This last two weeks, I have been mainly getting to grips with being unemployed, for the first time in so-many-years-I-don't-even-dare-think-about-it...
What does this mean?
It means:
Loss of the overall self-esteem that I felt, I guess, working in a high-level job in an office with a regional profile, and of a certain renown;
Loss of income and potential/future income;
Loss of the opportunity to build upon a relatively secure pension with almost twenty-five years of contributions made;
Loss of the opportunity to progress within the job, to some degree - It took me years to get promoted...
I'm very proud of what I achieved, what we achieved in our small ways, and yet thwarted slightly in my ambitions to get to the next grade... To be honest, I think I've reached a settled place in my mind about this moot point. I'm not that bovvered.
That I had absolutely no control over the decision to end my job is something I have tussled with slightly, to be frank.
I swore early on that I would not give the politicians my tears. Heartless millionaires are not deserving of my valuable tears.
But I've found myself unable not to shed any tears over our plight.
I know that on the scale of recent matters in New Zealand and Japan the loss of a number of Civil Servants' jobs just does not equate.
...And yet there are many innocent lives which are already being adversely affected by the ruthless ambition of politicians and Whitehall mandarins, namely,
- The young women who were holding off on just the right moment to have a family;
- The two young couples who had picked late last year or early this year for their wedding dates, and who had to revise their plans, (or not), as the case may be;
- The lovely lady who cares solely for her very frail mother, whose husband was also made unemployed in January - That's two of them out of work;
- The couple of couples who were both employed by my office - For them, and for us, this is a step off a cliff with little cushion to bounce upon...
- Similarly, there are those of us with lovely children who have years to go at University, and whom we naturally need to subsidise heavily, albeit very willingly;
Enough, methinks.
Where there is despair, there will be opportunities;
Where there is loss, there will be re-birth and repair;
Wherever there is death, there is always new life - In time...
Have hope, have faith - Whatever it is you choose to cling to.
With warmest greetings to my friends in New Zealand, to friends of friends in Japan.
I am sorry for your great loss and enormous sadness... May you be held gently by the love that is felt for you around this world of ours.
(Photo courtesy of Fiona Andersen Photography, please CLICK ON LINK, New Zealand via Flickr).
