The Ink Is Dry And Still Waiting For The Other Shoe To Fall

I think I may laminate my letter from my new employer.  I may frame it.  I may have it blown up into a poster.  Okay, maybe I shall just relish the moment for a moment.  Because, like so many people who have looked for work and never received responses or interviews or even a passing glance, I am now suspicious and wait for the fine print to become the big print.  How could we not? 

After over a year of scrounging, unrelentingly scouring the Internet, applying, revamping my resume,  questioning myself, asking friends, panicking, raging, wailing, doubting, wondering if I should move, wondering if I should stop living, wondering, wondering, wondering like millions of other humans, I have doubt.

However, right here to my right, I have a printed letter of an offer of employment.  It makes me cry just looking at it.  Of course, I have thought of all the people still looking.  We are like survivors from The Titanic and I now have survivor guilt.  I cannot celebrate because my brethren are still out there.  True enough, who knows how this will go for me.  That doesn’t even matter and that sucks.
 
I know, inside, what this process has been like and I remember every month, every rejection, every turn in this pitted road and I know that I am weathered and worn like a smooth rock on the bottom of a still, still pond.  The water is cold and clear and my understanding of what it is like to be over 50 and unemployed in America is carved on my character.  That’s why, tonight, the ink is dry and I am still waiting for the other shoe to fall. I have lots of company.  Think millions of people.