Did ya miss me? I’ve been gone from here for over a year, not exactly sure why. I almost decided to not renew the domain name and whatever else has to be renewed yearly, but I couldn’t let go. So here I am.

Things are generally the same, something that sort of troubles me. It’s been six years (!) since the cancer scare and yet it seems like not a lot has changed. And, in case you are wondering, I sorta promised myself that I would make some changes if I managed to recover from treatment.

In some ways, the move to North Carolina was part of the “change” I wanted to make, or at least a start. Moving was on the agenda before cancer, I just made it happen sooner rather than later.

And I suppose all the artsy craftsy things I’ve been working on over the past three years could also be part of the change. Yes, it’s been three years since the move. Time just flies.

But really, the biggest disappointment is work related, as it always seems to be. When I moved here, part of the plan was to downsize (done), have a mortgage the same or less than I was paying before (done), and generally uncomplicate things (mostly done). I was looking forward to slowing down the pace of work and life in general.

At the time, I was paid on “billable hours” which meant the more I worked the more I was paid…and the less I worked, the less I was paid. I figured if I got my finances straightened out, I could theoretically work less and enjoy life more. Also at the time (as in 5 or 6 years ago), one of the “perks” of the job was to work as much or not as much as I wanted to.

And then things went sideways in September 2020….which is just a month after the last blog post. I was approached and asked to accept a supervisory position which meant I would switch to a salaried job with paid holidays and paid vacation. It was a very good financial deal for me, no doubt about that. But it meant supervising and training people again (not necessarily my fave thing to do based on some past experiences) as well as continuing to handle claims. It also meant working “regular” hours as in until 5 PM every day instead of the mostly flexible hours like before.

I took a few days to ponder the decision. Part of the reason I said “yes” was because I knew one of the managers, who happens to be a good friend, needed help. I knew if I said no, I would feel guilty every day for letting her down. I still feel ambivalent about it and there are many days I wish I had said no. I also came close to asking to give it up and go back to being a worker bee instead of a manager. Many, many days.

It has been rocky and not exactly enjoyable. We had turnover issues for a few months meaning I was basically working two jobs. The other manager went out (twice) for major surgeries so we also had to cover his work. There is now an ongoing passive aggressive war with that manager. It’s just plain exhausting.

A couple of weeks ago, I came close to threatening to resign. I hadn’t been that angry, frustrated, and stressed out in a long time and it made me remember a long-ago mantra. “Change what you can change or quit yer bitching”. Or something like that.

Shortly after that awful week, I also had a long philosophical conversation with a “work friend”. He is a few years younger than I am, but he is also gearing up to trying to retire from the law firm he works for. The gist of the conversation is that you can’t put a price on happiness. And, I pointed out that no amount of money will give a person more hours in a day.

I go back to thinking about the cancer scare and how precious life is. I will always remember that day when it hit me that I could die during or after treatment and I wouldn’t be able to do all those things I wanted to do. What if this is “it”? Not sure how I can adequately describe how that feels. It was a wake up call that I fear I have not heeded.

I also told the work friend that this is NOT the lifestyle I wanted to have. At all.

So I am trying to think about ways to change things or maybe ways to accept how things are to “quit the bitching”. Not sure what the answer is, but I know I need to keep searching for it.

I feel a great desire – more than ever before – to be creative in some way. I wonder if this urge was always buried deep inside? I think I have a stack of 5 afghans that I made in the past few months that I do not need….because I already have at least 5 afghans I made for myself. Not sure what I’ll do with those, I already gave away a bunch of other ones I made last year. I’d like to do more paint pouring and maybe learn how to work with polymer clay…if I can find a creative space to be “messy”.

Stay tuned. Maybe coming here and writing things down will help. Sure like to think it will. Thanks for listening.