It’s been almost a month since I posted last. My how the month has flown by!
Changes in the wind have kept me busy, distracted and disoriented.
First things first though – I want to thank Kate over at Did That Just Happen Blog for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award. It’s been too long in coming for me to acknowledge her faith in me. After reading what I’ve been up to – I hope she can forgive me for not thanking her sooner. I also hope everyone else will forgive me for not posting a follow up at this time for the honor she bestowed on me. I plan on still getting to it, but with how things are going lately – I’m not sure I’m going to make it. So….I’m sorry in advance – let’s just pretend that I nominated your blog, because I guarantee that I it would be listed!
So – why have I been so busy, distracted and disoriented?
Well….I have 4 kids first of all. The three oldest are in high school, one of those is a senior, one is in Color Guard, one is in Marching Band, and all three are moody, sulky, sullen, attitude-oozing teenagers who have no interest in getting up early for the bus, staying late for practice or coming home to do homework . Did I mention they’ve only been in school three days now?
The usual stress of getting everyone ready for school happened just like clock-work. The only difference this year is LaLa lamenting about how this year is her “last” everything – to hear her talk, she’d gladly stay a kid forever and never have the responsibilities of adulthood. Dream on little one, dream on.
Then we have my work issues that have also contributed to my being busy, distracted and disoriented.
We still do not have a director for our office. Flora has been gone since mid-June. We’ve finally interviewed a possible replacement, but we have not heard whether or not the job was offered to her or not. Even if she had been offered and accepted the job yesterday, it would still be a minimum of a month before she would be allowed to start due to rules in our organization regarding director-level notices.
So – what have I been doing since mid-June in my stressed-out position? I took my job by the horns and took as much control as I could with as much effort as I could. I scheduled and attended training with other entities on my own. One session that lasted 5 hours taught me more about my job in that short amount of time than I had learned over the course of 5 months. The main difference was that I was trained on HOW to utilize the computer program we have to work FOR me rather than just being a database to store documents and run reports.
Don’t get me wrong – storing documents and running reports are a big part of my job, but it’s not the only aspect of my job either. I was shown how to read and use my “work-list” generated by the program. One day after learning how to understand, my list went from having 210 items pending to only 88. Two days after learning, the list went from 88 down to 42. Three days after learning, the numbers went from 42 down to 22.
This one little piece of instruction helped my stress level drop from “being in over my head” to “this isn’t as hard as I thought”. Taking control of my own training was the best thing I could have ever done for my job.
My health has also not helped with the busy, distracted and disoriented issues I’ve been having.
In fact – my health has probably been the biggest factor in all of this. It’s been almost a full month since my doctor prescribed me an anti-depressant. I have not broken down in tears for a full month now. It was a weekly, if not daily, occurrence before. This is a positive in my book. However, I’m still struggling with minor side effects and a total lack of energy or desire to do….well….to do…..ANYTHING.
This frustrates my kids, my husband, my dogs, my job, my chores and myself. Forcing myself to just “do” hasn’t seemed to work. There is no “do” umph for me right now. Just doing the bare minimum is a struggle. Showers are a must….most of the time….but there was three weeks in there where I did no laundry at all. Not to worry….I didn’t go dressed in the same item twice during those three weeks – they were all clean cloths. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not….it may mean I have too many cloths….
We’ve also been dealing with financial issues that have kept us busy, distracted and disoriented.
Since being on the anti-depressant, I’ve been able to look at our bills and actually pay attention to them. What I’ve known, but could no longer ignore, is the fact that we are in debt. Not just a little debt, but in DEEP debt…..almost bankruptcy level debt. I say almost because Hun and I have decided to make some serious changes to our life-style and attempt to dig out of debt first before we just “wipe the slate clean” so to speak.
This includes attempting to sell The Mistress. She is currently listed for sale. If necessary, we’ll do a voluntary return/repo to get out from under our debt. Sure it will ruin our credit….but it won’t be any worse than filing bankruptcy anyway. We may still end up filing, but we’re going to make a valiant effort first to avoid that route if possible. We both agree we’ll learn some hard lessons better by going this route.
So….that’s my update for now. I have a couple of really great posts fermenting in my mind that I’d like to share.
Now…if only I could find the energy to type them up….
If anyone happens to find my desire laying around anywhere, please be so kind as to ship it back to me – I’d really appreciate it!
Who or What Was That? 