This is my first blog ever – how exciting. Yeah – after what 10 years of people blogging I finally got the urge to join in.

This is mostly going to be diary style – figure that is the best way. My life went sideways this past month and in order to deal with it I’ve decided to go public. Well, anonymously anyway. I figure my story won’t be too unlike a few thousand other women in my position. Maybe if nothing else misery can find some company in the blogsphere.

Background: I’m 38 not looking forward to 40. I have too much weight to lose to even think about right now. I have a master’s and have in the past held many executive positions at very large companies. Nothing that publicity would have put me in the spotlight – so no one “knows” me. I just am the average, semi-successful woman. I decided to jump out of the frey and work on my own business and am finding some success. We are doing well year-over-year, but obviously not well enough!

My husband is a great man, no complaints. But his business took a nosedive due to the economy so he is trying to sort it all out. We have children and we live in an area that isn’t exactly cheap. So money has suddenly become very tight and we are hanging on by a thread.

We’ve eaten through all our savings, and now we are living on the final few hundred on our credit cards until my husband rights his own ship. We are both searching for the corporate gigs again - steady income. So much for the “American Dream”. Weird that two people so highly intelligent (sorry to brag there!) and with master’s degrees can’t make it work nowadays. But – we aren’t alone trust me.

Our mortgage has a fixed rate that is lower then any you can find even now. So it wasn’t the lending crisis that bit us. It was how those things bit our customers really. They are closing up shop faster than we can get new customers.

I’m a fighter, but even on my best days I look into the eyes of my children and think: “How can I sell the only house they have ever known?” I feel like a failure.

For the two decades I’ve been saving for my retirement, their education and so forth, we actually have nothing now to show for it. We have more debt then the sale of our home would fix. We are exactly like that movie “Fun with Dick and Jane”. Exactly.

But in our case there is no Enron to blame – only ourselves. We took a risk to run our own businesses at a time when the economy decided not to support that. So I spend most of my nights crying myself to sleep feeling like I’ve let my husband down, my kids down – but mostly myself.

As I blog I’m sure the picture will become increasingly clear. For now you have the basics. We are not unusual, but I think we are unique enough you might actually find this blog interesting.