Tying Up My Camel

In The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Sinbad says at some point, “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel!” I’ve always liked that quote. It’s kind of a snarky way to say, “God helps those who help themselves.”

I bring this up because I’m going to have to trust in God again, while I frantically try to tie up my camel. I lost my job Monday in a layoff and I only have about two months worth of funds to float us by.

I’m both calm and anxious.

I’m calm because I know I have a strong skill set and that I am in an area that has a great need for my services. (So if you know anyone in the greater Los Angeles/Orange County area who needs an award-winning editor with more than 15 years experience in marketing communications, publications management, public relations writing and web content development, send them my way!)

On the outside, I’m my typical chipper self, although maybe a little bit more so than usual.

On the inside is another story.

I knew this was coming in advance. The night I found out, I dreamed that I was outside of my body watching someone perform surgery on me. He had this huge, over-sized, plastic wrench that he was using to move around my large intestine. At some point in the dream, he invited me over to feel my intestines. It was really weird. I could feel the muscles moving the stuff inside along. I woke up with a horrible pain in my side.

I’d say the stress is getting to me. But there is a bright side.

For the past four weeks I’ve been coming into work and it has been torture. There hasn’t been much to do because I was in employee communications and we weren’t communicating more than once a week. The little work I did was to organize the employee questions coming in to the CEO via a Web form (90% we love you and we’re in this with you and 10% explicatives and vitriol) and to gather the news clips (the company is going down the tubes, etc.). Gee, that was fun.

So, as I said, I’m trusting in Allah/God/The Great Spirit/The All There Is/the Universe that something will come my way swiftly and we’ll be O.K.

But, on the other hand, I’m tying up my camel and setting up interviews with potential freelance work to help us get by while I play the job search game. Would you believe that within a hour of posting my resume on Craig’s List I received a call for a freelance job? Gotta love Craig’s List.

Anyway, I guess I just felt I had to get all this yuck off my chest without depressing my husband. Thanks for being there, oh anonymous blog reader.