Like everyone, I carry a certain amount of uncertainty at all times. Life, love, breakfast: All these things up in the air, apparently constantly. My attempts to ground any of them are either futile, or go unpredictably awry. This morning, for example, I discovered all the yoghurts in my fridge had expired. That’s a breakfast-related uncertainty, by the way, in case you were expecting metaphors. The opus “Ben in love: A multipack of low-fat yoghurt and fresh fruit garnish” remains a brilliantly titled, yet entirely fictitious autobiography. My favourite is strawberry. I like to think.

Uncertainty of the ‘life’ variety then. Don’t interrupt pointing out that ‘love’ and ‘breakfast’ are subsets of greater ‘life’; I don’t care. And, ‘breakfast’ isn’t a subset, it’s a transcendence. Uncertainty of ‘life’ is like background radiation. In my case, there was a reactor leak a few months ago, and I’ve been slightly poisoned. My well documented and overly dissected layoff experience has left me glowing in the dark a bit, and overall weaker for the experience.

So, apparently today my employer announced another 5% trim of staffing during our earnings call. About 650 will be out of work. It’s my hope and assumption that I am now working in a department so vital to what Yahoo is trying to do that I’ll be OK. Plus lightning would have to strike twice. Even so, the prospect inevitably sets you thinking, and I’m trying to imagine what I’d do. I think about what I did last time: Contacted everyone who would listen, ran around searching for every scrap of an opportunity. For two weeks, it was all I did. I spoke with some anger at the scenario, but didn’t have time to really feel it, and by the time I did, it was all resolved.

If that happened again? I don’t know that I could do it. I don’t know that I actually have an energy reserve to call upon to drag me through another crisis. And whilst work provides this context, I mean anything. We stay sane because we battle through hard times. Sometimes, with retrospect, entire situations where we’ve actually maintained a pretty good level of mental health seem entirely unrealistic and ridiculous, and yet we get through it. Now, I’ve recovered from that big hit, but I don’t feel recharged. I feel like if something blew up again, I wouldn’t have the energy to run away, I’d just fall down.

I think everything’s going to be fine. But it’s sobering to consider. Sobriety is mildly paralysing, and I wish I were drunk on energy again, like before. I want the reserves to do the things that will seem nuts in retrospect. I want that back so that I can jump into everything new I want to do, and I want that back so that I can survive.

I should start drinking mimosas with breakfast.