Housecarers.com

Monday 31 January 2011

Start-up Burn-out

Well, I now feel I can safely blog about it without feeling really, really bad. Or maybe I should say depressed, stressed, mad - you get the picture.  Somewhere around September and in the midst of the financial crisis at that time, I reached my burn-out point.  Just couldn't handle it anymore.  Something had to give.  I kept limping along though, thought the November break in Maz would fix me up, and then - another financial crisis.  And at Christmas.

The company Mike was contracting with in Sacramento was supposed to send the first deposit since he started working for them on Nov. 3 by bank transfer on Dec. 23.  Had it arrived on time, a lot of grief would have been avoided.  I would have been able to get presents for the guys at least.  But everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and it continued until well past the first week of January.  I won't go into detail, but things got royally screwed up (again) and I reached my breaking point.  Anger was my primary emotion.  Frustration was my secondary emotion.  Not just with whoever screwed up our receivables, but EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, including myself and Mike.  I informed him in no uncertain terms that I was not going to do this anymore, and software development were words NOT to be used around me.  I was done.  Financial uncertainty was to end, debts were to be brought under control, and "rocky" would be a mild word to describe the marriage.

In very short order, I hired a company to take over all finances for both companies and personal, packed up the condo and hired a moving company to come and put it all in storage, got some good drugs and therapy (which I was already in since September), bought a ticket to Mazatlan and left the cold and snowy city of Calgary, and hopefully much of the stress, behind me.

Thanks to my wonderful therapist, Ella, I have a mantra now - "I am peacefully present".   I use it whenever I notice that my mind is in stress-mode, worry-mode, thinking about the past or the future, not even in the same place as my body - its off somewhere else, somewhere that can't possibly be as beautiful and wonderful as Mazatlan.  So I bring it back - often.  And I'm feeling much, much better.

Mike will be here soon, for short visits until he can get some extended time off.  He keeps the software fires burning; it's a dream he can't let go -  but I'm not participating in that.  It will or it won't succeed.  Maybe I'll get some of that fire back at some point - I don't know.  For now, I am peacefully present.