The New World

What a difference a week makes. From one week to the next, my life has shifted from a eleven-year history of full-time employment to a new paradigm of self-directed part-time employment which is still somewhat puzzling to my reeling brain and mind.

How does one arrange one's days when they aren't built around the 9 to 5 framework? What parameters does one set in order to get things done, balanced with time to not do anything at all? Does one think, "Don't just sit there, do something!" or "Don't just do something, sit there!"?

What does it mean to not have one job that defines one's place in the working world? When someone asks the ubiquitous question, "What do you do?", what becomes your new ten-second elevator speech?

"Well, you see, I'm a newly-minted under-employed nurse slacker, waxing poetic---latte in hand---at a cafe with Wifi near you!" Or perhaps, "I'm a burnt-out nurse with more per diem jobs than I can count."

However one defines it, I know this first week has seen me working a few hospice shifts, attending my new Tai Chi/Qi Gong class and my new writers' workshop, and---dammit---crying uncontrollably during a matinee showing of The Kite Runner. My slacker cup runneth over.

I embrace this new life, even as I must accept not commuting with Mary every day, letting go of my beloved work family, and allowing the uncertain fickleness of this new paradigm to overrun my life. Gaining control of these new reins, I have no doubt that a kinder, gentler work-life will emerge, seeded with challenge yet relatively free of the trappings which so efficiently burnt me to a crispy shadow of my former self.

Here's a toast to newness and all its inherent uncertainty.

Spiritual Identity in Middle Age

So, here I am, admiring our Christmas tree, a middle-aged man with nothing but Jewish roots traced back generations to the permeable borders of eastern Europe in the 1800's and early 1900's. Well, how did I get here, anyway?

Raised in a admantly secular, non-denominational home in suburban New Jersey, I grew up celebrating Christmas and Easter as the ubiquitously plastic-coated, gift-wrapped confections of post-WW II middle American culture that they generally are. My parents, both Jewish New Yorkers, left New York for the Jersey suburbs in 1951, assimilating into a predominantly white Christian culture, with a Christmas tree in the living room and chocolate bunnies in April. Occasionally visiting my observant Jewish cousins and extended family in New York and Long Island, I would get a fleeting taste of the alien Judaic world, returning to the safety and cultural anonymity of our assimilated existence.

Unlike some adult Jews who "rediscover" Judaism later in life, I continue to feel drawn in other spiritual directions, pagan and otherwise. Morphing from teenaged devout atheist to twenty-something agnostic seeker to middle-aged spiritual eclectic, I guess I'm just one who dares to not embrace the root culture, striking out for something uniquely my own. Some would call me confused, others would feel sorry for my loss of identity. Still others would simply see someone caught in a world he never made, making lemonades from so many lemons. However ill-defined, my spirituality and sense of self amidst the great Universality of Being is a constant work in progress, and while this is certainly not a dress rehearsal, I apparently still don't know my lines.

Some day, I'll exit stage left, and whether I meet St. Peter, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Paramahansa Yogananda or my old dog Sparkey, I know that ease and bliss await me in that Great Beyond. Will I know the script? Probably not. But just as I did while traipsing the Earth, I'm sure I'll just fake it 'til I make it.