On whom a world of ills came down like snow

(Written Thursday 12/17. Blogger was having issues so I'm just now posting this.)

It's been a hell of a year.

The first real snowfall fell tonight. It's very early in the morning and the sky is still eerily bright. I left work early, after finishing my paperwork, ostensibly to finally get some sleep, but instead ended up wandering around in the snow for an hour. It's beautiful at first, gray and white and glistening falling through the glare of streetlights. It's all a matter of set and setting though--in a week or so when the ice is packed on the roads and everything is a dull gray industrial sludge color and I'm trying to keep my car on the road while driving over it, the charm flies off in a hurry.

DC Berman said it best (as is so often the case):

Bad snow, bad roads, bad bridges
Could turn a once bad man, religious
If thy kingdom ever comes
You'd better run, run run run

Earlier today, before work, I gathered up five notebooks and a couple of legal pads I've used for writing fiction over the past year. I had to decide whether to keep them or throw them out. Finally, I tossed all of them into an old toy chest with pirates on it that I keep in my spare room, with the absurdly optimistic hope that someday I'll have balls enough to re-read and maybe try to fix some of the terrible things I've written.

It's been a bloodbath at work. We're losing people, and always the wrong people. The wrong people get the axe, and the wrong people get promoted. A surprising number of kids keep showing progress. More and more I attribute this to their own toughness and desire for redemption and less to any particular knack any of us have for therapeutic interactions.

Last week I ran into a clinical supervisor from the other building. We like each other, but rarely cross paths. We were walking together toward lunch (I was stuck covering an extra shift that day) and we spoke:

Him: You look uncomfortable in the sunlight.

Me: I think I may have become a vampire sometime in the last year.

Him: Or a big unusually ugly mole.

Him: Christ. You know, I never thought you'd still be here at the end of this year.

Me: Yeah. It was touch and go.

Him: Well, if you think last year sucked wait until this year gets moving. I've seen our budget, and I've seen our waiting list.

Me: Bad?

Him: Oy vey, kid. Oy vey.

Me: At least I don't have a personal life to worry about.

Him: That's the spirit. You'll do fine.

Now, after wondering through blunderland for an hour or so, I can sleep the sleep of the dead before going right back into it.