9:33am at work. Slept in this morning. I was exhausted. Good to have a couple hours extra rest. Thinking about living in the moment. That there is no better future. I still feel traumatized by the last job. I try to block it out but dread sits just below the surface. I have lost my innocence. I miss not worrying about getting fired, laid off or talked to. I guess I always had that at jobs but it only came up like around performance review time. And usually it was unfounded. Now I feel the hammer could fall any moment. This past weekend was good. Enjoyed Saturday with my daughter and even my wife. Sunday they planned to go to lunch wit LH friends. They left the dog at the house. Which was interesting because it brought up issues I hadn’t thought about. How I was always the one left behind. With no social outlet. Just hanging out with the dog. It made me glad I was leaving. Those moments made me feel empty and wasting away

California ending is the same feeling as when a long vacation is over. I had a good time but I am looking forward to getting back to work. I lived nine years as my daughters happiness being the priority. I spent too much but it was with it. Now I am back where I am familiar. Arizona/Utah/Wyoming doing work

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end

Seneca, Roman philosopher circa 65 AD

And semi sonic, alternative rock band circa late 1990’s AD

5:44am. In Dana piint. Furniture is packed up. House almost empty. Second to last weekend. Went for the walk up the hill. Two thoughts. One. Still terrified my job history will haunt me. I will contact a counselor about thi. And the other thought. Arizona gives me a gear I never had before. Boss mode. Not the chaplain. Not the sales manager. Not a sales person. I have been a manager before. I have been a boss. But I never found the mode I get into when I am at the office in Arizona.

9:09am sitting in my truck because it is warmer than the house. Waiting for the movers. feel good. Feel like I am leaving a hotel room more than a house. I don’t know if Arizona is home. But I needed a new perspective. This move has taken over a month. Need to have the junk haulers come, figure out the fridge, clean a little and then be done. And get my car out to Arizona. I worry what I will do without the drive and the move to occupy my mind. I don’t want to fall into over thinking and over drinking.

1:32am in bed. Leaving soon to get furniture and meet movers. Been texting with my boss from back when I was a chaplain in utah. We were close. We did our MBA’s together. I worked with her again my first sales job. Working with her was always the best scenario. She mentioned that she feels the same. That she hates work and misses working with me. I was going to get her a remote job (she lives in Northern California and Washington state) before things blew up at the beginning of the year. We are good friends. I haven’t seen her in over five years. She is really the sister I never had. the WIL hated her and the relationship I had with her. But it was and is platonic. I like chatting with her. It feels anything is possible when we connect. Together we get things done. I need that energy. Apparently so does she.

6:28am The thought that gives me the most peace right now is the lease being up in March of next year. A year from tomorrow. If I cleave off the past, block everything else out, that calms my mind. Otherwise my mind spirals to thoughts of failure, shortcomings and even suicide.

If I can be objective my failures stem from doing sales and not being good at sales. I keep waiting for the day I look back on the last nine years and laugh. Maybe even appreciate how crazy it has been. I just don’t like the instability hurting my daughter. Everyone wants to do high risk, high reward unless it is high risk and high probability of failure. I have crashed and burned as a salesperson. Yesterday I overheard my business office manager talking about his sales career with one of our chaplains. He mentioned winning a recognition while still being under fire because his numbers weren’t good for the month. That you are only as good as your last referral/sale. The business office manager has a similar background as me. He is a nice guy. Not necessarily a high pressure sales person. He got out of sales for the same reasons as I did. Sales is a young persons game. It is not for the feint of heart.

I marvel at the people who can stay in the sales and marketing. Deflect the pressure and the blame. Stay in the role. The upper management, senior leaders. If you can hold on to your sales related job for a couple years that is the sign of a true sales person!

7:54pm actually went out after dinner to go shopping. The smoke alarm was beeping again. I needed fresh batteries.

Is it possible to change? Am I the same person I always was? Do I want to change even if I could? What do I want to change? I keep thinking there is something better out there. Maybe that is a distraction. Just like the distraction of returning home. Except it is a distraction of the future. That a better future is no more real than an idyllic past

6:39am a new thought popped into my head just now. There really isn’t much difference between working years and months. I worked over six years as a chaplain. Two years in one of my sales management jobs. A year and a half in a sales job. They don’t seem any more meaningful. There are two reasons I value longevity. One, provide stability for my daughter. I want to give her a safe space. And two, financial stability. There is no way to accumulate retirement effectively without stability. I am a month into this job. I can’t begin investing in a 401k for another 5 months. The company is transitioning to a new owner so there will be change there as well. That seems a million years away yet it is only a little over three months.

I wield the cleaver this morning. Lots of negative thoughts trying to force in to my mind. Fuck off assholes