It's Just a Number...

Yes, it has been two years. I don't even know what to say about that, really, so I won't say anything other than "Hi!".

A lot has happened in the last two years. I started this blog when I bought my first house and did some renovating projects. There is still a long list of things to do to the house due to several factors: 1) money to complete said projects, 2) time to complete projects, 3) lack of people with expertise to help with projects. When I started out I had several friends and family who were helping me with lots of projects that I didn't have enough knowledge to complete. Over time, for various reasons, they have had things come up. So, for now I am just doing little things here and there as I have the time and money, but nothing major.

About a year ago I changed jobs. It was a total life upheaval, as I had my previous job for about 13 years. I didn't love everything about that job, but there were some things that I was very passionate about related to education, and I had definitely formed friendships that made up the bulk of my social life. However, the pay was such that I wasn't really surviving and was having to put things like gas to get to work on a credit card. So, I had to look elsewhere. Finally I found something, and it is a company that has a lot of great benefits and great pay. Despite that I went into a major depression. The work was not particularly challenging (or what I had expected it to be) and I was supremely lonely. My biggest means of social life was gone and I was working long hours trying to acclimate to a new workplace. I felt like I had no life.

A year plus later, I am in a better place mentally and emotionally. It is still hard to not see my friends very often, going from every day to maybe once a month is a huge adjustment. The job is still not horribly challenging, though it is plenty stressful and busy. If you don't know how those things can all co-exist, you're lucky! I am attempting not to complain much about it, however, as I have had several friends recently lose their jobs due to budgets and downsizing at their respective companies. It's a scary thing, but most of them seem pretty hopeful about the new exciting opportunities that lay in front of them.

Mostly, I'd like to figure out what my passion is....and then do something with it. Even if it isn't something of which I can make a full-time career, at least it would feed my soul. I don't know how to identify it. I think that has been my problem for years. I am interested in so many different things that I don't know how to focus in on any particular one. This is how you end up changing majors 7 different times in college.

Someday, I'd also like to date again. It's been a couple of years. I'm 40 now and don't know any better than I did in my 20s or 30s how to meet people. I have done several online dating sites, but that does not seem to be a great fit for me. I did manage to meet one guy in person (live and in person, imagine!) for coffee...and that was the entire story. It just doesn't come naturally to me, I feel like online relationships lead to a strange dynamic where you think you know someone better than you really do. Things don't evolve in a natural way and there is a way that typing on a screen puts up a barrier that allows people to say and do things online that they would never do face to face, which applies to dating or to Internet trolls. I don't really have friends who are the fixing up types, and even then I doubt many of them even know many single people other than me! I have exactly one friend who is single and she is incredibly outgoing and active and adventuresome, but she hasn't hit the relationship jackpot yet either. It's hard out there for pimps and women in her 40s apparently.