Sometimes you need to step back, force yourself to take a thorough mental timeout, and pause to re-evaluate things in your life and how they're working out for you.  I've just completed one of those timeouts related to my blogging-- my last post having been written October 30th, the same day I was informed my job had been eliminated and by December I would wake up unemployed.  I'll finish another timeout on January 31st-- for almost 20 years now I go through a self-imposed exile and don't touch a drop during the month of January.  That started as a team support thing for a friend that did way too many bad things to his body in the 80's but always maintained that "if [he] 'could stay clean and sober for an entire month, [he] didn't have a problem that was out of control...."  20 years down the road we all recognize that he was wildly out of control, that he had no idea how dangerous he was, and that he had a major case of denial going on.  We were merely contributing to his delusions by courteously not drinking around him for that month.  Still, the timeout habit remained long after the friend flamed out ["It's better to burn out, than it is to rust...."] and now it's just a good way to cleanse the body, drop a few unneeded pounds after the holidays and make February 1 a personal "holiday" to be anxiously awaited for weeks (there's a nice bottle of Bordeaux with my name on it waiting for the calendar to turn).  

Getting the news that you're about to wake up on the wrong side of the age 50 border and out of work can be a scary thing but it can also be quite liberating.  It's a chance to start out with a clean slate-- tabula rasa-- or at least the chance to re-think what you'd do if you could really get a complete 'do-over' in life (which, by the way, you can't...).  Coming as it has during the holiday season, it's also a chance to think of the things in life that really matter, to tie in those New Year's Day resolutions and to try and start fresh with both the 2008 calendar and the life routine.  Having a timeout is really just a way of exercising self-control.

Some things are clearly black and white issues with not a millimeter of gray separating the two.  And sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's just that simple.  You're pregnant or you're not.  You're married or you're not.  You drink or you don't (in January I simply don't...).  You smoke or you don't (I bummed the first one in 1971 so it only seemed right to bum the last one, which I did November 29, 1989).  You go to work or you don't.  Well, January started out as an "I don't" on the go to work thing but I'm committed to making a change there and ending that particular timeout.  Being without a meaningful place to go every day and make a contribution is just too boring.  Put me in, Coach, I'm ready to play.

Chris Hendricks