It's Déjà Vu All Over Again

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The late, great Yankess catcher and quotable legend Yogi Berra once said, "It's déjà vu all over again." It's one of his most-often quoted remarks (although my personal favorite of his is, "I didn't say half those things I said" ). I'm experiencing that, in a way. Ten years ago, coincidentally this week, I made the decision to quit a job. It was a good job, very well-paying, and I had great co-workers. However, there was too much "office politicking" going on; and, more significantly, my mom's health was failing. I figured she wouldn't be alive in five years, and time with her was more important. (I didn't know it would be five months, not five years.) Yes, it was a difficult decision. I had to weigh the pros and cons and crunch numbers like a bad car salesman, but I did it. I quit the job, went back to temping, and took my mom on one last vacation (she said she wanted to see the just-opened Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, so I took her on a trip to the Smokies and a day trip to the library/museum). Six months later she was gone, a victim not of her chronic illness (COPD) but a brain aneurysm. I made the right decision. Well, here it is, ten years later. My dad's health isn't as bad as my mom's (he's managed to stay out of the hospital for a month now, and a lot of his ER visits are his fault because he has a manageable issue -- diabetes -- that he frequently chooses not to manage), so that's not the similarity. What is more or less the same is I'm facing the prospect of being unemployed. This time, it's not of my own choosing, but rather due to schools across the country facing budget cuts. Don't feel sorry for me, because I have my VA pension and I can survive on that. My co-worker, though, left a good job to come here...and now, in just nine months, she might have the rug pulled out from beneath her feet. Nothing is certain right now. We probably won't know anything concrete until school starts in August or September across the country. I just find it interesting that, here on the tenth anniversary of my leaving one job, I may have to depart one yet again. Oh, well, that's just the way it is: