What's on tap for 2020?

As I sit down to start this post, we are in the waning minutes of 2019. I don't know what 2020 will bring, but I am hopeful it will bring some new things and perhaps a new, sustainable career, or at least a job that will help me cover the basic costs of living.

The year 2019 as least led me to a more-or-less full-time job, but it's frankly not covering all my basic costs. I'm behind on several bills and digging a deeper hole all the time. But I hope we will be able to get my dad's estate settled in 2020. It's been a long couple of years since dad died in May 2017, just 9 months after mom died.

I can't believe I haven't covered that on here yet, but then I haven't posted much of anything here in recent years. Not about my parents. Not about my brothers. Not about my daughter. Not about my abrupt career derailment. 

There's a lot to get people, or the blog at least, caught up on.

In recent weeks/months, I've had a few people in my life as me why I don't write anymore. I have avoided answering that question with friends, and I've avoided asking it of and answering it for myself.

There are many reasons why I haven't ventured in to writing, even here. A significant reason is that my confidence in myself and my "skills" has been shaken by being tossed out of journalism, in spite of a few attempts to get back in. On top of that, I haven't been a reporter/writer in a long time, although I have written throughout a 28-29 year career in journalism. 

I certainly want/need a creative outlet of some sort, whether writing or photography or both, or some new creative pursuit. In my head, I blame lack of funds and equipment for avoiding the photography angle. But the lack of writing? I'm not sure what to blame there, beyong like of confidence or drive. What if I have nothing to say? My past writing has been either 1) work related and based on interviews and facts based on some news or human interest angle; or 2) journal-like either in the form of writing in a notebook or one of a couple of older blogs; or 3) short social media posts on Twitter or Facebook.

I have no "great American novel" dying to get out locked up inside me. At least I don't think I do, as it has not made itself known to my conscious mind. I have no compelling true-life story I'm dying to tell. And I don't think I have any particular wisdom to share from which I think others may draw inspiration. I just have questions and doubts and fears and foibles and failings spilling out all over my life.

So, I don't know what to write. And outside of creative pursuits, I need a job that challenges me again intellectually and even creatively. But I don't know what that might be, in spite of applying for multiple jobs in multiple fields.

I have got some experience working in food service and retail fields, in untrained fields. I'm kind of living my work-life backwards, working in unskilled areas now in my 50s like many of my (former) peers did in their teens and 20s.

It's an interesting time in life, and not interesting in a good way. I wish I knew how this particular story will end. I would like to get to the next chapter as quickly as possible, instead of slogging through this interminably dull and painful chapter.