Facing My Goliaths

This week/month has been rather trying, an understatement to say the least. I was put on a project at work, the person that used to handle the project was leaving and they needed someone to do it, so over the course of about a week he showed me how to manipulate the spreadsheets and put them in order.

I naively thought that I understood what to do, I was scared though that when the time came to do it I wouldn't be able to... and I wasn't, at first.

I had deadlines to meet, and I was told by my manager that she had confidence in me and I wanted to shake her and say "are you crazy woman? I haven't ever done this kind of thing before! I will mess it up and you will be disappointed and angry with me...!!"

Nevertheless she left me to scratch my head and sort it out, it was very frustrating... I had notes but for some reason they just didn't seem to fit any logical order, they were all bits and pieces to a puzzle that I was terrified of handling. So I kept asking her questions and she has been so busy that she's been giving me distracted half- hearted answers, I've figured out that she honestly thinks that she's helped even though I (and others) are still left feeling confused.

So, I just started opening spreadsheets and pulling reports. Then I randomly started formatting the reports like I had been shown... but the crux was that I needed this list of customers and their cancel dates and I had queries to pull to find them, I had had previous instruction, I had examples of past spreadsheets... but things just wouldn't work the tools that I was using to try and find the answers to my questions just wouldn't work for me... so I spent many nights and shed many tears sitting there sorting it all out.

Then there was the battle that I was waging in my mind about how much I hated all of it, how much I wished that I was doing something else, ANYTHING else. Why had I chosen accounting in the first place I HATED IT!! ARGH!!! ON the other hand I was arguing with myself trying to be more positive, trying to look at all of the ways that I was improving, trying to deal with the stress during the day with other people there who needed my help and at night when I was tired and just wanted to go home, especially when things were not working. Plus the fact that I really needed this job in the first place and how much I wanted to prove to the world that I would be a good worker and how I wanted to prove to myself as well that I could be competent... and how much I wanted to be able to know all of the things that I needed to know...

You know what, I never would have been able to learn as much as I have learned if I had had an easier time at this. I've found that to be true with everything in life... still, it is hard and I wish that I could just absorb all of the stuff I need to know and just be incredibly talented w/o the hard work... hmmm.... well, I guess I'll just have to survive the hard work... and maybe when I come out on the other side, even if I end up not wanting to do accounting in the future, I will be more talented for having faced and conquered the difficulties that I have had this past month/nay lifetime really... ;)

Hope you all are doing well...

SG

Heart Passage

Each day, I get up and go to work and work hard. I try not to complain though I do sometimes because it is hard. My manager is busy and it is hard to be forced to hammer out difficult things without someone there to tell you you're headed in the right direction.

I'm sad in some ways, and I push myself in others. Sad that each day I go into work, to grasp at this stuff called "Accounting" to do it and do it well means that I have to call on the reserves of determination that I have built up over many years of being determined. As if, through my own force of will I can learn and conquer this beast that looms in the distance called ignorance. I suppose I fear the unknown because if I fail, if I make a mistake then that will be like stepping off the road to security and happiness and I'm very scared of a future where I just can't cut it.

On the other hand I haven't come to grips with where I want my future to be. It has always been planned with my husband by my side... well that's what I wanted, that's what I thought. Though I feared being with him as well. He betrayed me very early on in our marriage and I was never able to really let that go, to believe that he was sincere when he said that he loved me. Things were difficult in other areas as well, yet he was my husband. I loved him. I forgave him, or tried to and vowed to move forward. At some point though I completely lost faith in things working for us and I tried to leave him thinking there was someone else that was better. Yet I couldn't follow through with that, I came back and I tried again and things were starting to feel alright, things were starting to work and I could just see in him this limitless potential and I wanted so much for him to reach it and I wanted us to be together as a family and make it in this world. All of my planning, all of my hopes resided in this.

Then it was all ruined, in one desperate  year of madness, betrayal and ultimate idiocy. Then is when I started to scream, then is when nothing that I have strived for in all of my life made sense anymore and I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to excel, it didn't matter anyway.

He was at my parents house tonight, it was my sons birthday on Wednesday so we held the party today. He brought his friends sons and refereed a game of hide and seek, laughing at how funny those kids were sneaking around, and my little daughter running away from the big kids. He's such a jerk, he wants me to take him back and with the passing of time tortures me because he hasn't taken the divorce education class for parents yet and so our divorce is stalled in the courts. After that, well, I shall have to see...

I Love Fall!

There is so much beauty in my mountainous Utah home; early dawn, awakening morning sunshine filtering over emerald mountain peaks and valleys; azure skies and crisp clean air. Little birds like to greet each other and peep as they hop in the grass looking for their breakfast.

I love it when it is stormy as well, roiling dark clouds with intermittent rain and sunshine, the dark gloaming in the streets, the fresh smell in the air. Splendid!

Then the glorious fall! How crisp the day's, how refreshing! For some reason during the first week of school you can simply feel the change in the air, it is less intense, so much more relaxed than summer. There is still some uncomfortable warmth but it isn't like the scorching heat of Summer. Each day the tips of the green leafed trees slowly take on different hues and die away, until one day you realize that the leaves have fallen and the musty smell of mulching leaves permeates the air and then one day the air holds winters bite and the season has turned again.

There is just something about the fall, I love fall!

SG