Rainy Days and Mondays

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Abstract

hum, another Monday off. Such an occasion is rightfully celebrated by the gainfully employed. Alas, for me, “getting off” is anticlimactic.</p><p id="52a8">For my first two years post-layoff, rainy Mondays were ideal for virtual visits to venues of potential employment. Lured to explore myriad tantalizing sites cited in Sunday’s Job-Ops online, I would dutifully submit my credentials into the ether ad nauseam.</p><p id="626a">Two years on I avoid the void; I’m spent from having spent a hundred hunched — as in “terminally hung-over” — Mondays spewing my stuff into an unresponsive abyss.</p><p id="9707">Networking failed to catch any fish, though their stench lingered — something was awry. Given my presumably impressive resume, why had not one of my esteemed contacts arranged an interview in my behalf, much less a job? Could it be … age discrimination? (Is 47 > 35 …? Bingo!)</p><p id="e60e">At long last, an interview is pending, one I look forward to, confident I’ll clinch the position and so fatten my scrawny workweek. When the director of the hospice program — to which I applied to volunteer Mondays — calls, I’ll be ready.</p><p id="a287">I expect he’ll wonder whether I have the em

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otional fortitude to interact with terminal patients. I will assuage his doubts with the rhetorical question: <i>How can contemplation of another’s demise be any more demoralizing than dwelling on one’s own deadly existence?</i></p><p id="17c9"><i>As it turned out, my strategy backfired. I was rejected on the grounds that I was too depressed to bring cheer to terminal patients.</i></p><p id="4330"><i>This was written four years after my layoff of January of 2004. I continue to volunteer at the food pantry.</i></p><h2 id="85fc">For a sprinkle of gallows — or I should say, “guillotine” — humor, take another pinch of ashes from my “memoriam” urn.</h2><div id="7f7c" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/hung-out-to-dry-e5960ef71dfe"> <div> <div> <h2>Hung Out to Dry</h2> <div><h3>In memoriam of my employment</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*p56TH89aYffQ3dXF)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

March 17, 2008

It is pouring as I write this on a Monday morning. Rainy days; Mondays. Each one a bummer. Together, a double downer.

The upside of unemployment is that I normally need not venture outside in a deluge. As luck would have it, I have my annual date with the mammographer — a two-mile walk.

The downside of a downpour on the start of what used to be a workweek is that nowadays it serves as a painful manifestation of yet another three-day, wash-out weekend.

The food pantry at which I volunteer is closed Mondays; thus, after indulging in two undeserved days of leisure, I’m perversely granted a tedious extension to the denouement of my week.

Ho-hum, another Monday off. Such an occasion is rightfully celebrated by the gainfully employed. Alas, for me, “getting off” is anticlimactic.

For my first two years post-layoff, rainy Mondays were ideal for virtual visits to venues of potential employment. Lured to explore myriad tantalizing sites cited in Sunday’s Job-Ops online, I would dutifully submit my credentials into the ether ad nauseam.

Two years on I avoid the void; I’m spent from having spent a hundred hunched — as in “terminally hung-over” — Mondays spewing my stuff into an unresponsive abyss.

Networking failed to catch any fish, though their stench lingered — something was awry. Given my presumably impressive resume, why had not one of my esteemed contacts arranged an interview in my behalf, much less a job? Could it be … age discrimination? (Is 47 > 35 …? Bingo!)

At long last, an interview is pending, one I look forward to, confident I’ll clinch the position and so fatten my scrawny workweek. When the director of the hospice program — to which I applied to volunteer Mondays — calls, I’ll be ready.

I expect he’ll wonder whether I have the emotional fortitude to interact with terminal patients. I will assuage his doubts with the rhetorical question: How can contemplation of another’s demise be any more demoralizing than dwelling on one’s own deadly existence?

As it turned out, my strategy backfired. I was rejected on the grounds that I was too depressed to bring cheer to terminal patients.

This was written four years after my layoff of January of 2004. I continue to volunteer at the food pantry.