Last year was a very bad year for me. I can back it up to summer of 2021, when my husband resigned from his job. I had been reading books about goal setting and had plans in place to improve our finances, but Hubby hit a wall with burnout and had to step away.
In September of that year, seeing that he was not yet ready to return to work, I took a second job. A second retail job. If you've ever worked retail, you know how thankless a job it can be. So I had two of them, not both full time, of course, but I was consistently working 50+ hours a week. It was tiring, to say the least. By early 2022, I was winding down, really wanting to get back to one job.
Then in April, my father passed away from heart failure. The first few weeks after that things sort of seemed to stop. I took a week off from work, then decided I needed the distraction that work provided. Between two jobs, driving kids around, and not really dealing with grief, I hit a breaking point. Things needed to change.
My manager had transferred to a different store in April, and our assistant manager moved up to her position. That left an opening for Assistant Store Manager. I applied, knowing it was a long-shot. What I got out of it was a half hour sit-down discussion with my Regional Manager about my two jobs, what I wanted to accomplish at my full time job, and how to get there. He asked me what I needed to make in order to quit my second job. I had the number for him. He told me I wasn't quite ready to move into management, but we made a plan for me to step up to Department Lead, which would put me in place to move up to Supervisor.
By the end of the summer, I was the Farm department lead, but still doing the books and other bookkeeper things that belonged to my previous position, as well as a big update of our tax exempt records for customers, which had a six month deadline and I'd already started. I got a raise, but not yet enough to quit job number two.
There was talk about one of the supervisors retiring. She had talked of retiring in June, but it didn't happen. Then it was January, but she suddenly stepped down in November, the day before Thanksgiving(the last work day before Black Friday). So we were down one supervisor. I applied for the job, as well as four other associates from our store. I got the job, put in my notice at the part time job, and started my training.
Somewhere in all this, I took a week off, where the grief caught up with me and I cried for four days. We went to Michigan for our 20th wedding anniversary, which was a nice trip, but we were both tired. We bought a ridiculous amount of Mackinac fudge.
After two interviews with the corporate trainer and several training checklists, I have now been officially promoted to Floor Supervisor. I am making enough to support my family. Hubby is talking about going back to work in the Spring, after our youngest gets her driver's license and can get herself to work.
I'm still grieving the loss of my dad. I'm still trying to fill a hole, I think, although nothing can fill it. I'm still seeking something that would make him proud of me or make me feel like I'm not wasting the start he gave me in life or the many things he taught me.
Writing is my escape plan. It's my focus for where I want my life to go. It's the one thing I can do that really brings me any sort of satisfaction or joy, except maybe music. That's why the 1,000 word per day goal. That's why the outlining.
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