Everything I Touch Gets Ruined
In “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Charlie Brown find his pathetic little branch of a tree, brings it home, and hangs an ornament on it…only for the tree to bend over sadly. “Everything I touch gets ruined!” he laments before storming away.
It’s a moment we all identify with; everyone goes through phases where they evaluate the decisions and think, “how do I manage to screw up everthing, without fail?”
I’m in one right now. I usually try to resist indulging in such self-pity, but backing up and considering the major choices of your life is necessary at times.
The gist of it is that everything Vic and I have done to improve our lives in the past four years or so had backfired. We moved to New York so I could get an awesome job, and I got no job whatsoever. We then moved to Portland to get a fresh start, and found barely acceptable jobs after months of searching and interviews. We both make significantly less than we did 5 years ago, and it’s not like we left our jobs to pursue our passions. We left hoping to get better jobs. Good intentions, ill-conceived execution.
Now I shelve books in a library, which is pretty awesome as far as a way to spend 20 hours a week, but it’s a cruddy way to get money into savings, let alone make credit card payments. Vic hates his job, talks constantly of quitting, and has substantial OCD issues that his insurance plan just informed us will not be treatable for 6 months because they were a pre-existing condition. I don’t think he’ll be happy, period, until he gets professional help…help we can’t afford, but don’t qualify to get assistance for.
So that’s on my mind. How will we afford a baby when I work less, and how will Vic’s mental state be when a baby comes if he is already unstable right now? What on earth made me think it was a good idea to have a baby anyway, or that we can ever manage to live anything resembling a comforatable, modest life? I don’t have a great career to fall back on. I’m a freelance writer with no college degree. Perfect material for a mom. A mom on welfare.
Well, boo-hoo. Like I said, I only indugle in such sorry thoughts from time to time. I prefer to be proactive instead. You have to hope, but not assume, that your ship will come in. But usually it’s little rafts rather than one ship. You have to have faith the next raft will show up sometime in the near future. Utnil then, vent on your blog.
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