Real Freedoms

Three years ago this week, I was laid off from a job that I had worked for about fourteen years. The company up and quit due to some ugly news stories stemming from BAD nursing. When Jim Taricanni points his camera at you, you hire lawyers to run defense so management runs out the back door pointing fingers at everyone else but themselves. I think the lawyers were the only ones to make out like bandits from all of that.

A part of me was upset by it. I was losing a weekly check, health care and the such. Plus so many of us had been there so long that a family grew from it. I'd miss that and the social outlet that provided. But that's America when it comes to economics. It's like a bus station with employees, companies and CEO's coming and going.

When I heard the news, another part of me said: “FUCK YEAH!!” A few minutes later, I might have fist pumped the air in the back room where no one was looking.

That last time I had an entire summer off was eighteen years prior. Prior to that, it had been another five years earlier when I was in college. With the piles of vacation, sicktime, severance and unemployment bucks about to follow, I calculated that I could skate easily for about seven to eight months provided I didn't step on any financial landmines. Luckily, I never did. This money would purchase me time, which is what I prefer to buy instead of things.

It took about two months to decompress from work and the shitstorm it had become. I know this because people around me started to remark on how relaxed, open and breezy I had become. Sure, when you don't have anywhere to be, no deadlines to face and no responsibility...and the bills will be paid, you revert to your childhood “summer vacation” mode. I knew when I was completely “there” when I realized that there times when I wasn't sure if it were a Wednesday or a Thursday. I didn't really need to know really. That's how free I became. I did what I wanted to, when I wanted to and wherever I wanted to do it.

Prior to being laid off, I knew I had to remain active in some sort of way. Lazing on the couch eating Doritos ain't the way to do it. So I bought a mountain bike and started on a health kick that in the end, burned off 30 lbs. I also regularly attended a gym if it rained and did those exercises and learned all the guys who “Pick Things Up and Put Them Down.”

Twenty miles a day I biked religiously. It took me a while to get to that mark but once I reached it, I stayed with it. I wore out the tires on that bike eventually. I became somewhat tan, lost the weight and my hair style was windblown-unkempt. I sped through the nicer neighborhoods of northern Seekonk, past defunct factories in Pawtucket and up and down dirt paths by a river that runs by near here. I learned that loose lycra was a great thing to wear as it weighs nothing and looked sporty, along with my knock off Raybans.

I may have looked a bit like those retirees you see dressed in sports gear everyday, in some retirement community in Florida. Hell, I felt like I was retired.

**

“You're turning into a hippy.” a girl I knew once remarked.

“What? You see me flashing peace signs and hating on Nixon?”

“Nooo...not that....it's like you...I can't put my finger on it...You...”

“...don't care?” I filled in.

“Yes!” she says. “You just do what you want without much regard to what anyone thinks now.”

“It's the only way to be!”

I could've quoted her Marlon Brando's speech on freedom and judgment from Apocalypse Now but it would either be received as too damn weird or she'd never get it at all.

Kurtz: “Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself?”

Nah...it would've been lost on her. But in a sense, she was right. I was free to meander and I drifted to my default state, which was doing whatever interested me at the moment without any constraints or caring about the views of other people. I was happily unproductive and had heaved the Protestant Work Ethic into the garbage. I had done the work ethic for over two decades and found it over-rated. Those who would scorn this attitude, I've noticed would plan and talk of weekends and vacations as their only goal.

If you had been thinking that it's easy to roam and range in life if you have the money, you're right. I was doing exactly that and I had the means, for a while.

I wasn't looking like a hippy, but had the attitude of one. “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out.” I never took up a nasty LSD habit but the “Drop Out” part I embraced fully. My days were easy going. My true relaxed personality came to the forefront when that toxic crap from the old job, when it became a hellhole, dissipated.

It was a remarkable time that was well spent. I miss it. I kinda know how I'm going to be if I ever hit MegaBucks.

Unfortunately, I got a call out of the blue one day to return to work and be responsible. I took the job. No more biking, no more breezing. The weight came back and winter was setting in. Adult life had returned which required me to be exact, stable and reliable. My Endless Summer ended. I thought it would keep going in some ways. 

I realize now that my mistake was like what everyone else does. You think once a change or effort is put into something, it stays put. No it doesn't! Life is always jostling things loose or outright changing them completely. Though, to borrow an abused phrase, I lived in those moments fully without wasting worry on the future. God, it was great while it lasted. 

I still think of that time and the positives that just flowed from that summer off. Today, I was thinking how could I recapture some of that?   One would be to just plain avoid fighting for hills that aren't worth it.  That's a given though. As I get older, I have less appetite for battles that only produce crumbs. Those who gloat over such wins, can have their crumbs.