I had just gotten off the phone with a local city council member, after spending the better pat of two days running around talking to people, tracking down information and taking photos for the group of stories I was working on for the week, when I was summoned into my boss's office.
Ten minutes later, with my few possessions in tow, I was escorted out of the office I'd worked in for the last two years.
I didn't get an official answer to why I was being let go, but based on the previous two weeks and the sudden about-face which had taken place, it doesn't take much to figure it out.
I'd been notified at the end of the month that my productivity had fallen off and I needed to pick it up again quickly. Not an unrealistic demand to make by an employer and I knew that. And since we were having a change in management, the overall tenor of the office had changed somewhat and the word was given that we were all going to be held more accountable for our impact on the company, both good and bad.
So the following week, I did so. I got off my butt and out from behind my desk, of which I admit I'd grown a little too comfortable with, and tracked some good stories down. I didn't complain, didn't fuss or fight them on it. In fact, I didn't say much of anything to anyone.
I figured the best way to show my productivity was to actually BE more productive. Turned out that didn't work, either, as I was both written up and lectured again. This time, however, the lecturing took on a very different tone, because I was notified that I had, in effect, been spied on through social media for a good chunk of time.
Now, in this day and age of the NSA, Edward Snowden, semi-secret super-huge data collection sites in the Utah desert and everyone clamoring to be a part of the great social media engine that is Facebook, Twitter and the lot, I get why employers frown upon their people getting too immersed in it all. I do. Hell, I even wrote about my growing sense of dependency (for lack of a better term) on Facebook to have any sense of social identity at all.
I also understand that in a time where even the simplest choice of words on a tweet or a post can be so drastically blown out of proportion by those who might not understand the full context of what's being said, we have to choose our words VERY carefully. I'd like to think I did so, as I never spoke ill about my employers or anyone I worked with on Facebook or this blog and I made a concerted effort to not let either interfere with my ability to do my job.
Unfortunately, that was not the consensus agreement, and the fact that I was even using this platform to deal with everything I'm working through became an issue, which in all honesty, it shouldn't have.
I made no illusions about the fact that I am still working through my depression and other unresolved issues, and because my employer felt the need to raise the rates on our healthcare coverage to more than I could afford every month, I had to cancel it in favor of things like rent, food, electricity, gas and car payments. That said, with the passage of the ACA, I was in the process of getting my benefits back at a rate I could actually afford. Problem is, such things take time and for as impatient as I can be a lot of the time, turned out I wasn't the only one.
Then I got asked the most uninformed question I've ever heard from someone claiming to be a qualified journalist.
"Don't you want to feel better?"
Let me be as straight about this as I can be. Would you ask a person who is fighting cancer, or diabetes, or fibromyalgia, or drug/alcohol addiction that question and expect them to respond "No?"
Then why, in the name of common sense, is that considered something to ask a person struggling with mental illness?
Of course I want to feel better.
For years, the single hardest parts of my day have always been going to sleep and getting out of bed. My brain doesn't want to shut off at night, and when it finally does and I then have to get my butt up and do stuff, it doesn't want to do that either. I can't tell you when it started, but it's been a persistent battle I've had to fight for a long time.
I also don't like walking around feeling like everyone I know can't stand the sight of me, or doesn't want to talk to me, or doesn't care what happens to me. Even though I know that is completely opposite of how my closest friends and family actually feel, and I know this because they've had to remind me more times than I'm sure they'd like to tolerate.
And no, I don't like feeling so wholly inadequate as a human being that I have nothing to contribute to the world outside my door and would rather keep said door shut, locked, and dead-bolted than to let any modicum of sunshine in.
Nobody enjoys feeling this way, least of all me. Yet I do. All the time. So the question I so desperately wanted to ask in return was, "Do you honestly think taking my job away is somehow going to make me a healthier person?"
Sadly, I didn't ask it because I've been around long enough to know that in such situations, the perspective of management is always the right one and to question said perspective is akin to spitting on the Pope's shoes.
I also got the uber-patronizing consolation of, "Now don't go beating yourself up over this." Right. Like the fact that I am now out of work, in a country that's systematically taking apart its domestic support systems with the subtlety of Leatherface because it views its unemployed as "lazy and uninspired to work harder," and now have to worry about how I'm going to pay my rent, or my child support, or find another job in a still stagnant and atrophied economy, that makes it all okay. If we're still all about banging the drum of "personal responsibility," then why wouldn't I spend a great deal of time kicking the crap out of myself for losing my livelihood?
In the dictionary, under the word Hypocrite, it should say, "See: Management."
In the week since, I've already sent out about twenty portfolios across the country. I have my preferences on where I'd like to work, but on the whole, I really don't care any more. I just want out of here.
I would like to go somewhere fresh and totally start over from scratch. Leave all the bad memories and reminders at the border, plant my flag in fresh earth and chart a new direction. But to do that I need a job first.
Tally Ho.
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