Howling at reality

Thomas Wolfe was right - going home simply does not work.  I tried it with the best of intentions, both personal and professional.  The need for a Master's Degree was coupled with two dying parents who could not live independently.  So, we moved.  And learned the hard way what happens when good intentions meet incomplete information and reality.  I'm not griping; if the option were to come up again, I would do the same thing.  But, it is doubtful the outcome would be any different. 

Sixteen months later, two dying parents became two parents who have passed on, a lifetime of things and memories collected in their house has either been stored (for the important keepsakes) or swept out (for the calendars from 1985), the Master's has been half-earned in an effort that was one-third fun and two-thirds frustrating, and a lot of people I used to consider friends are no longer people with whom any communication is necessary.  Again, not griping, just saying.  

The town of my youth is no longer; it has been replaced by something bigger, something less inviting, something more impersonal, populated by people who are of other places and/or heading to other places, with little use for natives.  I tried to stay, applying for numerous jobs that would not only keep me in school, but further tie me to the community that was such a formative part of my upbringing.  At least two dozen applications; not a single interview.  Not one.  Not even a phone call. 

It is not about qualifications; I am old enough to apply only for jobs that call for my skills set, in this case 20 years of communications and marketing experience.  Near the end of my time in town, I found out I was hardly the only one.  The attorney who helped with the closing on the folks' house, a native who graduated a year ahead of me, had the same issue and the man has a law degree.  He recounted tales of other locals similarly rebuffed.  I'm not sure if this made me feel better or worse.  Of course, I was glad to hear it was not just me; a lot of rejection and you start to take it personally.  On the other hand, that an institution would ignore people who grew up in its shadow and wanted to return was depressing.  It does not say much about an organization when it refuses to consider its own graduates for employment. 

The upside was the football season and the chance to see, in person, a once in a generation athlete and a magical season.  Saturdays will be different this fall; I won't be attending games this time.  I just can't write checks for tickets to an institution that wrote me off, so while I retain an allegiance born of a lifetime of cheering for one set of colors, there will be a new team to pull for, one emblematic of a new set of colors, the one that will adorn the Master's to be completed.  And, it will be completed.  The folks would have insisted and, in some way, they still do.  It will just be a little different.  The remaining ties are gradually being cut - a storage unit to be emptied out in the next few days, a bank account to be closed down, license plates to be changed, and old hopes to be retired.  It's not the way I had wanted it to be but, apparently, it's the only way it could have been.