A Thought On Migraines

Yep, I've got another one. It must have something to do with the piddling little upsets of the past year or so:

Quite some time ago, the business connection that had kept me afloat for years packed up and moved. My work started to really dry up. My other two main connections -- let's call them Dr. Feelgood and The Newbie, so you can picture them as wisecracking crimebusters in a buddy movie -- simply did not come through with the accounts I needed to stay solvent. I started nervously looking for another job, in the state with the worst economy and lousiest job prospects in the nation.

Last April 10th I found something I actually thought I wanted, and started a job so hellish I did not have time to stop and realize the fact. I finally got stuffed into a Baggie and taken to the doctor, who gave me more and better drugs. Most of the time they worked, too, until:

I got laid off from Hell Job, about 9 months into the ordeal, which is probably terribly symbolic. But I didn't have time to stop and register that rich imagery of being spewed screaming into a world I never imagined. I had to find work. I started looking even before they told me that it was a mistake, that I was keeping my job after all; that, oops, they lied, I was in fact getting laid off; that they'd move heaven and earth to get some something else; that there were lots of jobs out there for someone like me; that oops, they lied, there was nothing; that they were sorry that nobody they'd asked for help from was coming through; and on and on. After all my leads had fizzled, and I was in a complete panic:

The bosses shunted me into a different job, one I could keep for the rest of my life if I wanted. But this was work I'd vowed I'd never take. Now I was finding out why I was right all along to avoid it. It was a lot less exhausting than Hell Job, but boy did it ever suck. AND I had to commute to get there. AND the freeway coming back home was closed, so I had to drive on badly-maintained dirt roads at the height of the slush season in my plucky little clown car. It wasn't the work so much as the spine-jolting ride that had me coming home with a daily headache.

At this moment, of all the low points in my life, the exact dream job I've wanted for years opened up. If I hadn't been laid off I wouldn't even have been looking, and I would have clean missed it. To my utter astonishment, I got the job. After weeks of the staff trying to intimidate me with how tough it was going to be, I discovered that it's really no big deal. Except for learning new paperwork, I can pretty much do this job blindfolded. Even starting at the bottom of their pay scale means a raise for me. The more I learn about it, the more I see that this work combines the best features of all my previous career experience. They told me that I actually have a GOOD reputation in the community, in spite of all the dire things Dr. Feelgood used to tell me. (I knew he was talking through his hat, but for shit sake, the guy signed my paychecks.)

I started a year to the day from the inception of Hell Job.

The blinking and twitching of the past couple of months -- did this really only start in the middle of February? -- have started to subside.

So why do I have another migraine this weekend?