Mary Oliver's "The Journey"

I can't take any credit for the below wisdom. My mother recommends this poem to people who fear change and it seems particularly pertinent at this point in my life.  Maybe it will stir something within you, as well.  Enjoy!

Fearless day, to you... <3

The Tin Man (Part III)

..."So, we were just talking about what we should do, since you've applied for another job, and we think we should start looking for your replacement."   

My heart stopped (cue weak Tin Man tie-in).

"Okay, I think that's for the best, I said."

"When were you thinking would be your last day?"

"Let's say April 15th," I replied.

They marked the day on the calendar, said they were going to be sorry to lose me, and hoped I would stay in touch.  They prayed that the right job for me would come through.  And when they wrote my paycheck, it was too high.  I took it back and told them they'd overpaid me, that I only made $___ an hour.  "Not anymore," they said (I told you, they are saints!).

Over the next two days, real panic began to set in.  On one hand, I felt so damn free for the first time in forever.  But then, the whole "crash and burn" scenario took over my headspace.  No one would hire me as a camp host, it was WAY too late in the season to start applying, and I hadn't heard from anyone.  No one was replying to emails, or applications, or phone calls, or voicemail. It was that "you don't even exist in this world" silence that I frequently hear on the days I know the world has entirely forgotten me.  I was not going to make it very long on the money I had in savings, but I would at least leave the area so that I could look for work closer to the kids and granddaughters.

I kept looking for other companies that hired camp hosts, and lucked upon one I hadn't seen before that had a few openings in northern California.  I applied at night, and heard from them early the next morning.  Two phone interviews later, and they had offered me a job.  It would be a super-challenging campsite, huge (their largest), and rowdy, and I'd be far away from backup if things got out of control (which is why they always hired couples for this site).  But.  A job, doing what I wanted to do, near where I wanted to be!  I started to unclench, and breathe again... And then I started to get excited!

Within an hour, the first company, the one with the great reputation, called me, and said they'd had some trouble with their server, and could I please resubmit my application.  I did.  And they emailed me, and said I'd been referred to some area managers who still needed camp hosts.  And this morning, I got a call from a woman at Sequoia National Forest, who gave me two choices, and I picked the cooler (temp-wise), smaller campsite.

Sequoia Freaking National Forest!!

Now, if only my new truck and trailer will present themselves to me at no cost, that would be amazing!

Scarecrow (Part II)

If I only had a brain...

I might be able to figure something out, if I could gain some perspective, but I had a feeling that the solution was going to take me WAY off the societally approved path.  That's pretty terrifying, when everyone you know belongs to a society with the same values.  But I kept thinking of all the vacations I'd never taken, the trips I'd skipped, the adventures I'd never had, the fact that I had $12,000 more in debt than I did when I moved here (student loans), and nothing to show for it.  I looked around and saw people I loved wishing they could do things they love, but who were too busy trading their time for money, so they could hand over that money to someone else for the privilege of living The American Dream.

And slowly, a little, tiny, inkling of a plan began to form.  I remembered a group of great people, who knew pretty much everything about really living, that I'd encountered in 2012.  And I looked them up again, and got more information, and refreshed my memory, and asked some pertinent questions. Initially, my plan was totally half-baked.  Surrounded by National Forest here, I would "disperse camp" on public land, save my rent and utility money, and by October 2016, I would have a good chunk of change for a downpayment.  On a mortgage.  That would tie me to a job that tortures me, all the days of my life, or until that job decided they didn't need me anymore, and the person to whom I'd been handing over all my earnings took my property, and until, once again, I had absolutely nothing, and had to start all. freaking. over. again.  Or death.

Someone mentioned camp hosting...  I had considered it before, but that would mean quitting a full-time job, and hitting the road.  REALLY taking a risk.  Requiring bravery with which little ol' me wasn't acquainted.  So I applied anyway.  Just to see what would happen.  After all, didn't I vow to do more brave things this year?

And then it was time for my next three days of 12 hour shifts at a job that tortured me.

And it was an awful day. My own fault.  My attitude sucked. I needed more days to figure out what to do, instead of being trapped at work.  I wanted to give 30 days notice, to coincide with the 30 days I'd have to move off my property.   But, who gives up a secure job?!  Crazy people!  Everyone would know I was insane!  I even thought how nice it would be if my boss would just lay me off so that it wouldn't be MY fault that I was jobless (Let me just mention for the record, that my boss and her husband are the most wonderful people on the planet, and my miserable attitude is in NO way caused by them.  They are amazing, kind, beautiful people).  So, I didn't give notice.  Because everyone knows you don't quit a job before you have another one to take its place. But I mentioned to my boss that I had applied for a camp host job in California. Now, all year long I have mentioned lots of jobs to which I have applied.  They have the business and property up for sale, and it's pretty much agreed that we're all keeping an eye out for our "next thing" just in case the new buyers don't want the business, or the staff, so it wasn't an unusual thing for me to tell her.  The long day ended, and I went home for another sleepless night.

When I returned the next morning, my boss and her husband were sitting in their living room and asked me to join them.  Boss lady said, "So, we were just talking about what we should do, since you've applied for another job, and we think we should start looking for your replacement."

To be continued...

Cowardly Lion (Part 1)

There's really nothing like getting kicked in the teeth for the third time in less than three years, to bring out the coward in you.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

This was the year!  This was going to be the year when things finally, finally (!) started coming together for me again, after losing my job, house, and 99% of my belongings, in 2012.  I was living on land with a beautiful view, but it didn't belong to me, and I had my heart set on purchasing a few acres with a little house, putting in a garden, maybe even getting Bella (my fabulous yellow lab) a puppy to play with.  Of course there would be chickens!  Maybe even a goat.  Dare I dream of horses?  Too quick, slow down, one step at a time...

I connected with a realtor, who started looking for property that might match my imagination.  She connected me with a lender who could pre-qualify me.  Wheels were in motion! I could feel my confidence growing, my vision of tomorrow sharpening, my feelings of failure starting to fade.

And then. Two days after my birthday, I got a call from my landlady, saying that an unexpected issue with the property I was renting, required that I vacate in less 30 days.  She was very sorry, but there was nothing she could do.  I wasn't even all that upset.  After all, I was going to be buying property anyway, we'd just have to put a rush on it! I'd already gotten pre-pre-approval based on the information I'd provided, we just had to get everything formalized.  I met with the lender and gave her all the required paperwork for approval, and she assured me that she would have an answer for me the next morning.

The next morning came and went.  I sent an email asking if there was any word on my loan approval yet.  No reply.  Around 4pm (after being trapped in the torturous hell that is Les Schwab for 4 hours) I sent another email telling her that the silence was freaking me out.  She called me a few minutes later, and dropped the bomb that reduced me to tears, still stuck at Les Schwab, trying to get them to give me back my damn car so I could leave before I completely lost my shit.  She said that because of my 2012 job loss and foreclosure, the earliest I would qualify for a home loan would be October of 2016.

There are no rentals in the area that I can afford with my income.  And even if I DID find a place, I did not have enough money set aside to give first month's rent and deposit.  People offered me rooms in their home, and space in their relatives backyards or farms, which was sweet, but the thought of co-habitating after these years of domestic serenity made me want to stab myself in the face.

There was nothing I could do, nowhere to turn, no one with any advice other than settling for working twice as much just to hand all my earnings over to another landlord, and utility companies, and shit.  Absolute shit.  For the rest of my life. Just to give someone else the power to jerk the rug out from under me whenever they pleased, and make me start all over again.  Honestly, ceasing to exist seemed like the best solution, but God never answers that prayer.

Experience has shown that day eventually dawns, but I sure couldn't imagine how it would this time.

To be continued...