Life happens...

Thanks all of you for your kind comments, they mean a lot to me.

I haven't trained this week. Monday, my mom came over to visit so I didn't. I had a horrible headache Tuesday, and spent all day yesterday out in the field. It was hot and I ended up with another headache. Never mind that my feet were killing me from the steel toe boots I wore all day.

I got off the elevator this morning and fell. I had my hands full and didn't notice the elevator wasn't leveled with the floor, it was lower. I ended up tripping and falling on my knees. I am wearing pants, but still scraped both of my knees. ugh. if it isn't one thing, it's another.
So I'm staying in here until quitting time, to make sure nothing else happens.

And to top this off, I'm in a "job funk". Again.

Back in December, I took a new job. Until then, I had spent 10 yrs working on air pollution related issues. I loved it, I was good at it, and it was the area of environmental engineering I enjoyed. For a number of reasons too long to list (related to management, not the work I was doing), I made the decision to switch to another division, this one dealing with soil and groundwater remediation/cleanup. It is very interesting work and very different from what I've done in the past.

It's good experience, interesting work. But it's not where my heart is. I'm basically starting at the bottom again, learning something new. Where I was before, I had 10 yrs of experience, I knew what I was doing, people came to me for my opinion.
Here, I'm the new kid. It's very hard to start over at this point in my career, specially when I had my heart set on the work I had been doing for 10 yrs.

So this job funk has been growing in the past weeks. It's hard for me to find motivation to get up in the morning to come to work. I used to be excited about getting to the office and tackling the work. Now, I am going thru the motions, because that's what I get paid to do.

I'm sure this funk is moving across other areas of my life, like training.

Career change is not an option at this point. I have 3 small kids, so trying out something like teaching (which I'd like to do) isn't feasible because of the big paycut I'd have to take.
Moving back to do air pollution work is not an option either. I'd like to stay in this agency, and vacant positions aren't easy to come by.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I've had this chance to learn something new. It's just hard to start over, and to leave behind 10 yrs of experience and a job I enjoyed and was good at.

But there is hope in the horizon. Soon, we'll have our debts paid off, and that will ease the burden on our family finances. Maybe once that happens, I'll be free to explore other career options without having to worry so much about a paycut.

wow, now this was a depressing blog. sorry!

I'm still so excited about the marathon and I've started to visualize what it's going to be like on that day. Keep on running, marathoners!