All of us has been taught valuable lessons from the Pandemic of 2020 and the stories will be told for generations to come.
Life is short, as I get older I find myself looking back on my life and realize on a deeper level that family is everything. I missed a lot as I put work first trying to make money to pay bills. Don't get me wrong, paying bills and daily living is important, we must pay our own way and be a productive part of society.
The sad part for me is that my husband and I have worked very hard our entire life and when the pandemic happened, we had the rug pulled out from under us and everything financially we have worked for, especially for retirement has been taken from us.
I'm tired and sometimes don't know if I have it in me to continue working so hard. Starting over is difficult, when your older and starting over, it is even more difficult. Good jobs are hard to come by and jobs with health benefits are even harder to come by. Now working difficult hours are expected and now we have to do it without health benefits.
Working as hard as we have we missed being with family, for important occasions and just being with them. I missed the last Thanksgiving in 2018 when my mother was alive. I'll never get that back. My job at Blue Nile, told me I had to work. I was afraid of loosing my job, so I cried through the whole shift and the supervisor on shift told me without any feeling, I should just leave, because this was obviously a job that didn't fit my lifestyle. Explain to me how being with family during the holidays is a life style. Even the customer's who called in asked why we were even there, most thought they'd get to leave a message for a callback. I politely would say, because as long as people called in on holidays, the company would remain open making us work.
Most people don't realize when they are home during the holidays, that corporations stay open, especially retail, and people have to work, because companies won't let their employees off because of the almighty dollar. Company's only look at their bottom line and forget about the people who they expect to work their awful hours. Most people who have to work those very difficult hours/ days/ nights, have husbands, wives, daughter, sons, mother's and father's and other family members. Why would companies expect their employees to miss important holidays and have to celebrate at a later date, if they even can that is not the actual holiday.
Being home during the pandemic and spending time with other family members has been an unexpected blessing, even though I had to quite my job because my husband was laid off from his job. It would have been difficult financially, but I should have quite the job at Blue Nile instead of trying to hang on because of a good paycheck. Companies like that are not flexible about taking time off.
I should have made the choice to leave it behind. I will never get that time back with my mother and my other family members.
The pandemic has forced us to slow down, to isolate and to spend time with family when we could. We got to know our family again, for us this has been a blessing. A blessing I don't want to let go.
I find myself at a retail job again and I truly resent this. I have to force myself to leave my home to make money so our bills can be paid. I swore I'd never let a job take me away from my family like it used to be.
I have changed and I don't know how much I can take if I can't take off when my family is here visiting, or we need to go be with family help them.
I didn't realize how tired I really am. Being forced to stay home has really magnified it for me and now that I have to work again, I don't want to go back to the way it was.
I pray to God constantly, for a miracle.
