i used to love to write. that’s not to say i’ve ever been great at it, but has always been something i love to do. there was a time, years ago, when i’d write on a regular basis: poems, journal entries, short stories, whatever. i’d write something new on at least a weekly basis.

tonight’s the first time i’ve visited my own blog in about five months. it makes me a bit sad. it seems that bit of me that used to so enjoy writing, enjoy the feel of the keyboard moving under my fingers. now i find that drive in me, that urge to write, is all but gone. i haven’t written a story, or poem in ages. and i know that vast majority of posts here were written as an outlet to express a dark mood, a window through which i try to expel my demons.

as i start this post, i find myself a bit conflicted. on the one hand, it’s been suggested/requested by a good friend of mine that i write a couple of posts on particular topics. on the other hand, the topics in question are not only particularly personal, but they will be virtually impossible to write without a nearly direct reference to people i know, friends who might read the post and be compelled to respond. the posts would, by just about every definition, be about those friends.

what’s more, it’s been pointed out to me recently that my somewhat regular posts about my abysmal love live can be a bit of a “turn-off.” to some extent, i get that. i understand girls like someone who is self-confident and while i’m far more self-confident than i was just a handful of years ago, i still have a long way to go. if i follow my friend’s suggestion and write on one of these particular topics, i’ll be perpetuating my track record of longing-for-love-type posts and in both instances, i’d be breaking one of my general rules about explicitly referring to people in my life. what to do?

april 29, 2010. it was the last day of the 2010 legislative session and the last day i worked to collect a paycheck for over a year. in fact, it would be 565 days, or one year, six months, and 17 days until i was once again a fully employed person, but we’ll come back to that in a bit….

like so many others, i’m sure, when i graduated college, i never imagined that i’d someday be a statistic collecting unemployment benefits, but there i was 565 days without a job, without a retirement plan or legitimate health insurance. while it has, at times, been frustrating, i can’t say i minded it all that much. i was able to really commit to the thing i’m most passionate about: politics. i can’t say i spent 40 hours every week of that 565 days doing political stuff, but i spent a lot of the vast majority of time doing just that and i loved it.

since january 2009, my life has been in some regular degree of transition. on january 1st of that year, asb-bishop insurance agency was officially purchased by monarch insurance services. as a result of that purchase, many people i had worked with for years, people who had worked at bishop insurance their whole lives, lost their jobs, including my immediate superviser and the agency manger. even with the huge bonus from the bank, it was a tough pill to swallow and it wasn’t too long before i started actively looking for employment elsewhere.

looking back now, i see clearly that the outcome the next two years can be traced back to that day and that bonus check.