The New Year

It's Thursday, January 1st, 2009, and I'm at home on my day off from work, the same as a lot of people are on this day. I know it's technically a "new" year, but I don't want to be let down again by the promise of a better tomorrow when all today really signifies is the beginning of another year with the same old crap challenging me once more.

2009 also marks the 25th anniversary of when I graduated from high school. And I also have mixed emotions about that. I definitely have it better than now my mother or father did at this stage in their life. But what did I really accomplish here? I wanted something for myself, but that changed with my life situation and I image it happens to a lot of women because of the demand of family and children. Honestly, I don't know what I expected to have going on at this time because I could never see myself being 42. You see, I graduated in 1984, so the biggest deal for us graduating from high school then was what our lives would be like in the year 2000. Well, it's beyond that now, and although technology has improved, transportation and the economy are now moving slower than ever.

2008 marked the first time in my life that I had been laid off from a job. It was nothing I did, rather, the company went out of business. It shutters you from thinking ahead because all you can really focus on is what you're trying to deal with today. Now that I'm working as a contractor, also a first in my life, I feel that I can pay my bills at least, but for what I'm doing, I know there is no future in it and I feel unstable with no health care benefits. I mean, knowing that I am one major medical illness away from a total financial meltdown is unsettling. It makes me look for a better job. It makes me look into training so I can get into a different career.