I’m Working Harder to Stay Home Than I Worked at Work

I retired July 1, 2023. It was my birthday, and the first available date for retirement, and buddy, you better believe I took it!

I was miserable at my job.

In fact, I’d been miserable for 24 long years, but I worked for the state government, and I was vested, so I couldn’t just drop everything and run like I wanted to.

The last three years were particularly hard on me. Because of Covid, I was taken from a travelling position to a work from home 12 hours a day job. The department monitored every move I made. If I had to go to the bathroom, I had to let them know and could only be gone for a few minutes. Lunch was thirty minutes. Those were my only breaks.

It was a call center, but not just any call center. This one involved people calling and screaming their heads off and blaming me for all their shortcomings in life. Eventually, before the call was over, they’d either give up all their savings or make arrangements to do so. As soon as our department closed for the day, my job turned from “them calling me” to “me calling them.”

No one was ever happy.

Their entire lives depended on the calls, and a good bit of the time they had done something catastrophic to mess up their life and expected me to be able to fix it.

On some occasions there would be sobs, from anger or frustration. Sometimes people would cry to me from extreme sorrow, and I would cry too. My heart is tender. Still. Even after all those years and all those people.

I worked for the Office of Motor Vehicles, and if they didn’t have a fine to pay or a mess to straighten out, they didn’t call me.

After a while, the stress took a toll on my head and heart, and the sitting took a big toll on my body.

You can’t just sit in the same place all day long for years on end (sometimes even on the weekends) and not start to be unhealthy. My Dr. wrote me a prescription for anti-depressants and sunshine. She sent me to talk to someone for my mental health.

None of that helped.

But then I retired!

Along with my retirement came time to tend my garden, start a business, write two books. I created a brand identity and designed my own products, bookmarks and greeting cards, different than anyone else’s and the best I’ve ever seen. I’m bragging, but I love them personally. I would choose them over the department store version any time!

The economy is kicking my butt though, and I don’t know how to market my things. Not even things that should sell themselves, like my artwork. I’m working on it. I’m setting up an Etsy shop that I’ve had since 2011 and never used. I’m trying to find Marketplace on my Facebook page. It’s not in it’s usual place—no worries, I know it’ll turn up!

Getting older limits you, even if you think it doesn’t.

I don’t want to go back to work in a traditional job. I have three booths that I maintain here in the town I live, DeRidder LA, and I sell a variety of items, including my own brand!

I do a lot.

It’s not too much. I’m more than capable of keeping up with all of it and have plenty of time left over. I went to art school, as well as a lot of other schools. Before the OMV, I worked managing stores and training managers. I’m catching up to technology that’s moving very fast these days, although I don’t particularly like some of it when it takes over things humans should be doing, like writing and artwork.

Still, AI has it’s place and I’ve used it in an art piece or two—not for the whole piece but as an element.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. ADHD brain just kicked in.

I’m talking about not wanting to go back to work.

The thing is this: I’m broke. My health insurance takes up a third of my retirement check and I own a house that I don’t live in (it’s not inhabitable right now) and it takes up another third. I live on the money I make in my booths and with the economy falling flat on its face, I’m barely scraping by.

My books earn royalties but I don’t know how to market them so they will do enough to make it a good chunk, and I don’t have the money to pay anyone to do it for me.

But after years of noise and people screaming at me, I just need the peace of doing what I was born to do for a while. I’m not ready to give that up.

So, I’m going to keep plugging away at this thing until I get it right.

Wish me luck, or better yet, send prayers for me!