Runnin' on Empty

The first of December brings a confluence of emotions, feelings and worst of all, apprehensions. We'd had a pleasant Thanksgiving having actually succeeded in not thinking too awfully much about my economic fortunes. But, as December came on, frigid and bleak my mood began to mirror the weather. I had been off the payroll for 4 months now. The Christmas season was in full boil and I was flirting with the blues in ways I hadn't in years. When you spend most of your professional life working, even conscientiously in a bank its easy - no, I'll go so far as to say normal to lose track of what it means to be truly, economically productive. In a big, mature organization transactional business happens largely because customers know to call when they need a financial problem solved. A responsible bank employee simply takes the call and fashions a response from the ample resources that employee has at his or her disposal and that's called "sales". By using just a little initiative that employee might even qualify for sales rewards - a trip or a campaign prize and if you're really well employed, incentive compensation. Well, during my banking career, I had come to fully understand how that process worked and was, not only paid enough to keep my comfortable life style in tact, I'd gotten completely used to making bonuses on top of the ordinary compensation that did everything from enable consistent philanthropy, to treating my family, including young adult children to extraordinary trips and of course living well. (By upper middle class standards, anyway) But there is a dark psychological aspect to becoming accustomed to receiving such compensation without ever truly processing what it means to earn it. Its called entitlement. I had come to believe that I was entitled to be so compensated and that the things I chose to buy, creature comforts, admiration from others for doing so "well," a tangible sense of accomplishment and above all a feeling of security all get rolled together. I had become a person disconnected with self reliance because my well respected employer assumed that position. Now, all of that was gone. Only now was I beginning to understand how a slave could get comfortable with his circumstances and not want to change them, even if he could. The hardest reality though was my professional identity, my professional self concept was dissipating before my very eyes and, on the darkest of days I was terrified that I didn't even begin to know how to get it back. I realized that the irrevocable loss of such self respect meant certain failure. On some days this reality motivated me but by early December I was nearly depressed, longing for the salad days of working at the Bank, planning the office Christmas party, looking forward to shopping for others, the Christmas feeling. The only person who seemed to understand as well or better than me was my wife, Jill. its a long story but her adolescence was rudely interrupted when her Dad, a well respected football coach lost his job and simply couldn't find another one. Her nuclear family nearly disintegrated as a result and each carries the scars from that trauma, even to this day. The prospects of a merry Christmas seemed just as remote to her as it did to me. Oddly though there was real comfort in knowing that my wife understood. And, comprehending that she too was suffering psychologically was completely motivational. I simply could not let the blues over take me as I had too many looking to me to solve this problem. Of all the things that I couldn't afford, feeling sorry for my self, the ages old indulgence of the entitlement generation could not be the option I chose. I had to find some way to force-ably reject that.

Running on empty
Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I dont know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, thatll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I dont know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But Im running behind