The Ramblings of a Menopausal Woman

“How’s Funemployment going?” A friend asked me this recently, and it made me think I should check in. I like that term. I was having trouble coming up with a name for it. “Fake retirement” was awkward. “Nervous breakdown” makes people anxious. “Midlife crisis” is probably accurate, but it doesn’t sound happy or positive. Since Funemployment began, happy and positive is starting to become the norm again.

It’s been a month since I stopped working for someone else and I am started to get settled in. I have managed to stay pretty busy so far. I have given myself a list of things I would like to accomplish this year. Nothing strict, because that defeats the purpose, just some ideas I would like to try or places I would like to visit.

The first two weeks felt more like a staycation than anything else. I would catch myself thinking I needed to log in to work and check my email. It didn’t help that I threw out my back the first week, and almost broke my arm the second week. Maybe my body was trying to force me to stop and take a moment for myself, or maybe I’m just clumsy. Either way the first two weeks had very little physical activity but it did help get me started on a different project.

As you may know, when Clay and I bought our first house together almost 15 years ago it needed a major overhaul. That was the beginning of From Crap Shack to Home. That little house has always held a special place in our hearts and I think it’s time to give it the upgrade it deserves to make it our forever home. The first time we remodeled this house, we did the best we could with the time and money that we had at the end of each week. This time we are going to add some square footage and have enlisted the help of an architect to help us get a plan in place. In the time I have been off we have already been able to find someone we really liked and put down a deposit to get started.

I am SO excited about this upcoming project! We love that little house and we aren’t planning on changing the size too much but the older you get, having a second bathroom becomes pretty important. So this is the project I have concentrated on so far during my time off. Since I have been using the house to go through my mom’s stuff I am working on finding an estate company to take what I am not keeping. We had some trees taken out and got a dumpster to start clearing things out while we work with the architect to have the plans drawn up. It’s been pretty exciting to see even small movements forward.

One other thing I have done in the past month is go back to the pottery studio. I am definitely out of practice but I did have one little survivor from my first day back. It made me really happy to get back in there.

Today I went and had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. That was the second time I had done that since I became funemployed. It has been nice to reconnect with people instead of just repeating the same phrase “We should get together soon.” Then being too exhausted to actually plan whenever soon would be.

It’s only been a month and I am still settling in to being in charge of my own schedule. I am really curious how I will feel a few months down the line. I’m not really sure what my next step will be professionally but I have some time to figure that out. I am still working being okay with not working. That will take a few months on its own. 😃

I know I made the right choice. It might be hard down the road, but something had to change. I needed to remove something from my plate. My body is finally starting to relax and the tension is leaving my shoulders. As my hormone replacement therapy gets dialed in to the correct dose things should keep improving. For me, menopause was hard. When you add in the kidney stones and everything else, 2025 was really hard. I will forever be grateful that I have the opportunity to take some time and recover from all of the physical health and mental health challenges I had last year. It’s like my brain was completely rewired and I am just figuring out the new operating system.