Out of Place

I've recently discovered I can't go back to any of my previous places of work without feeling like I'm outdated. When and why did that happen?

It happened the moment I left those jobs for good, but it took me awhile to realize because I was in denial and decided I could feel like a cool kid whenever I went back. Not the case.

Since I left my most recent job on a sour note with my boss, my ex coworkers now give me alarming looks when I walk in the door as if to say "What are you doing here!?" Wait a second... they actually said that to me. I guess I just like the thrill, guys. Jeez louise.

My job before that one was at a nursing home and it has become an abyss of people I don't know. So now I strut in to see my one or two friends and then awkwardly fade out of the building. I worked there while in high school and the first half of college so somehow I feel like the residents are more my peers than these high school kids. A few years can change everything.

And my alma mater! I firmly believe I was outdated there before I even left. Most of my best friends were gone by my junior year and I was working too much to have a life so I made few new ones. I go there now and it's like a dream full of people I never wanted to see again and places I didn't get to go to enough when I was relevant and now it seems impossible to thoroughly enjoy them.

So what to do when you feel absent from any place you've ever known even when you're standing in the middle of them? I'm sorry I don't have an answer; not only for your sake but my own as well.

Try first for a new job? I guess that's what you do. I tried that and as you may have read, I changed my indecisive mind and ran away from it. Well, today I applied at a library! This seems like a step forward rather than another step to the side.

Of course, I got a parking ticket while I filled out the application because my meter ran out before I got back to it. Do I take that as a sign that I don't belong in this new place either? Or do I take it as a sign that the police department is unforgiving? I'm going to try to do the latter.

This is a weird world when you don't have places you have to be at regularly. You get cocooned into your home and lose the stamina you had when you were shot out of the school cannon. Lighting the fuse yourself is harder than you'd think, even if you're standing on dry land because the fear you might land in water isn't looming in the distance... it's standing right next to you.