Considering changing direction(again, and in more ways than one)

I've just discovered something new about myself this weekend: When it comes to looking for work, at least as far as Monster.com is concerned, I'm OLD. They didn't say so in so many words ... but tonight I was googling for inspiration to help me rewrite my resume, and ran across several articles about the "40-plus job seeker." Until today I hadn't realized I'm considered basically over the hill, expired goods, in need of special help ....

Among other depressing information, one article offers the opinion that any experience more than 10 years old is irrelevant, and recommends that in drafting my resume, I "compare myself to younger workers, who are engaged with the job market and know what employers want." Another article even goes so far as to suggest I consider cutting or coloring my hair so as to not "give away my age."

I was planning to get my hair cut anyway, so I guess I won't take that one personally. But wow. Instead of feeling empowered, these articles sort of make me feel ... the opposite. Far from helping me solve a problem – how to present my earlier experiences as being relevant to the job at hand – they've informed me I have a new, bigger problem I didn't even know about.

Well, they may have a point. I am older now than I've ever been before. And while it's certainly possible to write up my most recent experience in positive terms, the truth is that I haven't had what I consider a "real" job in almost nine years. My plan when I left the software industry was to stop commuting and commit myself to living and working here in town, conserving resources, dedicating myself to supporting the social and economic health of my local community, blah blah blah. I've been lucky enough to be able to somehow always cobble together some sort of job, but it's never been very interesting, challenging or secure, and I've certainly never made much money at it. Still, until now it's been working. Sort of. But then the other day I ran across a folder full of emails I wrote right after I moved here in 1995, and realized as I read through them that it's never really been feasible for me to do what I've been doing – trying to do – in this town. It's been a struggle the entire time.

I need a new plan.

It's time to let go of the struggle and get real about where I'm living, and what I can do here that will be sustainable for the next 25 years. Even if I find another writing, editing or design job now, I'm feeling pretty clear that over the longer term I need to start moving toward doing something else. Something that brings me into closer contact with other people, that doesn't require me to sit at a desk all day. Something I can keep doing until I'm old. Something that can't be outsourced. Something that means something to me.

It's hard to get my mind around the idea of doing something completely different from what I've been doing for the last 20+ years. Especially since I'm not sure what else I might do. The main thought I keep coming back to is "something in healthcare ...." – a category so enormous I hardly know where to begin thinking about it. In my 20s I went through a period of being obsessed with childbirth, and began some training as a lay midwife. In my early 30s I finished a certification as a labor and delivery doula, although I only ever attended one birth – and that was a caesarean, so I wasn't allowed in the delivery room. Lately I've been interested in diabetes education, and health education in general – and I've obviously been interested in therapy and mental health issues for a very long time. There's also hospice ... I've had some very interesting conversations with a friend who's a hospice nurse ....

So I'm starting to look into various programs I could do within a reasonable distance from home – RN, MFT, MSW .... And also trying to figure out what jobs might actually exist locally, or within a short commute. At some point I'll also need to figure out how to pay for my new education, assuming I can even get into a program. I keep hearing it's not easy. And then, of course, I'll also need to find an actual JOB in my new field, so I can pay off my student loans ....

See how good I am at scaring myself away from actually doing anything? Like rewriting my resume, which is what I'm really supposed to be doing right now?

Well, one thing at a time.

Maybe the first thing I should do is revisit the question of whether I'm really going to be able to live the rest of my life without anxiety meds. Getting off them was a big part of the reason I took the "go local" route – I thought I would trade in the big paycheck and high stress level for a simpler, easier life with small but pure pleasures and a focus on quality over quantity ... and in a way, it sort of worked. I did go off the meds, and have stayed off them. But how well is it really going? I'm still hamstrung by anxiety, even though I've made my life just about as simple and small as it can possibly be. And it just keeps getting smaller.

On the other hand, how much did the drugs ever really help? I really can't remember. Would they help me now, at least to get my mind together enough to apply for a job, or a master's program? I can sit here and write this kind of drivel all night long, but when it comes to really focusing on something important (like my damn resume!) the anxiety leaps up from the floor where it's been snoozing and grabs me by the throat, and my heart starts pounding and my mind starts racing and I just can't concentrate at all.

Even so, I have to try. I am going to send that letter and resume to this company on Monday morning, whether I'm satisfied that it's perfect or not.

P.S. I just reread this and almost want to delete it ... I sound so boring and pathetic. Maybe next time I'll make a point of reporting something interesting, encouraging or beautiful. One thing I could mention today is how much I've been enjoying the fall colors, and the colder nights. We've had the wood stove going pretty much continuously for the last couple of weeks and I love to sit and watch the flames.

This is what chronic illness looks like

[From last week] Just a brief note while I'm waiting for Obama to start his healthcare speech to Congress ....

I really want something good to come of this. My insurance doubled last year, and this year it's going up 41%. I damn near cut off my thumb last weekend and had a few scary moments contemplating whether I could actually afford to go to the emergency room .. though thankfully it turned out that wasn't really necessary.

Lately I'm having some trouble with a healthcare concern that seems kind of stupid: I'm just really, really exhausted all the time. I don't know why I should be. I eat well and carefully, I exercise at least an hour every day, I get plenty of sleep, I take my vitamins, I don't smoke and very rarely drink, no drugs, no dangerous or unwholesome habits or proclivities ... I'm not even eating sugar anymore.

And yet I feel like crap. Unless I'm actually on my bike or exercising in some other way, I can hardly keep my eyes open. I can't seem to focus on my work, either; in fact I recently had to give up a small freelance copyediting job because I just couldn't seem to get my head together enough to finish it. I couldn't concentrate, and I was too embarrassed to tell the client what the problem was ... there was no specific deadline so I just let it drift  ... and today I got an email asking how it was going and decided to tell her I just can't do it right now. [to be continued ....]

It's so easy for me to blame myself for being lazy or stupid or a worthless, terrible person. But thinking of it right now, even if those things were true – this little project was so small and so easy there isn't any reason for me to have dropped the ball this way if I were just being lazy. I should've been able to just jump in there and bang it out in a couple of hours. But every time I looked at the pages ... I just couldn't.

So what's going on? Is it hormonal? Seasonal? Environmental? Do I have some kind of allergy? Or is it something more nefarious than that? Cancer can make people feel tired ... and so can about a half million other life-threatening diseases.

Maybe I'm just anemic again. But I've been taking my iron supplement religiously for a couple of years now ....

The other possibility that comes to mind, the one I really don't want to think about at all, is that I may be heading into another depression. This desperate exhaustion and inability to concentrate are so familiar to me ... and this morning, for no apparent reason, I woke up all flooded with fear and adrenaline and spent 40 minutes sobbing my guts out before I finally remembered I still had a bottle of Xanax lying around somewhere, and nibbled a few crumbs off the end of one just to get myself together enough to go to work. Then spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake, since that drug does take the edge off the anxiety but makes me so sleepy I can hardly function.

So damn. Now that I actually describe what's been going on it does seem pretty clear. I must be getting sick again.

I've been through it before, and so far it hasn't killed me. I think the worst part of it is that I feel so guilty about not being as functional and energetic as I would like to be. It's funny to me that despite my own experience with this stupid condition over the last 16-17 years – which you'd think would be enough to convince me it's just as real as my boss's herniated disk or another friend's congestive heart failure, or my own diabetes, all of which can be seen and measured and proven to exist – I still very often find myself secretly agreeing with the masses and leagues of "healthy" people who don't quite believe depression is an actual illness, but think it's more just a failure of will or character in a person who really just doesn't care to work as hard at being happy as everyone else does. I know feelings of guilt and worthlessness are symptoms in their own right ...

Anyway. Blah blah blah. Just like the herniated disk or the damaged heart muscle, my mind's tendency to freeze up under stress is just part of how my body seems to be composed. Sometimes, it forces me to slow my life way, way down whether I want to or not.

I'm sick of thinking about it, and sick of feeling ashamed of it. It sucks, being shaky and exhausted all the time. And knowing that so many people probably see me as a lazy, boring loser and a disappointment, because despite my supposed talents and capabilities, I never seem to really accomplish much.

This is stupid. I know it's the depression talking. I might not be able to turn it off inside my own head but that doesn't mean I need to broadcast it all over the internet.

Mainly, I just wanted to write it down as a record of what's going on for me this fall. And as a reminder to be kind to other people, no matter what ... because you can never really know what someone else is going through, even if everything looks OK.

Back to healthcare reform, though ... I don't know how any kind of healthcare reform would really help me with my particular problem, because right now the most commonly prescribed treatment still seems to be antidepressant drugs, and those have caused almost as many problems for me as they've solved. It's been years since I've taken any, and I don't really want to start them again. Still, it would be nice to know that if I did start seriously losing it, I could just go see someone without having to worry about how I was going to pay for it.

Ugh. So boring. SO boring, it makes me want to shut down this blog. Still, at times in the past I've received email from people thanking me for writing, letting me know it's helped them to read about my experiences, that they feel better knowing there's someone else out there who's coming out the other side of the same thing they're still stuck in the middle of. And it's made me feel better, knowing there are sympathetic strangers sending me good wishes.

I've been writing this blog (under several different titles) for just a few months short of ten years now. Maybe it IS time to start thinking about shutting it down. Or at least making it private again.

Or not. Just rambling now.

I guess the other connection with healthcare is that I can really see, when things get like this for me – and thank god it usually doesn't last very long – that I'm just not contributing to the world, or even just to my own experience and enjoyment of it, nearly – not NEARLY – as much as I would like to. And it makes me wonder what we all lose by not supporting the highest level of health possible for everyone around us – what might be brought forth by some of the people who are suffering even more than I do, for long periods of time or even for all their lives. What would they do, who would they be, if they were feeling well enough to really thrive?

There's this romantic idea afloat that illness, especially certain kinds of mental illness, can bring out the best in people. Beethoven created his best work after he lost his hearing. How many other geniuses of art, literature, music, science – are bipolar, schizophrenic, depressed, Asperger's? I'm sure it's true that some people rise above their struggles to do great work. But if my own experience is anything to go by, there are also plenty of people who are held down and held back from their best work, because it's all they can do just to get through every day.

My opinion is that getting through every day is a beautiful and important thing to do with one's life. It's all there really is, for anyone. But still ... sometimes I feel myself really yearning for just a little bit more. And it hurts when I just ...  can't .... reach it.

Health care

Yesterday at work we had a meeting to discuss changes to our healthcare coverage. One of the results of the layoffs that have been happening since the beginning of the year is that the company is no longer big enough to qualify for the same coverage plans we had before. There are three new options available, with an effective date of October 1. So I'm spending my holiday weekend carefully poring over the stacks of literature I brought home, hoping to be able to extract enough meaningful information to make the best choice.

Losing my health insurance, or no longer being able to afford it, has been one of my greatest fears since I found out I'm diabetic. I sat in the meeting for two hours, feeling like my solar plexus was on fire, wanting to scream or cry. The "plan representative" was chipper as hell, extolling the benefits of the HSA PPO option (the one I will probably end up choosing) over our current HMO, which we can choose to continue – at four times our current cost. She was grinning so hard it looked like her face must hurt. But she was pretty much the only one in the room with a smile on her face. Everyone else looked anxious, concerned, confused.

Well, such is life in a sinking ship. I'm a smart enough cookie and a pretty good swimmer, and am determined to stay on board as long as I can, for reasons that still seem like good ones, at least for now. As an example, in addition to the cost of looking for a new job and getting to and from it once I find it, there's also the daily exercise time I will have to come up with if I'm no longer able to use my bike-to-work time to keep my BG under control. Plus, I still like some of the work I'm doing, and I really like most of the people I'm working with. And of course there's also the access to healthcare – even if it's expensive, the coverage I'm able to buy through my work is still better than what I would be able to buy for myself, assuming I could even find a company that would take me at all. Legally, they don't have to. Even though right now, despite my "pre-existing condition," I'm still pretty healthy.

During the meeting I sat next to a friend from another department whose 24-year-old fiance has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. For the last year they've been desperately fighting to get him the treatment he needs. It's inconceivably expensive: he hasn't been able to work, sometimes he needs care at home, and just one of his bone marrow treatments costs upwards of $16,000 a month.

She feels like screaming and/or crying quite a lot, too, she told me. At least it appears he will be eligible to come onto our plan as a spouse, as long as there's no more than a 62-day gap in coverage after his COBRA benefits expire. That was a huge relief to everyone in the room except the plan representative, who was probably the only person there who didn't know the background to that particular question about pre-existing conditions.

All of my issues seem pretty workable when I think of what they're going through. So I've decided to try not to worry so much about it. Even if I someday do lose my coverage and lose control of my diabetes – which seems pretty unlikely, though anything's possible – what would that really mean? Maybe I'd go blind, or have to have my feet or legs amputated. Maybe my kidneys would fail. Eventually I would probably have a heart attack and die.

But I'm going to die someday anyway. This fact has been on my mind a lot lately, for some reason. Maybe it's the change in seasons; summer feels like it's winding down early this year. I've been working late on a deadline for several weeks, drinking way too much caffeine, and not sleeping well – and the other night I woke up around 4 a.m. and couldn't stop thinking that someday I will be dead. It seemed like a stupid thing to think about, but all the same I suddenly found myself crying tears of real self-pity. I kept picturing the face of my friend K. who died in her sleep a few weeks ago of heart trouble probably related to her own poorly-controlled diabetes. She was 72 and so funny and happy and creative and alive – with her big red laughing mouth and fabulous jewelry and her dashing new white-haired boyfriend – it's hard to imagine that she really won't be around anymore. And someday, I won't either.

Now that I think of it I guess it wasn't so strange that I should wake up crying. I've been working so much I still haven't really had time to just sit with the knowledge that K. is gone.

I know no good can come from dwelling on my own death, or worrying about anything that might happen to me between now and then, or afterwards, either, for that matter. Right now I do still have access to healthcare. So I'll just make the best decision I can, keep doing what I can to stay healthy, and focus on enjoying the life I have – instead of worrying about things that haven't even happened yet, and maybe never will.

When you're a chronic worrier like I am – though I'm feeling more justified recently in starting to think of myself as a recovering chronic worrier – sometimes it's good to remind yourself that worrying is always optional. Thoughts do have a way of coming to mind ... but I can choose not to entertain them when they do.

P.S. Here is a link to the article that inspired this long and tedious discourse, in case you're wondering how I get started on these things ....

P.S.S. Speaking of anxiety ... I just added up some of the figures from the plan summaries and it's looking like my out-of-pocket cost for even the cheapest option is almost twice what I'm paying now, and the coverage isn't as good. I think I'm going to go throw up now.