I Have Run, I Have Crawled, I Have Scaled These City Walls, These City Walls, Only To Be With You, But I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

--"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", U2

Earlier this week Casey and Laurel had me over for a consolation dinner over my being recently let go from my previous employment. They had meant to do it earlier, but even with my schedule suddenly clearing up, it still took a long time to coordinate with them. I made repeated attempts to let them know that such a gesture was altogether unnecessary. I even told them that, if anything, I would have rather they not make a big deal over it since that only led me to reflect my current unemployed state even more. But Casey being Casey, that only prompted her to nail down the logistics ever more quickly.

It was a good dinner comprised of her version of chicken cordon bleu with a side of angel hair pasta. It did the trick of more than filling the three of us up. More to the point, it really made me feel like there were other people out there aside from the usual suspects that were genuinely distressed to hear about predicament. And, no, we didn't concentrate completely about where I was looking or what my plans were going to be next. And, no, it didn't become a pity party or an Eclipse is a rat bastard company. For the most part, the subject of my layoff was ignored and the conversation drifted only other more amiable topics. It wasn't that I was unwilling to discuss into detail my feelings about the subject. It was more that the evening was focused on seeing my situation as a celebration rather than a nightlong rant--more of a wake as opposed to a funeral.

After the conversation had died down, I even had the opportunity to teach them my new favorite card game, Cosmic Eidex. Seeing as CE is a game expressly made for three people and, what do you know, we had three people; I thought it was a perfect fit. Normally, Ziggy and Zags aren't too keen on my gaming obsession--not like Ilessa was, at least--but since it was get-together in my honor I thought it only appropriate that I get to pick what we did for the remainder of the time we were together.

According to Board Game Geek, Cosmic Eidex is described thusly:

This little trick taking game is a fairly intriguing little game only playable with three. The idea is to take either the most points or the least points (designated by the trump and rank of the cards that you take each hand), to earn a victory point. A set number of victory points gets the game. However, if in a hand one of the players exceeds a set number of card points, then the other two players automatically get the victory point. And if one player can get all of the tricks then he receives two victory points. Additionally, each player is given a relatively weak Cosmic-like power to break one of the rules. There are as many possibilities as there are cards, but wise card play usually outweighs their influence.

I've always found it an interesting mechanic that to play competitively you either want to commit to taking the most number of points or the least number of points. Most of the time it's the person who gets caught in the middle that loses out on scoring the trick. Indeed, the game was a moderate success expressly for the reason it prompted a philosophical discussion about the nature of setting and achieving goals. True, on a literal level, it was just the three of us sitting around the dinner table pitching in cards to win the trick or sloughing off cards in order not to win it. Yet on a more symbolic level, it could be described as a contest of wills between absolutism and the concept of zen nothingness. The choice at hand in the game isn't one of winning or losing; it's a choice between setting out towards a goal or giving up the goal entirely. It took the girls a little while to get away from the precept that you can only win by making points since it flies in the face of most games where you keep score. But once they understood that getting zero points is a valid strategy, the game definitely picked up before I had to leave.

I think it was Laurel who pointed out the correlation to my losing my job and the game. She told me that they had come into inviting me to dinner with the idea that I was suffering some great setback. But, truthfully, I was somewhat more resolved to my fate than that. In game parlance, I was more resigned to the idea that my job at Eclipse wasn't exactly my dream job. I was somewhat stuck in between having the security of a job but the disappointment of being in a job that simply did not match up with my expectations completely. As she put it, I was riding the middle. From that standpoint there were only two options to make me completely happy. I would have either had to get my dream job, whereby the majority of my expectations were met, or I could leave the job that was only serving to remind me of how much I had settled. If I couldn't have everything, then it was almost better of extricating myself from a position of only getting half of what I wanted. I was taking the viewpoint that rather than beat myself up everyday for being in a job that seriously was deadening me inside day after day, I was glad to not be under those conditions anymore.

If I couldn't get the high score job wise, then I'd go for the low score, so to speak.

And that's kind of how I felt I told the both of them. At Eclipse I always felt like I was jumping through hoops on a career track that I don't quite know if I wanted to see the end of. There I was, busting my hump, for a goal that just didn't seem all that glamorous or worthwhile to me. But now, yes, I don't have the satisfaction of having an occupation to pour my energy into, but I also don't feel saddled with the stress of a job I did not like completely.

It is kind of freeing to be in a position again of deciding where I head from here--even if at the same time it is a scary prospect.

I didn't win every game of Eidex that night. There were just some games where I went high with the hand I was dealt when I should have gone low, and vice-versa. That's one of the most important skills in playing that game, evaluating the hand you're dealt and formulating a strategy from there. Sometimes you're going to receive a hand where the decision is almost made for you, but the majority of the time you're going to receive hand where the decision isn't so transparent. In those cases you've just got to make the best guess with the information you have in front of you at the time. In those cases, perhaps, it's okay to change strategies in the middle of your turn depending on how those first tricks line up for you. In whatever case, you're not going to win every trick.

The important thing is taking the time to actually see what you have in front of you and not what you think you have. That's what working at Eclipse was like, playing a hand full of losers as if I could win out with them. Now, however, it feels more like a new hand has just been dealt to me and I'm still evaluating if I should just go for it or not commit myself to points that may not be there for me to win.

At any rate it's a brand new game and with it is a new chance to go running for it again... or just to slow play my hand for the first time in a long time if the situation calls for it. That's something I never could do as long as I had that job. I was always under pressure to fulfill my obligations. Now, for the first time in a long time, I'm in a position to evaluate my situation and rearrange my goals accordingly instead of the other way around like it was before.

Or like Casey said as I was leaving, maybe my time right now "would be better spent more games of Cosmic Eidex than jumping back into the job market before I'm ready." LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers