Thursday, Jan. 08, 2004 - 2:08 p.m.

Ruined?

Today I discovered that the company from which I was deriving around 2/3 of my income is no longer on the web and no longer paying.

My body reacted instantly, clenching and hyperventilating, the familiar feeling of the start of a panic attack, yet more severe than I'm used to, accompanied by the kind of sullen dread you'd feel if you were being buried alive. Yet I'm getting more and more in the habit of noticing my bodily sensations and surrendering to the present moment: almost instantly, my attention was with my breath and noting the fine details of my queasiness. Siting back and observing myself wracked with terror became such sublime joy. The fear makes me tingle all over, and when I can stop thinking about how awful the situation is, and stop all the self-incrimination, the fear makes me feel intensly alive. I don't know how I'd survive without my Buddhism.

It was one of the safest investments of its kind, "was" being the operative word, but I knew better than to concentrate so much of my livelihood in the hands of one company. What's more, I had months in which I could have withdrawn most of that capital and diversified properly, yet I did nothing. It was on my to-do list, and I procrastinated. Why was that? I really want to know. I can't claim that I'm an unfortunate victim of circumstance. I knew exactly what the risks were. For some unconscious reason, I sabotaged my own life.

But I still have the third that's left, and I have several options to get more money that I haven't explored yet. I ought to have enough money to get me through the beginning of February. I have to remind myself that nothing in the real world has changed for me since yesterday. I'm still healthy, I still have a home to live in and a bowl of warm oatmeal. Only some pixels on a screen are different. Maybe it's for the best. I was (obviously) getting complacent.

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