Discouraged

When is it time to say when?

For this section of my life's adventure, I've rather arbitrarily picked next weekend to go on home.

My job search up here has petered out.  I had lots of good conversations with recruiters, but never unlocked the key to actually getting to talk to a hiring manager.  I've quit looking - time is not on my side if I want to be home by spring.  The shortest consulting contracts are generally six months - and six months from now puts me into March.  By March, God willin' and the crick don't rise, Kate will be done with school and moving on with life.

It's tough to say done.  I'd hoped to be up here until the year's end, to see this through.  It feels like I'm quitting in the middle, and I hate quitting in the middle.  But economics enter the equation somewhere in here, and I don't have the wherewithal to stop work forever.  And if I can't find short term work, I'd prefer the long term job be on my home turf.

With all this running through my mind last night, I had a hard time getting to sleep.  Sometimes when this happens, it's effective for me to pull out my childhood bedtime prayers.  As a child, I never saw the prayers written.  I memorized the sounds, and so each night would dutifully pray:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my lass dagony.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, mevreeforth my soul in peace with you.  Amen.

I had no idea what a dagony was, nor why only lasses had them - and why did the boys say the prayer if they didn't have dagonys to give?  I also wasn't sure what mevreethforth meant, but knew it had to be a good process, since I ended in peace with Jesus, Mary and Joseph if I managed to figure out how to do it.

I quit saying the prayers sometime before Mom died; I was well into my thirties before they came to mind again, and I realized the actual prayer was:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my last agony.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.  Amen.

Makes a bit more sense this way.
But that hasn't stopped me from working on mevreeforthing my soul.
I'm all about Peace.
Amen.