June 17, 2020.
Welcome back to life. It’s been a year since I made the conscious decision to embark on a new path of self discovery, and basically open myself up to the most intense transitional period of my life. I had a few misconceptions of what this experience would be like.
As I walk this new path, I am constantly reminded of how much I struggle with change/transition. I’ve thought hundreds of hours about why my brain has such difficulty accepting and molding to change, and all I can come up with is that I just don’t handle it very well. I’ve mentioned my anxiety before, and how change almost always throws me into anxiety overdrive. I have great mechanisms now to handle the anxious moments, but I often wonder if others experience this unwanted, unnecessary anxious behavior.
Life has thrown a few curve balls at me recently, and I’ve tried my best to maintain my composure and find the goodness in everything that’s going on. It’s hard. I’ve learned a few valuable lessons about transitioning through life.
Sometimes, it just sucks. Quitting my job after 11 years sucked. I lost daily connections with many people that had become more like family members than colleagues. I enjoyed seeing those people on a daily basis. I still care about them. I am able to still keep up with them, but I do miss the conversations in the hallway or meeting up in the employee dining room to watch lunchtime cooking shows and chatting about random topics. Those were my people, and it sucks that in order to move forward with my life, I had to lose those meaningful connections. I didn’t realize it would be like the worse breakup, almost like a sad divorce. It created something that can only be described as a void. In my life, when there’s a void, I try to fill it. So, what did I do? I tried to figure out a way to patch that hole and move forward. This process lead to a transition.
I found a new job to fill the void. From October 2019 to March 2020, I worked a happy retail management job. Although retail is a beast of burden, it had some very memorable moments. The transition into the new job was tough. I had worked in retail before the credit union gig, but things had changed. I had to learn new ways of selling and managing a team that consisted of mostly teenagers and young 20’s. There were many moments where I couldn’t actually relate to the situations that were happening. I had to fake it in order to just get through it. My manager stayed happy with my performance, so I guess I was effective. I eventually found my groove, and things weren’t bad. I just knew there would be a new transition coming, and I tried to brace for it.
March 2020 invited two situations into my life. A new job and a pandemic. I accepted a job with a different company and prepared myself for the next transition. I worked out a notice with the old company and tried to prepare myself for the changes coming with a drastically different genre of retail management. I’m a firm believer that God and the universe watch over us, and keep us from being in toxic situations. The new company was not right for me, so I resigned from the job, and the next day, a worldwide shutdown occurred.
I tried not to think too far into it, but it was hard not to look at the signs and see that obviously I needed to take this time to reflect and figure out my next move, while sitting at home, waiting for the world to reopen. I partially felt that I wasn’t making very good decisions, and partially felt that the universe was pushing me to step out of my comfort zone.
Quarantine was a great time for me. I adore time alone, so being at home, surrounded by my things, working in my garden in solitude, and spending really great quality time with my family was truly a blessing. Many people went sort of nuts and I watched them all complain and act out on social media, but this was a time of healing for me. I was able to patch up some old wounds and regenerate feelings and emotions that helped me reach a higher level of my truer self. I reflected a lot on the past, and dealt with a few situations that were harboring negative energy.
I believe in the law of attraction and the power of energy transfer. I am very diligent with offering up positive energy as often as I can and not letting too much negativity penetrate my force field. That being said, a few negative sources of energy have gotten close to me recently. I have had to recognize the source, give an evaluation, and make a decision on how to handle the energy. I don’t allow negative energy to stick around for too long. I guess this is a new lesson for me. As I grow, I cut things out much quicker, instead of letting it linger. I’ve come to discover that time is very limited, and wasting time on something that doesn’t bring a sense of joy or happiness should be left behind. I’ve learned to become selfish with my time. At one point it my life, I was stretched so thinly that I didn’t have a true identity or felt like I had lost myself trying to please others. I can’t let that happen again. My life is about me, not pleasing everyone else. :)