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a month of unemployment

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2017.05.06

It's interesting that some things have changed so much and some so little, being unemployed for a month. I'm spending more time with the kids, but it seems that every time I try to sit down with my daughter to read her a book, the phone rings. I get to take my son to school at the final months when he'll need it (he's nine, now, and our neighbourhood is fairly quiet). I'm more useful around the home, I think.

But I'm no more rested than before. I'm still heading downtown every day for meetings (even if just over a coffee). On the whole, discussing business ventures is a lot more interesting than carrying out the day-to-day of a job that's clearly on the wane. A lot more interesting, but the stress of frustration has been replaced by the stress of uncertainty, and the clock is ticking.

And of course, I still have a major commitment in the board I'm on, and I still have two kids to contend with.

On the whole, life hasn't changed that much.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot