2004-04-03 - 11:31 p.m.

Happy New Year's

I was standing in the shower an hour ago and decided that today will be the only holiday on my personal calender, because I abruptly realized that it's been several weeks since I've been substantially depressed. Winter is over, and my mind is mostly my own again.

It's not that there're no aftereffects, and there are certainly consequences of the depression left in residues chemical and emotional, but the weight itself is gone. One wouldn't expect, upon attaining a new summit, to drop the pack and prance around like a happy little antelope, but to stretch and sit and perhaps just be a little happy that the weight's gone.

It's unfortunately not as easy to take pictures of a state of mind as of a mountain peak, with or without a camera, but I think perhaps a special day is in order. I think this will be my New Year's Day -- I've come out of the dark part of the year (less metaphorical than literal in Washington State) and there's a long time before November arrives again. There's so much I can do before then, and perhaps among those things will be something that will prevent or alleviate these bad winters in the future.

Every year I lose sight of how vast an effect the change of the seasons can have on me, and every year while it's underway I struggle to hang on to the belief that it will end someday -- usually failing, for the most part, but never quite managing to rationally give up. I'm tired of that, and annoyed by it, and perhaps something can be done about it.

A lot has happened in the last week at work that should have left me reeling, but that's left my mind ticking off possibilities and liabilities and problems, solutions and counterplots and stratagems. It's a hard financial year for the corporation in our region, and there are rumors that they may sell to franchisees to cut their immediate losses, incidentally crippling any possibility of long-term gain as well.

That saddened me somewhat, but it will pass. In the past months I've thrown myself into work as much as I can and remade my store into something that works well and is friendly to hard-working people, as well as profitable for the corporation. There are eight stores in our area, and my store averages about $130,000/year in profit. Our eight-store area, averaged out, made five hundred dollars in profit last year.

Yes, the other seven stores combined lost $129,500. As far as the corporation is concerned, this district may be a losing proposition, and my work to protect my people may be for nothing. It's not a concept that I'm unfamiliar with -- it's hard to keep life's devouring urge well-fed enough to keep it away from what matters to you. It just saddens me to run into it time and again in so many places, regardless of what I do.

So I've been figuring facts and figures, researching the management philosophies of the heavy-hitters in the local franchisee region, and testing the waters in general. I've come to the conclusion that my job is safe and that the worst I can look forward to is the same exorbitant pay I'm making now for a much more fulfilling job. It's my assistant manager that I worry about and whose job I might or might not be able to maintain if the move to franchise went through.

The local corporate office is scrambling to make changes -- any changes! lots of changes! -- to save the district from sale. It makes sense, since their jobs disappear if the area is sold. They called a bunch of interviews with the senior assistant managers of the district, my AM among them and scheduled last in the string of interviews.

Dead giveaway. If there is a group of people that you do not wish to talk to and one that you do wish to talk to, you schedule everyone for the same amount of time in order to preserve the image of equality. You then schedule the one person that you are interested in talking to right before lunch or right before the end of interviews so you can talk as long as you like and ask as many questions as necessary without anyone being the wiser.

The question, forty-five minutes into the interview that the secretary relayed had taken the other candidates around ten minutes, was put to my assistant manager: "Well, we understand your reasons for not really being able to move to another area to take a store at the moment -- but what if we offered you the Lacey store?"

The Lacey store, as it happens, is my store. The conflict of interest should be apparent, as well as the confusion.

"That store is occupied," she said rather sharply. They stated rather quickly that they had only meant what if, and that the what-if was "what if we promoted him".

The only position that I could be promoted to would be that of regional manager.

There are so many things wrong with that idea that I cannot even begin to count them.

And the more I think about it, the more I suspect that it might be a serious possibility. The current regional manager isn't going to be able to turn our district around -- I wouldn't be able to either, but they don't know that, and they don't like the current RM.

There's no real reason for me to even think about taking the job. I'd move from a position that would be completely secure regardless of the hands in which the business ultimately lay to a position that would evaporate into nothingness if I failed to bring the area up to strength. I'd move from being responsible for absolutely nothing that I couldn't directly change with my own two hands to being responsible for eight stores over an eight mile area, seven of which are fucked up, possibly beyond repair.

But there's also the possibility if I took the position that I could save everyone's jobs and make the district work like I make my store work. And everyone who works in the area would despise me, because I would start by terminating 20-30% of the current staff, including four or five store managers who I judge incapable of making the changes I would require.

And in the end, I don't know if it would be worth it. The people that I would go to these lengths to protect wouldn't want it done for their sake, I know this.

And yet.

I mean hell, it's not like I've got anything else going.

And if they were serious and if they promote me and if I manage to turn things around, I'll be a twenty-four year old college dropout, debt free, pulling six figures, and remaining upwardly mobile in a corporation that would owe me more favors than either side could count.

If you have to have an empty life and you try half-heartedly in idle moments to boil away the vapors of longing from your heart, you may as well be making a shitload of cash in the meanwhile.

I don't know -- that's really what it comes down to. I don't know what's important to me now, or what it's okay to feel. When I figure out what's important, the rest will come in time.

But the holiday -- the holiday, New Year's Today, this is a good idea. Here's to the end of winter, if not the end of complications.

Cheers!

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