I’m not even going to pretend I have had it together these past two years. Every time I lay out my plans, with the best of intentions, the Universe conspires to knock it out of the park.

So, fast updates – I left my job of 6 1/2 years back in July. The manager treated me differently than the other members of the team leading to a toxic situation for me. I wrote the position I was originally hired for back in May 2020 when the company changed how they imported their data to the system. I was the only one doing it and had to work with three departments to build and fine tune the process. I was the subject matter expert. I generally pulled between 50-65 hours a week to make sure everything was done on time and accurately. I applied for and accepted a new rule under the same manager in Sept 2021. Trying to hire someone to replace me in the old role turned out to be a significant challenge. They ended up hiring three different people to do the work I had done by myself. Then in the spring and early summer of 2025 I had to watch as the new guy of 9 months received not one, but two back to back awards for doing the job I built. A job I was never nominated for in all the time I did it. A man received two awards within 4 months, had not completed his initial training, and whose work I was constantly correcting because he had no office skills. The woman who did the job for six years didn’t even receive a public thank you in all that time. Red Flag! The manager kept up the passive aggressive BS she began exhibiting two years prior of “I realize no one else appreciates you, but I do.” Red Flag! As of April 2025 I had still not been transitioned into the role I accepted in 2021. After complaining to the director, a hard stop date was established. The problem? When I was set to begin learning about the new role the manager admitted that she didn’t have any way to train for the position established. So in 4 years of waiting they didn’t put a single thing together to transition me. Red Flag! Add to that the fact that since I complained against my manager I was now further isolated underneath her thumb and kept from interacting with others. Red Flag!

In June I went to my PCP who had been trying to figure out what was wrong with all my blood work and why none of our care plans were having an impact. It was a different physician than my usual one and she laid it out pretty bluntly: ‘you need to get rid of whatever this thing is that is causing all your stress. We can’t get the inflammation down until you get your body out of flight or fight survival mode.’ The main thing causing me the frustration and stress? The thing that even on the weekends, holidays, and time off I couldn’t seem to de-stress from? My job. I was hesitant what with the current climate. I made good money, decent time off, some flexibility for dr appts, and had longevity. I had been trying to find a new job for over a year to no avail so I kept trying to hold on hoping it would get better. I pulled jury duty the last week of the month and when we got back a little earlier than expected that week (3 days instead of 4) due to no cases, I logged into work. Not a single person spoke to me the entire day. Something in me cracked. I wrote up my resignation letter and began to compute my finances to see how long I could make it. After doing math several times, I scheduled my resignation letter to post to my manager and director over Fourth of July. The next week was my last. Not a single person from my team spoke to me, said goodbye, or good luck the entire week. Not one. However, directors and people from multiple other departments messaged me to say thank you for all of my hard work and how they had appreciated everything I did to keep things going over the years. Interesting. My manager said no one appreciated the things I did.

The first week off was surreal. I made sure to pay bills off where I could, crossed all the t’s, dotted all the i’s for the road ahead. I tweaked my resume and began to apply for jobs in earnest. The next several weeks I finished paying off some other debts to where now I only have student loans. I had budgeted to be okay through October but then discovered last week that my student loans kicked back in sooner than expected throwing my whole budget off. Now I have until the end of September to become gainfully employed. Yet I don’t regret leaving the job. I regret not having the longevity of time and the pay checks as the housing market is finally becoming manageable again. I am irritated by that one. I will be starting over from scratch again unless I receive a windfall of funds from somewhere. Anyone know a sugar daddy for me? My health has improved. Most of the inflammation has gone down and I am actually getting sleep even though it’s in smaller chunks throughout the day and night rather than just one long stretch. Mentally and emotionally I am not the train wreck I had become by the time I quit. I am getting nervous about the job thing now that my time frame is shortened by a month and what responses I get are either spammed/spoofed jobs or rejections. I am over-qualified and old. No one wants to pay what I am actually worth for the skills I have gained over the years. I have a minimum threshold in order to make ends meet on a single income household so I can’t take just anything if the pay isn’t high enough. Then there are a bunch of new programs and processes that I have never had to use, which eliminates me from a lot of positions when they mark it as required. And when they figure out my age, well that just puts the nails in the coffin. 😛

So writing, reading, rituals, yard work, house work…it’s all been hit or miss over the past two years with mostly misses. I still have things rattling around in my head, and some notes I have dictated, but the current upheaval in my life seems to be causing a reading/writing block. The spirits say: create your own job. I say: how the hell do I do that when I hate cameras, do not have video editing skills, write like a 12 year old, need to pay ever increasing cost of living bills NOW, and have lost my love of reading thanks to OSU?

Sigh.

So this is where I have been. And where I am now. Let’s see if I can pull my ass out of the fire again.