Dear Universe: Please take your “gifts” elsewhere

I awoke a few days ago to a project list longer than any I’ve had since before JPFO got sold off to Gottlieb.

I’d been feeling pressured for weeks — very busy, very committed, but as if nothing was coming together. Before May, things had been going great. Couldn’t have been better. Since the end of April there’d been bad news and a few hints of good news on the earning-a-living front. But bottom line, I’ve been working hard and getting nowhere.

Sure enough. I put all the project descriptions down on pixels, then looked at that to-do list. Over half the items were strictly volunteer work — dear to my heart but not buying the groceries. One other item was intriguing, but so long-term and so speculative it was more like a fantasy of work than work itself. It was going to require a lot of discussion and looking into and might never come to fruition.

The rest of the items were real, but not likely to provide puppy kibble for quite a while. They’d take research and time to develop, then time to write, and more time to get paid for, always with the chance they’d be rejected.

There was only one, single, active, committed project on the list. It was the one that should soon have begun bringing in money. And it was bogged down. I was having a hard time getting answers to questions. When I got them, I’d discover the project had mysteriously changed its nature since the last discussion, prompting more questions. It was growing in complexity as it morphed. (And — sigh — I’d agreed to accept a flat fee because the work had initially seemed so straightforward.)

After a month I was still closer to the project’s beginning than its end. Then I got an email from the client and discovered I was going to have to move backwards yet another step or three before making any actual, you know, progress.

I … erm, reacted. Then I shut down.

I turned off the computer. I turned off my brain.

I said, “This isn’t how I want to work. This isn’t how I want to live.” I said, “I will take two days and crawl into a cave and I will think this mess through and I will solve this.”

I haven’t been back online or checked email since. Except for a brief stop outside the closed library to post this via their wifi, I don’t intend to until I’ve figured out where I need to go next.

—–

It’s been two days and I haven’t solved the problem. The mess is still a mess. I’ve barely been able to sustain an organized, rational thought about it. Mostly I’ve read trashy detective novels, taken long walks, and indulged in large quantities of strawberry shortcake and bacon while fighting overwhelming urges to nap.

But it’s one of those cases where the unconscious is at work even when the conscious mind goes into a state of gibbering uselessness.

Though my head is still absent, The Gut has spoken loudly.

Unfortunately The Gut is great at providing general directions, lousy at offering specific action plans. But those will come.

——

Such sudden upsets and unwanted changes of course happen. All the time. To everybody once in a while. You’ve had ’em; I know you have and I know some of you have had them Big Time. Despite the greatest commitment to stability, despite the proverbial “best-laid plans,” despite the greatest diligence (none of which I can be accused of), they happen.

Then you buck up, try to get started again — and get knocked on your tailbone. Again. And that’s when you know it’s time to do something more than just dusting your butt off and continuing down the same path. That second time.

After the initial hours or days of despair, outrage, or head-bangery, there is simply nothing for it except to consider them wake-up calls. Opportunities. Gifts from The Universe.

And (cuss-damnit!) to be grateful for them.

I’ve heard people say that a diagnosis of cancer or being the victim of an unthinkable natural catastrophe was “a great gift” in their lives. Because of the new wisdom or perspective it gave them. Or the new love it brought them. Or the way it set them on a life course they never would have attempted had they remained healthy, intact, and complacent.

I always boggle at that. Can’t even imagine. I’ve never been given such a “gift” and fates willing, I’ll happily do without, thank you very much. Go give such “gifts” to … oh, any random politician you choose, Dear Universe.

But these smaller “gifts” have always proven useful. In the end.

No idea where or what the end will be in this case. Yet. Hate that part.