So, there you are: ready to say “fie upon the trodden path!”  Then, you start to wonder whether you really want a full-fledged liberation.  After all, a Working Girl who plays it safe... lives to work another day.  She may conduct a very spirited scheduling of her life into place- nothing like the joy of a freshly written list of things to do. But, the point always comes when she realizes that the road is lonely, precisely, because it is lonely.

Making plans and projections is easy. It’s taking the first step to starting afresh that’s the killer. For me, starting anew was very much like getting out of a wreck of a relationship.  You think “I’m past that”, but, you soon discover that, despite the scars, you begin yearning for what once was, before everything became so corrupted.

You have to shake off old ways. You have to be more responsible than ever. For, now there’s no colleague, group or institution guarding your back.  Not that there was ever any vigorous guarding of your back before- but, it’s always nice to think you might have that luxury.

My confidence was beginning to waver. I surveyed all those around me; they were bustling to and fro, so content with the status quo.  Sometimes, they stopped to ask “what are you doing?”  Sometimes, they sympathized: “girl, I didn’t think they’d do that. Not you.” Sometimes, they offered help- they’d heard of this or that job seeking someone like me.  But, you are set on doing this thing…your way. So, it matters very little the scariness of the current and entire situation.

It had only been five days since I’d discovered unemployment. It had been four since I’d drafted my plan of action.  My plan was to take two weeks vacation before re-immersing myself into the working world. In the end, I had no choice.  I came down with a mystery bug right around the time of the swine flu scare.

It was a horrible bug, which left me with little appetite for much- neither work nor sleep nor food nor speech. Those near twelve days remain a blur to me, but, I remember, very clearly, coming out of the illness.  Looking back at it now, perhaps, I just needed to get all the filth out of my system before I could start anew.  For after it, I felt invigorated with hope. It was quite like when I used to have that dream as a child.

This dream (it was but one dream with many variations) consisted of blackness sprinkled with lots of silver and gold shimmery stuff. The idea had gotten stuck in my head that I could make a fist and return to “real world” with some of the shimmery stuff. I can’t remember why this was important. But, I’d be reminding myself throughout the entire dream and any other which followed it: “don’t open your fist”.  In the morning, I would wake up anxious and crushed. At night, I would be again brimming with hope- eager to try again.

I thought maybe freelancing would be just like that.  Me, in some black corner, making a fist and trying to hold onto the shimmery stuff. My confidence began wavering again. (It still does every now and then.)  But, then, all I have to remember is how the idea that I could catch the shimmery stuff became planted into my head.

To be continued….