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Life is like housework.  It never ends and you cannot possibly do it all at once.  It’s sometimes overwhelming, yet strangely satisfying once you get through it –even though you know it’s coming around again.

So, I am working toward my one-year clean birthday on Halloween.  In the interim, I am working on saving my job.  I was dumb enough to be honest when I met with my company’s medical director about my Fitness for Duty.  She asked how my IOP program was going and I mentioned that along with my frustrations about how disorganized the place is, and how I end up wasting valuable paid time away from work waiting for the doctor who is never on time, I also get frustrated with the fact that I have had positive drug tests there due to the fact that they insist on using cheap UA kits that make lots of their clients test positive for crazy things.  Well, she evidently thought that I was trying to hide something and has now gone on a witch hunt for my records to see if I was lying about my sobriety all this time.  I was supposed to report it any time I had a positive UA, and I did –to the company’s psychiatrist.  She has always supported me and took a reaming from the medical director for not informing her about these tests (they are both women).  As a result, now I have to chase down records to prove my innocence or else I could be suspended or terminated.  Unbelievable.  Lesson learned, it doesn’t always pay to be honest in recovery.  I know the truth.  I know that I haven’t used -other than the four prescriptions I was given over the past year for the dental nightmare that I am STILL dealing with.  If you are following my blog or reading this, please keep me in your thoughts and prayers about this issue.

Next issue, I approached my boss on Friday about supporting my endeavor to go after another degree –a Masters in Science in Addiction Counseling.  I have found a program that I really want to pursue, unfortunately, his response was not only a resounding “no” to having the company support the cost of my educational aspiration, but was also accompanied by an emphatic speech about how he had to pursue his education, without financial support and while being married and raising four kids…and “walked to school…in five feet of snow…uphill…both ways”…blah, blah, blah.  It was followed by a non sequitur about my performance and how it has suffered due to my absences for medical appointments.  I reaffirmed his statement, when he said he couldn’t legally judge my performance based on that issue, but it didn’t prevent him from basically informing me that my performance appraisal would be grim -yet again.  This could turn into a legal issue…we’ll see.  I have put up with crap from these people for several years now and frankly, I’m tired of it.  I have to make a decision about school -a commitment, but first, I have to have my finances in recovery on track.

There are more issues…well there are always more issues to deal with.

I have survived a lot in my life and whatever happens, I WILL SURVIVE!!!

Gloria Gaynor references aside,

Peace, love and blessings to all….

Lately I have really come to value spending time with my great-niece.  There are several important reasons for this.  First of all, she is a very polite and precocious 8-year-old, yet so little girlish and innocent at the same time.  I connect with that innocence and naivete.  I was that way as a little girl.  That’s the part of me that is trapped somewhere inside.  I never really let her grow up –through all the trauma and severity of humanity, that part of me remained altruistic and trusting.  I love the chance I get to be a kid with my niece; to play dollies and color in coloring books (I am doing more art therapy alone now too), to watch the Nutcracker together and play in the makeup, nail polish and fix each other’s hair.  We can even make crazy selfies.

Clearly, I am jonesing for some grandchildren, but alas my children are far away and not yet ready for that step in their lives.  This is a nice temporary fix; to spoil my niece and then send her home afterward.

But it’s got me to thinking…more than that…to reminiscing…memories of my childhood, squishing my toes in the cold wet sand at the beach, then digging them into the dry sand to get warm.  Napping on a blanket in the sun to the sound of the waves and the background noises of other kids playing, adults visiting, surfers whooping it up in the water.  I tried to just close my eyes last night and think of any pleasant memory.  I recalled how I felt the first time I remember going to Disneyland (1965), and the magic and wonder of the rides along with the smell of all the great vendor treats (cotton candy, carmelized applies and popcorn, hot dogs).  There were some great flashbacks running through my mind.  I had a LOT of amusement park reminiscences.  Summer school mornings, back-to-school shopping, roller skating down the steep street that faced our house, making jewelry out of colored wire scraps left on the ground while they were building our subdivision, going out for coffee and donuts with my mom when I was not in school, and going out for ice cream with our dad any time he could find to take us.

There’s a lot to our childhood –more than I could ever fit into a blog post.  What I believe, is that we need to fight to maintain that child within us.  Take time to “treat” ourselves, watch a Disney movie we loved when we were little, make chocolate chip cookies or a cake from scratch so you can lick the bowl.

Remember Good Night Moon?  Read a children’s book that you love.  Go for a walk under the stars tonight.  Try to focus on how that silence in the night made you feel as a child.  Then -get your favorite movie and a blankie and go snuggle down for the night!!!

It’s not all horrible at this age…rediscover the chasteness of your life.  Be…guilt-free.

Peace, love and blessings to all…

I have received my offer letter from the new contract company and thought I had signed it correctly but I got another one today and evidently I didn’t sign all the pages, so I first chose a correct signature and initials, then signed all the documents and thought when I clicked on the finish button that I was done. Now I am not sure since I didn’t automatically get an email with a copy of the letter and documents attached this time.

Anyway, an ex-supervisor told me today that the woman who has been bullying me for the last four years is getting promoted by my manager and getting more responsibility.

Yikes. You could probably see that “boy I am really f@#@ed now” Wile E Coyote look on my face. My jaw dropped and I felt sick.

I had better hurry up and get a plan for school going as soon as possible. The other bad news is that I think the medical director is on a weird witch Hunt to get rid of me.

Maybe I am being paranoid. In any case, it’s time to get control of my life and plan my exit strategy from the place I have worked at since 1990.

I promise to submit for jobs and contact schools TODAY. I CAN’T HELP OTHERS UNTIL I HELP MYSELF GET ANOTHER DEGREE AND A LICENSE TO PRACTICE FIRST.

I pray for the wisdom and guidance, and especially the resources!!!

Peace, love, and financial blessings to all….

In the NA program, we believe that “the therapeutic value of one Addict helping another is without parallel, for one Addict can best understand and help another.” I finally got to meet with the medical director today about closing my Fitness for Duty. I realize that we are understaffed in the counseling area both where I work and where I live.

The more aware I become, the more I realize that my recovery life is evolving as is my recovery dream.

I now want to go back to college and get an MS degree in Addiction Counseling.

I am looking at programs online and have found a couple that I am seriously considering.

The next step will be to find out if I can get enough financial assistance to cover it.

I will keep you posted on the progress I make. Feel free to post me suggestions or comments.

By the way, the most recent event leading me to make this decision, happened when I was at the local grocery store and ran into an old co-worker who shared that he has recently and secretly begun talking with a counselor over one hundred miles away about PTSD issues from over forty years ago and who was in real pain.

He thanked me for listening and although I didn’t do anything I was so moved by his sense of relief at finding anyone to listen that he inspired me to want to help more.

As I said I will keep you posted about this.

Peace, love and blessings….

Well, I finished my neuropsychological evaluation for my Fitness for Duty case and got the report.  I learned that for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV, my Current Full-Scale IQ is at the 92nd percentile.  Basically, I guess this means that I am NOT STUPID!  Boo-yah!  It also reveals from the Wechsler Memory Scale-IV that my verbal comprehension and Working Memory are both at the 98th percentile.  My overall cognitive function is excellent, however my processing speed has DECLINED to the 30th percentile.  The results show a decline in my visual memory function.  This means that if I think of my brain like a computer, things that I must concentrate on in a multi-tasking manner get jumbled.  There are reasons and causes for this.  It could be the decades of drug use; my age; and the fact that I am receiving large quantities of information all day long from my computer, my phone headset I am connected to from 8:15 – 5:45, the employees at my desk needing immediate assistance with various things and my four managers asking me questions and giving me instructions to do things.  There are ways I can work to cope with this until my processing improves.

One suggestion is that I work on eliminating the stress and anxiety that my COS and managers cause me.  I have been given suggestions to improve my self-confidence and self-esteem and how to continue setting firm boundaries.  Another, is that I can continue to use my lists and post-its and ask my colleagues to slow down while I get a notepad and write down/transcribe what they say to me.  I am not allowed recording equipment so all old-school manual tips and tricks.  I am also supposed to make sure that I UNPLUG from my headset and take a break at least twice a day if not more to give my brain a rest from work stuff altogether.

Some very nice verbiage came out of the evaluation report.  The psychological profile testing led to “patient does not have any personality disorder” and “patient is highly competent, diligent, conscientious and hard-working, open, trusting, honest, and more than capable of performing this job.”  DUH!!!

I have a very nice friend at the Occupational Medicine building who believes in me, and will do everything she can to help me get this FFD closed very soon.  I will be extremely relieved when it has all concluded.  I always feel so much better about myself after meeting with her.  I think it’s because with her and my therapist in Santa Fe, they treat me with respect and talk to me like a friend and not some neurotic.

I can share more about this experience later, but for those of you in recovery who have had to deal with this process due to your addiction, please share on this site what your experience has been like.  An employer cannot terminate you when you are in recovery or for the results of these types of medical evaluations.  I am learning a lot about that.

The bottom line is, as ex-junkies who are in recovery, and along with aging, we are going to experience some loss of memory function.  Can it be arrested?  Improved?  I am told that there are exercises up on the web that you can do (like puzzles and mini-memory-function tests) and suggestions for improving lifestyle too.

Read this article:

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-living/how-to-improve-your-memory.htm

Go check out mentalfloss.com and this website too:

https://www.memory-improvement-tips.com/brain-games.html

Sorry that my links are not working (just copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser)

I’ll have more on this topic as things progress for me.  Peace, love and brain function blessings to all….