My Fluxing Life

The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare to let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. — (Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)

Day 268 of Sobriety

As I tell the cap'n to keep throwing logs in the woodstove this morning, it's hard to believe that a little more than a week ago I was sitting in a bikini (please photoshop Kate Winslet's or Salma Hayek's body in your mind) and sweat was running in torrents down all my cleavages.

I seem to go from one extreme to the other.  Likewise with the work situation.  For the last several years, (I've lost count), I cringed and cowered at the thought of going back to work.  I did it, but I was petrified the whole time.  Now that I've gained back some of my daring-do, I want to get back to work now before I lose my nerve.

The last time I blogged I said that I had sent an email to my old hospital telling them that I couldn't accept the position they offered at the wage they offered.  I expected them to write back and say either, "Okay. You're right. You win. We'll pay you what you asked. When can you start?"  or "Sorry.  We were only doing you a favor that we really wished we could take back and now we'd like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to do so.  Now would you go away and quit bothering us."


I'm trying to teach myself the virtue of waiting so I waited a couple of days for a response. Nada. Nothing.  "Okay, I thought, "That is just f'ing rude." I had been corresponding with the HR department, maybe they hadn't let my old boss in the OR know that I had turned the job down and she hadn't had the chance to make her plea and tell them how much she really needed me or how the OR had suffered since I left or how she'd be willing to sacrifice a couple of pain in the ass surgeons to get me back. So I wrote her a contrite note telling her that I had informed the HR department I would not be able to work for her this summer because I can't afford to pay for the only apartment I can find with the wage they are offering me.  I made sure and told her how grateful I was for her continued confidence in my skills and how disappointed I was that this wasn't going to work out.  She quickly wrote me back and said something in the tone of, "Oh well, I'm sure we'll get by. Good Luck."

So that was the answer I've been waiting for?  The sign I've been pleading for my Co-writer to point in my direction, telling me whether he agreed with my plan to go back to work?  I better learn to live with it, right?  Start searching in another direction for where I'm supposed to go, right?  Just quit meddling.

Yeah, right.

See, I got to thinking maybe, just maybe, the HR hadn't let my old boss know just how little I was asking for.  After all, I'd never heard back from the HR dept. Maybe they never got my email.  I'd better write one final email just to make sure that they had gotten all my other final emails and to give them one more final chance to cry, "Uncle."

So I write the final email asking if they had received the other final emails and letting them know that I was getting ready to let the landlord, who was willing to sacrifice a long term lease to let me rent at an exorbitant price, know that I wasn't going to be able to take the apartment. That should get some response.

And I waited. At least a whole hour. Maybe the gal in HR that I had been corresponding with had taken vacation, maybe she was home with a sick child. Maybe I should do what I should have done in the first place.  Call her.  So I did.

She answered the phone. No vacation. No sick child. No excuse.  What? The computers had been down?  Oh, okay.  I waited in validated expectation for their offer.  She'd forwarded all of my correspondence to the head of HR and to my old boss, she explained.  When she received my next to last final email saying I couldn't take the job, she had asked her boss if she had heard from my old boss.  She hadn't.  So their pitiful offer still stood. As did my refusal.

I hung up the phone and called the pissed off landlord to tell him I couldn't take the apartment.

Then I called an old friend that I used to work with at El Cheapo Medical Center to unload on.

"Hey," she interrupted as I told her about my ordeal, "I have an apt. that's just now coming available that I'll rent you. Cheap!'

Oh Flux!

Oh and speaking of fluxing.  My womanly courses have shown back up after a 9 month reprieve.  What the hell's up with that?

To be continued...

P.S.  On a totally different note. There are always new people out there starting on this journey and I am blessed when they venture into my blogosphere.  As Anonymous commented in my last blog, my writing has changed, my life has changed (thank my Co-Writer) since I started this blog.  I can remember, when I started this journey, wandering around the internet searching desperately for someone that I could relate to.  Someone who was in the same place.  I want to encourage those that are in that place, just starting out, to go back to the beginnings of the blogs you find.  Go back to where we were looking for answers to the same questions you have.  I have barely started down this path and I sure haven't found all the answers, but I've found a lifetime of new possibilities.