Whining

I don't normally like to whine because I think it's annoying, but lately I am feeling a strong inner whiner presence. The current state of the world is a pretty good reflection of my inner world - full of ups (the craziness of the election) and downs (the financial market meltdown). Up to now, the things happening around me were surreal - although my carefully acquired mutual funds have lost more than half their value, it hasn't affected my daily life that much, as I like to live simply (frugally). But recently, the financial turmoil has started to hit non-profit sectors pretty hard, including the agency I work in - everyday there is word of cuts but no one really knows when and where the cuts will land. My friends in Wall Street are not faring much better - some have been laid off, and the rest are working endlessly to prove their value. Right now I am fairly confident in my job security, and if I were like most sane people, I would be grateful for the job that I have and keep grinding away. Unfortunately, I am not like most people, and I decided at this precise moment to go job hunting, a process that I have half-heartedly done off and on since last January. Surprisingly, my job hunt has ended in a number of interviews, a much better result than when the economy was in an upswing; what kills me is all of the deception involved in going to those interviews... So there's the stress of deceiving my current workplace, as well as dealing with the jubilation of getting called back for second round interviews. The two competing feelings must be suffered through silently and alone if one must remain professional, no? It is a torturous process, but I suppose it is a necessary one. As I was feeling crabby and whiny, I got an unexpected pick-me-up; it was when I was browsing through the pictures taken during a recent trip to the Bronx Zoo. For some reason I got fixated by this picture; my co-worker who was not as amused as I was told me the animal looked like a pig in a diaper, which has no place in a zoo. That totally made my day!I think I am the only one who found this amusing, but we all have our unique coping mechanisms...