Home for a year.

 I can't remember the exact day I actually came home for real to stay but it was around now a year ago.

Maybe last week.

I guess thats good i can't recall the specific day. Or maybe its a milestone i should be celebrating.

I have a tiny bottle of champagne i got from a friend in the fridge the time i moved home but then had to leave again. I decided I'd drink it to celebrate when I was home for real. But its still there in the fridge a year after that already happened.

I mean i couldnt know, could I? that it was gonna stick so i never drank it.

I guess i could have drank it any time in the last 12 mos but im not feeling celebration.

next month is 2 yrs since the awful day this all started. I

I don't want to celebrate that either.

I got the blues today for no real reason. Everything is fine. the cat is back to normal. I have my old sofa back. I got rid of some stuff from the garage while i had them remove the old one and I can get in there now to clean it out. 

The weather is mild enough I could make that happen but im stalling on it. Not that I dont want to be done with all this but I just dont know what clothes are safe or not safe until i wear them. It might all be fine. I just lost my stomach for experimenting. When i go through stuff out there it makes me sad for all ive lost and i just dont know.. its been so long and my body is unfortunately a lot bigger now. Well not a LOT bigger but definitely not the same size as it was when i fit into those clothes. and it just hurts my soul to look through the remnants of my old life. 

Meanwhile I've had to get new clothes for my new job and its very reasonable to just move forward. No one ever said, "let me find something old to wear" to an upcoming occasion. 

I've been out a couple of times but its always stress for me to find something to wear since im scared of my old clothes and they dont look as good as they used to on me and i don't have a lot for new clothes that are for going out. oh yeah and i have no money for that.

I still owe a lot of money.

and i still have to get carpet and a new washer and dryer. 

I want these things asap because its the end of all this.

but i dont want to add to my debt until ive paid some more of it down.

its all very do-able but its also so terrible at the same time.

I mean most americans probably have more debt than i do, but then my goal was always to be debt-free and i was on track to be almost there before all this. 

anyway i have improved the kitchen a lot with the new floor and the dishwasher, which were unrelated expenses. and i fixed the hole in the basement finally, and i got a hot tub, and new patio furniture. A lot of my expenses were things that would have been anyway probably.

and my kitchen is really nice. I had my handyman come back yesterday and put in a new faucet. the old one had been leaking since before. and i got a much more useful one and its so nice and shiny. and he moved the dishwasher slightly and reinforced the cabinet, put in a new hose reel for me outside and even fixed the weatherstripping on the door where flashy pulled it off without asking. 

So i felt inspired and put away some things that were cluttering up the area by the door, and it looks really nice there now. 

and my backyard is fantastic with the wifi lights i put in when i first came home and i was unsure about everything so i changed hte lighting becuase it was something i could improve while i waited to see if i was going to be ok. 

I've been in constant mode of waking up in the morning and doing what i could to make things a little better for me every day for almost two years now. This includes working and not going on vacation and not drinking and not going out and not eating much takeout. 

and getting a new better paying job that i think i should think of as committing to for at least a year.

but today i was lonely and bored and i felt like there still wasnt much walking, which is what i wanted when i signed up. and i was just sitting in a room by myself again all day so this may not be the right job for me.

but its better than the last one because no one's timing me or yelling at me and I really am helping people i think. i think. its a lot of paperwork which feels archaic. 

I didn't do the last part of my work today becuase they seriously wanted me to print out 45 pages of stuff so i could scan it in and then throw it out. its so wasteful i couldnt make myself do it. 

45 pages. at least. i didnt count them all but seriously maybe even 50 or more.

i used my 15 min breaks to walk. i just set the timer on my watch and walked out the door and kept walking till i got to 7 and then turned around and walked back. then walked to that same spot for my second break. So thats 30 min of walking. I'm gonna keep doing that. I never did that when i worked from home. i do walk sometimes at work, but i dont feel like its anywhere near the amount of exercise i was hoping for and its a lot of paperwork. they have me working someone else's job too remotely so its a lot of phone calls. which are fine. honestly its easier to do the job on the phone and i dont get why the whole job isnt remote. they are very set in the past working on paper in the office for no reason and i think its dumb and a waste and i question how long ill want to do this.

at the same time i do like that i mostly get to decide when im going to do what and no one's breathing down my neck about metrics since the job is basically monitoring what comes into the work queue and clearing it out. so if you're working its clear and thats fine and they dont seem concerned with metrics.

and im not just keeping up fine, im doing two peoples work and keeping up fine. they actually gave me a 3rd the other day and i still managed it. but that just got me down because i think theyre going to overload me with 3 peoples' work since i seem to be able to handle that. 

so today i guess i should be celebrating but i find myself feelign down because i cant have everything i want right now. and that its gonna take me another year or two probably to have everything I want. or to be where i want to be now.

and i forgot to remember how i came home and hung out on my new/old sofa, which has a pink sofa cover being custom made for it right now, with my cat who is no longer hurt and acting normal and my other cat who is the sweetest nicest little kitty. and we hung out in the yard on my pink adirondack chairs i stressed over spending so much money on last year when i wasnt even living in my house but I knew i just wanted to hang out in my yard with my cats, and that if i couldnt live in my house, i could at least sit in my yard. 

and i sat in my hot tub awhile which is always fantastic, which i bought with the money i normally would have spent going out of town and celebrating my birthday by staying overnight at a hotel and going to a weekend beer festival where i would have spent even more than that on beers and food and everything. and i was looking for a hotel with a hot tub, becuase i really just wanted to sit in a hot tub. and what a smart decision that was for me to make and how its paid for itself over and over again because I don't need to go anywhere.

and i came inside and cooked dinner and my cats joined me to eat in front of the TV and i remembered how a year ago when i was in the apartment trying desperately to get home, this is the exact life I was dreaming of.

Its weird that i didnt do any of this in any order like importance or what i could afford, it was all just what did i need or what could i get. I just woke up every day and did what i could when I could. When you have everything to do that's probably the best plan.

It's been almost two years and i still have two of the biggest expenses not even started yet.

I'm trying to decide if its worth just adding the debt to the bucket im dropping money into or if i should wait and space out my debt more so its not so overwhelming.

My friend who never really had much for money or savings doesn't understand my need for not racking up debt i can't afford to pay. I don't have family or friends to rely on if things go wrong for me. My good credit rating and my savings are how I take care of myself and I can't let that slip. It's all my stability in life. Since I've become an adult, it's how i function. I've been retirement planning since the early 90's because i would like to not have to work. 

So of course its a bummer I am in yet another new role and probably this one for a year or two at least when I was originally planning/hoping to not have to work a 'real' job by 2024 and thats looking increasingly less likely. 

Maybe its still possible but today im settling into the idea that im going to have to work full time and spend as little as possible for at least another year. The last two went fast so maybe it'll be like that but pardon me if i'm feeling sad as a settle into my new groove with my new job.

because i've gone beyond only wanting to live in my house and hang out in my yard with my cats. its not enough anymore.

I want to have a social life again and i want to be physically active again because i hate how weak and soft and fat i've become. and i hate how isolated ive become. 

and im just a little sad today because i don't think i can fix that for awhile.

and i still want carpet and i still want a washer/dryer.

its crazy how fast I destroyed my life with one seemingly innocuous product. It's crazy how its taking years to undo all the damage. I have spent so much time focused on action. every day. what needs to be done, what can i do, move out to save myself, need an apartment, need furniture, figure out how to move back in, need clothes, need different clothes need more different clothes, need different furniture, need the house painted, need the basement fixed, need to fix what i can while im not in the house, may as well upgrade things before i move in while i have a place to be with the cats while the house gets worked on, move home, didnt work move out, move home, back problems from all this wonky used furniture, scared of everything, everything still in the garge, pile more things in the garage, pile more things in the garage, need junk removal to help me move things out of the garage to get to the other things in the garage so i can clean out the garage, need new job, need job hunting clothes, do interviews, i forgot how to interview, got better job, get covid, cough for a month while training for new job, new job training is different hours and locations and trainers every day and i cant learn this but i keep coming back because icant afford to be out of work at all and theres a sign on bonus ill get if i stay. need new work wardrobe, and here i am miserable 

even though ive dug out of so much

accomplished so much

got a unintentional career that pays well enough to pay for all of this eventually

im just sad because im still isolated, i still dont have everything, im still not finished with this nightmare.

Maybe ill get carpet and a washer/dryer and then its all just paying it off and not suffering for not having all i used to have.

I keep telling myself theres always new clothes.

i was never not going to buy new clothes

and im not trying to punish myself. so i should buy myself and the house nice things.

and even with all this extra debt its still less debt total than when i bought my house in the first place. It's just i wanted to be done paying the house off soon. 

Well i guess i never stopped making house payments so i am still on track to pay off the house and without a house payment i can pay off any leftover debt probably pretty quickly after that. 

but no matter how much i tell myself its not that bad, its totally do-able, youre in a better position than most average americans still, you dont have to punish yourself. i still feel like im in punishment for at least another year or two.

Surprised im at this 1 yr home milestone feeling sorry for myself

but truthfully, ive not spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I've been so focused on action to fix it all. When i got my old sofa back i wanted to cry, which is weird because i barely cried through any of this. 

I cried one day in the bathrooom halfway through the work day before i moved out because i was in such pain and i was sick and working and barley sleeping and my heart was racing and id been doing that for almost two months at that point and i dont recall what happened at work but it just was more than i could do and i went on personal time and cried in the bathroom at my cat for a few minutes and him how its too hard and i cant do this anymore. and i went back to work a few min later. and then i got serious about finding an apartment.

the next time i cried was when we came home. 

sadly it was the first time, which iddnt stick but I moved us home and i cried i was so happy to be back . it just make it so much more heartbreaking to have to leave again.

and the third time, almost 2 yrs later when i got the sofa back.

finishing this nightmare.

mabye its time to get carpet and a washer and dryer.

and be done save for the bills.

i can find money somewhere for the bills without sentencing myself to two more years of isolation and suffering. My soul may need that. Today i just spent all day thinking to myself as i sat alone in my office most of the day without much work to do that this is my whole life for another year or two.

and talking myself into committing to at least a year. So i get my full bonus.

but the next year if they dont give me a good raise its actually a cut in pay so it may be time to find some other thing to do. I can do a year. I thought i was doing that last job for 9 mos temp but i ended up there 2 yrs and only left because i got a shitty manager and said nope or id have stayed forever.

i can do a year at this job for more money and more freedom. 

still feels like punishment a little bit tho.

ok so writing this has helped me . i think i need to be sure im not punishing myself now im runinng out of action to have to do to fix things as most things are fixed now. except the expensive things. i should get them done. i can pay off my debts, i know i can and i know i will. 

i dont need to punish myself.

i can handle some debt. 

i deserve to have some enjoyment in my life so i need to add that in as well.