Connection

So how does one reconnect with the world, renew a sense of belonging in the most positive and nurturing sense?

Consider touring your own town. Find the independent coffee shop or tea room, especially one with free wi-fi. You'll find people there relaxing, working on far more interesting projects than company assignments, and in lively conversation. It can be a central station for forward-thinking day people. Stay connected in the symbolic sense as well as the physical. Conversation will come to you if you don't initiate it first with your recharged sense of curiosity and comfortable fearlessness.

There will be an astonishingly large population of day people busy into their own developed passions, coming up for air and retuning their strings. You'll do the same in short order, after a reasonable time of detached and amused observation. Treat this as a prelude, a small and necessary step toward connection with the music of the universe.

Learn to carry your essentials with you, so you don't have to return home for any small excuse. Home is not your reward for venturing out. The reward is wherever you are and wherever you're going. For a gadget freak as myself, this is the ideal reinforcement for my wish come true.

They say be careful what you wish for, since the power of that thought will influence its outcome. i got lucky, eventually, after feeling years of containment and persecution. The day came, as destined, and i knew everything i had bought and hand-picked from online catalogs was going to be put to immediate use.

Let me back up here and give you the short of this chronology. As is easily surmised, my job was of personal service to physicians and medical staff, assisting with their publishing and presentation needs. Essentially, I helped them look good in front others by reformatting their content, and smoothing the delivery. It was a niche job that didn't pay very much, being a sub-department of one. This kept me under the spreadsheet radar for years, although the collective paranoia was refueled with every wave of restructuring and downsizing. Whole departments fell to the axe and yet I was untouched, presumably by someone at the occasional breakfast meeting that spoke up for my service. It didn't take more than a couple years of doctors' heads posted at the village gate to realize no one was exempt or unnoticed by the red flags of database.

Awards and Recognition

America loves awards and recognition, the key to fame. Remember the Wizard of Oz giving the scarecrow a diploma? The official (to whom?) piece of paper, the dimestore medal for courage, the baroque-font university degree, all validate the effort and experience of hard work, yet anyone with a printer and convincingly manufactured testimony can form a foundation out of thin air. The lifestyle one adopts in the rejection of social programming is the living proof, the national treasure of unconventional thought, the seeds of contentment to be out of the rat study. The superior mouse climbs the perimeter wall rather than repetitiously seeking the food or addictive substance planted in the maze. The badge of honor you wear is the success of happiness, the personal identity in an infectious smile, the enthusiasm of the day ahead.

The greatest reward is staying out, away from retreat. Buy yourself a tea, enroll in an adult education course. The minimal money this costs is an investment in your peace of mind and a stimulant to personal growth.

Acceptance

When your immediate superior and the Human Resources company tool call you up to the quiet room on the second floor, the immediate gut-wrenching, realization is the time has come for the hanging. It usually happens on a Monday or a Friday and they run through a blizzard of well-rehearsed business-speak of severance (if you're lucky) remnants of benefits that will be gone before you know it, and procedures of acceptance.

The bigger corporations may offer a package "deal", an acceptance document that will prove to you this was no surprise to the weasel manager, that it was a long time brewing to cut you off before a raise in your vacation hour accrual. In my case, it was a couple months before my fifteenth year of hire. The others in my wave of dismissal was an older guy just short of eighteen years work, a Hispanic male in his twenties, and a woman a few months short of full retirement, the reward they used to treat with a trip to Hawaii. Rest assured that those Hawaii trips have been monopolized as retreats so deservedly and humbly accepted by upper management every fiscal quarter.

The "acceptance deal" is that they'll give you a week's pay for every year served, penitentiary-style for good behavior. This is unless you sign the document as a revocation, that you have a waiting time, my case was 45 days to ponder litigation for age discrimination. This kicks in as a factor for those dismissed after 45 years old. This is a serious consideration, even if they stacked the demographic deck against you in your group. Again, the game is different for upper management. They're most often offered a relatively nice package that provides a year's health coverage and golf-membership time while pondering how to pay the looming and over-extended bills. Seems these guys always come up smelling like a rose, but the reality may be their ulcers have grown a bit more, less because they are still despised for being career sellouts known for brutal decisions, rather more for how to grovel for starting again at square-one for another heat of olympic ass-kissing. Believe me, they had it much worse than those of us who actually worked.

BikeTart Dream #1

My life changed forever with the most intriguing and beautiful sidelong glance from the yet introduced BikeTart. I had no idea what effect she would have on me now and forever, but at that moment I knew I was significantly touched to the depths of my soul.

This burst out of my chest and scattered into the breeze to seek root..

Until you found me
i thought i was free
Days gave me friends and plans and jokes
No expectancy
Your smile made me see
Love wasn't to be
Until you found me

Until i found you
Your hopes were thin too
Only light raindrops in this flood of desire
That i cannot subdue
Discontent grew
There was nothing quite true
Until i found you

-bridge-
Now we've reached our destiny
We dared never dream
The highest of mountains
You lift me to view
In my angel eyes' gleam

Until you found me
It was what was to be
Wandering aimless days
Of coffee and tea
Your love made me see
Life wasn't to be
Until you found me

BikeTart Dream #2

Funny how being in the right spot at the right time is guided. Where is that banshee the rest of the time? Probably waiting all your life for that perfect moment. I know for certain it happened to me when I felt least receptive, but now realizing was delivered in perfect harmony to the possibility. I'll be forever grateful for that enchanted semiquaver in time, and even more delightfully astonished that she could so naturally feel the long now in us. Nothing short of miraculous to me...


I know it's over
Your arms pulled me free
Gone is the hopeless veil
of complacency
i know it's over
my solitude's done
i have my One

The day that you found me
The look that you sent
Blew sparks to my soul, my mind, my heart
i could never invent
i know that it's over
The new world's begun
You are my One

bridge
No need to analyze
We fit hand in glove
So quickly become, we're certain is real
i finally know love

You give me your sweetest smile
Enlighten my day
Delight in your glow, your thought, your touch
In every way
I know that it's over
Waiting is done
You are my One