Starting Again

Wow.  My last post was nearly a year ago; a lot has changed.  One of the reasons I didn't blog more here was the depression resulting from my job (which just got worse) and that sometimes I feel like I don't have much to say as an "older" single adult.  I just live my life.  Besides, who wants to hear from a single woman in a miserable job, driving an old car, and trying to learn new things? :)

Update:

I was laid off from that awful job a couple of months ago.  I feel like it was a direct answer to many anguished prayers.  I still don't know why it was the right thing to accept the job to begin with, and the right thing to deal with all the badness that came in the last half of my time there, but I am confident that it WAS the right thing, somehow, and that, even if I don't get the answers to my questions about it right away, I will eventually.  Or, if I don't get answers, I'll at least be blessed with understanding.  I didn't realize how depressed I was until after I met with HR about severance and 401k stuff and felt a lightness I hadn't felt in months.  I even stuck around my last few days and cheerfully cleaned my desk and finished or handed off some projects.  I even got emotional on my last day talking to a few excellent colleagues (could they be the reason I was supposed to work there, I wonder?) after they took me to lunch.

The first half of my time at that job was great.  I was treated as an equal and contributing member of a team with ideas and thoughts worth hearing.  I was respected and trusted.  If I was honest in my shortcomings, I was not made to feel stupid.  The last half...well, we've already discussed it and I don't really want to talk about it except to say that it took the first several weeks of unemployment for me to figure out that I had actually been depressed.  Not just sad or worried, but probably depressed enough that I should have sought help from a mental health professional.  The stupid thing is I should have seen it, having gone through some major depression (to the point of contemplating suicide--yikes) over a decade ago, but I didn't recognize it for what it was until after I'd been laid off.  I just figured things were weird and would get better.

(Incidentally, one of the weirdest things was that I was given no instruction or direction from my actual boss for how to handle closing my accounts and for taking care of my computer and other equipment.  I had to call several departments on my own to make sure I did things right.)

Since then I have said many prayers of thanks for getting me out of a really bad situation.  And, although the stress of not having a job has been wearing (there have been several weeks where I just let myself sleep until 11 AM and didn't really do anything until 1 PM), and I'm still working through some depression issues, it's been so nice to just be home.  I have been reminded that, if my single situation changes soon and I have the opportunity to stay home and raise children, I will be very happy to do so.  Very happy.  I have hope that I'll be able to do that.

I've been on several interviews since, but nothing has panned out.  My savings is getting low and I'm getting worried so I really hope I'll have something in the next three or four weeks because I don't know what I'll do if I don't.  Overall, however, being laid off, while stressful and sad at times, has been a blessing.  I look at it as God giving me a little bit of a break from work, and I figure as long as I'm doing my best, He'll tell me what to do next.