Making A Comeback

The more time that pases, the harder it is to actually return to blogging. Nearly six months ago when I last posted here, I was still living in FL and was in the middle of a copious amount of stress involving job-hunting and the potential for relocation. It’s a period I don’t want to relive, so let’s just fast forward to today.

I am now employed with a UU church, as has been my goal for a couple of years now. I am living near family, and experiencing 4 seasons once again (sometimes all in one week!). My husband is recently employed as a web designer once again and couldn’t be happier! Next month, if not sooner, the Bug will also be enrolled in a preschool, and he may even be able to begin kindergarten as soon as next year!

The result of all of this is that we are all thriving once again, but my writing has suffered. Perhaps as our new routines stabilize, I will again be able to make room in my week for blogging, among the myriad other pieces.

What’s New?

I haven’t been very good about keeping up with my blogging. (That said, the husband and I have semi-resurrected our former online magazine, The Green Room, recently!) I’ve been too busy living (and restructuring!) my life, to sit down and blog about it.

• After 10 months of unemployment, O started a new job in May! Just over a month into it, he’s still very much enjoying what he’s doing.
• When my temporary assignment with the Census ended, I began taking on new projects, and honing my skills toward what I really want to do with my professional life. This has included volunteering in the office of the local Unitarian Universalist church once a week, editing the monthly and weekly newsletters for the same, and recently starting some work with a local group dedicated to environmentalism and peace.
• L started attending a Montessori preschool, where he spends 5 mornings each week, and he is happy as a clam there!
• We bought a new-to-us car. *
• Next month, we’re headed to NY to unload the storage unit we’ve been renting since August (and of course to visit family and friends up there!), and we’re on the hunt for our next rental home.
• … and I’m going to the gym three times a week.

All together, this whole list means that we’re finally starting to put our lives back together. I spent SO long saying, “I want my life back!” after we moved down here. It feels so good to be moving forward again. We’ll never have the life we left behind, and I’ve accepted that. But now, finally, it feels like we have a reasonable substitute. A new beginning, and a stable foundation upon which to continue to build. I still yearn for more in the way of socialization, but the pieces that were previously scattered or missing are now starting to fall into place.

Life doesn’t feel quite so broken, anymore.

* More on this topic in a future post.

Health Care Reform

There is a stigma in this society against poor people, or anyone even potentially perceived as poor.  I ran into this several years ago when I determined that I could not get any decent customer service with regard to the credit card I had because it was a secured credit card – the kind you get when you don’t have credit enough to get a “real” credit card.  And I’m learning it again now, at my son’s expense.

See, when my husband lost his job in July, we lost our health insurance.  When we moved to Florida, we applied for assistance.  Because we had substantial savings, though, he and I did not qualify, but our son did because the rules are different for children.  We were relieved, but honestly?  We shouldn’t have been.

Could you tell this sweet little face that his doctor won't see him because he doesn't have the right insurance?

As it turns out, there are very few pediatricians in our county who take Medicaid at all.  Those who do, often have huge waiting lists.  The first appointment we ever made resulted in a more than two hour wait, while walk-ins were also being taken.  We left after two and a half hours, having never even met the doctor.  When we got home, we changed his doctor immediately.

Unfortunately, now we have a new problem: sick visits.  Twice in the past couple of months, I have attempted to make a sick visit appointment for him due to a recurring cough.  In both instances, my choices have been to wait 1-2 weeks for an appointment, or bring him in as a walk-in (which of course means no guarantee of being seen).  That is simply unacceptable.  We incurred over $200 worth of medical charges yesterday because we took him to urgent care, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to get an appointment today anyway.  This is not a choice I should have to make.  My child should not receive sub-par care just because his parents were going through a hardship.

What’s more: I can’t get ahold of anyone to find out what our current status is.  See, (and my apologies for not posting about this previously) my husband is finally gainfully employed again, after a very long ten months!  I need to contact someone to find out how this affects Bug’s eligibility because Bear’s health insurance and benefits do not kick in until the beginning of August.  But herein I reach another issue: my login no longer works on their website, and their telephone lines are so congested that I get a message telling me to try my call again later and I am disconnected from the call.

This story is proof that there is Something Wrong with our health care system, and the way our society in general regards the unemployed/uninsured, or anyone perceived as a “have not.”  I don’t profess to have all the answers as to HOW to fix it, but I can attest heartily to the fact that it needs fixing.  Badly.

“Life is the Cookie”

“…If you had the cookie, things were good. If you didn’t have the cookie, life wasn’t worth a damn. Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing. Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes sex. At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most prestigious address. …you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie, to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you. You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not what life is about.

My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him. For the first time he is happy. No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf. “Two years ago, cancer asked ne, ‘Okay, what’s important? What is really important?’ Well, life is important. Life. Life any way you can have it. Life with the cookie. Life without the cookie. Happiness does not have anything to do with the cookie, it has to do with being alive. Before, who made the time?” He pauses thoughtfully. “Damn, I guess life is the cookie.” — Rachel Naomi Remen

2009 took a lot away from me, from my family.  In the space of one afternoon, we went from having financial security and a house-purchase underway, to having no kind of security whatsoever.  That afternoon began numerous changes in our lives, ultimately ending in our move out of state, away from all of our family and friends in New York.  This has been the source of a lot of sadness for me, and an ongoing theme in both my blog posts and in my daily thoughts.  I’ve been focusing a lot of energy and thought on looking back at all the “cookies” I’d had to give up.  I held resentment towards my husband’s former employer, and I lost many nights’ sleep to homesickness and depression.

The year turned over, and I began to realize how much of my energies were tied up in negative thoughts.  My former minister, Rev. George Tyger, told us a Buddhist story about holding on to negativity, the moral of which was to “put down the raft,” lest we spend our lives carrying around old burdens.  That was exactly what I was doing, and I told myself as the ball dropped at midnight that I was leaving 2009 behind me.  “It’s in the past,” I told my husband, “It can’t hurt us anymore.”  Instead, I am choosing to focus now on the positive.

The fact is, we have a lot going for us.  We are very lucky, in so many ways.  We have a roof over our heads, and money in the bank.  Both of those things are more than so many people can say.  We are healthy, and most of all, we have each other.  We have life; we have “cookies.”

Maybe that was what we were to gain from this experience.  Perhaps it was a reminder that life is not its trappings.  Life is not the house, the job, and the stuff.  I used to say that my life got turned upside down, courtesy of Xerox.  But no, it wasn’t my life – it was just the temporary cookies, the ones that can crumble or break.

I’ve taken to calling 2010 The Year of Hope and Good Things.  I’ve changed my outlook, and am leaving the past (and the negativity contained therein) behind me.  More positivity can only lead to a better and more satisfying cookie.

The Season of Hope

For Christians, we are in the midst of Advent. Our Jewish friends just celebrated Hannukah. And the Pagans among us celebrate Yule today. Whatever your beliefs – be it one of those I’ve listed, or something entirely else – there is magic in this time of year. The very air seems to crackle with anticipation, and children everywhere light up with hope.

A Decorated Palm Tree at Fort Myers Beach

This year, the things that usually symbolize the season for me – cold weather and being with my family – are absent from my immediate surroundings. My mother visited last week for my son’s 2nd birthday, though. When she commented how it was “weird” to hear Christmas music when it was 80-something degrees outside, I couldn’t help but agree. Even still, my husband and I have found our own ways to bring the Season into our surroundings. Despite our limited budget, we found ways to do a little bit of shopping – for presents and also for some inexpensive decorations. We also hand-made some decorations, as well. We’ve recorded a bunch of this year’s Christmas specials on TV, and bought ourselves all some seasonally-themed pajamas; we’ll spend Christmas Day lounging around the house in our PJs and watching the shows we’ve recorded (all child-appropriate, of course).

More importantly, though, this year is all about Hope for us. Both my husband and I are still searching for employment. We’re still living, along with our toddler son, in someone else’s home, waiting to get back on our feet. Hoping, in fact, to get back on our feet. In this season of “Holy Longing,” as my minister said in yesterday’s sermon, we are acutely aware of hope and anticipation. We are eagerly awaiting what comes next.

May the close of this year bring us the things we seek. May it bring new beginnings, and all that which we have been working towards and praying for over the past months.

Waffles Aren’t Just for Breakfast

A couple of weeks ago, right around when we started toying with the DC idea, my husband had a phone interview with a company in CA. A friend of his from HS works there and has been trying to get him to apply there since before he even lost his job back in Rochester. Finally we agreed he might as well see what happens. Well, the first interviewer liked him enough to pass his information further down the line, and now he has a second (phone) interview lined up for later this week. If that goes well too, they’ll be wanting to fly him out there to interview in person either later this month or early next month.

This whole turn of events has led to many late-night, long-drive, dinner-time, and telephone (while I’m on breaks at work) conversations between the two of us, weighing the pros and cons of this possibility from every imaginable angle. They say opportunity doesn’t knock twice, but this is definitely multiple knocks at this point. In the past, we’d ruled it out because O already had a decent job, and then because we didn’t want to move so far away. It always felt like a last-resort option. But even though we have definitely not exhausted all other possibilities, I do have to wonder how long this opportunity will realistically stick around.

As I consider this possibility for our family, I hear the voices of other people in our lives echoing in my head. I hear a lot of “shoulds,” and it’s difficult not to let those potential opinions color my perceptions. On the other hand, is “because I don’t want to!” a solid enough reason to say no, if the job is offered to him in the end?

Theoretically this job would offer us the financial freedom to visit home more often than we can from here, even though CA is further from NY than FL is. But how much more hassle would the flights be, especially when compared to our previous goal of moving to DC (from where we could also drive home relatively easily)?

Even if he is offered the job and we decide that he should take it, it doesn’t have to be forever. But how many times do I really want to uproot my entire life and move out of state, before finally settling someplace for the foreseeable future?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

How Do You Hold Onto Hope?

I admit it; I’m feeling discouraged.  I am feeling as though nothing ever changes, no matter the amount of effort I expend.  This is true of my weight-loss goals, my job hunt, the quest for health insurance coverage… It feels like life itself is just stagnant, even in the areas in which I seek change.

Bathroom Scale, image from http://www.care2.com/

My weight has been stuck at the same place, give or take no more than 2 pounds, for probably close to a year now.  I’d dropped to about 7 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight at one point, then gained a few pounds back… and there it stayed.  Since we moved to Florida, I’ve tried calorie-reduction and increased activity, and still it remained.  Whether I’m being “good” or not, the scale doesn’t seem to care.  I’m still going to the gym nearly every day, but recently I’ve stopped religiously counting my calories.  I’ve also stopped weighing myself because what’s the point?  It just leads to more discouragement.  (Of course, not weighing in leaves me with this fear in the back of my mind that I’m steadily gaining now, instead of continuing to plateau.)

Now Hiring, Must Have Clue. photo from http://www.carteworld.com

Obviously I can’t do the same with my job-hunt. I can’t scale it back out of frustration. The only thing I can do is to soldier on in the face of the incoming rejection letters and lack of interviews. The only change I can see making is to slowly reduce my pickiness and increase my desperation. I can look for jobs I don’t really want, jobs that are more likely to leave me miserable and tired at the end of the day, instead of leaving me feeling like I’ve done a good thing with my day. I don’t want to get to that point… but I am losing hope of finding the kind of job I actually want. And it’s not like I’m asking that much – I just want an office job with an area (or, really, anywhere in FL) university.

How, in the face of all of this negativity, do I hold on to my hope? How do I keep myself from drowning in all the rejections and letting it hammer away at my self-worth? I can write, and I can concentrate on the positives. But some days it feels like that is just staving off the inevitable.

I want a job, and I am more than qualified for the kind of job I want.
I want to lose weight, and 10-15 pounds doesn’t seem unreasonable.
I want health insurance I can afford, and everyone deserves that, I believe.
And most of all, I want to feel hope that all of the above can be achieved.

Writing As Therapy

It’s no secret to anyone that things are a little bit stressful here in the SJ household.  We’re in a new location, not even in our own home, and we’re both job hunting.  With so much up in the air, yes, anxiety levels are sometimes a little bit high.

So how am I, a woman with a mild-to-moderate case of GAD, coping with the extra stressors that have been piled on since July?  You know, other than resenting the ever-loving crap out of my husband’s former employer.  There are definitely better, more productive ways to manage my stress.

One such method is something I had started back in the dark, dark days of PPD hell – a focus on the positive.  My therapist at the time urged me to try to find positive things about each day and write them down.  I kept with it for a while, and I did notice a difference.  I’ve done it sporadically since then, when things felt particularly bleak, but it never became a real, solid routine.

A week and a half ago, though, one of my dearest friends started posting Daily Positives in her journal, and urged her readers to do the same for a period of eight days.  I latched right on to that bait, and immediately started to notice a difference.  In so doing, I determined that it was something I should keep doing.  Not just for eight days, but for as long as it feels right.  I’m starting with a month (today is day #11), but it may well continue after that as well.

In this time of recession, job loss, and personal turmoil, it is really easy to get lost in negatives.  Every day is NOT all sunshine and roses, even here in tropical Florida, where it’s hard to even remember that it’s autumn.  But every day does have at least a few rays of hope.  No, those rays don’t take away the worries.  They don’t stop my brain from obsessing about finding work, missing loved ones, or trivialities like Christmas plans or something someone said to me in passing.  But remembering the positives forces me to shift my focus, at least for the length of the journal entry (and usually quite a while beyond), onto something good and away from anything negative.  That can only be a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

The Fruits of Our Labors

Like many people, I’ve never given a whole lot of thought to what Labor Day actually means. It’s been a day off from school or work, the unofficial end of summer, and sometimes a day for picnics and barbecues with loved ones. But what does it really mean?

This year, though, the true meaning is particularly salient for me. This year, not only are my husband and I each seeking work ourselves, but it seems like the whole country is re-evaluating what it means to be employed. People retire from a life-long career, then end up taking on part- or even full-time work anyway because they can’t afford to make ends meet. Job security in the majority of fields is wavering, with the dark cloud of downsizing always threatening. And people are stuck in dead-end, miserable occupations because they can’t afford to quit.

It sounds bleak, doesn’t it? Not much of a thing to celebrate on this first Monday in September. To be honest, being in a brand new area without friends or family to picnic with, we likely won’t be doing much celebrating, ourselves. But if we were, it would be as a tribute to those who are striving to improve the state of the economy. No one can deny that the country has hit some fairly dire straits in recent years. But we will bounce back. However long it takes, whatever path we follow, things will improve.

Keep that thought in your mind, particularly if you are one of those who is either unemployed or stuck in a job that leaves you feeling unfulfilled. Sit back, crack open a beer, throw some burgers on the grill, and enjoy this break from mundania.

This post was inspired by the sermon at The Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft Myers on Sunday, September 6, 2009.

Nothing to Lose, Much to Gain

My husband received some devastating news on Wednesday – he was let go from his job. The end-result of this is that we are no longer buying our house. We spent several tear-filled hours that afternoon, and spent much of Thursday in a post-stress daze punctuated by many comforting hugs and cuddles before piling into the car on Friday to get away from it all for the weekend (visiting my family). On Monday, we jump headlong into Planning The Future.

We’re very much trying to look at this experience as an opportunity instead of a loss. Back in February, just after returning from a visit with my in-laws in Florida, we were lamenting the northeastern US winters, but we decided to stick around because of O’s job. In today’s economy, one doesn’t just walk away from steady, seemingly stable employment.

However, when that employment instead walks away from you… you become suddenly free to go wherever you want, or wherever the Fates may take you. I don’t necessarily agree with Janis’ definition of “freedom,” but we definitely hope for plenty to gain.

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