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

6:10am when I feel threatened (overwhelmed) I look to retreat. I catalog my shortcomings and all the reasons I fail. I look for a concept of home. A place I feel safe. I am in Arizona. It is new. It is the proving grounds. Dana point is almost gone. Utah has faded. Wyoming is the most home like now. Not to physically go back to. But mentally. When stressed. Check with me this afternoon. I will laugh at that sentence.

10:45pm have a meeting with an employee tomorrow morning. I do not look forward to it. My neural response is to be scared. Feel stressed. When I feel scared my reaction is to shut down and back down. This is a response that from this point forward I no longer choose. It has been cleaved.

Also, the cheap coffee pot I bought last month does not have an automatic shut off. It has been on since 6;30am.

7:07pm at home. The day didn’t get much better. Still anxious in a weird way. Went to an open house at one of the communities this afternoon. Talked to a 99 year old wwII vet. US Airborne but from Saskatoon Saskatchewan. nice to talk with someone without much social or professional pressure.

Daughter had a good first day at school. At lease my wife relayed that information. When I called my daughter she was busy playing an online game. She said she didn’t see anyone she knew or talk to anyone. I don’t know if that is true. She probably just wanted to get off the phone.

Reading an article in Salt Lake City weekly about retiring universalist Unitarian (or Unitarian Universalist) minister. makes me think of the road not taken. Tom Goldsmith, Rev. France Davis. Father Lincoln Ure. People I admired that were able to stay and minister in Utah. Makes me want to promote The Unaffiliated more. I am feeling small and frustrated. That usually creates a downward spiral to self pity. I am not going to indulge. But I am not going to waste energy trying to fight it. Going to go read. Go to sleep. Start over tomorrow