Making things work

The last several years have been eventful, and despite the major setbacks I’m still finding ways to make things work in all major areas of life.

I truly need to count myself lucky.

Others would be aghast at the amount of money I’m out (+$50,000) from my selfish almost-ex-wife, the debt I’m now in ($37,000), and losing my job in a downsizing (May 2016) right before showing up in divorce court (by phone). Trying to sort my way through a new life, before then AND since, has been the greatest undertaking of my life, and I didn’t think I’d be doing it in my late-30s. In the face of all that I found reasons to be optimistic and happy.

I started to STUDY MY ASS OFF for the next few months and wrote and passed the Project Management Professional designation exam. During that time I upped and moved back to Ontario. Yes, without a job. I updated my resume and took the enormous risk of moving out without a job in search of a job, and a month and a half later earned my PMP. I just wasn’t keen on the prospects Winnipeg had. I needed to be closer to people who cared about me AND had the time for me. My dearest, beloved friends of Winnipeg are all married with kids. It’s hard finding time with them. My loving supporting family were so good to me I felt like I owed it to them to not be a burden.

I’d managed some interviews in Winnipeg but really needed a new start. Again. The last one.

So I moved back to my roots, back to Ontario, bought a used car, and applied for literally hundreds of jobs without a word heard back. There were days and nights I sat in my furnitureless apartment on an air mattress or eventually my pull-out-couch-and-bed; the single piece of furniture other than a table for 2 in the kitchen nook.

Sometimes, after 8 hours of job hunting (some applications took hours online, or I’d get an phone interview then nothing), I’d cry and call up someone who was close by, or go over, so I could be helped through the stress. I eventually found a job in a manufacturing plant. Yeah. That was awful and paid me crap. I eventually had to move into a run down house, with boarded up windows, unmowed lawn, and it was surrounded by burned down houses. The actual house I lived in was with like 9 other people! We all rented a single room for a few hundred a month from the slumlord. I kept to myself, and kept my door locked!

I’m less stressed now. Life feels new, and good. I play like 0-5 hours of WoW a week these days, almost exclusively with my brother, too. I’ve averaged 25 minutes a day for the last 3 full years, hah. Playing WoW is the only way he and I see each other these days, I don’t have the money to visit folks even for Christmas. I haven’t seen them in over a year and a half. Maybe I can fix that this year.

So when I learned this year that World of Warcraft:Battle for Azeroth has minimum requirements my computer doesn’t meet… Well that’s going to suck. It’s still a fun stress relief, and I’m a nerd, I need a computer and the internet. So I’ve been budgeting and wracking my brain how to meet my planned financial expenses this year while wondering whether I’d be able to get a new computer by the summer. See the work I have is contract based, in case they need to do layoffs. So I’m not an employee at the site I work at. My contract is up in June.

After talking with people and exploring websites I didn’t know sold things, I learned of the ridiculous technological advances in hardware and reductions in prices. I can get a replacement computer and monitor (because this iMac can’t act as a monitor) for $813 after taxes and shipping.

I’ll make that work! I can do that! Then I’ll no longer have to worry this tried and true mid-2011 iMac will die on me suddenly. Because I could be very much unemployed with even greater bills and next to no credit remaining to keep me afloat. If I don’t have a computer to do job hunting on it will take far longer to find a job, and I can’t afford to be unemployed for long whatsoever.

But I’m making things work, I’m doing my best, and piece by piece, step by step, it’s worth it.

I’m dating a beautiful, funny, caring, and trustworthy girl who doesn’t care what my job is as long as I get to spend my time with her. I spent 6 months unemployed within our first twelve months of dating, and she stuck by me. When I got this latest contract work can you believe she asked me to move in with her? Can you believe that, I’m living at her place! I moved from a terrifying shithole into her place! She brings me home little things, like my favourite chocolate, and even asked me today if I wanted some beer, so I said yes please, just a few. I don’t know what I did to be treated this well. I’m not used to this.

I don’t even know if I can list all of the crap I’ve had to wade through, and somehow I don’t feel the need. There is lots more that’s happened and that pretty much sums out the last 3 years of my life it feels, but with her I feel like it’s manageable. When I’m actually divorced soon, and when it’s my birthday and I’m on a fresh contract, I’ll be feeling so much better.

I’m getting close to seeing the results of 3 years of ups and downs, because I’ve been striving hard to make things work. And in all of that it turns out I’m where I need to be. I’ll get through the crap, through the debt some day, through the uncertainty of work stability, through all the ups and downs, and I think I’m going to have a good life after all.

I come home to her and we’re making things work.