Blah.

(not my actual hand)

There's no other way to say it - this week has just sucked. Work was terrible, life was horrible, it's way too hot outside (97° today), and one of my dogs keeps peeing in my bedroom floor because he's too lazy to go out the doggie door. I feel like running away and changing my name.

 

I'm really tired of working two jobs. It's only been about 2 months, but I can't believe how exhausted I am. For the part-time job, I drive to a satellite clinic in a small town. The receptionist there doesn't seem too motivated to fill my schedule, so there are times I only bill 2 or 3 hours in the whole day. Which means I'm not making enough extra money to make up for all the time I'm putting in. The receptionist at the main clinic is begging me to come over there - he swears he can fill my schedule every single week - but I feel guilty about the few regular clients I do have right now. I can't decide whether to transfer or just quit altogether. 

My primary job is also craptastic right now. My agency has two residential facilities for kids; I'm the director of one of them. The other director is off work pending surgery, so I'm juggling both facilities. Which means nothing gets done because everything is so hectic. And I'm now on call 15-20 days a month instead of 10 or so, because she's out of the rotation. And crazy stuff keeps happening, like the three kids that ran away yesterday at 6 AM (we had to call the police to help find them) and the one who tried to backflip off the swingset today (he ended up at the ER with staples in the back of his head).

I'm still pretty depressed about my son's grades, though I'm trying not to be. He's an awesome kid and I feel like I never get to spend time with him because I'm always at work. I can't even talk about my house because it's too embarrassing. I feel like I need a month off just to catch up on the stuff that should take five minutes.

I'm full of gloom and doom today, huh?

Normally all this stressful stuff would be an excuse to buy something and make myself feel better. And today was payday. But as I work to pay off my buttload of debt, I realized that emotional spending isn't the way to go. So instead I paid the whopping $200 extra from the second job (sarcasm) toward my Dell credit card. It won't credit until Tuesday, but it should knock the balance down to a little over $400.

When I did that, I felt a sense of power over my debt. When that card is gone, I will have paid off almost 15% of the amount I owed when I started this journey. It reminds me that I will get out of this mess someday. 

After I scheduled the extra payment, something else happened that really made me think. I got a call from the local police department. The officer told me someone had turned in my missing wallet. "But my wallet isn't missing!" I said, only to check my purse and realize it wasn't there. I flew down to the station in a panic. When I got there, everything was still in my wallet. Driver's license, debit cards, a Walmart giftcard....even $2 in cash. I was shocked and amazed. 

Maybe I'm superstitious (or crazy) but I took that as a sign that things will get better. I overthink things a lot, as many of you have probably noticed, and that missing wallet could have ruined all my careful planning. I had no control, yet everything turned out okay. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: I had no control, yet everything turned out okay. That's a powerful lesson, and one I hope makes sense for some of you as much as it has for me. 

Here's hoping my blahs go away, and yours too if you had a bad week! Feel free to commiserate in the comments.