2023 has been the year where not only did I hit rock bottom, but I found the basement.

What a year 2023 has been, there has been ups, but a lot more downs.

Before you continue reading please note the following:

For the love of all things unholy, note this is what I am going through. Please just keep your negative comments to yourself or just use this blog post as a topic for your shit talking night with your cat.

Anyways, it’s been a year, 2023 I will have to say has been by far one of the lowest points in my life. It has been the year I definitely will not forget. This year has been the year where I found the basement to rock bottom. This has been the year of tears that I’m sure I can fill an olympic size swimming pool.

The year started off well to be honest; I had a good paying job, freelance work, volunteering, working on my 6th Annual Birthday Toy Drive, Zoie turned 9, and it was going well. But, that didn’t stay for long.

This was the year I started to second guess my career choices and what I was doing with my life. What am I doing? 32, going to be 33 years old, and I haven’t achieved a single life goal. I love working in marketing and advertising, however, web development is no longer my passion. I’ve been feeling burn out, and my heart just hasn’t been into it.

I started with my therapist to try and make a goal list for the year. Try and figure out what I really want to do with my life, not just be a shell of a human. Actually figure out what I really want to do with my life. It started to feel like a mid-life crisis to be honest, like I woke up and it was like what the hell is going on. This isn’t where I wanted to be at in my life.

Yes, again don’t get me wrong at the time; I had a place to live, for the most part healthily, a healthy child, supportive friends, car, and a job. But, why wasn’t I not happy with my life? I honestly can’t tell you. I just felt (and still do) like I have not done anything with my 32 years on this earth. But, what do I want to do? I couldn’t figure that out.

Then in March my mom passed away. Before you get all “oh so sorry” please don’t be. We were not close, we haven’t talked in 7+ years. To be honest the world is a much better place. You can tell me I am heartless, that is fine. I took two weeks of bereavement leave, not to grieve her loss, but to start coping with the fact she is gone and I no longer have to live in fear she’s going to just show up at my house. For years I was terrified she’d fine dout where I lived and just show up, and either be verbally or physically abusive.

When people look back on their childhood they have great memories of their mom. I however do not have warm and fuzzy memories of my mom. She struggled a lot with her own mental illness, but that is not a real excuse. Bad things can happen to you in any part of your life, I 100% understand that. However, you cannot take that out on other people, especially your children. You have to get help!

I never asked to be here, no one did. The amount of trauma that women put me and so many others through could fill multiple books to fill a library. Have you ever had to kneel on rice as a punishment? Have you ever had a TV thrown at you for not remembering to turn it off? Have you ever had every dish in a the cabinet thrown at you because you left a spec of food on a dish, one dish out of a whole meals worth of dishes? Have you ever had your shoulder dislocated because your mom pushed you through a door?

Don’t get me wrong, I know the 90s were a wild time for parents, and it was like the wild west. But, yea no, you don’t treat anyone that way, especially children. The amount of therapy I have had to go through for years has been interesting. For the the rest of my life I’ll need to go to therapy, for the rest of my life I will jump when I hear loud sounds, for the rest of my life I will probably just shut down when someone yells at me, and for the rest of my life I’ll be anxious to do something wrong.

But after her passing, things starting to get interesting. My nightmares and night terrors started to get worse, waking up screaming remembering incidents I blocked out. While talking with my cousins and other family friends I started asking question, because at first I started thinking I was going crazy and what I was dreaming wasn’t real. No, I was not making up dreams, these things did happen and much more.

I started going to therapy more, opening more about what had happened. I started actually coping, and really fixing myself. When I was told this was going to only be the beginning of my healing journey and I was going to probably fall apart, I didn’t listen.

To be honest, I went to therapy, but wasn’t really giving it 100%. I decided to focus on my side projects; the Birthday Toy Drive and starting my club Not Another Club. I was not giving it my all at work, and it started to show.

Through all of this I will say I heavily slowed my drinking down. Now, I didn’t stop drinking, but it wasn’t my everyday beer drinking, or 4 or 5 on a Friday night. It started being 1 or 2 a week, I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. I did start eating more CBD gummies. Not a lot, just to relax and get my brain not to be 10 train of thoughts at once. But, even then I wasn’t eating gummies all the time. I was just taking my Zoloft and raw dogging life.

Then one day before the end of the year I was like I’m just going to run up my credit card and figure it out later. We went on multiple trips, hosted a party at Sandcastle Waterpark, went to Hershey Park twice, once with a cabana, and I bought everything. I learned shopping is my own form of self medicating, and just trying to avoid what’s going on in my life. Gift giving is my form of showing my love for others.

This is not healthy. You need to actually address your issues, not swipe your credit card and everything will go away, that’s not how it works. However, I thought it was how I was going to work. What could go wrong.

In July I turned 33, and hosted one of the best Birthday Toy Drive I have ever had. With support from several friends, and businesses. I really couldn’t ask for a better year, but I still felt it wasn’t good enough and started feeling depressed about my failure. I really like to set unrealistic goals for myself, another thing I’ve been working through in therapy.

Not only was a bummed about my Birthday Toy Drive, it was also my last year with AAF Pittsburgh specifically Ad 2 Pittsburgh. Which if you’ve been following or know me in real life you know I’ve been giving my everything to this organization. But 33 means you have to go to the big kids table, no longer working with Ad 2. This really got me down in the dumps, I was no longer needed and I did not achieve anything with my 8+ years in the organization.

As 2023 kept going, the more I realized I have not achieved anything worth wild. If I dropped dead tomorrow I couldn’t think of a single thing I would really be remembered for. I didn’t help anyone, all the volunteer work I did wasn’t notworty, my web development work wasn’t great, and I was like what the hell am I doing with my life.

August rolled around and I decided it was time to start a networking club. Not Another Club had its first event Have We Met? and it was great! One of my best friends attended, and it was a hit. At that event, which was Thursday evening, I had stated I loved the company I worked for, but I was not feeling being a web developer anymore. It was no longer fulfilling my life other than a paycheck. I don’t want to be one of those people, I don’t want to just work a job for a paycheck. I want my work to be fulfilling and helpful.

The very next day I was let go from Pixelsmith. This life event was the first domino to fall to start the series of other dominos to fall, and my life to fall apart. Again, I love Pixelsmith it is an amazing company that does great work, I have no bad things to say.

I filed for unemployment, however, that did not go as planned. They had no record of me working for two years. After three weeks, they finally found the information from the state of Minnesota, which then we were trying to figure out getting the funds from the state of Minnesota. As I’m writing this it has been 7 weeks fighting with unemployment, reaching out EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Not only did I file for unemployment, I updated my website, I updated my resume, and I started applying for jobs. I did land another job quickly, which should have been a red flag. It was way too good to be true. I still continued to apply for jobs, because I felt off about the job. I was 100% right, the first day I was told as of 2024 I would have to move to Florida, the job would no longer be 100% remote, instead hybrid. The very first interview, and interviews after that I stated I lived in PA and I would need to continue to be remote. They said they understood, obviously not.

As this was all going on I was trying to figure out how to not get evicted, have my car repossessed again, pay my utilities, and just keep everything going in my life. I really didn’t realize how hard life would get.

I started reaching out to non-profits to get help to pay for rent, and utilities. Because at this point I was going to be behind in my rent, my electric bill was $400 due to an issue with a 3rd party vendor, my phone was going to shut off, and I was going to lose my car insurance. Hot mess was the nicest way to put it.

I found B.R.I.D.G.E People here in Pittsburgh, they helped me get my electric paid with Dollar Energy. However, I could not get help from anyone else or help with any other utilities. According to a lot of non-profits and church I reached out to “I made too much money” one organization said I made $146 more than I was allowed too. Even though I had and still have zero income coming I was told I made too much. They told me I needed to use my savings….

The little bit of savings I did have went to pay utilities, pay for groceries and by middle of October the money was gone. All the freelance work I had coming in was going right to also pay utilities. My last paycheck on October 13th went to pay rent, and my car payment. It was gone.

The whole time I was applying for jobs, by the middle of October I had applied for over 300 jobs; from LinkedIn, Indeed, Google Jobs, Dice, Monster, etc. By the end of October I had applied to over 450+ jobs. 1 in 30 jobs would responses like “The team was impressed with your background and skills; however, after careful consideration they have decided to move forward with other candidates who we believe are better aligned for the role at this time.” The remainder, just haven’t even responded.

I know that Facebook laid off 10,600 people, actually 300,000+ people in have been laid off in the tech industry in 2023. It was and has been extremely defeating. Knowing that no matter how great my resume is, how many skills I have, I am not even good enough for a job.

I started reaching out to my LinkedIn connections, emailing everyone I knew for work. I’ve started reaching out to agencies, small businesses, large businesses, literally everyone stating I was willing to take a paycut for a job or even freelance work to get by.

Slowly starting getting small freelance projects to help bring a little money in, not enough to pay rent. I was able to defer my car payment, able to sell several unused items in our house for money for things we needed. I was able to talk to my landlord and get things put off until I could get on my feet.

Now that November is here, I look back at how low I have fallen. I’m back to where I was when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how many times we had our electric shut off, water shut off. Thankfully I’ve learned from those situations, and we can survive. I know how to make healthy meals out of anything, and make homemade things like pasta and bread.

Through this whole thing my support system has been extremely helpful. Offering places to live, places to store our belonging, offering to share my work and resume to get freelance or an interview. But really just offering support to remind me it is going to be okay. Listening when I am at my all time low, and just want to cry my eyes out.

My support group is in the same sinking boat as me, struggling to pay bills and afford groceries. With inflation, the bad job market, and just everything going on in the world — it’s not great for anyone. All we can do is support each other in the rock bottom basement. We have each other, and when things start to look up we’ll continue to have each other.

In the end, as I’ve sat in this basement I’ve learned a several things.

First, the people you have by your side at rock bottom is important. They will still love you when you can’t love yourself. They will offer you anything they have, even if they can only offer a couch to sleep on. They will be there to just listen when your world is falling apart. They will still love you, even if you don’t have anything to provide.

Second, you cannot give up. You have to keep going, people rely on you. I never realized just how many people in my life really do rely on me, who really do care about me. Through this whole endeavor I’ve had several people show up and be there for Zoie and I for support.

Third, the J.K. Rollings quote “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” really hit home. Even though I no longer support Rollings, she did give me an outlet through Harry Potter, and if she didn’t hit rock bottom we wouldn’t have the story.

Rock bottom has been the place I have been able to weed out my friends, it’s the place where I have been able to lean on the the family I have made myself. It will be the place where I build the foundation to build a better life, where I will find my purpose. I will continue to apply for jobs, I will continue to reach out to find work, and I will find the money to pay for the things I need to.

Because even though I am mentally and physically exhausted, I refuse to give up. Again, I know I could have it much worse, trust me I know. I will find my purpose in 2024, I will get my life back on track and figure out exactly what I want to be when I grow up.

For right now, I’ll sit in this basement and continue to work on who I am as a person, heal from what life has thrown at me, and become a better person. With all that being said I’d like to ask you as a reader, if you have any leads for freelance work or a full time position please feel free to comment below or shoot me a message. I’d greatly appreciate any leads.

Lastly, if you’re reading this and you are part of my support system, thank you for all you’ve done. I greatly appreciate you being here, I know I’ve probably already told you 90 billion times, but it’s nice to be cared for. Thank you for loving me when I have been so unlovable.

Thank you for sticking to the end. Now go shit talk with your cat.

HERS