On the Search Again

When I started this blogging adventure, I had this unrealistic idea that I would start blogging and everyone would love the little tidbits of psychosis I share daily and they would share it to their friends, and their friends would share it, and so on and so forth until I easily had over ten thousand readers a month who wanted to know what little ole me was up to. I did mention that was unrealistic, yea? What I have found is that there are fifty or so people who return day after day to see what I’ve gotten myself into before returning to their real lives. And honestly, every day I’m surprised you all still keep coming back. I let go of my little unrealistic fantasy quite a while ago, but I have a firm grasp on the happiness and peace of mind that blogging has brought me. I know sometimes I overshare and contribute to the overload of TMI (too much information) on the internet, and a small part of me apologizes for that, but that’s like my little toe of an apology. The rest of me is jumping up and down in the air everyday that my page has more than two views and, at times, congratulating myself for saying what I think other people probably want to say or have said. Sometimes when it is close to midnight and I haven’t a thing on my mind worth mentioning, I start to panic because I feel like if I go to sleep without something waiting to post at 12:01am,   I may not wake up in the morning. It would be like going without air….or pizza. A girl just can’t live without the necessities and now that I’m in the habit of writing daily, I start to get a little  worried when I literally have nothing on my mind.   I get to that place of peace and contentment where nothing is bothering me and my mind is quiet and all of a sudden, I hear this voice boom in my ear like the liberty bell, “WRITE!!” And it startles me like a phone call in the middle of the night, but the crazy thing is, shortly after that, some random subject pops into my head and voila! A blog starts. Today was not one of those days. I have had the same thing on my mind for the last few days, maybe even the last few weeks. I need to find a new job. Not even a job. I need to find a career. I’m forty years old and I have been bouncing from job to job to job my whole life. I always blamed it on needing flexibility or needing to work around the kids’ schedules or just not being able to find something that I love to do. A wise man recently told me, “If it pays well, you probably won’t love it. If you love it, it probably won’t pay well.” There’s a whole lot of truth in that tiny little statement. The problem is, do I want to be able to survive or do I want to do something that makes me happy and just get by? I struggle daily with the answer. The one thing I do know is that I definitely want and need a job with some sort of stability. I never thought I would want something more permanent in my life like dental insurance and 401k and paid time off, but I only have twenty years or so left before I’m of “retirement” age and I legitimately have zero dollars saved for that. I don’t even have a savings account. I read an article on that Dave Ramsey site the other day that said something along the lines of: you always have money laying around. Sell something like your old jewelry  and put that money in the bank for a rainy day. And all I could think was that all my jewelry was handmade and even though I rarely wear it, even if it had any monetary value, which it doesn’t, it carries tons of sentimental value. Upon further review, I settled on the notion that I have nothing worth monetary value. Everything I have, I have because it makes me happy, it would hold no value for anyone else. So I can’t sell my valuables to start my nest egg. The next best thing I can do is to get my shit together. I just want to find a job that pays me enough to pay all my bills and still have money to eat until my next pay day. And maybe, just maybe, if I’m lucky, I would have enough left over to be able to actually save a dollar or two each week. I also want accrued vacation time. I know it seems silly, but as of right now, I am considered “part time” at my job. I was lied to and told that I was full time, but that was not the case. I have since written the District Manager to arrange a meeting, but I doubt very much that things will go in my favor since the priority is the business not those who help to keep it running smoothly, but I am holding on to a shred of hope. I mention the vacation thing because I was told that I only had to work over 30 hours for a year and then I would be given full time status, which would be all fine and dandy if I was able to go a whole year without ever needing an extra day off or never wanting to take a 4 day weekend, because that would drop me under the 30 hour average and I would have to start my year all over again. I guess they didn’t think I would figure that out until it was too late, but this is not my first rodeo. Or my second. I’ve worked for nonprofits, I’ve worked in the for profit industry, I will admit to being a job hopper, but that is only because life is hard enough as it is especially when you are perpetually living in poverty and if I have to spend 40 hours a week in a place away from my children, then shouldn’t that place bring me a little bit of joy? Or at least more joy than despair or frustration. I know, I’m living in a fairy tale world and I want to work in a stable filled with unicorns and eat Ben & Jerry’s every day for lunch without gaining a pound, but if that’s not possible, I don’t think it’s too much to ask to want to wake up in the morning and not dread having to get dressed to go to a place where you are underpaid and underappreciated.