Monday, I start my first full-time desk job.

It’s been a long five months, stutteringly under-employed, thrown off balance by Uncle Eddie’s decision to freeze state hiring for the budget year (and he’s talking now of cuts yet to come), which ended my chances of procuring a state clerk job. I was hoping to be employed with the state (or county, who works off the same civil service test result list) for several reasons — good pay, great benefits, and most of all, security and stability. Working with a disability can be a realizing experience or a crushing one, depending almost entirely on the environment in which you work: your co-workers, your supervisors, company policy. With the state, I would know one thing: there is a very low likelihood of running into any trouble, and if I do, I can be reasonably confident that it will be taken seriously in the upper levels.

This job was approved ahead of time; it is temporary, until early spring, processing energy assistance applications. I may be eligible for unemployment when I am laid off, which may actually be an ideal situation considering my disability: work one third of the year, rest the remaining two, then start again next winter. I may also be eligible for transfer to any of the various positions for which I was being considered when the hiring freeze came down. Regardless, I will have opportunity even when this position ends.

We can now pay off our maxed-out credit cards (which have borne our living expenses while I was without income) as well as some other debt (for instance, the car I totaled last December). I now have a predictable weekly schedule around which I can plan my medication, my laundry shifts, my showers (I have already decided: Saturday mornings and Tuesday nights). I will be able to afford the little things I have put off during these five months — a memory-foam bed topper (down, surprisingly, is not nearly so good for my body as one might think) (and though this item seems like a luxury, keep in mind my stress, pain and fatigue throughout the day stems directly from my insufficiently-restful sleep), a new shower chair, comfortable layering pieces for wintertime. And the particular job also solves a couple major problems in my personal life in ways too complicated to explain here.

2008 has not been kind to me. Things I never imagined could happen to me, things I have constructed an identity around avoiding, have happened. My late June vacation was the one bright spot in my rear view mirror, but some very bad news broke soon after and dampened any remnant joy I may have had from it. (I still have not processed those four thousand pictures; until recently, it was too emotionally painful.)

But finally, now, something has gone right. And recent weeks have been, on the whole, positive. The stability I have been chasing for so long, it seems, has finally arrived. And I couldn’t be happier.