Keith Richards is kind of a boring writer...

... and other things I have learned in my period of unemployment.

Also included:

- Pyjamas are casual, sweatpants are for dressing up and going out.
- The challenges in life are easier to face with good friends and a very supportive live-in boyfriend.
- Mushrooms are always cheaper at the Great Canadian Superstore.
- The Keith Richards autobiography is a slow yawn of a read (who would have thought??) but the Thomas King novel I'm halfway through is super amazing.
- The only downside of knitting: one cannot simultaneously read and knit.
- Toques take more time to construct than I ever realized (who would have thought??)
- Don't ever get cocky when applying for a job for which you feel overqualified. Because then it sucks when you're not even offered an interview.
- Farting is, and always will be, really really funny.
- 2:00 pm is not "the morning."

So. My two jobs fell through and I am currently unemployed, still living with some pretty bad days of anxiety, and applying for "social worky" jobs even though I still lack the confidence to feel I can hold a solid job. To make matters WAY better but more complicated, I am going on holiday for two weeks in... five sleeps!! Luckily, I paid for it when I still had a job. My wonderful man-friend has actually "forbid" me from applying for any jobs right before vacation because he wants me to enjoy my time, but when have I ever listened to good advice that involves self-care? I applied for two jobs. Smart boyfriend be-damned!

Okay, I'm having a pretty good time in life these days. I'm enjoying being in love, and in particular the fact that 90% of the time we're either kissing or laughing. To those cynics who are years into a relationship, yes, I know it's not *always* like that. He and I spend the other 10% fighting. But then someone farts and we're back to laughing.

I have my off days. Yesterday I spent the entirety of the day in bed reading, crying, and having anxiety attacks. But today is a new day, and I find it easier to bounce back than I used to. It helps living with someone, because it's a lot harder to extend that one self-indulgent day into, say, seven. Or ten. Or a month.

My night sweats and dreams are back in full force with the same damn themes as are always haunting me. Angry parents, disturbing violence. On a slightly more amusing note, I have constant recurring dreams that I never finished high school (better finish high school before they take away my university degree!!) and that I return to finish my year but don't show up for any classes. My best friend who I went to high school with is always in the dream, and attends all classes, therefore making me feel even more like a loser. I'm also always on rollerskates when in school, and I can never, ever, remember my locker combination and therefore stress about the fact that my locker hasn't been opened in years.

Every night it's a continuation of the same high school theme. Trying to meet with the school counsellor to see if I can get "incompletes" and redo the work so my permanent record won't be tarnished. Trying to find my classroom (on rollerskates) and never able to succeed. Trying to remember my locker combination over and over again. For the record, this is in fact the locker combination that my best friend and I had when we shared a locker in Junior High School.

Then last night. Last night, amidst the violence and crying and angry parents. I'm back in school, in front of the dreaded locker. On rollerskates. Of course. And VOILA! I remember the actual combination that my friend and I used to use. I pop open the locker in a frenzy of successful joy. I open the locker to find a fine layer of mold upon a stuffed pig, pencils, and what appears to have been... grapes? Spiders and bugs crawling throughout the dusty, webbed chasm. A poof of toxic smoke emerges, and I cover my nose for fear of inhaling black mold.

As the teacher across the hall closes the door to his classroom in order to fend of the stench, I turn away from the locker, walk down the hall, and out the front door.

I woke up feeling just a little bit like I may have made some progress.

Mourning the abandonment of the stuffed pig,

PS