the times, they are a-changin'

soooooooo...2009 is turning out to be quite an interesting year for me.

a short recap:
i turned 31.
my cat knocked a glass of water on my oh-so-necessary-for-school laptop (and rendered it completely useless).
i had my hours cut by almost half at work.
then i got laid off entirely...

and, to top it all off, i had decided sometime in late december that i would start trying to figure out just what the hell i was doing with my life, a process that, as you can imagine, has been mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting, but not one that i am even remotely willing to put on hold now that i have begun it. what can i say? i love a good challenge.

anyway, here i am, 31-years-old, living at home, a few months away from graduation, unemployed, more in debt than i'd like to be and engrossed in a most grueling self-improvement project (it sounds lame, i know but let's just call it that for lack of a better term). but you know what's crazy? i'm remarkably fine with it all. even more than fine. it was like divine intervention or something equally as profound.

see, if you have read previous posts of mine, you'd know that my job was assuredly the most evil thing in my life. i could try to describe it to you but it would just sound like i was whining or bitching or creating some other kind of noise that i don't want to be associated with. and i know that there are thousands of people out there who would kill for the job that i had and i won't even attempt to argue with that. but this job truly stripped me of my spirit. it gutted me everyday i went there (which was 3 times a week). i can't explain it but i know of many (some now ex-)coworkers who felt exactly the same. there was just something insanely oppressive about working there. pair that with the stress i put myself under for school and the stress i feel just being me (reason # 673 why i need a "self-improvement project") and it was just bad news. i was clearly upset to be laid off at first. i was obviously freaked out and didn't know how i would pay for my car, insurance, bills or just life in general. and how was i going to find a job that would fit into my school schedule, a schedule that would be changing again in just a few months? it was panic city, i tell ya. but when i was driving home that night, something clicked and i immediately felt free. it was like the weight of the world had just been lifted off of me. i hadn't been that happy in a long, long time. it was freakin' awesome!

i got home that night, filled for unemployment and went to sleep happy. as it turns out, because of obama, i will be getting just as much money from unemployment as i would have made at my job before they cut my hours. holy crap! and now, i have more time to study, more time to spend on this little project that i've created for myself and more time to de-stress from both of those activities! and i can still have a life because i won't be any more poor than i already was to begin with!

life is great!

then i started wondering... "hmmm...i could have turned into a crazy person from this turn of events...all things considered, i had every reason to freak out...i have definitely freaked out about way less...what the hell happened to me?"

well, i'll tell you what happened to me. up until quite recently, i was one of those people who thought that positive thinking was for losers. what a friggin' waste of time. i was convinced that it was just a new way to get mad at yourself when things went wrong. an example of a supposed optimist's internal thoughts after receiving bad news:

damnit, you didn't get the promotion. it must be because you didn't think
positive enough about it. god, you suck. it's all your fault. blame
yourself, you pessimistic jackass. you're not even good enough at life to
think positively the right way.

see what i mean? can't you just hear charlie brown saying this to himself? so my (former) approach was that i would instead think of all the horrible things that could happen, all the ways in which everything could go terribly, terribly wrong. i would refuse to believe that whatever i wanted to happen would actually happen because then i couldn't be angry at myself if it didn't work out. and as an added bonus, i would be supremely prepared for any and all situations that could possibly occur because i would overly-obsess day and night as to how i would deal with each and every circumstance just in case they panned out...

now do you understand why i am such a ball of stressed-out crazy-lady? how insane was that thinking??? just so i wouldn't be disappointed at the end, i made myself incredibly miserable throughout the entire waiting process!! well, that seems like a good trade-off. jesus.

needless to say, i have a new approach now. i haven't jumped on the optimist's bandwagon just quite yet because i still think that there are some bugs to be worked out in that particular system. but i am working on adopting a slightly more zen way of thinking. obviously, you have no control over what happens to you, good or bad. but you do have control over how you deal with the situation. there is always something to be learned and appreciated from everything that you encounter in your life. it might not be life-changing or mind-blowing but you can take at least something away from it. what you choose to take with you is completely up to you. so i choose only the good things, the meaningful things, the things that make me feel good or happy or peaceful. i'm trying to leave the negativity behind. it's hard, mostly because that is how i've lived for most of my life. but i know i have the will to change that about me. i need to have the will because my only other option is to live miserably and i refuse to do that anymore. it has never yielded the results i sought and i know that it never will.

so, yeah. big things for me in 2009. hopefully great things. only time will tell...