Overwhelming Times

Forced to move

The last month or so has seen a couple major changes in my life. Both good and bad, depending on your perspective. A couple months ago, I was informed me and my family would have to move out of your house. It's a rental. Not for anything I did, the landlord's son got married and they decided to give them the house.

I was slightly pissed off at first. To be honest, a little more than slightly pissed off. When I was informed that we had to move out, I technically did not have a job. You can't really rent a house with no job and no income. That was the main source of my stress. I was feverishly looking for any kind of job where I could afford to move into a new house that was around the same price. I found out that finding a place would not be too difficult.

We started looking at the selection of houses, and found a pretty good supply of rentals near our area and around the same price. That wasn't the problem. The problem was finding work that I can actually do. My disability prevents me from doing many different jobs.

This was a pretty low point for me. But, I do not give up that easily. I searched and searched, and found a job. It wasn't a great job, the pay was not very good, and the hours were even worse. But I had to take what I could get. It was a job that would allow me to put it on a rental application. I was ready to move forward with finding a new house.

The surprising but happy part

In 2022, I had applied for many different government jobs, city, state, and federal ones. After not getting any of the jobs I applied for, I stopped applying for government jobs. Since I was in desperation mode looking for work, I applied for a few more government jobs.

The day after I accepted the other job, I received an unexpected email from the State of Arizona saying that they wanted to offer me a job. This is more of a career type of job with a bright future for me. I could not believe it. My luck has historically been pretty bad in this area. My confidence had been deteriorating, my self-esteem had been deteriorating, it was a pretty depressing time.

My family life has been going great, everything else was pretty depressing. Did I celebrate when I got the email? Of course not. I would not be happy until I got the final offer letter and when I started working. I was skeptical about everything because it quite often seems like my luck would run out.

With the news of this job though, we started looking at houses. My biggest worry was that I would need a few months of work history before applying for houses. Along with that, every application costs money, so I had to be careful how many houses I applied for. If I applied for 10 houses, it would have cost around $1000.

We looked at only 4 houses and I applied for 2 of them. One was a house that we really wanted. I ended up getting approved for the house we liked the most. Why didn't we wait until we saw some other houses? Because we only had a very limited amount of time to move and I did not want to risk not finding a good house at some later date. I frankly did not have that luxury.

I applied for the house using my new State job as one income source. I am still getting my disability money too, so that helped. I would say that WE waited patiently for an answer, but I was the only one that was really worried. After a few tense days, I was approved for the house.

The tense part

The tense part was that I had to start my new job on April 3rd. I had to start moving out that same weekend. I would not be in town during the week because of my training. So we started moving over the weekend. I'm in training, so we will finish the move the next weekend. The added bonus? The next weekend is Easter. I have a young son so Easter is important to him. I want to be able to give him a good Easter even if we're in the middle of moving.

Does it cut back our moving time? Yes, but it is worth it. The old house must be cleaned, I'll still be in training, finding time for everything is a difficult task for me. What must be done will be done. I really have no idea the next time I will be able to sleep in. I DO think about my sleeping in time. Call me selfish if you want, but I need it.

Too many things happening at once is pretty difficult for me to juggle, especially big life changes. I think most people get overwhelmed when too many life changes happen at once.

Getting through tough times is what I do. I have been in training for work only a couple of days, but this career move is right for me. Life is busy right now, but in the long run, these are all positive life changes. I look at them as opportunities and new life experiences to learn from. No matter what goes on, I get through it because I have strong support around me to keep me going. Whatever challenge comes next, I will conquer that challenge too.