A year ago, I was enjoying what I thought was going to be the last summer at my house. Of course, we were all stuck at home, so I was spending a lot of time out in my yard. My yard is my sanctuary. I can sit out in the day and read and enjoy the nature; at night, I can sit out for hours and just look at the sky. I will miss that, but it was time to be moving along. My plans were that I was going to move sometime in the fall. It is now summer 2021, and I am still here in my current home. I am on some waiting lists for several apartment complexes in the area, but I am still not sure whether a home or apartment is right for me at this time in my life. Some things are very much up in the air. But I trust life enough that there is a new place for me, with new neighbors to meet, new experiences, and it will a place that meets my needs. Why am I still here? There is a complex answer for that. Part of it is that with the pandemic, housing of various forms is not readily available. The other part was that there were financial realities of the situation. Last summer, I experienced a completely unexpected loss in my life. I was not in any way expecting it, so I had to take the money I was saving towards the move and apply to expenses towards the loss. I was also a bit overwhelmed and did not likely have the energy for such a big change after such an unexpected time of grief. As fall turned into winter, I decided that I did not want to try and move when I would need to anticipate snow, ice storms, etc. I said March I would be willing to move and start the process. Whichever placed opened up, that was where I would go.
Last year around this time, I checked my work email on a random Tuesday night because I had forgotten to order an accessory I needed for my laptop and needed to find out what to order. I never in a million years expected the email that was waiting for me. A longtime employee was leaving at the end of the week. Did I want to take over the responsibilities of his job? Hell yeah! It was one of the crown glory positions. I was pretty much managing one of the other accounts, and I enjoyed it. However, their company was furloughing its employees due to the pandemic, and a lot of our work was drying up there. The months of April and May were a bit lean, and so was my pay. Problem solved! I moved into the role very well. I did it with my full attention and devotion from that day on. At the end of last year, my company was anticipating a large new contract with a new company, and my boss wanted me to work on that when it started. I was thoroughly enjoying what I was doing and did not want to move to the new account, but good luck telling your boss that. To my own credit and abilities as a worker, my boss wanted someone experienced and who had good communication skills to be able to teach others what to do. My responsibilities were given away as of March 1. And there was a major problem-the new company and mine were not coming to a satisfactory agreement. There was no contract. My responsibilities were given away based on a contract which did not even exist. I tried very hard to get even half of my responsibilities back, but my boss would not budge. I had a few things to do each week, and I mean a few. My income was decreased over 75 percent. Then things got ugly. For privacy reasons, I will not get into it. But, I learned that it was not a good place for me to be. My boss was never a warm and fuzzy person, but I saw an even worse side. I needed a new job. And it could not have possibly come at a worse time with the summer coming up and really needing to get out of here. Nothing was changing with the project until around a month ago. The contract did go forward, and the new project began. I started on the new project because I still had not found a new job. Any job is a good job when the bills need to be paid and you need every dollar coming in.
A few weeks ago after having numerous training meetings for the new project, on a random afternoon, I got an email from my boss. If it was okay, I would be moved back to my old position. Again, hell yeah! I really missed it. I know the job like the back of my hand, and I enjoyed the accounts I was working on. I moved right back into it, and it was like no time had passed. The reality, though, is that time had passed, and I still need a new job. But, the crazy thing was, I thought I was moving on to a new job, not stalling where I am. I still do my job, but there is nothing left of me personally there. When I move on from something emotionally, I never go back. I am doing my duties but am still looking around for a new job. Life had me back around the bend again, as it were.
And that is the fascinating part of life. Life is full of twists and turns. My life has certainly had no shortage of challenges, and there was very rough part I hit at the end of 2015. It got very narrow, and I knew that it was going to be a sink or swim time for me. 2016, I sunk. The losses that I had at the end of 2015 were expected and not a shock, but they really left my life empty. I had trouble going forward. The holidays of 2016 in particular were rough. I sat on Thanksgiving morning wondering how I even had the strength to get up and go to my family's celebration. I did, and I always do. I was still struggling well into 2017, and there were some more complex things that happened over that summer, none of which were positive. At the end of 2017, I had the opportunity to hear a speaker and author who survived a near death experience. I had to drag myself there that night, too. His words resonated with me. He discussed how when he was entering the death process that his whole life passed in front of him before his eyes. He ended with, "We are all going to die sooner or later. My hope for you is that when you get to that time and you see those things pass before your eyes, there are much more happier things than bad ones." That night, I decided that I needed to somehow move on and give it one more shot. I want to stress that I do not believe in that nonsense like "The Secret" and the New Age belief that when you put out intentions the universe lets everything line up in your favor. But I will say that when I truly intended to move on, doors opened in my life like you would believe. And they all had one thing in common-they were totally unexpected. And good. The only bad unexpected in the past few years was the loss of last summer. Everything else was good. For example, a few months after that night, I got a call from a close relative on a random Monday morning. They ran into another relative of mine who was a huge part of my life from the time I was a child. There was some kind of feud and they did not speak for years. That meant the rest of us were caught up in it as well. On a Monday morning, they both ran into each other face-to-face at the grocery store. Neither one could even determine why they stopped speaking. They reconciled in the grocery store, on a random Monday morning. Were they expecting that? Probably not. I sure as was not expecting to get a phone call with that story on a random Monday morning. But I was very happy about it. Now my long lost relative is once again a part of all of our lives, at family get togethers.
I have had many other times like this in my life where just randomly, things happened. And other times, what seems lost in the moment or for a long time will come back around. We just don't know when. Maybe I will share those stories some other time. But for now, I will conclude with this. Life is rather unexpected, but it is what makes things so much fun. These past three and a half years have been totally not what I thought they would be. They are actually much more interesting, happy, and full of new people and experiences than I would have believed possible. I have adopted the life philosophy of "expect the unexpected." On this day approaching mid-June, I am still at my current home and at my current job, but I expect both to change sometime within the next several months.
So, what's next for me? I really don't know! But what do know is that I look forward to it, because the unexpected has been very good for me. And I love new things and new experiences. Stay tuned, I will surely talk about them all.
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