Nine months.

I’m moving forward, really and truly. I put one foot in front of the other every morning, and I shuffle through my days. I am busy, busier than I ever felt when I had a paying job. As odd as it sounds, I am also happier.

Since the April 1 layoffs at my old newspaper (“Seriously, you’re letting me go? Is this an April Fools joke?”), I’ve launched a new, local website with some former co-workers who also lost their jobs on April 1. The site — more online magazine than newspaper — keeps me busy. I am also thankful for the life raft of unemployment benefits.

But, still: I lost my job. It was a job I loved; a job I was good at; a job that had great meaning for me. After years of waiting on tables, I felt lucky to do work I considered important and valuable to my community.

Being without a job is a crappy way to end a year, let alone a decade.

While I am busy squeezing these lemons into lemonade, I know I’d not take the old job back at any price. So why am I feeling so crabby at what is supposed to be the most joyous time of year?

Maybe my crankiness is easily explained by the fact that I live in Michigan, ground zero for the “great recession,” and No. 48 on the happiness scale for U.S. states.

 Maybe my less-than-sunny disposition these days is just the new me. I used to rule a newsroom; now I am the Queen of Crankiness.

The other morning, my 10-year-old son asked for a cup of hot chocolate to take to school.

When I refused — he had just finished the healthy breakfast I made him, after all — he informed me that all the kids who walk to school bring mugs of hot chocolate with them when it’s cold.

“They do not,” I said, not seeing the value in my kid walking with a mug of hot chocolate to the school I can see from my front porch.

“But everyone does,” he whined, quickly whipping out his ace in the hole: “Sophie does.”

He waited for my play.

Sophie is a friend of my son’s and one of my favorite kids in the neighborhood.

“Sophie brings hot chocolate?” I grilled him. “Every morning?”

My son nodded.

“In a travel mug,” he added, upping the ante.

Before I knew what I was saying, words flew from my mouth: “So, if Sophie brings a big bag of farts to school every morning, is that what you’d want to do?”

No “if everyone jumps off a bridge” for me. Nope. I went straight to stinky bodily functions to make a point.

My kid looked at me for a split second, not saying a word. His silence underscored my childish crudeness. I felt awful and crabby and old.

His uncharacteristic silence worked in his favor: as he finished dressing for school, I made him hot chocolate in the lovely stainless steel travel mug he bought me for my birthday just six weeks before I lost my job.

“At least someone’s getting some use out of it,” I thought.

I handed it to him as he finished slinging his backpack on his shoulder.

“Really? Hot chocolate? To take to school?” My kid was thrilled.

“Better than a big bag of farts, eh,” I said.

My kid laughed.

“You didn’t mean that,” he said. “I love you, mom.”

After a quick kiss on the cheek, he was off.

Those few minutes, which could have easily devolved into something angry and stupid, instead became a nice moment I drew on throughout the day, a moment in which I felt irreplaceable.

I hadn’t felt that in a long, long time.

The biggest lesson I learned when I lost my job is that, for the most part, we are all replaceable.

We may think we’re not, but we are.

We all know it, intuitively; that it feels like a thunderbolt when it actually happens is testament to our big egos, that deep down we don’t think any of that stuff actually applies to us. Other people, yes; but ourselves? Hell, no. In our minds we are special, unique individuals, difficult to replace.

Oh, but we’re not.

We float in and out of jobs and relationships; we fly into and under the radar. We come; we go.

It’s the American way, I suppose, the peaceful transition of power. Out with the old, in with the new. Sunrise, sunset. All that stuff.

It’s the churn of life.

But how one feels during the holidays, I’m learning, is directly tied to which side one is on — the coming or the going, the in or the out.

I thought my usual good humor and optimism would buoy me along this holiday season, but I can’t ignore the professional and financial body blow I got this year; I’m unemployed, not stupid. While I’ve been struggling to get through the holiday season with a heart full of comfort and joy, I am, instead, going through it with a heart full of crankiness and oy.

And that’s OK. I’ve decided to enjoy my nice moments as they come, and to be as cranky as I feel the rest of the time. It’s kind of like a Christmas present to myself, much better, I think, than a big bag full of farts.