Whether it makes a difference or not.

I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm so frustrated, and I feel like I'm doing what I need to do to fix it, but at the same time I feel like there is too much about the situation that is completely outside of my control for me to feel like me doing anything will make any sort of difference at all. Does that make sense? Maybe I should be a little more specific.

I need work. I need a job, both for the obvious monetary reasons and the more personal reason that without a reason to get up and going every morning, I probably just won't and will fall into depression again. So I need a job. I want a job, even, which probably sounds funny to those of you in jobs you hate. I want something I'm good at and feel like I make a difference in and have the opportunity to shine in. That's what I want, so I've been looking. I've been doing the networking - telling everyone I see that I need a job and making sure they have no doubts whatsoever about what it is I'm looking for - and even went to the temp agency today. I've been sitting on the idea of MCG for so long now that I'm starting to give up hope on that one - I feel like they want me to work there but are just keeping me on hold (not telling me anything one way or another) until they can use me. Well, while that might be flattering, it doesn't do much for my sense of purpose or our bank account. I have a life I need to live, and I don't want to spend it sitting around waiting on someone else. That's why I went to the temp agency today. It's the same one I went to before that placed me at the job with the golf cart company. I don't know if they'll be able to find anything at all for me, much less anything that I really want to do and feel a calling to do, but it makes me feel better to at least know that someone else is working for me. So anyway........

Last night I had a minor breakdown (i.e. crying fit) about this whole thing. I'm scared. I'm really scared of 1)never finding something I like and am good at, 2)never getting anything and having the brutal truth that I'm not the most marketable employee thrown in my face, and most of all, 3)that I'll be put somewhere I hate and will get sick again. I've been feeling good, and I sure as the world don't want to get back to that place again. That's the scariest thing I can think of right now, and that's why I've kinda been sitting on my thumbs about the job search to begin with. If I don't do anything about finding a job, or passively search for a job, then the chances of getting a job I hate and that makes me feel awful again are remarkably slim. The irony, though, is that by sitting at home and not doing anything about being out in the world of the living, I'm ensuring that I'll feel bad, and am strangely increasing the odds that I will get sick again.

Karla, my counselor, told me that I have a little problem with prescriptive thinking. That basically means that I have this belief that if I'm in a job I hate, I will get sick again. I will crawl back into my hole and never want to leave and will have to increase my medication, etc, etc, etc. She told me I have to realize that while being unhappy at AUM didn't help my mental and emotional state, it wasn't the cause. I have a chemical imbalance that coincided with that, and I need to be aware that those two things happened at the same time......not one because of the other necessarily.

Do you think that God sometimes gives us what we pray for just because we are so insistent that it's what we need, even though He knows it's not going to be what's best for us? What I mean by that is that while I know that God loves me, wants to take care of me, and always has my best interest at heart, I feel like maybe He let me get the position at AUM because I was so sure and so convinced in my prayers that AUM was where I was supposed to be. Is it possible that God - like our parents do when we're little and independent and sure of how we can live our lives - could have said, "Well, that's not what I had in mind for you, but maybe this is a lesson you're going to have to learn for yourself." Could that be? I just don't know what to think about that. Someone proposed that possibility to me a couple of days ago, and I didn't have much of a response to that. Could that be what happened? Or could it be that God knew the messed up chemicals in my brain would mess up at that time and put me somewhere that would allow me to stay home and miraculously still get paid? Or maybe could it be that God wanted me to go there before I even thought of it, simply because He had some lessons for me to learn? Or maybe He wanted it all to happen so that I'd be sitting here today, in this coffee shop, asking these questions.....