"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free."

Sooooo, after that last post about finally feeling better, would anyone believe that I actually got sicker? Yep, it's true. A chest X-Ray revealed pneumonia, so I went back on an antibiotic and spent many days on the couch. While on the couch, I decided to put my down time to good use and I read a couple of really great books.

The first one is "Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss."

Let me just say that the opening chapter of this book spoke to me. It's almost like the author peeked into my brain and stole my thoughts. And it made me realize something important: Job loss is very difficult on your psyche. I don't care who you are or what you do for a living, having it all disappear at the snap of a finger is a difficult roadblock to get past. It's been 10 months and I'm still struggling with my failure to bring home a steady paycheck. Granted, I'm harder on myself that the average person, but it's still feels like I'm not contributing to our household and that is tough to deal with. As Chapter 1 so effectively points out, a crisis in self-worth comes along with a layoff. This is something that can't be fully understood until it happens to you. Trust me. (The rest of the book is good too, I highly recommend it.)

The second book, "Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content" spoke to me in an entirely different way. It gave me hope that I can write my way to a better future. I need hope right now because I'm feeling especially discouraged. I continue to struggle with knowing that I did everything right in my career, and yet I still ended up here: Unemployed. Eventually, I'm going to refer to myself as self-employed, as I it has a much better ring to it, yes?

The Husband's favorite movie is "The Shawshank Redemption." We have a giant, official movie poster of it hanging in our upstairs hallway. The slogan on it says "Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." I need to start living by those words. Maybe it's true that the only thing holding me back is me. I've been given this incredible opportunity, really. What I do with it is solely up to me. So, I guess that's where I am right now. I'm trying to figure out my next great move; my next step up on the career ladder. Because I'm only going up from here. I'm completely open to ideas, so if you have any, please send 'em my way.

As always, thanks for reading. It really does mean a lot to me and keeps me inspired to keep writing.

Sick Times

Well, it's been a long couple of weeks over here, which has resulted in me neglecting my blog. But, the storm has passed, so I'm back. Ironically, Kate has been ON the clock a lot lately, which is a good thing, as the clock is now set to my own time. And I alone reap the rewards of being on the clock.

I think I've established through older posts that there are certain things that I miss about my old, crappy job: paycheck, coworkers, lunch plans and having adults to talk to on a regular basis.

Well, after the last two weeks, I'm now adding a new item to that list: SICK DAYS.

While freelancing is fabulous and a great fit for me, I definitely miss being able to call in sick when I am, in fact, sick. Just like there's no crying in baseball, there are no sick days when freelancing. As luck would have it, I caught a cold from the germy kindergarten class that quickly morphed into near pneumonia. Normally, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. But it just so happens that the timing was about as horrendous as getting the stomach flu on the subway.

Why was the timing so awful? After months and months of looking for freelance work, I managed to pull in 3 months worth of work in 2 weeks. So, it's been chaos for the last 2 weeks, as I haven't had time to do anything but sleep and work and cough and sneeze. Now, I love to work and I find deadlines to be a complete rush. When I'm healthy. Totally different story when I feel like a semi-truck is parked on my chest. For the first time since last year, I actually missed something that my old job offered. And looking back, I didn't fully utilize my sick days. If you have sick days, stop and think about whether or not you're getting the most out of that benefit. And if you aren't, change that, pronto!

In 15 years in the work force, I can only think of a few times that I called in sick when I wasn't actually sick. One time, I called in sick from another state, as I was just having too much fun to drive the 6 hours back home. Another time, I called in sick to watch a 90210 Marathon. And the morning after the 1998 Seinfeld finale party, I definitely called in hungover, which is a form of sick, I suppose. And I think that's it as far as abusing the sick days. Looking back, what the hell was I thinking? Sick days are use 'em or lose 'em and I so should have been using 'em!

The Husband has several very funny stories about calling in sick. He worked as a recruiter for a staffing agency for many years, so one can imagine what he encountered. He still laughs about the woman who came in to apply for a job wearing a shirt that said "I used up all my sick days so I called in dead to work." True story. Another true story is the guy who called in sick from a local strip club. Gotta love caller ID!

What's that saying, "All is well that ends well"? I guess it's true. I'm finally feeling better and 90% of my work is done and billed. Next month will be awesome when all of the checks start showing up in my mailbox. And for the record, one of the jobs I landed was the direct result of having my resume on a jobs web site. Seriously, that really works? Apparently, yes.

God bless antibiotics. Good night.