I damn near bottomed out last week. My physical energy stores were completely depleted by Wednesday evening, and my mental energy soon followed it out the door. I was pleading with myself to dig up the hidden reserves, the ones buried in a time capsule out back, just to make it to work on Thursday morning. I spent two days questioning all of my decisions. What had I gotten myself into? How was I going to handle that it cost this much money to get into real estate, and I still can't say with any certainty that I'll ever see a dime of that back? I had no way to predict that I would be laid low this badly, for this long, just as my career was in its infancy. I haven't had a paying job since I stopped being a test examiner in New Mexico in 2011. I spent all my time in South Carolina between being a volunteer and being an invalid. I pretended briefly three years ago that I could monetize this blog, but that dream was quickly destroyed before I ever saw a penny. In all those years, I didn't hold down a regular job, didn't try to tax myself mentally or physically more than I could handle (other than those days when I had to force myself to mow the lawn, before I knew I wasn't allowed in the sun like that). I've worried that I don't have it in me anymore to put in the time that it will take to do this job justice. I still have a great desire to succeed, but my confidence is shaken. When I was filling out the forms for the rheumatologist (who I still have not seen), I was startled to discover that lupus may in fact qualify as a disability for social security benefits. For a few hours, while I struggled at the nadir of my energy and pain tolerance, I seriously considered chucking it all and applying for disability.
But I didn't.
I dug deep, and I found the will to go on. I made myself rest, and I made myself cry. I got it out of my system. I did the necessary soul-searching, and I decided not to give up. I'm not ready to admit defeat before I really have a chance to take the field. I went searching for support, and I found it in the far reaches of the internet. I joined a lot of pages on Facebook, and found that those inspirational memes actually do work when they speak to someone who really needs to hear, "Hey, you survived today. Be proud of that." I had the opportunity to hold an open house on my boss' listing today, and I was thrilled to discover that yesterday's massage was good enough to allow me to function for the full three hours, plus the extra half hour at the end when the neighbor from across the street arrived just as I was flipping off the lights, to tell me the history of the house. I made it home, even though pulling up the yard signs in the sun and driving home with the sun on my arms made me feel extra wrung out. I managed to keep the pain at bay the entire time I was holding the house open, and was able to focus on everyone I spoke with, answering questions clearly and accurately. I even have a couple good leads to follow up with. And one woman made me feel like the queen of the world, filling out my feedback form to say: "What did you like best? The realtor." She meant me, and she made sure I understood that. I can do this. I'm not going to give up.
This is not to say giving up is always the wrong choice. While I was in the north, Mr Smith-Park was in the mountains, trying to take one of the new-to-us/used snow machines up to his mining claim. He made it part-way in, and the machine bogged down in deep snow. He turned around, got a running start at it, and the skis bogged down in the same place. So he put it back on the trailer and tried to hike in. Right around that same spot, he ended up hip-deep in snow, and he recognized the futility of trying to climb to his property today. He turned around and decided to let the snow melt for another week before he tries again. The takeaway lesson here is that giving up is not necessarily bad in all situations. Tactical retreats are fine, if you regroup and find a way to overcome the adversity. I need to remember that when I'm wiped out like I was on Thursday, that it's okay sometimes to spend a whole day in a bathrobe, recuperating and planning a new strategy for the next attempt. It worked this time, it will work again.
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