November and Thanksgiving

November came and with it the anticipation of that holiday feast and then Christmas. I was looking forward to it, because it is my favorite time of the year, but it was bittersweet since I still was not able to find a job and my severance was about to run out and with it my insurance. I also knew that I could not really afford to buy Christmas presents for people this year, but I felt really bad not getting people at least something. I decided that I would make jewelry for all the women on my list. It was fun for me and I hoped they would really like the fact that I made it with them in mind. It would be a truly personal and unique gift. But what about the men?
As I was continuing my job search I came across an ad for Avon. I remember my Mom used to buy Avon many years ago so I decided to look into it. I spoke with an Avon rep and it would only cost me $10 for the initial materials to get started. I am not really a sales person so I was a little concerned, but I figured I could bring people in through a facebook page and my Avon website. I did find some fantastic deals so I got the men on my Christmas list done and I did have a few sales but not as many as I hoped for.
Thanksgiving was almost here! Usually I go to visit my Mom for Thanksgiving, but with my limited funds and my major claustrophobia I was really terrified what would happen if I was in an airplane with no way to get out during a panic attack. I have to catch my breath just thinking about it! It's so sad because I really loved flying and now I was so afraid of being trapped in an airplane. Hearing about the horror stories where people are stuck on the tarmac for hours and hours on end with no air conditioning terrifies me even more. There is not enough Xanax in the world to get me through that!!

So, I would be having Thanksgiving alone. I got a great deal on a turkey and got all the ingredients for the side dishes I grew up eating for Thanksgiving. I know most people have sweet potatoes and cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie, but I don't really like those things so I have my own traditional foods. The turkey of course is the star of the day and my kitties would agree! It would not be Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes and gravy, and my Mom always made rice a roni so that is part of my tradition. My family is German, and my Mom loves noodles more than anything, so German egg noodles are always on the Thanksgiving table. To finish it all off I like to have a warm cherry pie with vanilla ice cream melted on top.

As much as I love Thanksgiving and all the delicious food, I do not like all the dishes and dirty pots and pans it creates. I was still pretty tired much of the time so I had to improvise. Now I am pretty OCD about having all my dishes washed, I can't "leave it until later". I do have a dishwasher, but since I am only one person, I usually do not use it. Thanksgiving is one of the few times that I do put my dishwasher to use. I start rinsing things and putting them in the dishwasher as I prepare the food.  I do have quite a bit to do after dinner because I can't put away the leftovers until they have cooled some and are put in tupperware for storage in the fridge. I usually clean out the fridge the day before Thanksgiving so I will have room for all the storage containers. I don't feel like I can relax until all the food is put away and the dishwasher is humming along cleaning my dishes. Only then can I collapse on the couch with my full and happy belly.

I talked to my friends and family on the phone, wish I could be with them, but this is the next best thing. At this point I am full and happy and looking forward to the next thing...Christmas! 

Fall Changes Everything

Fall is my favorite season. It starts getting cooler and you can start wearing a jacket again, and after the hot days of summer I really look forward to cooler days. I even love the fact that it gets darker earlier. I want to drink warm drinks and eat comforting foods. The only thing I miss about living in New York is seeing all the leaves changing and the beautiful colors of fall! Southern California is different, instead of summer starting in May/June and ending mid-September summer starts in July  and ends in mid-October. People always think it is summer all year round here, but we do have seasons. Summer doesn't start earlier than July because we have a marine layer that keeps the temperatures down in May and June and sometimes into part of July. The unfortunate thing is that summer hangs around until mid-October, it seems like it is never going to leave and I am already in fall mode starting in September so I am impatient for fall to start.

September came and I was still doing well with my diet and exercise plan. I had myself on a schedule and I was really sticking with it. It was still pretty warm and the days might have been getting shorter, but it was not really noticeable yet. I was looking forward to cooler days. Finally September was over and October arrived. I knew that the cooler temperatures were coming soon. It was now noticeably darker earlier which I love. I was still on my diet and workout plan but I started noticing that I did not have as much energy and I was more tired. I blamed it on the changing seasons and the shorter days. It was starting to get cooler too and that always makes me think of cooking comforting meals and baking.
Now my Slimfast diet was about to become a thing of the past. I am a strange eater. I can eat the same thing over and over for months on end, then one day I just can't eat it anymore. That is what happened with the Slimfast, I had been drinking it since May and now all of the sudden I could not do it anymore. I had to start eating regular food again, I did try to keep the calories low but a lot of the foods I wanted to eat were not low calorie. Pot roast and mashed potatoes, chicken and rice, stuffed shells...all things I was craving. I was also looking forward to that Thanksgiving feast.

So my diet had failed at the worst time of the year and I was so tired and back to little energy. I had been doing so well and now I was back where I started. Why was I so tired?

I Have More Energy

It was May and I still had no job. I had been looking but nothing was really working out. I still wasn't sure what kind of job I should be looking for. I did not have anything specific in mind so I was looking for a job in generalizations. That never works because you get overwhelmed by the amount of jobs to sort through to try and find something that you are suited to. I just had to keep trying to find something that I could do and that I would enjoy doing.
In the meantime, I had fallen into a pattern for my days. I got out of bed around 8am and had breakfast, checked my three email addresses (personal, job hunting and Playful Kitten Jewelry) and checked my facebook pages; personal and business. Around 10am I would take a walk around my complex to the mailbox that is located on the other side of my complex and back. When I got back I would do some other things on my computer until 1pm, at that point it was lunch time and then I would work on some jewelry until dinner and then back on the computer to load up my new jewelry and log the new piece into my database.  That process may seem simple but it actually takes some time. First I create the piece, then take a picture or several to make sure I have a nice clear picture. Then I load the picture onto my computer from the camera and fix it ( crop it and put my business name on it) At that point I need to set up the piece in Payvment and Etsy (what I was using at the time, I now just use Artfire) and set them up to be on sale. I also load the picture onto my PKJ facebook page. Then I opened my Excel database and entered the information on the new item. Time consuming, but I was still new at this.
May did bring some changes to me. I started to have more energy and decided that I must be getting back to normal! I had put on a lot of weight because I was too tired to be able to work out. I decided to start a diet and exercise plan. I was going to drink Slimfast shakes for breakfast and lunch every day and a sensible dinner. Be warned, anyone that decides to do this, DO NOT buy the shakes pre-made! They are nasty! The best way is to use a blender, I have the magic bullet so I can make it by the glass. Add your low fat milk to the cup, then add the Slimfast mix (chocolate is the best), blend it up and it really tastes like a chocolate shake! Surprisingly it really fills you up too!

Now for the exercise. I was still doing my walk to the mailbox every day but I needed more. I had some DVDs of workouts that I had done throughout the years so I chose Hip Hop Abs because I remembered that I had liked it and you did not have to get down on the floor. Getting down on the floor was a little difficult for me, I don't know if it was because of the forced menopause or just a side effect of the radiation. In any case this DVD would let me tone my abs and get some cardio too so it was the perfect choice.

I was doing so well. I was still doing my Slimfast and I had actually lost some weight at my last doctor checkup. I was doing my workout every day and I was feeling so much better. I had energy again, I really was feeling like my old self before the cancer. I was confident that I was finally back to normal! Everything I had read said that it takes about a year to get your energy back after cancer treatment, and it was about a year before I started getting my energy back. I was confident that the worst was over and I could now really move on with my life. All through the summer I felt good, then came the fall.........

Unemployed and a New Start

Before I continue my story I just wanted to share some great news. Today marks the two year anniversary of the day I finished my cancer treatment! I have been cancer free for two years! 

Fight Cancer Tees

Continuing on with my story. I  had been laid off after twenty-two years of working for Barnes and 
Noble. What a strange feeling...I was really glad that I had a severance package so that I would not have to depend on unemployment to pay all my bills. The first few days were really weird, I did not have to get up at 5am anymore. I spent the first week signing up for unemployment and filling out various papers for my severance. 
My Mom came out to see me the first week of February. It really helped to take my mind off the situation I was in. I don't think that it had really sunk in yet that I was really unemployed. After she left I began to think about what I wanted to do as a job. The book industry was going through so many changes with the rise of ebooks so that was not really an option for me. I was going to have to reinvent myself and figure out a new career. I updated my resume and put it on every job site I could find, but I did not really know what I wanted to do at this point. How would my skills translate to a new career? I was going to do some research and figure out the best direction for me to take. 
In the meantime, I had been planning on opening a Facebook store for the jewelry I had been creating. I used to make jewelry when I was in my 20s, but life has a way of pushing things like that off to the side. In October I had been looking at the magazine section at Barnes & Noble for fall ideas. I love fall, it is my favorite season and I loved to look at the magazines for fun ideas. While I was perusing the magazines, I saw   a beautiful bracelet on the cover of Step by Step Wire Jewelry. After looking through the magazine, I decided to buy it and give jewelry making another try. I loved it! I began to play around making jewelry and I took some pictures to show my friends on Facebook. 

One of my friends also made handmade jewelry and told me to open a Facebook shop too. I thought this would be a great idea and had been creating jewelry for a few months so I would have some items to put in my shop when I opened it. Then I lost my job and for a few weeks I forgot all about my jewelry. During February I decided that I was going to open my shop anyway, I looked into the requirements for a business in California and saw that the only requirement was a sellers permit. I set up my store on Facebook and loaded up my jewelry onto the sales engine, Payvment. I went down to BOE and got my sellers permit, my store was slated to open on March 7th.  Playful Kitten Jewelry was born! 

It was exciting to run my own business. It was also a lot of work. I really enjoy it, it helps me to focus, one of the side effects of having chemotherapy is something called chemobrain. 
Chemo brain is a common term used by cancer survivors to describe thinking and memory problems that can occur after cancer treatment. Chemo brain can also be called chemo fog, cognitive changes or cognitive dysfunction. Mayo Clinic
My memory did not work as well as it used to and making jewelry helps me to train my brain to focus on something specific. I feel that it has really helped me to keep my brain functioning at a close to normal level. I do still have memory issues, but I have just learned to write everything down so I don't forget. I have pads full of lists and ideas and sticky notes everywhere. 
I was still looking for a full time job and decided that maybe I needed to take a couple of classes to gain some more skills. I had seen job postings for proofreaders and for SEO and marketing so I decided that I was going to take a couple of classes online. I took a proofreading class and a marketing class. I enjoyed being "in school" again and I passed both classes with no problem. The problem came when I was looking for a job and saw that the requirements for both types of jobs were experience. It is a catch-22, you can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience without a job. I needed to keep looking and hope that I can find something that is within the scope of my experience. It was only April and so much had happened so fast for me, but I was coping with it and adapting to my new schedule. I wondered what the rest of the year had in store for me..........

January and More Surprises

The new year was here. I was really hoping that this year was going to be so much better than last year. It seems like 2010 was the cancer year, between the diagnosis and treatment and side effects I don't think that I accomplished much of anything else that year. I had high hopes that 2011 was going to be a good year. After all I had been through I deserved to have an uneventful year. Unfortunately for me that was not going to be the case.
I returned to work on January third, this was going to be my first full week since August. The first couple of weeks back to work were normal. I did the things I usually do. I was tired, but I was getting through. We were told that we were going to have a budget meeting on January 19th. I had the first feelings of nervousness when I heard this. It was unusual to have a budget meeting that we were all required to attend. When I say all I mean my entire department. I tried not to think about it and assured myself that we were probably going to discuss ways where we could cut our budgets because sales were down. As the day got closer I began to feel more uneasy. On January 18th, the day before our meeting, I had a panic attack driving home from work. I had to pull over and get out of my car, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get back in the car and get home. After a while, I was able to get back in the car, but I was still borderline panicky. I focused my mind on getting home and I was very relieved when I finally arrived.
January 19th came and I woke up with an incredibly uneasy feeling. I tried to tell myself not to panic until I had something to actually panic about. Thank goodness I still had Xanax, I had to take one to calm myself enough to get to work. I arrived at my usual time at 7am, and tried to distract myself with work. My boss arrived at 9am and our meeting was supposed to be at 9:30am. A few minutes before the meeting was to begin someone from Human Resources came to our office. I knew that my uneasy feeling had been correct. We called in for our meeting and were told that we were laid off and that the HR person would walk us through the paperwork we needed to fill out for our severance packages. I was in shock, even though I had a feeling that this might happen, it was still shocking. I had been working for B&N for 22 years, and now it was over.

We were offered a very generous severance and we could also collect unemployment as well. I was thankful that I would have the time to find a new career. The book business was changing, with the advent of ebooks sales of actual books had been dropping. I can't blame B&N, they had to evolve with the changing industry, but because the industry was changing, I would need to find a totally different career. I packed up my stuff in my office, I had several boxes worth of papers and books etc, working in that office for 7 years, I had made it my second home. The saddest part was saying goodbye to my boss and my friends in the store.
Not having a job was a difficult thing to get used to. I had been working since I was 14 years old.  What was I going to do?