So one thing I’m celebrating is the completion of a year since I was issued my critical skills stamp visa. For the first year, I was not quite under Irish protection just yet. Thankfully, I didn’t know that until only a few months ago, otherwise I would have been panicking about being let go and being asked to leave the country and knowing how my mind works, I would have created scenario after scenario as to how this would happen. One of the reasons I like Thomas Pynchon’s works is his currency is that of paranoia. Most of my life, I have been paranoid about catastrophic things. But, over time, one learns to use it more as material than super imposed realities.
So when all the layoffs began in Silicon Valley and beyond, my manager was suddenly “transitioned out”. And then, upon further research, I realized I was not as safe from a similar fate as I previously thought. Year one is the Probation Year. More people were let go in the weeks following. Always with the company meetings (it’s a global company that one no one has ever heard of) that everything was fine, there would be no layoffs. But in the meantime, they had hired something akin to Darth Vader to take control of the engineering department. And so people were summarily let go with no warning.
So, I took it day by day. Sort of. And now, I am celebrating sliding in past the one year date and into the wide and welcoming arms of the Irish employment protection laws. Granted, it’s not France where one is taken care of for two years, but it’s something.
And in a few days, I will celebrate my actual anniversary…my arrival to Dublin on January 22nd. The beginning of a two month saga of hotel surfing, moving every four days to chase the low rates. Competing with all the Irish service workers who came back to Dublin immediately following the January 23rd announcement that the “Irish had defeated Covid”.
Shortly I will be coming up on the end of a year’s lease at my current apartment in Dublin 3. Time to find a new place as this was always meant to be just first year’s lodgings. At the musical bingo last night, the beloved musical bingo night at the local, I was telling someone how sad I will be to leave that place, but it would be better to have more room to write. To find more stories. He said, well, one ting ‘bout Dooblin is…it’s an infinite variety of stories. ‘Dat’s the ting for sure. Go and find the other stories all waitin’ oot dere for you.
In other news, it’s cold here. At 32 degrees each day. Some rain. No snow. Holidays are done. Everyone is returning to their inner lives and looking forward to spring. But Dublin is always full of a kind of warmth, just from the people alone. Also, now is when the music really comes out to get us through the next few months. And I’m writing a lot more…essays and poems. And working under protection. That one too.