Funemp. Wk #11/#TMIFiles in These Foolish Things

Holy shit. I’m into Week 11 of unemployment and I’m just now starting to feel like I need to buckle down and get serious about finding a new job. Truth be told, I have loooooved the down time and just hanging out in the Treehouse. It’s been a dream. But my severance pay runs out at the end of this month and then I’ll really need to dig my heels in and buckle down and hustle and muster some grit and all of the sayings that are reserved for successful people in the world.

I’m almost there - I really am! The days are starting to blend together now.

The Serious Company has offered me a contract position to work on a project with their company, but I can’t seem to make the numbers work, and if I take it, I’ll lose my unemployment benefits AND I’ve never really done contract work, so I honestly don’t know how to do it? Is it as simple as setting up an invoicing system and paying a quarterly tax? I just can’t seem to muster the energy to figure it all out when I just need a full time gig with decent insurance, ya know?

I don’t really have a “fun day” field trip scheduled this week - except I’m going to meet a former work colleague for lunch on Wednesday and I might do a kind of shopping excursion and buy nothing (because I don’t need to be spending money on anything except groceries, dog food and gas - oh and my rent that will be going up $300/month come July!! That’s another entry…).

I’ve now met several people from my former employer either at a lunch or a happy hour and it seems that everyone is jumping ship except for the execs. I’ve found out a lot of interesting things too that kind of boil my blood, but not really. Nothing really surprises me anymore. Still there are little things like the fact that the execs got a DOUBLE bonus last year and shit like that. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of those assholes, but it just hits me funny.

And the whole marketing/PD teams have left. I don’t know what’s going on with the part of the business that merged with my former company. It was the part that squeezed me out - nobody I talk with seems to know what’s going on with that. And I understand that there are two people from that other company who replaced me, so…hm.

Oh well.

In #TMIFiles news, I had some genetic testing done last week at the recommendation of my oncologist. As I understand it, this type of testing is normally done at the beginning of a cancer diagnosis, but I’m glad I got this testing done now instead of back then. “Back then” being the time of diagnosis when I was literally internally screaming at myself to wake up from this horrifying nightmare. I never would have been able to patiently talk with a genetic counselor let alone spit in that little vial they give you.

So, before one gets genetic testing done, you have to look back over your family medical history. Now, I didn’t realize this because nobody in my family made much of a big deal of it, but my father’s sister died of pancreatic cancer (!!). All this time, I’ve been saying that my family has NO history of cancer and then BOOM.

Why was this frightening discovery not really shared with me? Well, I think it was because my aunt lived such a good, long life that nobody considered the cancer as the thing that got her? I mean, she was 87 when she died, and it seems like when you’re that age something is just going to take you down, right? I mean, yes, I’m generalizing, but it seems like that’s what my family did too - they just generalized the cancer and chalked her death up to “old age”.

The reason why I’m spending so much time/words writing about my aunt’s pancreatic cancer is because now there’s a history of cancer, and in particular, PANCREATIC cancer (yikes!!) in my family, so the genetic counselor paid a LOT of attention to that fact.

I will find out in about three weeks if I have wonky genes, mutations, and a higher risk for more cancer or recurrence.

Yay.

Anyway, after the counseling and the spitting into a vial (which was a million times better/easier than giving a blood sample, by the way), I saw a nurse navigator who was just lovely. Again, this stuff is normally done at the beginning of the cancer “experience”, so some of it was sort of like, wow…I wish I’d known you provide this service, but it was still great to talk with this nurse.
We talked about my cancer experience and she told me about all of the services that my oncology center provides. Things like getting free rides to treatments, emotional support for patients and caregivers, financial resources, etc.

And I told her about the things that I used to help me get through my treatment (journaling, therapy, etc.) and she mentioned that July is Cancer Survivors Month) and that she’d love to have me involved in some part of that, and I was super happy about that. Possibly speak at an event or maybe read an entry or two, hahah! We’ll see. But stay tuned.

Last night I wanted to watch the lunar eclipse. Did anyone see it? It was too cloudy here to get a view of anything in the night sky, so I watched a little of it on social media until I couldn’t take it anymore. And then I saw something on an astrologer’s page saying that you might not want to get out and soak in the full moonlight anyway because something about this particular full moon and the eclipse might be worth staying under the covers during the event.

I don’t know - I’m not super big into astrology, but I find it fascinating. Wish that the stars could have predicted all of my shit…and maybe they did and I just didn’t see it?

Oh well.

Anyway, lastly, I heard a podcast about #vanlife on the New York Times podcast and thought about The Wanderer when I heard it, so I sent the link to him via the Tinder app. He wrote me back with a little joke about living in a van down by the river and hahah, but there was no mention about meeting again. Sadly, or maybe not, I’m not into the thought of seeing him again, so there’s that.

I desperately need something to get excited about again. I think I’m just about ready!

Until then,
GS