Yes, Ric and I are friends again. I broke down, kinda literally, sometime last week and called him to apologize for my Georgia trip outburst. He'd drunk-texted a nasty text to me about my lack of faith in "His Lord" and shit...a common topic he perseverates on when shitfaced. I then knew he was salty about me still and after mulling it over, especially the thought that with Ric in my enemy camp, I'd not be able to count one human being in the world who was on my side...I called him. (The next day, of course, I know he can't talk sense when he's drunk.)
I have a second-stage interview lined up for next week and figure I'll be hired. It'd be for a telecommuting CS rep for "the big nation-wide pharmacy chain that's headquartered in my hometown." Honestly, I'm not looking forward to doing customer service again and turning my home into the place I not only live but work? Sounds like a recipe for even worse loneliness and depression in the long run. I imagine having to be obsequious with snarky customers and Laura Hupfel-ish supervisors on the phone in MY OWN HOME. Who the fuck do they think they are?! Plus, eight hours on the phone with ice cold beers sitting in my fridge just a few feet away? Ah, just one. Oh heck, maybe another...who would know? How do you spell disaster?
I'm really not looking hard for other options. I really want to call the whole "work" thing quits. But I'm "only" 54. Can't get Social Security checks 'till I'm 62. I wouldn't be able to live long on what I currently have. Maybe a year, at current expenses, after paying off debt and hacking away at my IRA. Then it'd be 2003 all over again. What was it like back then? Click on "And Away We Go!" in the Koyaanisqatsi Chronicles section in the sidebar on the home page and continue through the subsequent chapters and you'll see. Except this time I guess I might still have a car. Mmm, sleeping in a Chevy Spark sounds fun, doesn't it?
Finally, with gold prices sliding as they are, the purchase of my "hoard" is really, REALLY looking like a stupid idea. I know I did it to test if I could rapidly turn credit into cash but if I went that route...I mean REALLY went that route, how would I be able to live? Yes I have morals and burning Rome while I fiddle would make me feel like a low-life slease. Plus, unless I went, like, TOTALLY off-grid, "they'd" catch up to me. Who're "they?" The banks, the debt collectors, the police, the shadowy people who REALLY run the world. (I needed another all-caps "REALLY," I think.)
I wish I had the balls to do like Ben Mendelsohn's character in "Mississippi Grind." A gritty gambling addict, he makes a last desperate bet on the roulette wheel...double zeros. But that was fiction. He won, but in my all-too real life, I know as sure as fuck I wouldn't.