Regrets: Only a Few

I've been thinking that I quit the bakery just in time, but the pain in my sacroiliac joint is making me think that I waited a little too long. I've mostly been ignoring it, because that's what I do, but today--even with the zen shiatsu--it's been pretty painful. Clearly I need to take some antiinflammatories, and not just sporadically, but regularly, and for a few days, and see if that helps. If it's anything like the shoulder injury I had a few years ago, a week or so of that will take the inflammation down enough so my body can heal the rest of it, perhaps with the judicious application of some yoga. But I have to do something; the pain has moved into the groin area, sometimes radiating down my leg, and it's pretty constant, so I think the "ignore it" treatment has proved to be worthless this time.

This whole thing has been kind of surreal, really. A year ago I was embroiled in working way too many hours at the bakery, and a year before that I was embroiled in Chuck's breakdown and the beginning of the end of our marriage, and a year before that I was planning pastry school and a wedding. Even this past couple of months has been surreal. Yes, I know I planned to quit the bakery, and I had reserves and such, but I applied for this job the day I left to visit my family, so that must have been January 3rd--less than a week after my last day--and a week from Tuesday I show up for my orientation. And? I'm making more in the first two months of the year than I would have made at the bakery, but working about a third or a quarter of the hours. My lesson from this (not to mention from the previous half a century) is that you never know what the fuck is going to happen.

I've also been feeling fortunate of late. Not just for getting A job, though of course that is a huge part of it; it's also the kind of job I've managed to get. Several things i have tried to do that were of the follow-your-dream sort simply have not worked out for me: you'll notice that I'm neither a professor nor a bakery owner, and the start-up company for which I worked went belly-up as well. On the other hand, the work I've managed to find this time around will at least put my talents to use on behalf of people who need help in a serious way. All things considered, if i can't do what I would have loved to do, then I'm happier to be able to help someone else. I know better than to think that I would do well in a corporate environment, and I'm relieved to not have to start looking in those arenas for a job.

Let's face it: every job has some version of memos about TPS reports and TPS cover sheets. But personally I find it easier to deal with the crap that goes with a job and a bureaucracy when it's on behalf of helping people in need rather than, say, enriching already-bloated wallets of executives and shareholders. Don't get me wrong, I don't think all profit is wrong, exactly--I was going to BE a capitalist, fer chrissakes, and I wasn't going to run it as a charity--but I still draw a distinction between small businesses and massive corporations.

Ah, well, time for bed. I don't suppose you get to be this age without a few regrets or what-ifs.