Q: Was it a relief to get laid off?
A: I wouldn’t say that.
It was a wake-up call.
We needed to simplify our life.
Not to have a better quality of life. But to survive.
Survival was a matter of simplification.
Q: But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
An opportunity.
A: In the sense that I wouldn’t have done it until forced to, yes.
At least, I hadn’t done it until forced to.
Q: Did you have any help?
A: Yes. We got free job placement counseling.
I was able to take a fresh look at my choices.
My situation.
A choice came up that wouldn’t have been a choice if I hadn’t been laid off, or hadn’t been able to see it as a choice.
We had a chance
to buy Brenda’s old home place from her brothers and sisters, sell our house in
I had a chance to retire.
To give myself a sabbatical year.
Between ten weeks separation pay, 26 weeks of unemployment, and one 13-week extension, I would have 49 weeks at the house to write.
I could go on early, reduced-benefit social security, at 62.
I got laid off in July and turned 62 in August.
Q: You fell in shit and come up smelling like a rose.
A: Yes.
No more commute.
No more tract house in the suburbs.
No more Burrito Day with my co-workers, repeating Rush Limbaugh’s talking points along with Fox News, overhead.
He went to the library. On his bicycle.
I could go to the library. On my bicycle.
Q: Did Brenda retire too?
A: Brenda kept working. She stayed in
She worked until she got laid of, so she could draw 39 weeks of unemployment.
I not only had a 49-week sabbatical, I had the first six months of it by myself, in Parker, before Brenda got laid off and moved down.
I could walk on the beach.
I could go the The red Bar on Sunady and hear Dread Clampitt.
I could set up a web site for Dread Clampitt and be the Band Paparazzo and Stage Father.
With my digital point and shoot camera.
I had a 35mm point and shoot camera, but now I upgraded to digital.
I could download jpg files from my camera and work on them in the photopaint program that came with the camera. Or with Windows.
I didn’t have to get film developed and saved to a CD as jpg files.
I was independent.
The ultimate free lance.
Q: Hunter S. Thompson wrote a story called “The Ultimate Free Lancer,” I think the guy starved to death.
A: Or died of a drug overdose.
Drank himself to death.
Lionel Olay. He “didn’t make much of a dent.”
Q: You haven’t made much of a dent.
A: It’s a chromium sphere that can’t be dented
from the outside and I’m not inside.
But inside, it’s an echo chamber.
Q: That’s the choice.
No dent or an echo.
A: Thompson made a dent.