Work/ School Balance

A lot of people look at the new year as a new start, a new chapter. I don’t. It’s another day, another month, another year. I didn’t do anything at all for New Year’s other than see a movie with my mom, and that was just because it was another day off. As those of you who read my last post, you know the Christmas season was ruined for me because of being sick so I was semi still recovering.

Here’s the thing, the last day of 2024 brought some bad news. I had a skin test done a few weeks ago to test for cancer cells of a mole. My nice cancer-sniffing dog didn’t show any signs of a positive, so I was shocked when I received the results of positive. My mind was not in a good place. I Googled it, because that’s what you do, and had a spark of hope when I found out there was a 30% rate of false positives. That’s what kept me positive in this. So my 2024 ended with a HUGE negative and 2025 started with a HUGE negative.

Here’s where things started getting bad. I had a biopsy on Thursday afternoon, and my Google search was wrong. My dermatologist said the test is pretty accurate. So now, every time my shirt or hair rubs against the scab on my back from the biopsy, it hurts. I did hit up Google and found the next steps. I’m hoping the biopsy is curative and I don’t need surgery to remove more or worse. The dermatologist didn’t go over the next steps because she wanted to see what the results were before proceeding, understandably. So, I’m trying to wrap my head around the very real possibility of me having cancer.

In other news, I’ve been on the job hunt this week, when I haven’t been working long shifts. It’s going to be hard to find a job making what I make now that is essentially entry-level since I just graduated. Well, I sent my resume out, and fingers crossed. We’ll see what happens, but I am not quitting my job until I find something I want to do. At least for now, I have job security and a paycheck.

With all of the stress I’ve been dealing with, I realized I’ve been throwing myself into a nice and expensive hobby, which isn’t helping me. I spent $40 on plants and a dog toy on Thursday and another $30 today on more plants and 8 fish. My 29 gallon tank is planted and up and running with 8 tetras swimming around in it. I also have a 10 gallon tank that’s overstocked because my platys had babies and I’m about to have some snail babies. Once my tetra quarantine is up, I’ll be moving a lot of my 10 gallon inhabitants into my bigger tank. So this is what my spare time and energy, along with all of my nervous energy, has gone into, fish. I guess there are worse things I can do to distract myself.

Well, tomorrow starts a new work week, so we’ll see what it brings. Hopefully, it is good news, so I won’t buy more fish, plants, or fish stuff.