The Winter of My Unemployment

I live by the seasons. If you know me, you probably know that. And, career-wise, this is apparently my winter. Beyond the obvious, cold, hibranating, quiet, it is apparently my time to do work internally, as you do in the winter. Here's the thing about working full time, the people you work with become your family. You see them every day for hours and hours. You rejoice with them, mourn with them, eat with them...when you don't like the people you work with, it sucks. When the place you work feels like home, though, it's awesome...until you're evicted...in my case, laid off. It's not so much the work I miss, mostly, probably because I am still doing much of it. It's the people I miss. When you leave a job, for whatever reason, people always promise to stay in touch. And, maybe they do. But it's never the same. It's never every day, their triumphs and failures, your highs and lows together, podmates to complain to and laugh with, desks to decorate on birthdays. Which leads me to my winter. Winter is a time to do inner work. To meditate, to work on the self. I feel like that right now. I used to write with the noise of a newsroom, people on the phone yelling, people passing by getting candy from my bowl and inevitably, enough talking to distract me from meeting a deadline or two (or three). Now, I write in comparible silence. The tv might be on, or music might be playing. Nate is usually asking for juice or a hot dog, or more juice. But, in comparison to a newsroom, it's silent. Apparently, there is something for me to learn here, in the quiet of my home, in the zen of my office. Apparently there is some lesson that would have been drowned out by the din of commeradorie (there's no one to ask about how to spell stuff either). Like the winter, though, it's lonely here. The snow of silence is covering me up. I find echos in my mind. I wonder what will happen when the ground thaws. Will I have found that I am enough, that the chatter was just noise and the true friendships were not limited by the walls of a newsroom? Will I find that there are new friends and new lessons and new families to be formed? Will I learn that everything changes and to not let go of the oars and go with the flow of the river would be to slow down my own growth?I don't know. But, for now, like those of us in the cold of the winter, I am restless. I want to plant flowers, I have to wait for the ground to thaw. I want to swim in the river, I have to wait for the ice to melt. I want to feel the sun on my skin, but I have to wait for the earth to spin to summer. If there is only one thing I know, I know that it will change. Winter will become spring and then summer, fall and winter again. I will plant, swim, feel. For now, though, I will write in silence...hoping that I am doing so to hear that tiny voice with the profound message that I have been drowning out for so long.