{"id":8216,"date":"2017-01-02T07:33:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T15:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2017\/01\/02\/new-year-new-day\/"},"modified":"2021-01-08T19:41:13","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T03:41:13","slug":"new-year-new-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2017\/01\/02\/new-year-new-day\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year, New Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m dreaming of another one of these in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>Had one back in the Summer and it was very good.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693.jpg\" title=\"\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-8215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693.jpg 4032w, https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/img_0693-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t had a chance to get back to the place since then. But I&#8217;m thinking this is something I&#8217;m going to treat myself to before the end of the month.<\/p>\n<p>Been thinking about how easy it is to get caught up in the day to day grind and forget to take little pleasures. Whether it&#8217;s a nice meal, or simply finding time to be intimate with a lover, friend, or even yourself, time and life have a way of getting in the way.<\/p>\n<p>I speak from experience, I&#8217;ve been moving at pretty much a dead run one way or another for the past 7 months. Either I&#8217;m fighting the clock to get to work, or I&#8217;m home from work tired as hell, trying to force myself to do chores, then on my days off, I&#8217;m driving 100 miles to the house in the mountains, spend a night or two, then drive 100 miles back to work.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when I drove 92 miles one way to work. I did this every day. The money was good and I actually enjoyed what I was doing for the most part. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Days of being able to drive like that are gone, especially in Southern California. I used to be able to clock that drive to 100 minutes and I was moving the whole trip.<\/p>\n<p>Now that kind of drive can easily take 2 hours sometimes 2 1\/2 hours and there is zero predictability. Those kinds of drives are also exhausting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By the time I get to the mountain place I&#8217;m really beat and typicaly pissed off at the insanity of traffic. Then when I turn around and head back to San Diego I&#8217;m dreading the drive and it never fails to be a stone bitch. &nbsp;So I start my work week exhausted.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve come to the conclusion that this isn&#8217;t really working for me.<\/p>\n<p>Like the alcoholic, admitting that I have a problem is the first step toward fixing the problem.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose it&#8217;s best defined as a quality of life issue. I&#8217;m making enough money to survive, but not enough to make much headway. I&#8217;m also not in any kind of rotation for promotion. Which suggests, much as I hate the thought, I need to start working hard to find a new job.<\/p>\n<p>It all loops back to the time issue and having enough of my wits about me to engage in such a job search after work. The other thing I&#8217;ve realized I&#8217;m fighting; my confidence is shot to hell.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen jobs that I&#8217;m probably qualified for, or well qualified for, but I hesitate to apply.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to come back from literally years of rejection. It&#8217;s hard to put yourself out there again because now you&#8217;re trained to expect rejection \/ failure \/ (the implied message) &#8220;You&#8217;re NOT GOOD enough&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All these things play in your head, and even with evidence to the contrary you&#8217;re still fighting that inner whisper of doubt.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve realized that in a way I&#8217;ve been broken. (Perhaps I&#8217;m broken in a lot of other ways too)&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i>In retrospect a former friend was probably trying to be helpful telling me I&#8217;m nuts, unfortunately he woefully misjudged just how fragile I was at the time. Him trying to be &#8220;Helpful&#8221; was basically breaking the remaining shards of me, and those parts I&#8217;d managed to glue back together<\/i>. He might have been right, but there&#8217;s a time to be right, and there&#8217;s a time to be gentle and kind.<\/p>\n<p>So now I have to figure out a way back. I know that I&#8217;m the only one who can fix me, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that I know how to. I&#8217;m working on it.<\/p>\n<p>My resolution this year is to climb back on the corporate merry-go-round so I&#8217;ve got a decent income. From there, the long term goal is to get back to writing regularly and carve out time to appreciate the things I have and figure out where I want to go from there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also not going to allow guilt or fear to have as much sway over me as they&#8217;ve come to have during the past few years.<\/p>\n<p>These sound like simple resolutions, I suspect that the actual work will be a lot harder.<\/p>\n<p>My list is short but achievable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I hope your list is easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m dreaming of another one of these in the near future. Had one back in the Summer and it was very good. I haven&#8217;t had a chance to get back to the place since then. But I&#8217;m thinking this is something I&#8217;m going to treat myself to before the end of the month. Been thinking &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2017\/01\/02\/new-year-new-day\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;New Year, New Day&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8219,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions\/8219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}