In my unemployed state, I find myself wanting things. Lots of things. New things. Things I even have already. Like perfume. I’m obsessed with buying a new bottle of perfume. I don’t even know which perfume but I know I want the luxury of a pretty new bottle in a lovely little box and a cute shopping bag in which to carry it out of the store. Before I was laid off I wouldn’t give this a second thought before heading to the store and leaving with new perfume, probably with some new lipstick and powder as well. Now, it’s food vs. luxury and let’s face it, food wins. As does bus fare, doctor’s visits and the occasional hair cut to prevent me from looking like Sasquatch. After all these years of listening to my dad proclaim his status as “the little guy”, and me doing everything in my power to prove that I wasn’t one, indeed, it seems I am.
I jokingly tell people that “I’m on the dole” but the reality is, I am on government assistance for the first time in my 46 years. Listen, I’m thankful as hell. If it weren’t for the $404 I receive every week I’d be somewhere I choose not to think about.
And I know that I am far from alone. In the small company I was laid off from alone, there are about 40 sharing this same fate. They too are probably sending out resume after resume to no avail. I’ve never had to look for a job before – they’ve always simply come to me through connections or simply happened if I pursued them. The job I was laid off from was one of those – seemingly the last as the world has changed and with it, my ability to purchase perfume.
Yes, I realize that life isn’t just about new things. People live in this world on far less that I’m currently receiving on unemployment and they are happy and well-adjusted people. Likewise, people live on a lot more and are miserable. Spirituality dictates that we find joy in things much bigger than bottles of perfume or a new pair of jeans with a tummy tuck panel- but isn’t spirituality also about the treats and simple pleasures in life? A new piece of pretty clothing could be just the thing to pep up a sagging spirit or lift a head just a little bit higher and I don’t think I need to apologize for that. That said – I do pray a lot. More than I ever used to. And I talk about it. I tell people “I’m going to stay home and pray” and I’m quite sure they think I’m enjoying a few too many highballs like my mom’s Aunt Bea used to do. She’d garage sale with my mom and her sisters all day – buying things left and right, and then in the evening have a few of her favorite libations, only to end up sobbing “I don’t know what I’d do without you girls.” You have to hand it to her – she did really understand what was important.
Admittedly, pleasure is found in some very small delights. I love sleeping until 8 am. My days have a decided routine as I head to my favorite coffee shop for a blueberry muffin and diet coke and where I log into my computer and check jobs and resumes and email. I see more of my friends who are self-employed and for whom Monday-Friday time is not a whole lot different than weekend time. My life has taken that turn as well. Fridays are no longer quite as exciting and Mondays no longer as dreaded. I lose track of formal holidays as there is no “the office is closed tomorrow” excitement. There is an even-ness to my time that is rather nice and I find that I enjoy being in my house writing with the French doors open to my flower boxes on a nice summer day.
But I am still faced with an unrelenting desire for new perfume. Does the little guy ever get to satisfy a base urge? My father – the king of the little guys – was as generous as tomorrow but also very tight with his money. Little guys are like that – always struggling to get by. In his mind he was always one paycheck away from disaster even though he worked to the bone. One of his biggest splurges in life was a beautiful, polished $700 acoustic guitar. He bought it without knowing how to play a lick and quite honestly, we thought he had flipped a gasket. What we didn’t realize at the time was that his childhood fantasies of Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, lived on in our dad, a man whose evening pleasure to this point had been holding a running hose on the new birch trees he had planted in our front yard. Dad took some guitar lessons and learned a few chords and that was all he needed. For some time following, he would come home from his drafting job (the one he held steadily for 25 years), have some dinner and watch the news and then he would retire to the master bedroom, put on his favorite Gene Autry album and sit softly strumming and singing along with his boyhood hero. Even little guys can find ways to fulfill their dreams it seems.
