Its been a little while since I posted a journal entry. A lot of things happened in the last 2 months and I suppose I need to put things into perspective.

The holidays at my retail job and the bowling alley were putting so much stress and pressure on me, by the time December rolled in, I was had chronic depression, I developed an addiction for French vanilla coffee as an incentive to get through the days and suffered physical symptoms due to anxiety attacks.

The thing is...that I am very self conscious and I worry about what other people think of me, I didn't want my colleges to think I was weak, that I was faking depression and that I was leaving them to suffer all the work to themselves. That's why despite my mother and friends telling me to take care of myself, I decided to wait until the holidays were over, to wait until the workload was lessened and the hours were cut shorter. As things would have it, the hours didn't go down when January rolled in, and my boss told me it was a bad time to be taking a break... If not during the quietest month of the year, WHEN?! When is a good time to take care of myself?!

So on the 8th of January I went to a clinic to see a doctor without an appointment, I stood in line and I was 14th in line, only 12 got to have an appointment. I then went to the hospital to the emergency to see a doctor. The doctor was rude and looked just as fed up with her job as I was. She made me meet with a social worker and told her about everything that caused my current state of emergency. She relayed the information to the doctor who proceeded to give me but a single week of medical leave with a dismissive attitude and offered me an appointment with a psychiatrist which I agreed to take.

I went to see the psychiatrist the same day and he proceeded to make a portrait of my personality, my relationships and my workplace, his conclusion was that my workplace showed sighs of a failing company and that the best remedy was a change of career, nothing new that I didn't know about already, but to my surprise he wrote me a medical leave of 2 months, I didn't even know he could grant me such a thing, the small folded paper felt heavy as it brought many worries on my mind.

I went to see my boss the next day and handed him the paper, confronting him, he wasn't too happy with it of course, hated that I did all this behind his back, but he's so intimidating! I value good working coworkers and he's the most shameful one I've ever met in my life, working alongside him in a day was one of the sources of my anxiety. Right after meeting with him, I went to the bowling alley and gave a copy to my boss at the bowling. She took it worse, even if I was only working 10 hours a week at her bowling alley, I was working those Saturdays and because of my medical leave, she had to fill in those shifts herself and told me that it was time with her family I was stealing from her. As I said before, I am susceptible to people`s opinions of me, her words stung me, but it shook me awake, she only took me for granted all this time, never cared about anything but her busy work, her world consists only of her family and business and her employees are just tools to keep it afloat. And in the end she fired me for taking care of myself, victimizing herself, saying I brought my problems from my other job onto her.

Thus began my month of recovery, the first few days were far from relaxing, I stressed over the littlest things, and I began to search for new jobs right away, sending resumes to the local businesses, and I started taking sleep medicine to combat my insomnia. I didn't have the heart to draw or start commissions as I said I would. After a week I began to procrastinate, finally taking it easy and taking care of myself. On the second week I started to draw again, personal art such as my 4 new comic storyboard pages, work was none of my concern and for 2 more weeks, I took it easy and sent more resumes out.

I started working again on the 12th of February at my retail job after meeting with the psychiatrics one last time, filled with renewed vigor and not at all paralyzed by my shitty boss. It took a full week after my return for us to FINALLY get a working price tag machine, which was one of the cause of my anxiety: Broken, defective and below standard equipment usage in the store. February was thankfully much less assaulting as the holidays were. Things were more tolerable.

And lastly, I found out last Saturday that our boss left to work somewhere else and he only revealed this on his last day with us. Kind of shitty for a manager to do this. Not even giving a two weeks notice, further proof of his douchebag nature. But you know what? I am glad he is gone, and I never want to see him again, my job hunt is still on going, my retail job has proven to be detrimental to my mental health and its just a dead end job anyway. Here's hoping I find something that makes me proud to be a part of.

And that's about all that has happened in the last two months, I'm not sure many will have cared to read all the way through my wall of text, but for those who did, know that I appreciate the concern and I am doing well right now all things considered. I hope I can craft some more art for everyone to enjoy, and I will let you all know when I find time to do another batch of commissions.

Thank you all.