Mr. Overanalysis

April 10, 2009

Most of the people out there (including the blessed wife) don’t want to read any negativity about this journey I’m embarking on, but like any voyage across the ocean of life, there are going to be good days and bad days. You’re going to have clear sailing at some points and at other times storms will be roiling.

Today was a rather tempestuous day.

My guess is that I lost focus on what my mission is because my monkey (and money) mind kept leaping into the future, casting preposterous scenes of dire fiscal collapse, not of the country, but of the family. I saw us scraping to make the property tax payments in a year. Groceries becoming scarce. The Repo Man coming for the Saturn Vue. People dying and leaving me with no health insurance. I even had a dream last night of people I know from The News (my former employer) on a train that was leaving the station. Note to self: Don’t take melatonin before bed as a sleeping aid because it gives you savagely crazy dreams.

I met my spouse at the door when she came home from one of her two jobs and laid the poverty trip on her. After a grimace of disbelief and a stern warning to get my act together, she advised: “You made this leap of faith, now hold on to the faith.”

College-age son, while sympathizing with my concerns, opined: “You overanalyze everything. You overthink stuff. How about stopping at A-Plus for a twelve pack?”

Eldest daughter added via e-mail, in regards to my reluctance to share this down and dirty day: “Changing careers at 52 is NOT an easy task – anyone knows that. So, if you’re writing a real-life account you need to include some not-so-perfect information as well.”

So most of the past 24 hours was spent dwelling on a future that isn’t here, and probably won’t be in any form that I imagined today. Just chalk it up to a crappy day.

The forlorn feeling was magnified by a neighbor who stopped to chat this afternoon as I was struggling to fill a 15-year-old blue plastic Bills football with air using a pump that plugs into a car’s cigarette lighter. Cords were twisting. The pump refused to work at first and then, after filling the ball, I pulled the pin and the orb promptly deflated. That’s how the day went. Anyway, the kind neighbor, who is my age, exploded in disbelief when he heard I took a minuscule buyout and bolted from the city’s respected newspaper.

“You’re retired, that’s great,” he said. “More time to sit around and drink beer.”

I started to explain that I was not retiring, but re-training and returning to the halls of academia, but he was having none of that. “Nothing but the good life now,” he said. “All beer, all day.”

Then he clinched the conversation by saying he just got a nice raise while more than 100 of his company’s warehouse workers in Jamestown, N.Y., got their walking papers this week.

“Goodbye, Al,” I said, and tossed the flattened football I was trying to inflate in the garage trash can before trudging into the house.

At least my family came to my rescue. I seem to be again on point – this is going to be a great, transforming adventure that few people in my position have the cohones to take.

One day at a time, bro. One day at a time.