Just another when the wild wind blows...

Some of you may remember (or most likely not) that I really hated my job.  Not much different from most people there but this place took the cake, and while I'm not allowed to go into detail lets just say it was a miserable place to be.  So in a happy twist of events, I was severed out of my position earlier this month.  I've never been so happy to be out of work in my life.  And from what I hear from those left behind its getting worse by the day. 

Back in December I wasn't feeling particularly well on a regular basis...it wasn't like I was sick, but something was off.  I knew part of it was probably work and I had already missed some time due to the physical strain the bullshit was taking on me.  I was already taking anti-depressants to better cope with that situation.  So I went in early for my labs thinking maybe the thyroid was down again, but it turned out I was borderline diabetic.  The blood sugar was up to 130 so they put me on Metformin to give the ol'pancreas a break and hopefully bring the sugar down.  Now, my family has a history of diabetes and growing up I've seen the dark side of it; of what happens to your body when you don't change your habits to accomodate for this disease.  So to be perfectly honest the lab results scared the shit out of me.  I decided then I had to make a change.

The first change was the drinking.  I had gone from pretty much never drinking at all to when I started at this company 4 and a half years ago to draining a fifth of rum every 2 days.  I was going through half a gallon of Captain Morgain in 4 days tops. The big problem was that I was mixing it with Coke, and as much as I was drinking that was probably a large contributing factor to my condition.  So goodbye, Captain.  You too, Sailor Jerry.  But I also needed to change my diet.

Being a bit ignorant of how diabetes worked I figured if I just cut out sugars I'd be ok.  Fortunately one of my best friend's wife is in the medical profession, and I was talking with her about this whole situation.  She told me that do get my blood sugar down I needed to reduce carbs entirely, all carbs...not just sugar but everything.  If not for her I would've gone about this entirely the wrong way.

So with that information it seemed like the best solution was Atkins.  Now keep in mind that part of the reason I had put on so much weight over the last 10 years was because of hypothyroidism that had gone undiagnosed for most of that time.  It took about 14 months of adjusting my meds to finally get the thyroid leveled off, which happily it still is as of now.  But now I had to get that weight off, and so I began to research Atkins online.

The first couple days were hard not only because of the adjustment but because you really had to not only keep track of everything but plan things out ahead of time.  After about 4 or 5 days I had settled in on what I thought was a good plan and went for it.  After about 2 weeks the pants started getting loose.  I went back for my labs at the end of February, and after getting on the scale I had lost 42 pounds in the first 2 months.  Now I know probably half of that was water weight, but still...good start.  The best news though?  The blood sugar dropped from 130 to 90.  Goodbye diabetes, hello safezone!

So to take the program a step further I broke down and bought a Kinect.  I picked up Kinect Sports and Your Shape.  Eventually I picked up Dance Central, which is what I pretty much use to work out exclusively now.  Btw, if you're on my friends list you've probably noticed that I've crushed all your high scores.  Just thought I'd throw that in there.  :)

I went to the doc's a few weeks ago for a checkup and saw that I had lost another 14 pounds in the meantime.  So thats 56 pounds total from roughly December 30th.  Still got a ways to go, but its a good start.

So now my days are filled with online job searches and visits to recruiters.  I had one seemingly solid lead but that kind of fell by the wayside.  The best lead I have right now is one I got from the main recruiter I work with, talked with her yesterday and she might have something nearby.  Being that I'm in Distribution/Transportation/Logistics, a lot of places want to temp you first.  As long as that leads to a permanent position I'm cool with it; thats how I started with my last job.  The good news is that because of my work history and experience I can shop some killer SAP skills as well as MS Office skills.  I can make a spreadsheet thats damn near a work of art, and I've been known to write a logic formula or 2 as well.  And whats nice is that because of my skills the temp jobs I'm looking at actually start you off almost where I left off with my last job, so getting hired on full time would put me near or at what I was making when I left this last place.  Now all I have to do is get in.

So if anyone in the Chicagoland area needs a DC supervisor or data/SAP analyst, let me know.  :)