one.one.twenty-four.

Try not to make it too seasonal…

I have no intention to make this a daily blog, but I also want to avoid the chronic sugar-coated posts like I do on social media. This space is my vacation from all of the filters and music used to dull the true nature of my mental/emotional and physical health. I’m a raw, vulnerable up-right and walking open wound. Might as well get some of these thoughts flowing from my ears onto a space and into a place where it can be more useful. Either as a lantern or a roadmap for others.

I’ve never seen myself as a visionary nor a trend-setter. But as I’ve been told, maybe more so in a toxic-work/life balance, I’m a “natural-born leader.” pssssh sure thing, bud. I’ll do that work for you, while you underpay and under-appreciate my skillset. Jerk-off.

I find myself at the end of 2023 for the second-time unemployed, first time by the hand of grace (?) but mostly burnout.

The first time I had ever been completely unemployed was, like most, March 13, 2020. I’ll never forget it for so many reasons, but just to name a few:

• my best friend from work, Emily, had moved back home to MN and just had her first-born son. Lou.

• I had just spent 4 days in Puerto Morelos with the broads - my group of girlfriends who are now either owning & running their own business or they are running a business like the boss they always have been. I met all these women while working in the service industry, either as their barista, bartender, server or fellow manager.

• I was in the CUN airport, at our gate to return home to OMA, when my employers texted that I wouldn’t have a job to come home to. And on Monday, two days away, I would have to sign up for unemployment.

March 2020 was a gut-punch for us all. I’ll never say I had it worse-off than anyone. But ufff, did it hurt. I had just secured a management position at a business I could see myself dying in, if not at least flourishing in and ultimately living out my dreams: Lola’s Cafe in the Dundee Filmstreams combined my insatiable passion for good coffee, comfort food, and clean operations. My friends worked with me or visited me often enough to make it feel less like a workplace and more like a comfortable hospice. I would’ve died there happily.

I’ve never not had a job, most times I had two. I never applied to work where I did - I was either grand-fathered in or referred by friends, family, etc. I knew I had reached my pinnacle in the industry, in Omaha at least.

Too bad Omaha will always be home but not where I live. I knew the gravitational pull to MN would happen sooner rather than later. I just didn’t expect the pull to be so strong in 2020.

In October, my hypochondriac older brother came to visit us in OMA. I thought this very odd: a last-minute decision to come see how we’re all doing in the midst of a pandemic. I’m always happy to be with my brother, so I didn’t hyper focus on the reason for his visit. And definitely didn’t see it coming when he slid a sonogram with two embryos across out patio table in our backyard.

He and my sister-in-law were pregnant with twins via a Madison, WI triathlete, middle school teacher surrogate. I had no idea they were even trying, let alone the horrors Anne experienced in trying to get pregnant as a 40-year-old woman. She struggled in ways I’ll never know, a lot of in silence.

But that was it! That was the green light Alex and I were wanting from the universe to get us to move from OMA to Minnesota. We had visited some friends last fall and stayed in their cabin in Lutsen. Since then we were looking for any excuse to move to the north shore of Lake Superior. Having only driven through, stopping at the co-op and smokehouse sandwich shot, we landed on Duluth being our new place of residence.

Duluth had a lot of the comforts of a home we longed for: location near freshwater, a more temperate climate, nearness to big cities, all while still being a modest and small town. The decision to put our house on the market and move came swiftly - and thus we became Duluthians 1/1/21.

We’ll unpack more on how that moved affected me, with emphasis on the expediency and little-to-no time processing the physical move with the mental and emotional trauma in mind. For lack of better phrasing…

I don’t want this post to be a Spotify Wrapped entry. Punctuality has always been my strong-suit. I’m learning that timing really is everything. And time is precious, invaluable, and fleeting. Gotta make good time. Always.