I hear you Lynn but I can't help but wonder if I wasn't/aren't being unrealistic to think I can take on a management job like I used to have given my apparent and real deficiencies. I think I need to be real about my declining skill sets. I don't mean in a negative way so much, though it is painful to consider but in a practical sense maybe I don't have the right skills anymore. I mean it is real that I don't think as clearly as I used to. I can fade in and out and loose my train of thought. I don't have the energy or stamina anymore. Lots of skills and capacities that were once my strengths aren't so obvious anymore. I know my years of management experience are invaluable on one level. I know as much about managing and developing an organization as anyone and in an advisory role I can still be valuable. Clients still call for free advise about how to deal with one situation or another. How to advance this project or this idea or another. How to rally support and how to present a new initiative. It is all like second nature to me to problemsolve or strategize a given situtaion. Just not sure I can prove myself to anyone new or maintain that value on a day to day basis as an employee again. I don't know what is a realistic acknowledgement of limitations and what is just plain self doubt. My friends and family want me to try to get a small job. One that won't be so demanding and so stressful. One that is just a pay cheque and won't require me to invest too much of myself into. I cringe at the thought of just ticking off the hours somewhere doing some mundane thing. Yet I understand their logic. I can promise myself I won't over invest but I have never kept that promise in the past. I always over invested and almost always burned out. Perhaps avoiding jobs that I am familiar with is the only way I can avoid another job burnout. I just don't know.

I told my son yesterday that I think I will apply at the local donut coffee shop. He laughed at me. I told him to quit being a snob. He reminded me of all the lectures I would give him about where he would end up if he didn't get an education. "You see that drive through... that's where you will be if you don't graduate."

I told him well now I am older and that's where people who semi-retire end up too. I have done my stint in the high pressure jobs and they made me sick. Unfortunately I also lost my retirement pension. This isn't how I had planned for it to be. I was suppose to be sitting pretty by the time I was old enough to retire. But it didn't work out that way and I need an income. We are not poor but we are broke. I need a job. Any job right now will do. Don't be a snob. I said I was having enough trouble of my own not being a snob about working at a donut job. What if people from the college saw me. blah blah blah.

The really crazy thing is though. I don't think I can secure a job at the donut shop. I have nothing on my resume to suggest I know how to serve coffee or handle a cash register or stand for 8 hours at a time dealing with customer. Oh good!! My son has told me some of his horror stories when he worked a fast food joint. That is a whole other kind of workplace stress that I can't imagine coping with.

Round and round I go wonder what the heck I am to do. I go into my sewing room and try to think about what can I sew to sell and laugh about how many shirts I would need to make and how much time it would take to get enough money to buy the groceries we need for the week. Let alone pay the mortgage. I think about workshops I could market but it will take time I don't have to make happen.

After overthinking and going round in circles I just can't take thinking about any of it anymore and retreat to the garden and hope that something will land at my feet. I know that's just as delusional as anything else but its easier than trying to rack my brain for solutions I don't have. I didn't even get called in on the other 2 jobs I applied for so back to square one. Only difference is before I thought I didn't have a job because I didn't want one. Now I know I don't have a job because I can't get one. Ouch.