It's been a tough couple of months. Between the passing of Mark's cousin, the cancer diagnosis for my relative, and the untimely passing of my nephew, I want to just hit the reset button and go back to, say, March. I want a do-over for April through June.

It's gotten a bit tougher this week, with some entirely unexpected bad news coming from yet another direction. A 38-year-old woman, with whom I used to sing in the choir at my parish, passed away very suddenly over the weekend. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that news. I went to the funeral yesterday morning. I feel genuinely sorry for her parents and her boyfriend. My family only just went through an unexpected loss a couple weeks ago, so I can empathize with them if they're feeling blindsided.

It puts things in perspective... I'm expecting to be downsized out of one of my part-time positions any day now. They haven't said anything outright, but I can see how things are going and I know there are people who've been there way longer than I have. I'm really ticked, because I genuinely like this job, but the economy is what it is. But I'd be far more upset by this if I hadn't just had a crash course in what a REAL problem is. Being downsized is a loss, but it doesn't compare to losing human beings. It doesn't compare to looking at your relative's MRI results and seeing words like "malignant" and "cancer" and "non-resectable". So I'm trying to keep my head on straight and forge ahead. In the meantime, I'm going to continue working my rump off at that part-time job until they tell me to do otherwise. Maybe they'll be able to find ways to get their own finances in order and not have to reduce staff.

Heck, I've already reinvented myself once, when I got downsized out of IT years ago. Now I might be downsized out of customer service... time for another session of reinventing myself, I guess.