Big finish

So it occurred to me tonight, looking up at the almost-full moon, that I have just, like, today, come out of a bad period in my life that lasted a really, really fucking long time. And now I'm out of it, but only just.

Here are the things, in chronological order:

- Got retrenched from my dot-com job
- Worked out full-time fiction writing wasn't the life for me, did the MBA, but had to move house in between semesters 1 and 2 and never did really get rested from it (the time that should have been rest was the world's worst, horrible nightmare of a beach Christmas with the inlaws - I still have a scar on my leg from it that comes up from time to time in periods of stress).
- Took 18 months to find a new job
- Which took such a toll on my self-esteem that my long-term partner left me
- just as I ran out of money
- Did get a new job, a great job, and a new circle of friends of sorts in Sydney, but the circle included some very crazy people, and it wasn't really nurturing me
- Decided to move back to the US, just before which spending the most - what - not hardest but densely packed with work, the logistically most difficult and consuming two weeks of my life.
- Had no idea the magnitude of the logistics and culture shock of moving countries
- coincidentally just in time for the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in 100 years
- and started a very challenging job in a not very supportive or nurturing work environment
- Then just as I was starting to get the hang of the job and rack up some successes, they restructured us and gave me a really boring and unstrategic job, and then yelled at me when I couldn't describe it or the value it was adding. Gave my dream job to someone else.
- Then announced they were restructuring us again, and downsizing, but wouldn't tell us who was staying or going for months and months.
- And meanwhile a complete madman was in charge and I got yelled at by him and then yelled at about it by my acting boss. So I didn't want to stay working there anyway.
- (But didn't want to move because I had started playing guitar and it had become the chief love and obsession and joy and preoccupation of my life. And I had found the perfect, ideal, perfectly suited teacher, and even though he might be leaving town in a year to go to grad school, I needed at least that one more year from him.)
- (And then that same teacher told me about an opportunity to perform in front of people, which it turns out was to be on the Saturday after the Monday when we would find out if we still had jobs or not.)
- (And my sister had already planned to come visit, arriving on the Friday night just before the Saturday gig.)

So in the last two weeks, I found out I still have a job and don't have to move, I did my first public performance of guitar (and got some lovely and wonderful feedback for it), and I had a great, event-packed, wonderful, fun, Wisconsiny visit with my sister.

She went back on Sunday night. Yesterday and today were the first official days working in the new structure in my new role. And tonight was the first post-gig lesson, where I could review the performance but also get back to the curriculum, and start to play some other songs.

I brought the guitar back home and then went out again and bought myself things - two expensive bottles of Pinot Noir recommended by a huge afficionado who works at the wine shop nearby; a burger and onion rings for dinner; pens and post-its and a file to keep my guitar books and notes in. I was walking with the purchases back out to my car under a midnight-blue sky (although it was 9pm, not midnight), and looked up at the nearly full moon, and thought, I've just come out of a really difficult period of my life. And thought back to how long it's been difficult, and got back to the start of the list above - October 2001.

Eight years. And I've just come out of it, just tonight. Under this blue sky and this white moon, with a beautiful pack of new pens, and guitar ambitions to pursue. But the ambitions sort of took a back seat, tonight. I guess what I felt was calm. The bad period, eight solid years of bad period, is over, just over, just tonight.