April 23

I deposited my severance pay this morning, then stopped in the glasses shop next door to look at expensive frames. I found a very nice Alain Mikli pair for $615. Prescription lenses will take it over $1,000. Most likely I will not buy the frames.

This is not a cause for sadness. I have five pairs of glasses of varying ages, but all wearable. Three pairs are really fine. One is adequate. One pair is a mistake. The material is wonderful -- a translucent plastic, full of complexity and glitter; but the shape is not good on my face. I figure I will wear them as sunglasses, since the lenses darken; and you can wear almost anything as sunglasses.

This afternoon I applied for a job via email. The job has been filled.

I worked more on my resume, which needs to be emailed to another job tomorrow; and I input 33 pages of changes to a 143 page story. It's 38,000 words long. If I write eight more pages, I will meet the Nebula definition of a novel.

One of the things Unemployment suggests is considering changing your career. Maybe I will change from accounting to writing science fiction.

I feel a lot better today. I was really upset for 24 hours, then exhausted because I missed a night's sleep. Last night I slept well. This morning I woke up cheerful.

I still have moments when I think, "I'm unemployed" and "How could they get rid of their accountant when faced with hard economic times?" It seems utterly crazy. But my ex-boss told me it was absolutely not about me. It was all about saving money. There's apparently a new theory that nonprofits can save money by getting rid of support staff.

But isn't it like getting rid of your city engineer when it's flood time in Fargo? "Oh, what the heck. We can outsource the work to Bismark."