Thank you Tupp and Lighter.
You two just made this cold lonesome winter night feel less so!
I'm in the same situation I was before, but with less time to waste, I feel. So I'm focusing on jobs sooner than I did last time when I was so wrung out from the end of that long bad job. This one hasn't created the emotional damage and there's no toxic hangover. She wasn't a cruel person. Self absorbed and flighty, but not an N. She's written me several nice emails since my last day, wanting to assure me of her regrets and of how valuable I was to the business. (I think wanting also to assure herself, because I was a little blunt with her that day. She knew I wasn't mean either though, and she gave me an extra week's pay. Fair enough after just a few months.)
The novel workshop is to re-start the book and connect me to the one thing that is my purpose that I can still connect to. Or in honesty, I'm re-connecting to it after many years of setting it aside for elder care, family collapse, the toxic job and all the rest. I never stopped dreaming about doing it, and the recent death of a friend my age was a wake-up call.
I also decided to listen to my T who's been urging me to Just Do It. Make time for it instead of wasting my time on escape. I've heard it over and over but this time, I was ready to listen. I take in my registration fee tomorrow and the writer/instructor has approved my manuscript I had to provide. I'm truly looking forward to it. Regardless of what happens financially, I am still that person who wrote with a sense of deep aliveness and joy for so long...until family and Nboss made me feel I had no more strength to fight for myself.
I may not have enough strength now, but I will do it anyway. It's one of those things. Whether or not I write this book is really answering the question of whether or not my life has any purpose. Being a mother was my main purpose for a long time, and that's been removed. Then I was walking dead for several years, grief left nothing to put into the book. I'm changed but I've also healed a great deal, so now is the time to start again.
To my surprise the decision has calmed me. Yes, I still have to cope, and worry, and find work. But even if it's an hour or two a day, I also can write.
My T supported me in deciding to spend that money on the workshop. I also am hiring two sessions with a lovely office organizer lady. She's going to spend time in the Scary Room with me...and by the time we're done, it's going to be the lovely Writing Room it was always intended to be.
What I used to say to my T, over and over during the recent years of grief over my D, was that I had lost interest in my own life. Suddenly...not in an exciting way exactly, but in a sense of renewed purpose, I am interested again. It's slow and not dramatic, but it feels real.
Thank you guys, so much, for caring and commenting.
We've got that polar vortex cold going on, so the night feels very cold and your voices are really precious to me when I'm alone. And I'm doing okay. I've tried to make a resolution to see one friend every day, even just for coffee, if I can. Helps me get through winter. And who knows? Maybe I'll find more friends in the writing group.
It's going to challenge me in a way I am eager to be challenged. Working on my own words, my own text, my own story. Making it as good as I can. And I'll be good with that. A friend wrote me something about "recognition" and I told her that was way way way down my priority list. It's the doing of it and at some point, the completing, that brings fulfillment. The rest can come later.
love,
Hops
