Here I am again in Limbo

     Limbo seems to be my life these days.  Since I last wrote so many things have happened: I made the move to New Jersey, my condo sold, I became employed here and then not.  It's nuts.  There are so many emotions coursing through me that I cannot keep up let alone label and process all of them. 

     The process of moving was laborious. Paring down from a three bedroom condo to what would fit in one large bedroom and perhaps a few pieces to add to the "common" areas of the house was at the same time tedious and emotional.  Fifteen trips were made to Good Will with everything from clothing and housewares to antiques. A few large pieces were left behind with the hopes to sell them on Craig's List as well as my dishes, pots and pans.  There was an offer on the condo the very day it was listed which put great pressure on me to get the rest of my belongings out of there quickly, but three weeks into the process and only 10 days shy of the proposed closing date, the other party became unreasonable in their demands and pulled out of the contract.  

    Back on the market it went at the original listing price. Two weeks later another condo in the neighborhood which had several updates made to kitchen and bathroom went on the market at a lower price.  I waited a month, but there was no denying that I had to lower my price. Two weeks later I had to lower it again. There was an insulting offer about two months later which I turned down. A few weeks after that an investing couple became interested. They saw the place three times before making a low offer. I countered. They countered. I countered. They countered. It became clear that my hopes to walk away from the closing table owing nothing was not to be. The condo had to go and it was going to cost me - a lot.  

    After 15 years my condo sold for $20K less than I bought it and I had to come up with $6K for closing. It was painful and stressful from the financial side. Emotionally and personally, I never felt like such a failure. I bought the place as an investment for my retirement. Well, there will be no retirement for me unless I start thinking and doing things radically different and I do not have a clue where or how to begin. 

   If that wasn't discouraging enough, right when I was negotiating with the condo buyers to sell the place I took a job at a local dental practice. It was the perfect scenario: 3 miles from home, usually four 10-hour days per week, decent pay, the promise of health insurance after the 90 day probationary period, really nice people to work with and the actual work was simple with no stress. It definitely wasn't perfect from the actual work standpoint but it fit perfectly with this new life as a caregiver for my aged mother. Seven weeks into that probationary period I was told it wasn't working out. That was last Thursday, and so I am in Limbo again.

     I left the office after this "it's not working out" speech feeling much like a rug was pulled out from under me. Was I fired?  Yes, I think I was. Talk about new territory, I had no clue what such an experience would feel like, but I had certainly seen others deal with the pain of "being let go". Being me, I had to start analyzing what happened and why.  The reason I was told it wasn't working out was because I wasn't picking up details. ME!  On some levels, I found this amusing because I could keep every detail of a party in my head and execute it all while running the dining room in a restaurant.  Really?  Then I stepped back and looked at my experience.  

    All of the people in the office were great. They were kind, respectful, fun, ... all of the things you want in co-workers.  The dentist himself was awesome: a truly great guy. My first day, it snowed and after he cleaned his car off he drove to each of his employees' cars and cleaned them too! What boss does that?  Pretty cool, I thought and decided then and there to put up with whatever anticipated boredom I would experience and stick the job out until I could retire. 

   The office manager, the dentist's sister-in-law, was made of different stuff. The woman knew everything there was to know about the running of that office. She understood the clinical end and the business end too. I grant her all of her expertise. Her personality however was very stiff and over-controlled. She was almost robotic and when she spoke it was as though she were doing a read-through of a script rather than genuinely interacting. It didn't take long for me to realize that I was going to be micromanaged. We sat perpendicularly back-to-back with each other and she would monitor every word of every conversation I had with a patient. She would then coach correct my choice of words trying as hard as she might to turn me into a clone of her. 

    I jumped right in when I started. I wanted to take on and learn as much as possible. At first she allowed this but then she stopped me, took tasks away saying that she wanted me to focus on a few main responsibilities: checking people in, confirming appointments, preparing charts for upcoming days. By the time I took a few days off to go back to Chicago to empty the rest of my belongings out of the condo, I was already bored to tears.  There was not enough stimulation, and the only stress I had there was trying to behave the way the office manager wanted without my head exploding.  When I came back from Chicago, she took more tasks away from me and gave me a checklist to follow and hand in at the end of the day.  It was torturous.  I was being treated like a child and it was making me crazy.  

     Every day when I got to work I would give myself a pep talk as I ascended the stairs to the third floor. At lunch I would process the morning on my way down the same stairs, "You have to stick this out." I would say to myself, sometimes out loud. "Your life is not about you anymore."  Then on the way back up the stairs after lunch I would put myself in a good mood for the afternoon. Being under stimulated is not good for me. It's not the way I learn.  I need new things coming at me to learn which causes the details of the older tasks to fall in line. I had a gut feeling that this is not something the woman would be able to grasp, understand or agree to, so I just kept my head down, my mouth shut (yes, I can do that!) and did my best within the boredom I was living. Perhaps I was wrong and she would have tried out my method of learning. I'll never know. Not communicating my learning style was, in my opinion, my only failure there. 

     When I was let go, I had a sinking sense of failure and immediately started beating myself up. It's not easy to hear that you're not working out. The truth is that I was indeed missing details; details that she put far too much importance on as they really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. She could only see things her way and believed that she had worked out every kink in their process. 

    In the end and with a few days to process it, I can say that this loss is probably for the best for me personally as the job would never have been fulfilling.  Also, I feel quite sorry for the office manager.  She is the most emotionally and psychologically constipated person I have ever encountered. She is not comfortable in her skin or the world and hides from life by working too much. How sad that she is so uncomfortable; I even thought she may have Asperger's Syndrome.  It occurred to me that perhaps the dentist was being charitable in some way, employing his wife's sister and focusing her capabilities in a safe environment.  Of course, I could be completely wrong about her, but these were my observations and thoughts as I worked for her.
    At any rate, here I am back on the job market and in limbo once again. The silver lining to this is that the condo is gone along with all the bills associated with it. I have enough money to hold me over for some time without those expenses. It sure does put a kink in my plans for some purchases though.  I really need a new mattress. I was hoping to save for some camera equipment too.  Oh well. i twill have to wait.  At least that's what I'm telling myself.  The truth of the matter is I'm scared to death yet again that I will not find work. No matter how many skills I have it doesn't change my age or my weight and I can change only one of those.