Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Remodeling Life

 I guess the reason why I hate the cliché that "everything happens for a reason" and that "things are meant to be" is that for one second, if you get too comfortable in life, the rug can be pulled out from underneath you even after said things happen. What I mean is just don't ever get too comfortable ever; whether this is in relationships, at work, or just generally speaking in life. I am yet again facing a crossroads (something that jist seems to confront me every chance it gets). I thought I had finally found the right career for me, but evidently, I was wrong. You know, all I've ever really wanted was a career I can stick with and master. At 42, it is really difficult to find the will in working towards something when you're not even sure which race you want to enter. I haven't even put my shoes on yet, more or less, saw a glimpse of that light at the end of the tunnel of glorious retirement. Will my generation even get the opportunity? I have a friend who is 2 years my junior who says he's gonna do it in 12 years. Well, more power to him. I wish I had that kind of foresight. I just feel like my light for hope in the career sector has just become dimmer, but maybe that has to do with my constant will to compare myself to others. Don't we all do that? Isn't that why fb is so cancerous? Shouldn't I be more concerned with what I'm doing and less concerned with what I SHOULD be doing? I think that's rooted deep within my upbringing with a narcissistic stepfather. It has taken years to overcome some of his shit, and the second I think I'm healed of it, something like this rears its ugly head. I don't want to tell people I was fired. I don't want to tell people the confusion and uncontrollable misery that is government work. It was physically making me ill not knowing my role, not fully understanding HOW to do my job, and no matter how many videos I watched of the same rhetoric over and over again, it wasn't explaining it at all. How did we get to this point? That's the piece I needed, but it isn't required to know. It isn't required to learn. It was required to fulfill a role. The job wasn't hard. I just had to be there, and I wasn't A LOT. That's on me. That's my fault, but give me a manager who is present, and I'll find you employees who feel useful. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, don't tell me what is wrong with the system. That helps no one. So, yeah, you let me go, but just know i had 1.5 feet out the door already. Government work is not for everyone, they say (whoever they are, probably former govt workers) and I found out how much that really applied to me. 

Here's something new for me: I am about as happy as I've ever been, but the only piece missing is that fulfilling aspect of feeling productive at work, so I chose the next best thing: I finally pieced together the partially remodeled house into a home. We have since put in new floors. We ripped out all the carpet and linoleum and put down Pergo. I had a lot of help, but we did not contract it out to save money. I'm not very handy, but it is done. For weeks, we had doors everywhere and boxes of things strewn everywhere and it was making me crazy. So, since I'm home a lot right now, I rearranged it. And now, I feel more at peace. Andrea has a job in Springfield, so she hasn't been at home as much. I went and got flowers for the table and began making my house home again. It felt really good. It felt less stressful. It was like I found purpose again. When results are positive, it makes the work worth it. I've had a few interviews, and even a couple offers, but now for the first time in my life, I feel like I can be selective. Andrea has made that possible for me, and I think this is one way of showing her my gratitude. Don't get me wrong, I am going back to work very soon, but in the meanwhile, I can finally tie up those things that are difficult to complete when both spouses work. That part feels great. The mission is clear. The task is achievable, and the results make it all worth it. 






Wednesday, January 12, 2022

So many updates, so little time

   So I just noticed that I haven't updated on here in a long time and so many things have changed yet again. The theme of the week, it seems, is lack of space, and once again I find myself in the middle of clutter. It's different this time around though because for the first time in my life,  I enjoy sharing my bubble with my partner. I always thought that I needed to have space physically in a relationship. What I've found is that you can share closer space with someone you truly love, and it doesn't seem painful, suffocating, and like work. When you truly love someone, you support them and they reciprocate. I have never in my life felt this way before about anyone. It truly is incredible. Andrea and I have taken the next step. Things are falling together almost as if it were predestined to happen. I have a hard time with believing things are 'meant to be.' I hate thinking that when someone in your life passes and they were super young, that it was meant to be or "God's will." Who am I to know what that is? I believe it quite literally is a way for people to cope with the difficult. I sit here thinking that a lot of things had to systematically happen for me to be here in this position; albeit in a relationship or a career. And, just within the last couple years, I've been placed in both. I found a job through the state because I was a customer of sorts, who quite literally joined the very company that helped me find a job. I now am like the hair club client who became president of said company. Just as I was about to quit online dating, I turned to the gods of Facebook and made the best friend I could have. It's like the algorithm perfected itself and manifested right before my eyes. Who made who? From the first day I met her, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with her. I was about to give up online dating because no one's profile matched who they really were, and that's the very same deception I was already running from. My brother once said I married my narcissistic stepdad, and that never made sense to me... until she was absent from my life. I had to relearn how to ride a bike. Not literally, but figuratively. I didn't know how I wanted my house to look after she left because it never occurred to me that I was capable of making that decision. Once I remembered what it was I liked doing, it made doing those things fun again. The 'new' is actually playing those things together; going to Memphis in May together; watching live rock shows together; watching the same silly show over and over and over and over again together, and not apologizing for happiness. Not having to justify feelings on either side of the wall. Feel. Just unapologetically feel. My living room now has a pallet full of Pergo flooring, and I'm about to remodel my heart once and for all, just as the trip back to CA to see my grandmother(s) AND introduce them to my love of my life and drive with my dad up the coast of OR: it happened. It was unlikely. It was random and it was one of the best weeks of my life. I hadn't the means, but my future wife found a way; same as the Jamaican wedding, and PS5 and Nintendo Switch for Christmas. Instead of regret on the excess holiday spending, she did something I just could not fathom: she got a second job delivering packages because of a splurge on me. I just put that into words; a life fulfilled. 


This is the epitome of happiness.