STARTING AGAIN

It's been so long since I've posted on my blog.  I am glad that I did not delete it and I think it may be time to get back to it.  It has been almost two years since I posted and so much has happened in those two years.  The biggest change is that I got a job!  I went back to work as an engineer but it is as a Product Management Engineer so it is not really engineering but more management.  I do not like that aspect of it and there are many more things I can complain about but just going back to work was such a huge milestone in my life!

I started last June (2013) and I was 49 years old.  I had been out of work for almost 21 years so it was pretty scary.  I had done a couple years of substitute teaching but that was quite a few years ago.  I started out only working two days a week and then in January of this year I started doing three.  By the end of March I added another day but it is a day working from home.  So I am just one day short of full time and it has been pretty tiring.  The job itself is pretty crummy and lacks any sort of job satisfaction.  I am finding many of the people I work with to be challenging to say the least but I guess I'd find that in any job.  I am working hard to learn to deal with these new stresses in my life and I must say it has been overwhelming at times.  If I do keep up with my posting I will probably write more about my feelings here.

I am surprised I didn't post about it but two years ago I also had a falling out with my in laws.  I guess after being married for 25 years I finally just got fed up.  I didn't initiate the conversation but my sister in law decided she needed to air some issues with me that turned out to be a last straw for me.  I have had mixed emotions but mostly I just feel free.  Free to fully be who I am without having to worry what they all think of me.  Free from having to try to make them like me and make them happy.  My biggest problem comes with knowing that although they may talk behind my back and say bad things about me, eventually they will want to make up with me.  I know myself well enough to know that I will never want to make up with them.  I am not actively angry about all the issues of all the past years.  Like I said, I just feel free.  I feel relief that I don't have these people bringing me down anymore.  Part of the problem over the years is that they are that kind of family that never fully accepts outsiders into the family.  I was expected to call my mother in law and father in law "Mr and Mrs."  I couldn't even us their first names.  Because they kept me at arms length all those years, I never had a close, loving relationship to be missing now.  To me the relationship really was being a bystander, watching all the family nastiness.  Sometimes it felt like that was all I was good for.  I was a person to listen to one person bashing another person.  I do not miss family gatherings which usually meant I had to listen to hours of meanness being spewed forth about whoever was the latest target.  Two years ago, I became the target.  I didn't feel I had done anything grieves that should cause anyone to think I was a bad person and I had no intention of changing to please anyone.  I had already spent years stifling things in order to keep family members from disliking me.  Now two years later...the longer they are out of my life the better it feels.

So those are the two big things that have happened.  I think I am ready to start posting more but I don't want to promise or pressure myself.