You may have noticed that I've been a bit dormant on here lately. My goal for next year is to be more dedicated and get these posts up more regularly.
To say I'm happy to see the back end of 2012 would be a massive understatement. It's been a challenging year, but I've persevered! I look forward to challenges next year, but more of the sort that help get you ahead in life, not like this year, where each step forward was followed by two steps back.
Late last winter we moved from the town we'd called home for more than a decade to another more than 100 kms away. We'd hired a large, national moving company, but during the two-day event, one of the movers robbed me of all my family heirloom jewellery - more than $12,000 worth by my estimate. My mother's wedding ring and engagement band, my grandmothers custom-made anniversary ring, the first piece of jewellery my husband ever gave me, and more - gone forever. I filed a police report, but I was told they couldn't assign a jurisdiction to the case since we couldn't prove whether the robbery had taken place at our old address, or while they were delivering to out new address. The moving company barely even acknowledged a verbal apology over the phone. The insurance company wouldn't cough up without receipts for items purchased long before I was born. But the worst part wasn't even the thought of my jewellery ending up on someone else's finger, bought illegally at some pawn shop or on the street. No, it was realising that the jewellery was likely destroyed completely - melted down into unrecognizable chunks of gold along with other people's stolen goods. To me, it was a heartbreaking thought.
Just a few short weeks after the move, I was "restructured" and lost my job. I'd been employed constantly since I was 12 years old, so this was very unfamiliar territory for me. I was also guilt-stricken that I'd packed up my family and moved them to another town for a job I no longer had. My husband was still commuting 100 kms in each direction to go to work. My daughter was admitted to her new school only on a trial basis, since the curriculum differed from our old area. If she couldn't cut it, in six weeks she would be forced to change schools for the second time in a year. And on top of it all, we had just bough a new house and in the process, doubled our mortgage. If we hadn't moved, losing my job wouldn't have been such a concern, since our little pokey townhouse had a nothing mortgage. This new one was going to be difficult to pay for on the meagre wages Employment Insurance provides.
I quickly discovered that I had not moved to a booming area. There were lots of home and retail outlets, but no factories or corporation to provide the career level I was looking for. The few that there were paid salaries less than half what I was used to getting. I tried to pick up a few cleaning jobs on the side to make up some of the gap, but the work was unreliable. The outlook wasn't good, and with each passing month I watched out bank accounts dwindle and saw no prospects on the horizon. We debated whether to sell our house, but having just paid thousands in lawyer and real estate fees a few months earlier, we knew we'd not only have to spend that again, we'd also have to pay a penalty to break our mortgage. Rental homes weren't going for much less than a mortgage, which scared me. If we couldn't afford to keep our house, we couldn't afford to rent, either. I really don't know how people do it.
Of course, when it rains, it pours. The first month I was unemployed our car broke down and cost over $800 to fix. Around the same time our water heater went and we discovered that since it had been installed, regulations had changed and the venting was no longer to code. We would have to tear down walls and replace all the pipes before they would allow us to turn the gas back on in our house. I will spare you all the details, but let's just say this pretty much set the stage for the next several months.
My daughter was home all summer with me, since we could no longer afford daycare. People told me I should enjoy this time with her, as it was an opportunity I might never get again. Though this is true and I really wanted to feel that way, I don't think I ever got to really feel it was. I felt pressure to find a job and found it difficult to do so with a child in tow. On the other side I felt I should spend more time doing things with her, then felt guilty because I wasn't actively looking for work. Electric bills went up with two people at home 24 hours a day, and I didn't feel like we could afford to go anywhere - not just to places that charged an admission, but at all - because even the gas for the car was something I couldn't afford. I planted a garden in the hopes of saving money on food, but in the long run I think all it saved me was exposure to pesticides. The supplies and electricity required to can those goods can really add up. While a can of tomato sauce at the store can be bought on sale for $1, I estimate that the cost of a jar I made, including labour, was around $20.
Shortly after my daughter returned to school in September, my grandfather's health began to decline. He'd been diagnosed with cancer in the spring and had gone through radiation treatment, and until then had been pretty independent. He called me one evening and asked if I could take him to the hospital in the morning for a "procedure." I spent the day there with him and kept an eye on him through the evening. But the next few months went by in a blur as his health declined rapidly and he became more and more dependent. I found my days filled with taking him to appointments, doing his grocery shopping and cooking his meals. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I was home and able to do these things for him, but I found little time during these days to look for a job, all-the-while growing increasingly aware of the E.I. cut-off date. Though I still had months to go, I had tipped past the halfway mark with nothing lined up, when I had thought at first I'd be off no more than a few weeks. I also knew the holidays were coming and wasn't sure how I would provide a Christmas for my daughter.
I remembered thinking at one time that if I ever found myself unemployed or won the lottery (or for any reason wasn't working at an office), that I would like to give a serious go at making writing a career. Then as soon as it happened, all my creative juices seeped away. In 7 months, I managed to pen less than 30,000 words. That might sound like a lot, but considering I can get 50,000 done in a month during November's NaNoWriMo, it's a pretty poor showing. I blame a combination of guilt - that spending time writing was an irresponsible way to spend time I should be spending on looking for a job - and a level of stress that gave me writer's block. The best opportunity of my life in that respect, when I had entire days alone to work... and I couldn't. I also lost my passion for reading. While in 2011 I read nearly 40 books, in 2012 I read less than 4. When I should have had ample time, I didn't. When I'm working, I often head to bed early and read for an hour. Yet this past year, I couldn't seem to let myself escape into a good book even under the tempting conditions of the sunny poolside in summer.
Anyway, then one day, it happened. I got a call about a job. An employer in receipt of my resume, who had no position posted, was intrigued by what she saw. Over the next month I met with her, sometimes racing from there to the hospital in the same day, to develop a position.
I am happy to say I am now gainfully employed again. We were able to keep our house. Granddad is doing much better. They say everything happens for a reason and I can't help but think that if I hadn't taken a new job and decided to move, I wouldn't be living close to my Granddad. If I hadn't lost that job, who would have been around to care for him when he needed it? Then, just as he began to recover and my responsibilities to him lessen, a new job pops up out of nowhere. It all falls into place nicely.
That said, I would not want to repeat the year I've just had. I am looking forward to rebuilding my financial cushion and perhaps even take a vacation in 2013, because I don't care what you say - being unemployed is not like being on vacation. Although you don't have to get up and go to the office each day, it is a very stressful way to live. No sir, I won't be missing 2012 when it's gone.
