so lucky

Grandpa George: There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket—There are only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?

-Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the film)

Yesterday—funemployment, day one—I felt like my job had slapped me with a burlap sack full of bricks on my way out the door. After 10 months identifying as "the Patch lady" 24-7, just being me was disorienting and a little off-putting. My work is such a large part of my identity. I stayed up until 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning to write my final story.

Also, work's absence allowed all the other stuff I have very little time to accomplish to rush in and demand mind space: sell furniture, realize the landlord and I had a misunderstanding and I might pay for all of September even though I won't be living here, pack my apartment, pack for India, change addresses, work out billing... all those common-sense lifey things I hate.

I woke up this morning (funemployment, day two) feeling about the same. It's a good thing I live alone; I hopped from bed with the urge to create a shiv with a glass-shard flourish and then stick it to an unsuspecting passerby. I reached for my Blackberry, and there was a message from Ridgefield's State Representative playing the inside joke card on my Facebook wall.

Then I confirmed a meeting with someone I love and haven't seen in many months and opened an e-mail from the parent of a former babysitting charge, who said her daughter woke up this morning in Manhattan asking about me, though I haven't seen them in many months either. I'm headed to yoga as soon as I stop this babbling, and I'm meeting an old journalism pal who lives near my parents next week. My sense of being overwhelmed and angry was pushed out by a sense that my heart, well, overfloweth. (This is where you turn, get the gagging noises out of your system and then accept the cheese factor and move on.)

Maybe this is just life and happens to everybody, but I have a tendency to amass a contingent of beloveds as I move from place to place. What's half a month's rent when I get to reconnect with some of them and then travel across the globe to see others? Pattabhi Jois famously repeated, "Do your practice and all is coming." One way I interpret the nugget is in the karmic sense that the universe returns what you give, and I am so lucky to get this reminder—that my giving may not be perfect, but the love and intention are there—at a moment I needed it.