Reduced Circumstances

 

I retired in 2002 never thinking that was what I was doing, but no one wanted to hire a 52 year old former preschool teacher, office worker and floral clerk. 

So I volunteered. I volunteered so much that I found myself on the cover of a local magazine about volunteers! 

I volunteered at an Aviation Museum, I volunteered at all sorts of local events and whenever the YWCA needed someone to stuff envelopes or do that sort of thing I was there. But eventually I was back to my old stomping grounds, volunteering in an elementary school library which led to also volunteering in a kindergarten class. 

Then COVID came along and I stopped volunteering until I did something pretty stupid and lost most of my retirement income. Finding myself in reduced circumstances approaching my mid seventies, I was distraught, but in the words of the famous poet Maya Angelou:

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

I decided to try and go back to work again. This time I was hired by a preschool learning center and today was my first day back to work at a paying job in over twenty years!  

I won't say it was easy, my feet were very tired when I came home today, but I think this is going to be a really good thing in my life. I have experience with small children and yet a day care setting is different from a simple preschool. 

I have a lot to learn, but I am certainly willing and able.