Thinking about time and time for thinking

I would definitely say that recently I have had a lot of spare time for thinking, not that it has really gotten me very far or accomplished much more than to make me question every move in my life up until this point.

A decidedly odd 3 months have passed not having a job, having a particular sense of direction taken out from underneath me. I have found myself being almost allowed to indulge in things that I had previously set aside, taking photographs and starting to write again, looking into becoming that person I knew I was before my work life took everything over (except with vastly better dress sense). I’ve felt a little ‘kid in a candy store’ in a way, opening my eyes to a fraction really of what the internet can offer. Will my photos really attract any attention on flickr? No more than likely not, but does it make me feel good that I finally posted some of them after much deliberation. Yes, it does and that’s the important part.
Maybe that's why my new job isn't in retail, maybe it's still all too painful to go back and say 'yeah I worked in that shop that closed'. I hated those faux expressions of awkward apologies coming from those safe in their jobs, the asking of the immortally ego crushing question, ‘So, when can we expect payment?’ And in one small question the world as you know it comes crashing down around you and the emotional backlash hit me worse than I’d have ever thought it could have.

What’s so painful is knowing that things I worked for still exists, things I put time into, deliberated over like nothing else in the world mattered, it's still there, it's just not mine anymore. I have yet to go into the place where it's all still very real, I’m not sure I ever will, but I’m willing to risk that it will hold no more closure for me than I have now.
However, I'm lucky you know. Every so often I think about it and I am just stupid enough not to realise it until I’m forced to think it over. I look around at the people who I used to work with and a couple of them have fallen straight back into retail jobs and carried on, for the need for money outweighed the need to maybe find a job that was more fulfilling and challenging. Three of the girls have gone into jobs in Debenhams (who are the people who took Principles over and made us all redundant) and I’m not sure how I would cope with the sense of sadness of working in such close proximity and watching as it is slowly becomes another nameless brand in a soulless department store. This isn’t something I say lightly, it’s not as if my bitterness is all the controls my opinion, its real life experience, and a case of ‘been there, done that and ritualistically burnt the work shirt’. Then there are the rest of us, those of us struggling to get back that lost direction, trying to find out that something that might actually make us happy rather than just having a job for the sake of it, and I feel I’ve wimped out in that stake, all this job I have will ever do is earn me money, but will it give me the ways and means to start improving myself again. Will I ever properly take advantage of what is handed to me, who knows?

Though, more recently I would say that I have found more a sense of inner calm, a little more grace but still the elegance of a cat with an inner ear infection (I shall and forever will be clumsy, end of). Whatever anyone says or may think things aren’t so bad. Life moves on even though the feelings remain and will sometimes cut deeper than you could ever imagine I can still hold my head up high and know I did that and so help me, I’m so proud.