This Time Last Year

Grad school starts again for me on Tuesday. This time last year, my work life started to fall apart. I worked for someone very unethical, in a terrible environment, but I was good at my job and proud of the work I did in spite of this. I managed for a year. A year in which I was increasingly depressed, but still, I hung in there. 

I started thinking about other things I wanted to do during that year, including my long-time dream of writing. I realized in working in that awful place that I wanted most of all to be a writer, to make that my livelihood. So I started working on that, started tackling smaller projects, sketched out a novel that had been in my mind for awhile, and made myself a writing schedule that would allow me to finish my book in one year while I also worked a demanding, draining full-time job (that I hated) and worked on my Master's degree. I even started my novel.

Then in August 2014, my work situation spun out of control. I was depressed but I was also angry that people expected me to accept abuse at my job. I planned to quit and talked to a higher up about it, and was, not surprisingly, offered a transfer. I took it and I still work at the site I transferred to. I love where I work now. There are some deep frustrations and challenges, but I respect my boss, love my coworkers, and think the work I do is interesting and worthwhile. 

But changing jobs, plus the emotional toll that the situation took on me, ate up my energy for a long time. I concentrated on getting better and getting a handle on my new job (which is quite different from my old) for months. Plus, I was still in grad school. I stopped writing. I pulled it together, but it was hard.

Eventually I started writing again. I got on my feet at work. I got help and I got better. I got a break from school and finished my novel. Now, coming up on the anniversary of everything falling apart, I feel a little raw. I feel scared. Not because I think my boss will suddenly become my previous boss, but just because things are about to change, and I'm about to start my last year of grad school, and it might all be too much. I finally got into the groove of writing again, of waking up at 6 to write 1000 words before my wife wakes up and we need to start our days. What if I have to stop writing again?

Also, being told all those horrible things I was told, I carried that for a long time. I want to let that go finally. I'm grateful that having a terrible job reminded me that I want to write. I'd like to keep just that--the commitment to writing--without the other baggage being so heavy.