You should be careful what you wish for

Depression told me I would love early retirement.

My plan for the past 30 years was to work until I was 70 ½, before retiring. Full social security benefits, a chance to add some extra cushion to my 401K and staying involved with day to day life outside of the house. This all seemed good and doable.

About 18 months ago, depression saw how good things were going.

It decided that I needed to retire early, that I needed to focus on my side business, and that I needed to be removed from day to day contact with people outside of my home office. At the time, I was still listening to depression, I had not faced it.

So, within a very, very short span of a few months, 30 years of planning went out the window and I retired.

Now don’t get me wrong, I make a good living from my side business when I focus on it. But depression not only had gotten me isolated from my renewable energy (the day to day interactions with people in a business setting), depression was distracting me from focusing on my side business.

The reason I was retiring early was to run my business from home, to make my own schedule, to work from anywhere. That what depression sold me. That was the picture I took away from my meetings with depression. That was what I expected to do.

The reality was depression wanted even more of my time.

Depression had in mind driving me into the abyss, by making it impossible to focus and work the new plan that I adopted after throwing away my much more thought out retirement plan that had taken 30 years to develop.

So, after hitting the wall a few months ago, I have been working to see what makes me happy, what is the best use of my time, and what can I do with where I am at today. After several attempts and lots of ideas from my new support groups, and others. I have gotten back on track.

I have come out of retirement and am back at a full-time job.

As I begin this new role, I am being very conscious of my self-care. I have my WRAP plan written out and others know the signs to look for in case things start to go sideways.

I’m going to end here today because it is time to get ready for work!