There’s a Million Little Battles That I’m Never Gonna Win/Anyway

I triumphantly left my toxic job in July and traded up _{<if such a thing can be said for any job in the US workforce, really>} after eight years of grinding away unhappily.

The new place sacked four of us as soon as February kicked on. I assume I was last in, first out. But whatever the reasoning, I have been completely left to my own devices for the last month. I’ve been idly applying to things, but we’re _{<on a very tight string>} paid up through the end of April and there’s a pandemic on.

‘How long have we been here?
Am I ever coming down?’

You know that thing where you focus the entire force of your will on making a thing happen and then it does? I honestly just have not even sort of done that yet. If it weren’t for worrying about money, this is the best I’ve felt in my adult life. My sleeping schedule immediately sorted itself out, I’m losing weight through no action of my own. Being employed is bad for your body and you can’t change my mind.

‘I’m not going anywhere
Who do I think I’m kidding?
I’m still standing in the same place
Where you left me standing’

I’ve lived here _{<northern New England>} my entire life, and if you asked a week ago, I would have said I have heard every violin-like horror movie sound pine trees make in the winter. Except.

Except last week, half-drunk smoking outside after midnight, I absolutely could not determine whether I was hearing a pine squeak or a kitty stuck in a tree. To the point where I clambered through the woods _{<with my phone flashlight illuminating practically nothing>} to make sure I wasn’t hearing a stuck cat. At some point, one of the trees scratched open the back of my non-dominant hand from the knuckles to the base of my thumb. I assume now that they’ve tasted my blood, they will stop at nothing to finish luring me out to the woods to die.

‘I am easy
To find’

Do you know how many times I have said
.                                                                           ;Oh no, I’ve seen this horror movie.;
.                                                                                                                                             and known better, but barreled ahead anyway?

‘I am easy
To find’
– The National