Life and the Reality of it

It has been difficult lately to stay happy and positive.  Work has been stressful and my brother (well his life/choices) are also a great stress. 

Let me start with work.  A member of the team has come back after being off for 8 months for surgery.  He is 2 years from retirement and has been in the department many years.  My line crew (which is me, my supervisor and a contract worker) has had a difficult time with this.  This "guy" is just not doing the amount of work that is expected of him.  He has been back over a month now and the medical department at work keeps telling us that he has no restrictions and should be able to preform 100%.  So this leaves us feel as though he doesn't want to do the work (he has voiced this several times, but we still hoped there was a medical reason to it)

My supervisor's boss decided to have this "guy" shadow our contract worker as he should be able to do everything he does and more.  "Guy" is not able to keep up even 50% of the time.  Then it was decided that he would shadow me.  While he did better with me (I am not a fast person) he still was only doing 60-70% of the work.  I was/am very frustrated with training someone who doesn't want to learn or work.  I am hoping that something will be resolved while I am on vacation over March Break.   I doubt that will happen, but one can hope.

My brother is an entire other issue.  He is making some really bad choices in his life right now (he is almost 30)  He has lost 2 great girlfriends in the last year and is also getting him in trouble with the law.  I have always been depended on by my parents (and my brother) to keep him going in the right direction.  He had 'issues' back home in school so my parents moved him 8hrs away to live with me.  He almost dropped out of high school, but my fiance at the time helped me get him through school.  It wasn't long after I was married (and pregnant) that we had to get him to move into his own place because of his 'issues'.  Here we are almost 10 years later and I am still in the middle, trying to keep the peace in the family and my brother alive.  This time there is nothing I can do but listen to each side b!tch about the other.   He is almost 30 and not a baby.  I have given him my opinion on a few occasions that were quite blunt but also truthful.  I am very worried and feel helpless.  All I can do is watch and pray that he survives.

On the positive side, work on the whole is going well other than being stressful, my performance is holding steady and climbing.  I am learning a lot and becoming a resource on the team.  This bodes well for me achieving my level 2 sometime in the next year (I hope!)  Money/financial part of life is getting better also.  After my nervous breakdown we accumulated a paralyzing amount of debt.  We are now on the uphill crawl and can actually see the top of the mountain.  It will still be sometime before we are where we actually want to be, but that is only another part of the journey of life.