My bookmark tells me how much money I’m saving by being unemployed. It’s not a webpage bookmark but an actual, two-dimensional slip of paper with pen scrawlings like minus $110.22 for union dues or negative $30 for parking. I keep that slip wedged between the incongruous pages of Eat, Pray, Love to remind me of the feelings I had before going under the knife.

    The vague yet constant fear of losing two dozen years worth of credibility was only slightly less gut clenching than the evaporation of a salary, 401K and insurance. That bookmark, done up in classic Rodney MBLSP style, (management by little slips of paper), kept reassuring me that my costs would also go down
the toilet with my job. City of Detroit taxes would be no more as would the five weekly lunches which I used more as an escape from the insanity than as nourishment.

    I like looking at the bookmark now because that Rodney guy seems remote and cold. There’s something about him though, that I just can’t place. I try to go back inside his head and feel the vibe from time to time. I don’t do this metaphorically or metaphysically, I actually try to re-connect with him and see what went so wrong.

    And then today I had lunch with some friends who still work in the business and I caught a quick passing glimpse of myself. He didn’t notice me, which every science fiction writer will tell you is lucky. Butterfly effect and all. But it was in the face of someone I met while downtown before meeting my friends. He is sitting very near where I used to sit, along that strange limbo lane near layoff land. And in seeing him, whether it was my proximity near my former jobor the similarities between us, it all came rushing back.          

    The sense of abandonment by people I worked with daily. The inability to fully engage in a conversation that wasn’t about the newspaper’s future. The panic about being the breadwinner. The anger over being targeted for dismissal. And the restless shiftiness I felt I was portraying. It’s nearly impossible to do your job when you are forced to have irons in other fires because you have it on good authority that your own fire is about to be doused.          

    I saw that in my former co-worker’s face and it made me sad. He was me.      

    There’s no earthly reason why I should be feeling so much better now than I did then. When I received confirmation this morning that another three hundred and something was heading directly into my account from the state unemployment agency there’s no explanation for why I threw both my hands into the air fists first. My contentment with my incoming funds doesn’t make sense on a rational level when,
like my laptop battery, they currently rest at about 29% of their former capacity.           

    And yet I lie here, belly flopped on my bed first, then doing the backstroke. All the while my cursor asks me with a slash or a sideways enigmatic pursed lip, “Are you sure you want to tell them this?” 

    I blink back at my cursor, not fearing its curses, and tell it “yeah.”

    Life out here after the apocalypse is actually better for me than before all the bombs dropped. Money never was everything. And now that it’s closer to nothing than everything, I’ve realized there are so many more bookmarks to tell me where I am. To keep me in place and remind me where to return to.            

    You can catch a break on your taxes and you can quit eating out all the time. You can see if the cable people will cut you a deal and you should always, always, always look in the radically reduced section of your grocer’s meat shelves. Tonight we had marinated filet mignon simply because Krogers felt it should’ve been sold already.            

    You’ve probably seen through my charade. You’ve probably guessed I’m not writing this for me. That’s very astute of you. Many of you reading this are journalists. Including you, my friend, whom I met today. “Yeah” like I said to my cursor. I’m writing this to you.