Hello everyone!

So, what's everyone been up to in the last 5 months?
I'll tell you what I've been up to...

CHANGING MY LIFE.

Well, that would be in the last month anyway.

Ever since mid October, I'd been feeling pretty unhappy. My job was making me miserable. I was tired all the time. I couldn't put a pencil to paper for the life of me, nonetheless be anything remotely close to enjoying my time in the pottery studio.
It got worse as MFF rolled around. I had a great time, which made it even harder to continue on at home. I would sit in my car outside of Petco everyday, staring at the building, trying to will myself to go to work. I requested a transfer back in October, thinking a new setting would help me. After my return from MFF, I was told the transfer wouldn't go through until after the holidays. So, I settled in for a long, depressing start to winter and the Christmas season.
There were financial problems as well. It got to the point where I would come home and just go to bed. I slept alot.
I was excited after the New Year. My transfer would go through, I might make a little more money, and with new management and coworkers I wouldn't feel like going to work was some kind of universal punishment. Then the straw hit the camels back.
A coworker told me that she was part of a conversation with our new Assistant GM, and she thought I had a right to know what was said. My new boss told her and another employee that I was never going to get my transfer, and that she was going to do everything in her power to keep me at the store. My coworker told her that "Kyote will quit if she doesn't get her transfer" and the AGM simply scoffed and said "She'll never quit. She's a pushover".
It's one thing to be walked on at work, to be underappreciated, to be brushed off when you have questions, suggestions, or requests. It's another entirely to have the knowledge that your management team are working against you, lying to you, and think poorly of you. I was horrified. I cried a lot. And then I decided to prove her wrong.

I am NOT a pushover. I walked into the office a week later, asked my GM straight out if I was to be transfered within the next few days, and when he said "no" I handed him my two week notice.
I didn't have another job lined up.
I didn't have any money saved.
I was striking out blind, but I had to.

So, in the last three weeks I quit Petco (where I had worked for 4.5 years!), I applied for jobs I never would have had the courage to apply for in the past, and I found a new job right off the bat at Almatis... an alumina company which is technically in my field of study! I stopped drinking soda and eating fast food on a daily basis, I tore my house apart and re-organized everything while throwing out bags upon bags of clutter that had been clogging up my life, and I've made a HUGE push to finally get back to the drawing board and finish art that's been waiting too long for my attention.

I feel fantastic.
I'm happy again.
I changed my life.

SO, that''s where I've been.
Sorry if this journal comes across as whiney, or ranty, or depressing. It's not meant to be at all. I just feel that you all deserve an explination for my abscence, and I have a hard time sharing my troubles with others... another trait I'm slowly changing.
I've missed you all so much, and I promise to keep working and to stay in touch. You guys are all so wonderful and I've made SO many good friends here on FA.
Thanks for being so awesome.

I will be posting a list of people that are waiting on art from me tomorrow or Thursday here in a journal. I even have art lying around the house that's been done for months that simply needs mailed! I will hopefully take care of all my backlog by the weekend. If you've been waiting on me for anything, keep an eye out for the journal. I will be posting and mailing all my completed art soon! I will also be reading and responding to backlogged notes this week.

Ever your crazy coyote,
Kyote <3