When your life catches you off-guard

Not to get too inside baseball about how I do this here blog, but on Wednesdays I either post something I wrote years ago or something based on what I’ve written before — hence the “Written in Past Lives” tag.

Unless there’s something specific that I know I want to revisit, I basically just poke through my old stuff to see if there’s something that grabs my attention.

Which brings me to last August.

Suzi and I went to Maine last August.

We visited the Portland waterfront, pondered why more places don’t sell both pizza and ice cream, took an late-afternoon stroll at the beach right before a thunderstorm and went to our first ballgame at Hadlock Field in Portland in 12 years … way too long.

And then, on the Tuesday after we got back, I was told I’d be out of a job in two weeks.

I was actually startled to see this.

It’s not like I don’t remember it — after all, I lived it, and it was a pretty big deal — but my brain was more “Hey, let’s see what I wrote about last August” and then “Oh yeah … that.”

But I thought about it some more, it occurred to me that while I was on that vacation — which also included a day trip to western Massachusetts — the wheels were already in motion for me to be let go once I got back.

Also, that vacation would be the last truly carefree time I would have for months. It’s not like I’ve been living in a constant state of panic since then, far from it, but it’s always … there.

And, at the time, I had no idea.

 

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