Curve Balls by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Life has a way of throwing curveballs.

Right now, those curveballs are kicking my you know what.

I haven’t been able to work for the last eight years because of my heart condition, the problem is, in the twenty-six years before that, I only had one job, and it only lasted six weeks, about all I could handle of it. (It stressed me out.)

Yeah, I wasn’t handling stress well before I was told to avoid it because of my heart.

Now I need a job.

Problem one, my doctor said I can only work part-time.

Problem two, aside from my CHF, I also have flat feet and asthma and am obese. I can’t stand long or walk far without one of those things causing problems.

Problem three is of course my work history, totally nonexistent for more than two decades of my adult life and well, what skills I did have thirty-four years ago, I can no longer use, because, well I am now physically incapable of doing custodial work.

My skill set these days is more suited for an office, but well, I can’t type fast enough to be considered a proficient secretary, and while I know MS Word, I do not know MS Office. I’ve never even managed to figure out Excel.

And then there is the whole being on the spectrum thing. I’m just having trouble getting everything done I need to do, and my to-do list keeps getting longer, while I sit around trying to decide what is most important.

I have honestly always had trouble prioritizing and now that I don’t have anyone around to keep me on track.

I miss Tom!

Of course, if Tom were still alive, I wouldn’t be in this boat, since while he was in my life, I mostly didn’t have to work, and for that one anomaly I found a solution that didn’t require me to work after I quit.

Then again, part of the stress of that job was transportation since my job was in the completely opposite direction of Tom’s job at the time and we only had one car. Let alone that we were living clear out in the country.

But it doesn’t change that I have to avoid stress.

How do you avoid stress in a work situation?

I mean really. Work is stressful. Finding a job is stressful, particularly during this pandemic while so much is closed. I find it especially hard to trust all these online job sites, and I’m getting tired of having to navigate through what is essentially ads without even finding a real job offer.

I want to talk to a real person!

And I still need to improve my typing speed. You would think with all the typing I do that I would be pretty fast, but I’m not. Just ask any of my friends I’ve been in word sprints with. I’m always last, period.

My average is twenty-five words per minute and secretaries need to type at least fifty. Yeah, I have a long way to go.

What really bugs me, is I did take typing in high school, and to pass that class you needed a net word count of sixty per minute. I did pass the class, but somewhere in the years where I didn’t have a typewriter available to me, my speed slowed down considerably, and I haven’t been able to pick it up.

Maybe more word sprints would help. I have no idea.

All I know is, I need to try harder.

I need to do more than just set goals, I need to set daily goals and I need someone I’m accountable to who will keep me on track.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set a list of goals for a day, and by the end of the day, I didn’t get any of it done, or very little, and it doesn’t faze me. Now if there is someone expecting me to do something by a certain time and date, by golly I’m going to get it done.

Too bad, I have no one making sure I get my everyday chores like dishes, laundry, sweeping, mopping, changing the litter box done.

The only chore Patches yells at me about is feeding him. So, he isn’t much help on the rest. In fact, he gets in the way when I try to do them.

I’m trying to do laundry; he’s playing in the laundry baskets.

I’m trying to do dishes; he’s climbing all around the sink.

I’m trying to sweep; he’s either attacking the broom or chasing the dirt away from the broom!

At least mopping and vacuuming scare him away, but he also gets in my way when I’m trying to dust!

Happy writing, everyone!