At the end of October, I had to make an incredibly difficult decision. I had to quit my job. It was, unfortunately, not the best fit for me, and I was beginning to feel the negative impact from that throughout my life. My work performance was suffering, I was falling behind in my classes, and I was spending such long hours at work and in school that I hardly spent any time at all at home with my wife. When I left the job, I was assured that I would be given a different position, one in which I had done well for more than ten years before switching to my last job.
It’s been nearly six weeks. None of that came to pass. For the first time since before I enlisted in the military nearly twenty years ago, I find myself unemployed. I’ve been searching for a new job with little success. I spend most of my waking hours each day scouring employment web sites and forums. Numerous leads have looked promising, only to fail to pan out.
Fortunately, I had set aside a modest savings before becoming unemployed, but that is quickly becoming smaller and smaller. It’s only a matter of time before that dries up completely, but at least I know that the rent and major bills are covered for the time being. As frustrating and stressful as it is, that’s at least one less thing to worry about.
I reduced my class load to part time, which in turn made me ineligible for the intern position I’d held. I’m still struggling with my classes, but I haven’t given up on them. Last month was also NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I’d attempted to start a novel for last year’s NaNoWriMo, but was unable to get very far with it, thanks to a need for emergency gallbladder surgery. I restarted the book, and got much further along this time, but between job hunting and school, I only finished about half of the book, rather than the entire thing. This was an excellent start, however, and I do plan to finish it; it’s just going to take longer than a month to do so. Once the book is finished, I plan to run a Kickstarter campaign to finance the editing, initial printing, and distribution of the book. After that, it will eventually be able to help bring in some income for me.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have a second interview for one of the positions that I applied for on Friday, and many other applications that I’ve only recently filed.
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