New Work

It feels quiet outside this morning.  Dark rain clouds hang close to the earth, the streets and driveways that I can see are wet standing puddles are littered about.  The grass, I cut yesterday, is saturated with rain today and the pink and red apple blossoms are in stark contrast to the grey that surrounds them.  This has been a wet, cold, spring with more days of rain than sun and more days of mud than dust and it seems that I am not quite ready to give up my rain coats and heavy boots just yet.  The skin on my fingers is taut from getting wet and drying out so often and my tool bags seem to be constantly damp, as do my tools and the air in my truck.  The nature of a carpenter, in wet weather, I suppose, but I do not like it and I long for a stretch of comfortable sunshine in which I can revel.

Tomorrow I start work with a new contractor, I hesitate to say I've found a new job.  I feel as though I am just going from one job to another, one day after another, a carpenter staying busy in a slow economy.  I can not look at the work ahead and believe in a year, or two years, or more of steady work for the same company.  I can only take in the project at hand, that is all my hope will bear.  But the project at hand is significant and I do look forward to knowing where I will be working for the next two months.  There is none of the niggling doubt and anxiety of finding work day to day or week to week.

But as is my want, in keeping with the fashion of my personality, the advent of steady work comes with a degree of sorrow and sacrifice as well.  The days of writing and riding are gone and, having not utilized my time as well as I had hoped, I feel the past weeks and months, when I had time available to work at other things and have not, those hours available have been wasted and lost and I look back with a degree of sorrow and regret.  The reality is there comes a point, in a lengthy unemployment, wherein the need for a job clouds all other needs or desires and the job search becomes a soul sucking process of rejection turning to mental anguish and a constant state of desperation.  This becomes the mental identity of the unemployed -- searching failure.  To have found a job, and to be on the cusp of starting, defeats that identity and the time it absorbed comes to stark focus as a mental purgatory and I wonder what could have been with the strength to utilize those lost hours in productive writing, riding, reading, exercise, family time...  But I do not want to dwell on hindsight for to long.

Tomorrow I begin work, formally, as a carpenter once again.  The latent identity of carpenter re-emerges and the dreams of writing are gently moved to the wings, to be realized in small steps, through my blog and moments of time I coax out of the day for such a purpose.

It has started to rain, again, and I look forward to a ride and some leisure as the day goes on.  Tomorrow I join the ranks of the employed, putting to practice my occupation as a carpenter.  Hopefully, soon, I can realize my vocation as a writer.