With all ends come new beginnings

Last Thursday was my birthday. My thirty-second, actually. I had dinner plans with my family, more dinner plans with friends for the next day and a birthday party on Saturday. When I got called into the conference room at work by the office manager, I was wondering what was up because nobody had even said anything about it being my birthday.

"We're going to have to let you go," is what she told me. I'd been missing too much work for being sick and other problems related to changing my medications. I thought I had staved off the inevitable by trying harder to come in and working hard throughout the week. But, like I said, it was inevitable; but did it have to be on my birthday?

Talk about a huge letdown. Its been a few days: five, to be exact and I'm still reeling. Sure, I've been fired before, but I'd also had problems at work before because of my illness and my former employers had tried hard to work around my problems and help me keep my job because I had good personal relationships with my bosses. I was left wondering if I had been fired instead of worked with because they didn't like me as a person.

I'll never know and it really doesn't matter. I didn't like my job very much and only took it because it was available to me. My true passion isn't filing paperwork endlessly or scanning in documents for digital retrieval; its art. All kinds of beautiful, creative, expressive Art. The night of my birthday, a new job opportunity popped and, should I get it, it will afford me the opportunity to work with people I like in a creative environment, give me access to lots of fun raw materials and introduce me to creative people from all over Houston.

My interview is on Wednesday. I'll be crossing all my fingers and toes and pigtails until then.

In other news, I took an assemblage class at Texas Art Asylum with local artist, David Pilgrim on Saturday. I sure did need the pick-me-up. In three hours, David shared all his assemblage tips, tricks and techniques with a small class of students and I created this:

"Our Lady of Forgotten Mercies"

10"x10"x14"

You won't believe how fun and easy assemblage is! I went out that night and did a small round-up of bits and bobs to work with. Last night, I started my second assemblage ever. I think it turned out pretty neat. That will be a separate blog post for later this week (maybe even today).

If I was working day, I wouldn't have been able to stay up past 3am and create. I'm going to take advantage of this small bit of time to myself during the days and create, create, create!

If you lost your job, what is the first thing you would do to bring positive energy back to your life?