My absence: Just call me Pat Benetar!

So the reason why I have not managed to make my regular appearances in the blogesphere for the past few month, well really, at least a half a year is because life has just been working me out!

I went from having no job to basically having 3 jobs! My regular full-time job has been going really well. I am really enjoying what I am doing and feel like I am making a contribution that is being valued. I have had two bosses in the past 8 months but that is because the guy who hired me got promoted to his boss' position, which is not a bad thing for me since he thought well enough of me to hire me in the first place and has direct knowledge of my work. And I like my new boss, who is a woman. I was not sure of her when I first started the job and she was in another group within my department. I got a strange vibe from her then but now that I report to her, she has been really great. She was promoted when she came to my group and is very inclusive and treats me very congenially, which is the opposite of what I felt from her before. So things are good!

Additionally, I am still working at The Container Store. A lot of people have asked me why I am still working there and it is not that the money makes a huge difference but I like it and it doesn't really interfere with my schedule that much. I work truck uploads, which is normally one night every 5-7 days (9-midnight on a weeknight/Saturday or 6-9 on Sunday) and I have started picking up store hours on some evenings and on the weekend. I cannot under emphasize how different this company is from regular retail --- and the people I work with are all pretty much very nice, helpful, agreeable people. But of course, that is why they were hired.

And lastly, I have been dealing with some investment properties that I purchased last year. The long and the short of it is that they have not worked out quite as I had originally envisioned. I have ended up renting them out as Section 8 housing, at a loss, and using a property manager (who is also an owner in the subdivision) to manage them. I was very hands off for a little less than a year but then the finances of it all caused me to take a closer look. I had not foreseen not having a job for 6 months when I purchased them and any extra that I could have dedicated to these properties disappeared into living expenses. But honestly, even if I had kept my job, the economics of this endeavor disintegrated as the housing market started going south. So while I am able to collect income on each property every month, it is not enough to cover the mortgage by a sizable amount. So I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what to do. And I still haven't gotten it figured out.

What I did figure out was that I could not continue to afford a property manager if I was already losing money so this fall I started the process of managing them myself. And in the process I discovered that a few things were not being managed as I expected. So I had to dive in on my own -- manage the transition in management with the manager and tenants, sign new leases, sort through a whole mess of things with the housing authority including rent increase requests, etc, steering clear of an investigation that they launched against my former property manager, and finding someone to do maintenance for the units. Additionally, one tenant and the former property manager did not get along, for a number of reasons, and while I has trusted his advice in the past with regard to tenant matters, I started to question if the rendition of events he had been telling me was completely accurate.

There have been periods where I worked at least 5 hours a day for 13 days straight plus had to manage stuff with the properties in addition.

I definitely feel like an adult these days.... Got some big ol' adult issues to deal with. Whew!

Stress Management

This morning I forced myself to go for a little run since I had only been up for less than an hour and my shoulders were already feeling tight. The weather seems to have broken here and it is actually cooler than 70 degrees in the morning here now!

I didn't have that much time but I thought 20 minutes was better than nothing.

So I ran up my street, around the corner, and up the hill to this other residential neighborhood. And all of a sudden, ahead of me I started seeing women in pink t-shirts walking up the street. As I knew what it was...... I was coming upon the route for a breast cancer walk. And I started tearing up.

For my birthday in 2006, I participated in the Susan G Komen 3-day Breast Cancer Walk. It was an amazing, inspiring experience that I undertook partially because a friend of mine from grad school had been previously diagnosed with breast cancer a couple months after we graduated, and 2 weeks after she got married to another classmate, at the age of 29. I will have to paste more about her later......

I need to find a way to do more to others......

Options

Isn't it great when you are in the middle of a difficult situation and discover an option that you didn't know that you had that opens up some new possibilities!! I am feeling encouraged!

This fall is proving to be very challenging for me. But just when I thought I was out of options and faced with a really unpleasant choice, I discovered an alternative path.... A temporary solution but hopefully I will find a permanent one soon.

What a difference a day makes....

Yesterday, I started my day at the County Tax Assessors office...

And the day just continued to be stressful, including some incidents at work (which actually were just more stressful given the day's tone.) It was just one of those days where nothing went quite as planned and you just want to crawl in bed and start over the next day....

And that is about what I did.

And this morning I vowed not to let the previous day's events shake me. And today was a good day. Work went well and I even got some face time with my Executive Director who I really haven't spoken to much at all since I started this job.

What a difference a day makes!....