I have not been working for almost a year now and though I have had a reasonable amount of interviews and though they go pretty well, I am still unemployed. I have a very good resume, but I am a 58 year old person with white hair who can't wear makeup due to allergies and have a body shape that is not the norm. If an employer is looking to hire, they are going to choose a person who will cost them statistically less on their benefit plans than me.
I am also a 58 year old person who isn't going to sacrifice everything for a job, or an employer which is why I quit that miserable job last year. Oil had already tanked and in Alberta, that means immediate slowdown. I quit that job knowing positions would be much more scarce, knowing that I am at the far edge of employability but I do not and never will regret quitting. Not at all. Quitting that job made life worth living again.
But, when you are not working there are things you have to do and one of them is to cut your living expenses. So I am. I am moving from my lovely sunny, bright wee house to live back at my house on the other side of the city. I will rent this house out. (Keep your fingers crossed that renters will come forward fast.) I have been fighting this inevitability all fall hoping to find a job that would keep me here, but c'est la vie.
On the upside, there are lots of things I can contribute to the life of the household I will be joining in a very active and positive way. It means that I will be able to play with 2 of my grandkids much more often. I will be a little farther away from my other two sweethearts, but I have a car and will travel to see them lots. It might mean overnights at their house, so I will get to see my other kiddies in a different and new way too.
In a lot of ways, it will stop me from slowly slipping into a hermits life. I want to do the things that I always planned to do, but that I never seem to find the gumption to do living alone. I have come to think that we do things to escape the busy and the routine of our day to day lives, but I don't have any busy or routine to escape from. I don't want days when it is almost too quiet to bear, when I go to bed rather than have to be alone. I did not choose to be widowed and to have life change so drastically as it did, but it did that anyway and to waste what I have that Brian did not get to have, well, that would be a crime.
I will write when I can. After all these years of writing almost every week day, it is part of what sustains me. I am a writer as much as I am a knitter, as much as I am a reader. Once I am settled again, a new routine will set in and posting should go back to normal. Or maybe better!
Anyway, that is the big news here. Big news, not bad news. I am sorry that it must be, but I look forward to the changes it will bring.
1 comment:
Stability can be under rated.
By necessity my mom was with us for the first decade of our kids lives - which was a long time - longer than any of us planned but it worked very much to her advantage once she set off on her own again and it gave our kids a very special bond with her that their less immediate cousins never enjoyed.
It was important, though, that we never took advantage of her presence...she didn't become a third parent, didn't prepare family meals, clean, run errands etc. and very, very rarely even babysat yet she was included in all the goings on in the house and could visit and play with them to her heart's content.
'Sounds like a promising new chapter for all of you!
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