What Direction is Forward?

Has anyone seen my Mojo?  My motivation?  My sense of being?  My purpose?

Normally I wouldn't share something so personal, something that exposes my weaknesses and vulnerabilities... but I'm having a bad day and I feel like I just need to get this out.

15 years ago I moved to Charlotte.  I started my career, experienced significant relationships, developed deep friendships, traveled, partied and created a very satisfied life... until recently.

I've been struggling...  for nearly two years I've been feeling lost.  Not constantly but consistently.

So much of my self, my confidence and purpose was wrapped up for so long in my career.  Since the layoff in early 2009 things changed.  Now that I am back at the same company that laid me off, I'm in a job I can't stand and that causes constant stress and anxiety.

While it hurts to admit it, many of my friends and I have grown apart, some have moved, I have changed.  While I see most of my friends regularly, it's not frequent.  A number of them are still into late nights of partying; many of them have husbands and children that keep them busy.  I find that I have far too many days that I spend alone... but I also know this is primarily self-imposed.  I'm not a ball of laughs to be around these days.

I'm also now about 50 lbs overweight, gained over the last 2 years.  I beat myself up over this constantly, every moment of every day.  As of yesterday I started working on this nutritionally but I am unmotivated to exercise.  Why?

I know what I need to do but I'm struggling with execution...  I need to find my sense of self, my motivation, my happiness.  I want to volunteer.  I need to get involved in church. I need to get into an exercise routine.  I need to proactively reach out to my friends.  I need to live my life purposefully, even while dealing with infertility (which only accentuates my problems).

And I worry about money.  I am tired of being 'house poor' (meaning having a mortgage too uncomfortably high for my comfort).  I want to sell my house but the economy will force a signifiant loss.  I do believe I could make up for it in my next, less expensive, house purchase.  I could actually buy a nice house and have NO MORTGAGE, rather than my current hefty mortgage.  The next question is WHERE would I buy my next house?

After nearly 20 years away from my hometown (I went to college in NC also) I have been thinking more and more about moving back.  This statement will absolutely SHOCK my family... I've not told them of these thoughts.

The reason why I seem to want to move back to my hometown is because of family.  My entire family is still in South Florida.  While I am not a fan of the HOT and HUMID Florida summers, in working to create my own little family, I'm realizing how important family is to me.  I want my child to be raised near family... I want to be near family... in order to do that I would need to move back to Florida.

My job, and many other opportunities at my company, allows me to work remotely.  With having little or no mortgage I can build up my savings again... and travel... and not be so uptight about money.  I could even request a role with less responsibility and, if that comes with less money, I could still live comfortably.

For the moment, I seem to be paralyzed with fear, anxiety and loneliness.  This too shall pass... but I need to move forward... and before I can do that I need to figure out what direction forward is?

*******
While I did pretty good over the holidays considering my IVF fail, I've been crying all day today.  My poor neighbor just came by and was subjected to my puffy, wet eyes.  I imagine much of this emotion I'm feeling is from coming off of 8 months of hormones.  This cycle is a forced break, which for the first time is fine with me.  It was expected that if my IVF failed I would have to take a couple of months off.  I have a meeting with my RE on January 17 to discuss next steps.

And in the meantime I'm going to figure out how to pick myself back up and start living again.