So I was laid off due to COVID-19 in
March and have been on unemployment since then. Apparently, I’ve been one of
the few lucky ones, as so many people around me who desperately need the
benefit have not received a cent of it yet. I’ve been looking for more work
ever since then, but you know how it is.
Therefore, I’ve kept busy by being a
personal care assistant for half a year. It was a hazardous, back-breaking job
fraught with lots of TMI, one where I injured myself repeatedly but didn’t have
any sick days to take. I finally had to leave that job the day I almost lost an
arm, a foot and my life all in the course of one short morning.
That job also taught me that I had
gotten older and heavier and as a result, my arthritis had ramped up by a
significant amount. Unfortunately, that makes me more prone to injuries and
slower to heal from them — a devastating double-whammy for someone like me who
can’t sit still to save her life.
But my industriousness never took a
vacation because the moment I healed from my first part-time post-pandemic job,
I blew through my apartment like a hurricane, gathering up all sellable items.
I washed, disinfected, laundered, ironed, folded, and bagged most of my items.
I took hundreds of photos and created a spreadsheet that could track sales and
inventory.
When I had a spare moment, I learned
how to make marijuana edibles such as cannabutter and my own brand of happy
cakes. I even formulated a salve for dogs with hot spots, to replace that
painful tea tree oil stuff that’s on the market.
There’s not even currently a legal way
for me to make money doing these things, but I sure wish there were, because I
could really help a lot of people and animals with my recipes. Plus, it’s fun!
But through it all, I’ve been job
searching, sending out tons of resumes and getting spam texts at 7:00 a.m. on a
Sunday in response, hoping the next help wanted ad will be legit, and wondering
— desperately — where all these remote jobs are that everyone absolutely needs
and that the corporate media keeps insisting we don’t want.
And also, through it all, my right
foot has started hurting — a lot, but only when I stand up, or try to walk, or
breathe. Which is usually fine because I don’t need to go anywhere. I’ve done
plenty of Zoom interviews by now.
My foot was all swollen and tender, so
my doctor told me to take ibuprofen and Epsom salt baths. I added CBD salve for
good measure. What helped most, though, was staying the hell off of my foot. No
easy feat with errands to run and no car. But I persisted in doing nothing, and
it really paid off.
While sitting on my ass, I finally
took some time off from everything — the job search, the personal enterprises,
the benefits paperchase the state had me on — to focus on myself and figure out
what was actually going on in my life that I could no longer stand up anymore.
Doing absolutely nothing was strange
and kind of harrowing at first. I had to let go of the terror of feeling like I
wasn’t doing enough to help me and my spouse survive. I had to stop feeling
guilty for doing absolutely nothing for a while.
After a few days of that, a moment of
clarity hit me while I was in the bath: My foot was not hurting because of a
blood clot, or cancer, or a degenerative disease. I had injured my foot by
getting into bed, the wrong way, repeatedly.
And I had been doing it hundreds of
more times than usual since I was unemployed and, even though I had kept myself
pretty busy, I still had nothing better to do but lie around half the time.
How the hell does someone injure their
foot getting into bed? Well, I’ve always kind of climbed into bed with my right
foot tucked under me, which is usually just fine when you’re young and don’t
weigh a whole lot, but when you’re older with arthritis and 50 more pounds on
you, all those foot bones you’re crushing between your body and the corner of
the mattress really make an impact.
When I went into a deep meditative
state during that bath, which happened at the culmination of many off-the-clock
hours spent aimlessly searching for a cure, I was able to walk through my
actions and see what I had been doing to my foot all these months and why it
had become a problem. Then I was able to start healing it.
So that’s how I injured myself — and
then healed myself — by being unemployed. It’s also why I feel that we need a
Universal Basic Income and many more legit, good-paying remote jobs: so that
people like me won’t completely destroy themselves, either by working way too
hard, or with idleness, or both.
I mean, just look what happened to me
when I tried sitting it out for a while. But then again, being able to take
that break and reconnect with myself is ultimately what gave me my health back.
And it was pretty much free of charge for once. At least I didn’t have to trade
in a bunch of sick days to get it.
Meanwhile, I need to put all this
manic energy to use by doing some actual good for the world. So bring on the
lucrative, ethical, remote jobs that help support and save all life on the
planet. I’m ready to stay on my ass and do them. After all, is it really too
much to ask that I spend my so-called declining years saving the world?
Until that happens, I’ll be whipping up another batch of my famous happy cakes.
