I don't talk about my real job here, you know, the one that actually pays the bills and puts a roof over our heads. I don't talk about it for a myriad of reasons. But here's the reality…for the last 10 months it has been unstable and scary. We have experienced large pay cuts and a variety of brick walls and seemingly insurmountable challenges. We have picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off every time we have been knocked down into the dirt. We have clung to small rays of hope, only to have them overshadowed by dark clouds over and over and over again. We have worked hard and are working even harder now to overcome all of the pitfalls that have plagued us, devoted to turning everything around.

I have tried so hard to be grateful and positive. I have tried so hard to embrace the fact that it is all still there.

But I am dangling by a thread.

On the good days, I envision that thread to be more of a bungee cord, stretching and tossing me around, but still somewhat solid. On the bad days, I envision that thread to be one that, as it stretches, becomes thinner and weaker with every tug.

I feel the fool for even talking about this. I feel guilty for complaining when I still have a job. But, at the end of the day, that does not diminish the constant stress and anxiety and fear. It just doesn't.

I try to extinguish those feelings in a variety of ways. Lately, those ways have not included anything of the creative variety, as by the time I have the time to go there, I am too damn tired. I want to stare off into space or dig my nose into a fluffy book. I feel uninspired and uninspiring. And, even those distractions can't erase the constant pang of anxiety that plagues my mid-section.

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When I opened this new online home back in August, I had illusions that it would be a much happier place. I wanted it to be a place where I would talk about my creative endeavors and how I was moving forward on that front. It would be a place where I could leave the emotional turmoil of the last few years behind and blaze a new path into the future.

Obviously, I knew in August that the "real job" was all kinds of challenging, for at that time I had just received the whopping pay cut that I referenced above and we were already months into the challenges. But still, I hoped with everything in my being that I would be able to juggle supplementing our income and my spirit with my creativity. I announced it here (the"leap", that is) and I started blazing the path with my Mom and friend Jen holding my hands.

And then, my energy levels depleted rapidly and I basically crashed and burned on that front.

Because here is the simple truth: I can not do it all. I can not work 50 hours a week, be a good mother, a decent wife, a budgetary goddess, a home organizer and a super creative jewelry maker, not to mention any kind of friend, daughter or acquaintance.  It is not physically, emotionally or mentally do-able.

I struggle with this now, and, as a result I don't blog nearly as much I would like to because I don't really have anything positive or illuminating to say. 

And there is SO much that I could not say here even if I wanted to. I can't talk about how my heart was breaking on a completely personal and different front last week. I can't talk about the in's and out's of the work challenges. I won't talk about my loved one's lives.

There is only so much conjuring of positive that I can do. There is only so much stretching that I can pull off.

And so I return to that redundant phrase that I use so often. "But it is real life."

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Today, I come here humbly…ever so humbly. And I thank you for reading my words. And I thank you for holding them. This is my truth right now. It is my reality. It is not pretty and it is not inspiring. It just is. And I had to get it out somewhere, truly I did.

Xo,

Jen