Unity, Trust, Nonjudgment

Happy New Year! I am hoping for a fresh new start since 2010 was most definitely not my year.

I began it living 30 miles out of town with a car I had bought the previous summer which turned out to be a total lemon. I had it towed a total of 5 times in the five months that I owned it, and in January it died a final death (after draining a good portion of our savings for repeated repairs). Thus began the first month of the year......30 miles out, sharing a car, (with very different work schedules, and afraid of being in debt due to the economy). We had to get over that and start looking for a car to buy...with no credit history. Needless to say, it's easier to get a loan if you've got bad credit than to do it with no credit at all. Sigh. And we thought we had been responsible all these years by avoiding credit and living within our means!

Finally, in March we managed to buy a car that is almost new, and still well under factory warranty. Our interest rate is terrible (see no credit, above) but it's totally reliable and a gas saver. Great. Then we moved back into town, closer to work. Spring was busy with the move, and while that was going on I got a new boss. I had had a great relationship with the previous one, but this guy....well, after a couple of months, I knew I was in for it. Everyone swears the man is bipolar. He can be super nice, supportive, helpful....but let him get stressed out and he can turn on you in a minute! And he can turn into a totally unreasonable, shouting, insulting monster. I spent the whole summer feeling that I had to walk on eggshells with this guy. The only thing that made the situation tolerable was the he works out of Charleston and only visited my store about once a month. He still made me plenty miserable at times, though, but he liked me reasonably well. Some of my peers told me real horror stories about his behavior! Most of the time I was under his radar, thank goodness.

Then came  the rush of the holidays, and I was busy, but at least I was starting to settle into the way things were. I felt a bit more at ease with the boss, the car situation was resolved, I liked the new house and the time I got back from no longer commuting. I felt that things were finally settling down. But the year had one last sucker punch to deliver at the very end.

My boss showed up unexpectedly one week ago today to let me and my employees know that our lease was up, and a new business had offered a better bid for the space. At the end of February I will be unemployed after almost 8 years with this company. Many of my coworkers have been around 5-10 years and feel like family at this point. We're all scared and unhappy and it feels like someone has died.

So I have no idea what 2011 holds for me. I am lucky...I have two months to work, and then I get two month's severance pay. So I have some time to prepare a resume and to begin looking for something. I hope this year will bring me a new job that I enjoy more than the last one, even if I have to accept a bit less money for it. I haven't been happy at the current job for awhile. Maybe this job loss is a blessing in disguise; I sure hope I look back on 2011 one day and think so!

I have been intrigued for awhile with the practice of drawing a word (or three!) at the New Year to divine the purpose of the year ahead. I found a great list at another blog I read, so I printed it, cut out the words, and
drew three. For 2011 my three words, in order, were: Unity, Trust, Nonjudgment. I am still pondering what sort of significance those three words could have for me in the days ahead. Thoughts?