open book open heart

Unless you are my best friend or you have cookies for me (oh wait. I just said the same thing twice – didn’t I?), you may want to stay far away from me right now. Because I am grieving. Grouchy-grumpy grieving that has me equally likely to break down in tears as swear at you right now.

Don’t tell my husband but I said the “d” word twice today. He still calls me a potty mouth from that one “h” word that slipped out in the first week of our marriage … 18 years ago. Where were we? Oh yeah. You don’t need to tell him I might be teary either because he already knows – phone crying has occurred.

Because you see, my life is shrinking.  I have this amazing, big, too-much-to-handle life and I’m trading it in.

This week I traded graduate school for pack meeting.  It’s a scouting thing in case you didn’t know.  I have a 10-year-old boy and though I think scouting is for the birds, you gotta stand by your little man – right? (By the way, go ahead and tell my husband I said scouting is for the birds.  *evil mom laugh*)  Before the meeting, I was so excited.  My first pack meeting in 3 years!  Yippee!  But then I got there.  And it was pack meeting.  And I chased my 2-year-old around the parking lot and thought, “No thank you.  If you need me, I will be at school.  Any school.”

I’m about to trade in my jaguar for a mini-van.  Uh-huh.  Why don’t you just go ahead and read that sentence again and tell me YOU wouldn’t feel like swearing too?

I’m losing my job, my awesome, custom-made for me job.  Okay.  I was going for dramatic there.  The truth is that I’m leaving my awesome job of my own accord.  But it feels like I’m losing it.  I’m trading it for another, smaller, work-from-home job.

Sure. Sure.  These are all good things.  The scout meetings are because I graduated.  Hello!  So great.  The mini-van is because of kidlet 3.  Hello! Amazing.  The new job is so I can be home with the little kidlets and still be tied to a cause I love.  Hello!  Perfect.  Why in the world am I complaining?

That is obviously a rhetorical question because you read the part about the jaguar right?

It’s okay to cry and swear when you say goodbye to amazing even if you are saying hello to a different kind of amazing.  That is what I am telling myself.

This week, I have been interviewing people for my job.  That is weird isn’t it?  Well, that’s what happens when a job is invented for you.  There are no rules about how to replace the person for whom it was invented.

So, I’ve talked with about 15 or so people who’d love a chance to do my passion-worthy job and at first, the feeling I kept getting while talking to them was, “Hmmmm.  Nope.  Not enough like me.”  I’m coming around though.  I thought, “better than me” a couple of times today.

Tomorrow, I will drive out of my parking space for the last time and say goodbye to my awesome job.  There will be weeping and then there will probably be a pulling up of bootstraps.  Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll re-read this post and think, “ridiculous.”  Heck.  I hope so.