The story of my life …

There’s no other way to put this than say­ing that I’ve sud­denly found myself unem­ployed. With­out going into details, my whole world has … as the title of this post sug­gests … as been turned upside down. Once again.

But I’m try­ing my hard­est not to feel weighted down, as if I’m falling down that rab­bit hole of darkness.

Oh, who am I kid­ding? A week ago today, I fell. And I fell hard. But now I’m try­ing to climb out of that hole and not let all those neg­a­tive thoughts pile up on me; like they did for years and years.

It’s funny how one big “fall” can trig­ger cer­tain neg­a­tive thoughts to resur­face. And when I mean all … I mean all ; espe­cially those illog­i­cal and irra­tional ones. For lack of bet­ter expla­na­tion, let me give  you an exam­ple of my train of thoughts lately:

“I’ve lost my job because I wasn’t <insert neg­a­tive adjec­tive> enough.”

… quickly turns into …

“I’m just not a good person.”

… Then that turns into …

“And because I’m not a good per­son, I don’t deserve good things in life.”

… which then turns into …

“I don’t deserve to be a mother.”

Yep. When I alluded to all neg­a­tive emo­tions … I meant all . Even those ones that I thought I might have resolved over the past year.

As Hubby pointed out to me this past week, when things get bad I tend to pile every­thing up into one big ball of neg­a­tiv­ity. And instead of think­ing about what “good” I’ve done in my life, I pile on  — no, I shovel on — all the “bad” dirt on top of the hole that I already fell down into. So for the past week, I’ve been try­ing des­per­ately to unravel that tan­gled ball of yarn … dig out of that hole I’ve started to fill up … that has totally messed up my mind.

I’m much bet­ter today. Obvi­ously, since I’m find­ing myself able to write about it now. But catch me three or four days ago, and I didn’t even have the energy to read my emails or screw around on Face­book. And we all know how much Emily loves her Facebook.

Hav­ing Hubby’s sup­port, as well as both sets of par­ents and sib­lings, has been my sav­ing grace. If it hadn’t been for them, I think I might have begun to believe those irra­tional thoughts about me being “bad.” And it’s because of an idea that Hubby came up with last night that I’ve decided to pick up my pen — er, lap­top — and write (type?) again.

That idea? It came from a blog that Hubby, in his “design world”, stum­bled on. This site, as the writer explains, is all about the small vic­to­ries in life. And as Hubby has told me time and time again, I need to remem­ber those achieve­ments that I’ve made … espe­cially when things get down and, well … dirty.

If I HAD to be hung out to dry … let it be on a beach

So this will be my goal. In the course of the day, I will try to find a small vic­tory I’ve con­quered. And I’ll con­tinue to do this every day until I find a new job. (At least that’s the plan … )

Because right now, I think I need to wrap my own set of “Apron Strings” around myself. I need to find some of my own hap­pi­ness in any lit­tle vic­tory I can.

Oh, and my small vic­tory for today? I turned on my lap­top and started blog­ging again.

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing the “whole” story, feel free to email me or com­ment below and I’ll send you the pass­word for the fol­low­ing PWP-​​post. It’s not the same one that I’ve used before. **

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** For obvi­ous rea­sons, you’ll also find that any pre­vi­ously un-​​PWP posts related to work also share this same password.