I have been using ratpoison in portrait orientation on RPoJ for the past few weeks. It is awesome to use via vnc on an iPad with a BT keyboard. A simple bar at the top using conky and dzen2, along with compton running at .8 = comfy. I have tmux mapped to use C+a (as I have for years, same with gnu screen) and ratpoison mapped to use C+z (because I am so good I do not need undo... heh. naw, the software I use most doesn't use that mapping for undo, and I really never background processes). No overlap on key chords, and suits my muscle memory.
I have been at my job since February of 2005. I have made it through a handful of layoffs in that time. This time is different, however. I expect to be unemployed on Tuesday of next week. This has caused some stress and worry to me for the past many weeks as I watched the momentum build for this. I have already lost people I have worked with for nearly 15 years. People that had given 30 or 40 years to this company. Entire camps shut down. Local economies left scrambling. Job markets are being saturated.
This is the reason that a couple of weeks ago when my wife's car took a shit, I purchased a 1988 Honda with cash. I cannot in good faith take on a new payment at the moment.
I have brushed up my resume. I have a few applications floating around. I do not feel hopeless, I do feel very out-of-sorts, though. I have not looked for a job since January of 2005. That is a long time. I have had this job longer than I've had my wife. Longer than my eighth grade daughter has lived. None of the cells in my body were existing when I got this job -- all of them have replaced the ones that were there at the time.
Not as in to turn inside out, as in to look within.
I have always lived in my own head to a large extent. That is where I find myself currently. Things feel unreal, yet not daunting. I feel very divorced from what I have been doing for so long, and as if standing on a precipice, able to see other details and options. Yet, not without an element of danger.