A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To WA

(This is going to be a bit of a long post, but I just need to write right now. This is an overview of what's been going on, leading up to me finding WA).

Yesterday (2/9) marked two years since my husband, Tom, asked me out on our first date. We'd known each other for years, and were friends. Honestly, I'd never given much thought to whether or not he could be a romantic possibility, he was so smart and awesome and way out of my league. However, after that first date, I found myself wondering why it had taken so long for us to get together. We fit together perfectly.

We got married last March, and it has been an insane year. About a month after we got married, I came down with Mono (this was my second round with it). It took me most of the summer to really recover. On top of that, both of us were working jobs we didn't really like, but we knew we needed the money so we just dug our heels in and focused on making it through each day.

At the beginning of November, Tom, got fired. He'd been there over ten years, and everyone who's heard the reason for the firing agrees that a poor management decision was made (even former co-workers of his think it was ridiculous). Without going into too many details, Tom was going above and beyond his job to meet customer's needs, and it was something that was outside of company policy guidelines. He was keeping customers happy, wasn't doing anything illegal or even unethical, and everyone in his store knew about what he was doing. However, someone from the corporate office caught wind of what was going on and asked Tom's manager to punish him. The manager thought firing Tom was the best solution. (I'm not bitter or annoyed about this at all...*growls in irritation*)

So, we headed into the holidays with only my income to keep us afloat. I was working an insanely stressful job, constantly having to do my supervisor's job (because she kept dumping her responsibilities on me), constantly having my schedule changed (on a day to day basis due to being short staffed), and I was starting to feel like I was losing my mind. It sucked.

Tom got hired to a new job at the end of December, and we discovered that if we didn't change our lifestyle (we're both homebodies, our biggest expenses involve dairy queen and Netflix), we could actually make it solely on his income. Sure things would be tight, but not anymore than they had been while just trying to make it on my barely-over-minimum wage paychecks. After a lot of talk, we came to the conclusion that for my own emotional and physical health, I needed to quit my job. (Due to stress, I had reached a point where I was having nightmares every night, and when I woke up every morning I was in hysterics).

It took me a few weeks to build up the courage, but finally on 1/21 I turned in my 2-weeks notice. It was beautifully written notice. I didn't lie, I didn't exaggerate, and I was quite kind. Turning that notice in was awful. I'm very non-confrontational, and I don't like feeling like I'm letting people down (which is a large part of why things had gotten so nightmarish for me). The worst part? My boss refused to accept my notice.

I didn't even know that possible. She spent the next few days constantly badgering me to tell her that I wasn't really going to quit.

I ended up reaching out to the HR lady. Which was a huge mistake. She refused to accept that I was quitting, and when I held firm she got super angry with me. After that meeting with HR, I was completely done.

I walked out of work on 1/26 and didn't look back. It went against everything I believed was right to do, but I had tried to do things the right way. The non-burn-bridges way, and had been met with disrespect and anger at every turn. I'm not proud of this, but I honestly was out of options. I was under no contract to stay.

I'm sure that people reading this are probably wondering if I'm just a drama queen. I'm really not, just had reached an impasse and couldn't see any other option.

Life has become a bit slower paced in the last two weeks, but I'm really not complaining.So, now I'm adjusting to being a stay-at-home spouse. Which is a good thing because our house is a giant mess. It needs so much help. Plus, I'm now available to be there if my mom needs me. Her health isn't good and my dad isn't always able to take off from work to be there with her on bad days.

I had heard of WA before, but was so busy I didn't have time to look into it. I'm actually glad I'm now here and working through the training. I'm learning so much. Plus, the community here has been absolutely phenomenal (in the day since I decided to jump on board).