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Archive for January, 2014

2014-My Year of New Beginnings

January 1st, 2014 at 10:34 pm

When one door closes, another opens.

2013 was my transitional year, a year during which some doors closed.

2014 thus is to be my year of new beginnings, I hope.

Two big doors closed, or mostly so, during 2013.

The first had to do with my career. I started the year having been at a temp job for 7 months, hoping that it would turn permanent, which would have provided a nice salary and benefits and reasonably good job security and interesting enough work. This was not to be.

But ultimately I realized that this was a silver lining: while the job was interesting enough, it wasn't one I was passionate about, and also, working at a foundry greatly exacerbated my asthma.

By year's end I left the company and found a tax season position at a CPA firm. Although I had interviewed for four permanent jobs, I didn't land any of those, losing out in each case to someone coming directly from a CPA firm and with a bit more experience in public. I'm hoping that, with one more busy season under my belt and the CPA and EA in hand (EA arrived in December and I expect the CPA to be final in January) and a CPA firm back atop my resume, that I'll finally get the permanent job I seek.

And a job in public accounting, especially working with individuals and small businesses, will give me more of a chance to use what I know about psychology in my accounting career and thus will be more personally satisfying.

The second door that is closing in the near future is the door on my dear Teddy cat's life. He was diagnosed over two years ago as being in Stage Four kidney failure and given a prognosis then of 6 months to a year. He was started on a medication a few months in that greatly improved his condition, but he developed antibodies to that this past summer and had to be taken off of it. He stayed stable through the summer (when he was spending lots of time outdoors), but as the weather cooled, he began to fade. He has been going downhill quite rapidly since Thanksgiving and is now in the phase where every day I ask myself: is he eating? can I get him to purr? is he suffering? and I expect to lose him in the next week or so....there are no overt signs that he is suffering but his purrs are getting quite rare.

When he passes, this ends a nearly five year "hospice" period that started in August 2009 when my Henry Hound was diagnosed with cancer. I lost Henry in 2010, my mother in 2011, my Phoebe cat in 2012, and Teddy any day now.

It will be a relief to have this dark period of continual losses behind me.

Other than trips out to California during my mother's illness and passing and one long weekend back in 2011 to attend a family wedding, I have done no traveling in that period beyond a couple of daytrips each year that took me maybe 75 miles from home.

So after Teddy passes, I'll look forward to being able to do a little traveling again, and later in the year, after busy season, I'll start another "fur family," most likely with a pair of bonded cats. (Another basset hound, while much desired, is not practical at this point and will have to wait.

So, two doors pretty much closed in 2013, but in 2014 I hope to open the door to a full-time job with benefits and a new fur family and the chance to travel and expand my perspective, which has gotten overly narrowed due to all the crises on the home front.

Despite my poor kitty's imminent demise, I start this year feeling more optimistic and hopeful than I have in years.