PondTaro of Leave
Oct. 30th, 2017 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoI saw unicorns in my dreams last night. They are every bit as beautiful as they are said to be. Here’s what I learned about unicorns: there can be more than one unicorn, but there will never be generic plural unicorns. No matter how many there may be, each one will remain splendidly unique. Each unicorn is as lovely and awe-inspiring as if there had never been and would never be another. In my dream, I was taking a tour of an area where ecological renewal was going on. Now that the world was becoming beautiful again, the guide said to me, “The unicorns are coming back.” How I wish that could be true.
So I haven’t been posting for awhile because I was just tired and sad. When I thought of something to say, it seemed either too raw or too boring—no happy medium for conversation. Wrestling with my demons again, stabbing at them with my pen, but occasionally sticking my own flesh instead, like the time my father stabbed himself in the leg with his pruning knife!
The Sparrowhawk’s exit plan has been worked out at last. He continues to go to work for the next couple of weeks, gradually winding down his responsibilities and passing them to others, dealing with the extended goodbye. Then he’ll work from home but still be available for a time. The last two weeks in November, he’ll take personal time off. We’ll spend part of that time with the kids for Thanksgiving. And then, December 1 will be his final day of employment. After that, Incipit vita nuova, I guess. He’s slowly recovering from the extreme stress of the last couple of months, but now that the deed is done, I can’t wait for him to just leave.
I appreciate all the good wishes that he would find something wonderful, jobwise, but the fact is that he will most likely not work again. His severance contract includes a two-year non-compete agreement that covers the whole west side of the state. If he wanted another job, we’d have to move again. We don’t want that. More importantly . . . I guess this is as good a time as any to reveal that my dear, beloved Sparrowhawk was diagnosed nearly two years ago with Parkinson’s disease. At the time, he wasn’t ready to share that with people. He said he didn’t want people to start looking at him as a person with a disability. I told him that people were going to guess anyway, especially given that he works with people who have clinical expertise. He still preferred not to. Now that he’s leaving work, he has decided it doesn’t matter any more. His symptoms are mild at the moment—a subtle tremor, a difficulty in his walk that wasn’t there before. It hasn’t impaired his ability to work at all, but it has made a hundred little aspects of daily life almost imperceptibly more difficult. Having worked at fixing health care for forty years, and with no end in sight, he says he might be willing to do something else for awhile. I bought him a copy of It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond, by Julia Cameron, and somewhat to my surprise, he’s enthusiastic about reading it.
The irony: Evil J told him, “I don’t trust you to lead this team into the future.” And yet, now that he is no longer leading them, the director of the team shows up at his office pleading for help, and the Sparrowhawk is creating documents to guide him when the Sparrowhawk is gone for good. The director has asked if he can still meet with the Sparrowhawk informally, outside of work, “because I still have a lot to learn from you.” The director got into a panic situation last week, where he didn’t know how to deliver something that another senior executive demanded, and the executive publicly humiliated him in a meeting. He came to the Sparrowhawk with his hair standing on end, and the Sparrowhawk calmed him down, created a template for how to create the thing required, and gave him wise advice about how to avoid getting on the wrong side of the angry VP in future. So the man who was demoted from leading the team is still leading them, at no benefit to himself. I was mad and said, “Screw it—you should not give Evil J an ounce more of your concern. This is what he wanted—let him deal with it!” But the Sparrowhawk looks at me with the puppy eyes and says, “But they’re my team. I can’t let them suffer.”
So I haven’t been posting for awhile because I was just tired and sad. When I thought of something to say, it seemed either too raw or too boring—no happy medium for conversation. Wrestling with my demons again, stabbing at them with my pen, but occasionally sticking my own flesh instead, like the time my father stabbed himself in the leg with his pruning knife!
The Sparrowhawk’s exit plan has been worked out at last. He continues to go to work for the next couple of weeks, gradually winding down his responsibilities and passing them to others, dealing with the extended goodbye. Then he’ll work from home but still be available for a time. The last two weeks in November, he’ll take personal time off. We’ll spend part of that time with the kids for Thanksgiving. And then, December 1 will be his final day of employment. After that, Incipit vita nuova, I guess. He’s slowly recovering from the extreme stress of the last couple of months, but now that the deed is done, I can’t wait for him to just leave.
I appreciate all the good wishes that he would find something wonderful, jobwise, but the fact is that he will most likely not work again. His severance contract includes a two-year non-compete agreement that covers the whole west side of the state. If he wanted another job, we’d have to move again. We don’t want that. More importantly . . . I guess this is as good a time as any to reveal that my dear, beloved Sparrowhawk was diagnosed nearly two years ago with Parkinson’s disease. At the time, he wasn’t ready to share that with people. He said he didn’t want people to start looking at him as a person with a disability. I told him that people were going to guess anyway, especially given that he works with people who have clinical expertise. He still preferred not to. Now that he’s leaving work, he has decided it doesn’t matter any more. His symptoms are mild at the moment—a subtle tremor, a difficulty in his walk that wasn’t there before. It hasn’t impaired his ability to work at all, but it has made a hundred little aspects of daily life almost imperceptibly more difficult. Having worked at fixing health care for forty years, and with no end in sight, he says he might be willing to do something else for awhile. I bought him a copy of It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond, by Julia Cameron, and somewhat to my surprise, he’s enthusiastic about reading it.
The irony: Evil J told him, “I don’t trust you to lead this team into the future.” And yet, now that he is no longer leading them, the director of the team shows up at his office pleading for help, and the Sparrowhawk is creating documents to guide him when the Sparrowhawk is gone for good. The director has asked if he can still meet with the Sparrowhawk informally, outside of work, “because I still have a lot to learn from you.” The director got into a panic situation last week, where he didn’t know how to deliver something that another senior executive demanded, and the executive publicly humiliated him in a meeting. He came to the Sparrowhawk with his hair standing on end, and the Sparrowhawk calmed him down, created a template for how to create the thing required, and gave him wise advice about how to avoid getting on the wrong side of the angry VP in future. So the man who was demoted from leading the team is still leading them, at no benefit to himself. I was mad and said, “Screw it—you should not give Evil J an ounce more of your concern. This is what he wanted—let him deal with it!” But the Sparrowhawk looks at me with the puppy eyes and says, “But they’re my team. I can’t let them suffer.”
no subject
Date: 2017-10-30 02:37 pm (UTC)