The Climb

No, this post is not about that Miley Cyrus song. Don't like her much, although she is far, far more bearable than that other freaky teeny bopper that won't go away. Can't bear to type his name on my blog, so I'll just say his initials are J.B.

I digress.

The climb out of the rut I've been in is what I'm talking about. Times of change are here, my friends. I was FINALLY able to accomplish #31 on my 101 in 1,001 list last Friday, and had my last day at the job I've worked for the last four years. Might seem like something small as people change jobs all the time, but to me it's huge. Some great things happened in the last four years- this big event in my life, for one- but for the most part I have felt like I was in a rut (hence the reason for my lack of creativity and blog posts for the past few months). My biggest problem was that my job really, really bored me. The culture of the company was very unhappy, negative, and discouraging. I encountered a lot of people that were miserable, and wanted others to be as well. There were few people around that I could actually respect as professionals. And all job duties aside, everyone likes to have a friend at work and I didn't feel like I had that either.  When I started at this company, I was new to the city and didn't know many people. I really hoped to make some friends at this place. As an extrovert, I tend to feel my best when I'm interacting with others and am able to talk, joke and have fun while doing my job. When I feel fulfilled socially, I work harder.  People energize me, and that's just how I am. It was an older company with slim pickings in my age group, and while I frequently talked to the people that were my age and could eat lunch with them or vent to them about something, I just didn't *click* with any of them. Since I don't know many people in the city not having grown up here I was counting on meeting some friends here, building my own network of friends apart from my husband's, and unfortunately that wasn't the case. Made the job a lot less bearable without some cool peeps around. Anyway, I was insanely bored and mostly isolated all day and just went through the motions. I got lazy, was tired all the time, my health wasn't as great as before, and I knew that the job wasn't allowing me to be the best "me" possible. (Thank God for Google Reader. Even though my subscription list has grown larger than I can manage to keep up with, I could at least enjoy my lunch hour enjoying blogs!)  I made the decision to seek happiness, and get the heck outta there. I started job searching just after our wedding, and then the economy went south. I kept my eyes out for better opportunities, and networked like crazy to try to find something, anything, else. Finally, the something else came along, and I left that place without looking back.

While my ultimate goal is to start my own business doing something entirely different, I have to be realistic about the financial aspects of owning a business. Since J and I want to buy a home and have children soon (I'm no spring chicken), it is a dream that I'll have to put off a while longer. I'm taking baby steps towards that goal by doing part time work in the field, saving my pennies, and getting things in order. In the meantime, I will start a new position in the same industry as my last position this Monday.  The team I'll be a part of isn't large, but the people seem very excited about what they do and I think it'll be a breath of fresh air. While it's not my dream job, it is more responsibility, different work than I had been doing, and a refreshingly welcome change.  I welcome this change and am using it as an excuse to clear out the mental dust, refresh, rejuvenate and move on. I hope to start some new habits & get rid of the bad ones, make some new friends, climb on outta my rut and just feel ALIVE again!

I have off this entire week. Husband and I might go on a last minute road trip, but for now I am getting things done and enjoying the time off. Week's highlights so far: cleaned the house, caught up to Jersey Shore reruns, Real Housewives, Oprah and other miscellaneous shows on DVR, making some new healthy recipes for lunch, started the Couch to 5K program, cleaned some more, shopping spree at the good mall in town, massage & pedi at the spa and catching up to my Google Reader. Yay!

Thanks for hanging in there through the quiet months. Hoping this summer brings some more excitement 'round here. And if you're using this summer to make some much needed changes in your life, gimme a shout out below. I'm right there with ya!