THE GREAT GADFLY:

Paradise By The Lunchroom Light

From June to December of last year, I couldn't pay anyone to look at my resume. I faxed, I mailed, I e-mailed, I even hand-delivered. I needed work. Badly. I was painfully under-employed, painfully underpaid, and painfully aware that even my less-than-zero job could end any day, being that it was a long-term freelance gig and all.

It got bad. Really bad. Dip into the quality of life bad. Buy the cheap shampoo bad. As in, buy Suave shampoo bad (though for a buck and some change per bottle, their Botanicals line is actually quite nice). And then, in mid-December, the worst inevitably came. I got sacked. We all knew the axe was coming. It was not a hidden axe. No, that there axe was propped up against my desk every day when I came into work. It was a very public axe, and it done fell but good.

And I was left with absolutely nothing. No possibilities. No resources. Just tumbleweeds and sad shrugs. No room at the inn. No room behind the front desk at the inn. Happy holidays. Ho ho ho.

Of course, it doesn't exactly add salt to the wound when you get a surprise check from an old job during such a time, and it's even less salty still when you get a holiday lovegift in the tune of a round-trip ticket to anywhere ya wanna go for New Years.

And the warm karma front just kept flowing with the good stuff, as was evidenced during my New Year's vacation in the Redwoods; when, after months and months of scraping, scrounging, searching and scouring every last employment resource out there, I finally got a job offer. A nice job offer. An improve my quality of life job offer. As in, buying MOP shampoo again. AND my IceCap mentholated conditioner. Ahhh.

Oh, and wouldn't ya know it, just like hungry snakes, all the employment weasels and temp pimps seemed to literally smell the sour odor of yet another desperate, unemployed simp plucked from the vine of availability into the world of stable employment.

I got THREE calls from employment agencies this week. THREE. And today, I got an e-mail from an employment pimp offering me a job earning considerably more than what I'm currently earning.

Just when I make a commitment, all the busybody succubi emerge from the shadows, oozing their signature slime trails as they trot around my periphery with their temptations of "a better fit" and "more take home", and all the dangling little evil carrots that such corpo-hucksters tend to wave.

Yeah, well, that's great.

I found my latest job all by my lonesome. No headhunters, no agencies. Just me and good ol' HotJobs. Nobody stood to benefit from my current hire, save for me and my boss. Nobody pressured anyone into anything for the sake of a cheap money shot commission. I have my benefits, I have my own little veal fattening work pen, I have my employee discounts, I have my work extension. So there. If any triflin' old employment agency skeezer is looking to bust a nut from the sweat of my brow, they can just think again, honey. This damn trick is off the market.

I can't help but notice the same rhythm with relationships. When you're single and feelin' a bit lonely, nobody wants a thing to do with your needy self. When you finally stumble over a rock and land on someone you could shack up with, suddenly you're Hotsy Totsy, the Belle of the Ball, and you're fighting off waves of cow-eyed suitors with a balsawood stick.

Chalk it up to the perverse tendency of supply and demand, I suppose.

I'm sure there's a way to tip these averages in one's favor. I'm not willing to sit through seven tapes of Tony Robbins' scary ape face to figure it out, however. And honestly, as long as I figure out how to fully appreciate and nourish what I get, that's good enough for me, really, honest.

I'm thankful that I'm moving out of a place in my life where I'm wanting for basic comforts. I'm thankful that I'm in a place right now where I'm not really wanting for much of anything. What isn't warming my belly right now is simmering on back burners or toasting away in the oven, slowly achieving a beautiful bubbly golden-brown.

So many glorious raw materials have fallen into my lap over the past month or so. My charge, as I see it, is to keep all the plates spinning securely on their sticks and to keep the garden growing every damn day.

Well, allright.