Yesterday I met friends! Trish, who I haven't seen for years, and we were later joined by Venky, who I likewise haven't seen for years, even though we live in the same city. I love them, but they've had different lives and schedules from me because they're self-employed business-people, and Trish was my first and best employer, aeons ago. (That business of hers shut due to the pandemic). I could've still wrangled meeting them, but in the aftermath of the indie bookstore debacle I felt insecure and out of place around them and their friends. I had never felt it so starkly, that they had privilege (capital) that I didn't, as during that time when I was going from shit job to shit job. I avoided hanging out with them, although we've been in touch on and off via text. Thankfully, our friendship is the kind that feels like we are picking up exactly where we left off.

Interestingly, despite not having income coming in right now, and despite telling them all about how I started out in the workforce five years ago on a 40k rupee ($450) salary and being laid off a couple of months ago from a 45k rupee ($500) salary, despite telling them all about how it has turned out that working a job gives me neither stability nor financial independence, that I have seen no growth or increase in income, that I don't believe I will have a future if I choose to bet that future on working jobs... I didn't feel insecure or out of place with them. I felt comfortable, even understood. I even told Trish about how it was the part-time job she had given me that enabled me to negotiate my first full-time salary to be $450, because I lied and said Trish's job paid on a sliding scale up to that amount, so that they had to offer to match it.

Wen I left the cafe, on the way home I felt uplifted as I usually feel after spending time with friends.

Trish and I talked about self-care. About how she doesn't have a work-life balance because she's working in a family business, but she gets to decide to take time off without applying for it, and is trying to do that more. About her horrendous boyfriend and how our friends are finding decent men and we aren't (and how that's entirely luck, because we have literally tried exactly what worked for our friends, but we can't control who we get to meet in this life nor can we control how other people treat us). About how I have felt helpless when trying to find something good in the job market, and how I need to carve out flexibility and freedom for myself because employers aren't going to do that, they're going to pigeonhole me. About how I'm never going to feel like I've figured it out in life because nobody feels like that, or not for long. About how Trish needs long breaks between socialising while I need it with somewhat regularity (we settled on meeting once a month after I made her self-conscious by looking at her in happy silence and she asked, 'What?' and I said I was committing her presence to memory). She loves villainess isekai, like me, and we shared recommendations with each other.

Venky and I talked about how self-discovery goes on forever. I said wanting to figure everything out is probably mid-twenties angst and he and Trish said it's forever angst. Venky asked me whether I had thought about working in education (Trish makes curricula and teacher training programs) and I told them about the disastrous teaching job that I bled straight through because my uterus thought I was running from predators every day. I also said that if I got a job now... nothing would change, and I wouldn't feel like I'm in a better place than before. Venky said this was a good time to think about what I want, a good time to change, since I'm what, twenty-four? I said no, I'm twenty-eight. Venky was surprised, recovered, and said, well I'm thirty and I can tell you... it doesn't necessarily get easier when you're thirty. Or ever, probably.

And that doesn't sound reassuring at all but it was strangely reassuring and comforting!

I came home, texted both of them, and then the next day both my mother and father wanted to talk about it. My mother annoyed me by asking me whether I asked Trish to employ me again if she's planning to start something of her own again. If that's what I say to Trish after meeting her for the first time in years, that gives me an agenda I didn't have, and also, that's a surefire way to make me feel weird about our friendship just when I'm feeling belongingness again. My father told me I should look into stock trading because he's learning to do it, and the thought of doing that when I have no incoming money stresses me tf out (plus he's doing a course on it, that's so demanding, I definitely don't have the spoons for it right now). I'm like CAN YOU GIVE IT A REST. Also, whenever they do this I want to scream that if they want me to do a job so bad, they should have been supportive of the indie bookstore job when it was offered to me. I was telling Trish that I realised I have to keep my own counsel about important life decisions, and not involve them or discuss anything with them, but they brought these topics up by themselves because they knew I met Trish and they know she was once my employer.

Anyway, that affected me, although I didn't want it to. Apparently it's a Libra thing to be sensitive to the feedback of those around you, and it's just my luck that those around me are family. I know that looking for a job or trying to figure out a way to earn money for its own sake is not the right thing for me to do right now. Whenever I ask the Tarot whether I should job search again, I draw the Nine of Swords, which is a clear mental health warning. There is no point working if it's going to make me depressed. There is no point getting a job right now when it's going to make me hopeless. I'll apply for something if I come across it and it seems promising, but I'm not going to actively search for jobs or do any sort of labour other than writing and fannish labour.

And this might not make sense to people but my life doesn't have to look sensible from the outside when it's rotting me from the inside. I want a life that enriches me from the inside. I want to repair my relationship with myself so that I enjoy my own company more than any other, once more. I want to curl up into the passing of time like a contented cat.