Spoiled Only Child

Time for a change

With regards to that last post, as John Steinbeck would say, "There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I." What an eloquent way to talk about the way that one day your life can feel like a prison and the next a paradise, even though nothing about your circumstances has changed. That was one of the bad days as a parent. (I am reading Travels With Charley right now and, wow, the flashes of brilliance are nearly blinding. Steinbeck is my hero.)

But the one feeling that seems to be remaining fairly constant is this one: It's time for a new job. I have become a bit addicted to some of the benefits of my job: the part-time flexible schedule, the nice title, the opportunities for travel, the working from home that allows me to care for my kid and dog in the way that we've become accustomed. Because of those things, I've tried to tamp down the feeling that this isn't the right role for me. I'm not meant to work alone, feeling the full responsibility of whether the organization succeeds or fails squarely on my shoulders, and trying, with few resources and little support, to figure out how to do something amorphous and confusing and difficult.

I promised myself after I was freed from the hellish prison of my last job that I would never allow myself to feel so trapped again. I wouldn't stay in a job that wounded my soul.And lately, it's just starting to feel like the costs of this job outweigh the benefits. Every day, I have this psychic struggle. I have to battle through the feelings that it's hopeless, that I'm not good enough, that I'm lazy/stupid/doomed to fail. A few factors have come together recently to prey on these feelings and increase them to a fever pitch. I'm always telling myself that I need to get over the fear and worry, that I shouldn't sell myself short, that I can do all these scary things. But I'm starting to think it's time to cry uncle. A job that makes me feel this way isn't the right one for me. The only thing that has made me feel better lately is thinking about my next move. Realizing that this job isn't who I am, and thinking about the possibilities for change. So I think that means that a decision to move on, even if it's to a job that feels less ambitious or has a lesser title, is not made out of fear but out of love and care for myself. I hope that's true.

But that leaves me in the spot of looking for a new job, which can be a very difficult, time-consuming and ego bruising chore. I will do it, but I don't relish it. And I am scared as hell to go back down that path of applying for and being rejected for jobs. And at the same time as I am planning to scale that little personal Everest, I still have to get up every day and figure out how to do this job I have and fight off all the gremlins who shout, "You're doing it wrong! You're a failure!" all day long. Don't they ever get tired?

So things feel a bit stressful and up in the air and scary right now. I feel like I'm on the precipice of change, but I'm not sure yet how to open the door or what will be on the other side or whether I'll be making the right decision if I step through. But I'm starting to feel like it's no longer tolerable to stay on this side of the door either. (How's that for a tortured metaphor?) Not the best place to be in. Also not the worst. This is how life goes. Things fall apart, and put themselves back together, and fall apart, and the cycle just keeps going and going.

This is my come-to-Jesus moment

This is it. This is the week that I change my ways. I have been making myself miserable with my brand of extreme procrastination for way, way too long. On Wednesday, I had one of those days. I just couldn't move. I sat bleary eyed in front of the computer all day, doing absolutely nothing. A couple times I forced myself to get up and take the dog for a walk, anything to get me away from the computer and the leaden, miserable feeling that it gives me. Then I'd come back and end up right back on it, wretched and dead inside again.

But for the first time in my life, I see what this is. It's not an unchangeable character flaw. It's just a coping strategy — it's my way of running away from fear. I have a fear of failure that surrounds my work, and I am afraid that if I try, my worst fears will be confirmed: I will try my best and still fail. The organization I'm running won't be a success, or my career won't be a success, or other people will think I'm incompetent, or I will realize that I'm on the completely wrong path and be back at square one again. My strategy for dealing with that fear is to not try. I let myself sink into absolute paralysis. This procrastination method has become an addiction, just like alcohol or drugs. It's an escape from my problems that causes more problems.

I think seeing it for what it is is the first step to kicking this addiction. The second step is learning to be with the fear, rather than running from it. When I feel that nervous rumble in my belly, that tightness in my chest that often comes when I think about starting work, I'm going to breathe in that feeling. I'm going to allow it to be there, but try not to get caught up in all the stories and scenarios that go with it. Just feel the fear, and then get started anyway. When I feel my urge to run (otherwise known as the urge to check Bloglines or Facebook or Twitter) I'm going to breathe that in too. Feel the urge, allow it, but don't act on it. As my new hero Pema Chodron would say, I'm going to stay, I'm going to hold my seat, and see the fear for what it is, a passing memory, a phantom made of nothing but air and thoughts and clenched muscles.

I know there will be days when I fail in this. But I'm starting to see how I'm creating my own suffering by constantly running away. And if there is a way to never feel again the way I did on Wednesday, I want to give it my best try.

Do the words "job" and "passion" really go together?

I have decided to earn a professional certificate in nonprofit management. It feels like there is a fairly obvious path laid out before me. I lost my career in newspapers, and now I have started on a new one in nonprofits. This certificate is fairly simple to earn, will give me lots of good training and a wonderful resume boost as I look to move up in this field. But yesterday I took the first class, and nothing felt as simple as that. I guess it never does.

For some reason, classes like this tend to inspire in me a sense of failure and hopelessness. I look around at all the people who are more experienced or more motivated than I am, and I feel like I just can't (or maybe don't want to) measure up to them. There was a woman in my class who is returned from serving with the Peace Corps in Africa, is now working on a masters and a nonprofit certificate at once, volunteers for a multitude of nonprofits, blogs about nonprofit management and, naturally, keeps on top of all the news in the nonprofit world. I am left feeling like I just don't have what it takes to succeed in this world. A blog on nonprofit management? I want to read blogs about people's kids and recipes and vacations. I cannot imagine spending my spare time reading nonprofit management blogs.

Many people in these classes tend to be very self-promotional. They want to talk on and on about their own experiences and successes. And classes like this are networking opportunities, so it's probably not a bad idea to make yourself look good. You never know where it could lead. A new job. Funding for your non-profit. But my natural tendency is to talk about all the challenges and stresses I face, in hopes that I can find solutions. But this often leads to me becoming the sort of sad case, and everyone else in the class then feels the need to give me advice and constructive criticism (despite their extremely limited knowledge of my situation). Yesterday it got so bad that I had to fight the urge to run from the room screaming. Even just the regular classroom instruction feels  overwhelming. There's so much to remember, and when will I ever have the time/resources/motivation to do it all? My brain goes into overload and shuts down. I don't know why I feel this way. Why can't I look at it as useful information, but not feel that if I don't do everything suggested in the class, I am a failure? Why can't I pick out a few ideas that I can use now, and store others to be used down the road when I have a different job or more resources?

And then, as in any discussion having anything to do with careers or nonprofits, people started talking about passion. That you should be passionate about what you do. That you should follow your passion. This word passion makes me a little bit ill. It feels so extreme. The idea that we should all wake up and go after our jobs with passion every day seems like a myth, a cruel fantasy designed to make us all feel like we're doing it wrong. The fact is we choose jobs for all kinds of reasons: because we need a paycheck, because the job is available at the time when we're looking, because the work is pleasant (or at least not miserable) to us, because it will add to our resume, because it offers good pay, because it has the right schedule or location for us, because it works with our family life. To say that you have to find a job that fits all those criteria and is also your "passion" seems unrealistic.

The truth is, I don't know what my passion is. The word feels hollow and meaningless to me. I want to get up every day and try to live my life in the kindest and most meaningful way possible. I want to take care of and have fun with my child. I want to nurture my marriage. I want to have a job doing something I believe adds good to the world. I want to have friends, eat good food, exercise, go on vacation occasionally. I want to read books. I want to practice meditation. I want to be a good citizen of my community and of the world. But there is no one thing that feels like my burning passion, no desire or interest that eclipses all others. And I'm constantly made to feel that that's wrong.

Maybe it's that I had a career I was "passionate" about, at least in the abstract, and lost it. And now it's not so easy to find a new passion. Or maybe it's that I'm lazy and lifeless and lack passion. I don't know. But I'm going to go into the next class with a cheerful face and the conviction that I only have to use one good idea. That the rest are just extras to save for later. I also promise to smile vacantly every time the word passion is mentioned, and just let it float on past. We'll see how it goes.

What am I afraid of?

Last night, I lay staring at the ceiling with a feeling of absolute dread. This is a recurring theme for me, being terrified in the middle of the night. Lying there in the dark, I feel like a monster is breathing down my neck. The anxiety makes my chest thump and my thoughts start sprialing into ever-darker places. In the morning, when the sun is shining again and Mia is greeting me with her joyful smile, it all feels so strange. What the hell was I so scared of?

On this particular occasion, it was thoughts of work that were keeping me awake. And part of me wants to write about all the things at work that are stressing me out, and try to talk them out one-by-one and convince myself that it's all going to be OK and that my fears are overblown. But I have a feeling that's an exercise in futility. Because if I somehow manage to defuse my work-related fears with logic (long odds on that, anyway), then I'll just move onto some other dark fear the next time. Like my loved ones dying, or my own death, or my fear that I'll never see California again. (Yes, these are all real things that have kept me awake at night.)

But I think it might be helpful to look at the way my thoughts spiraled last night, just to see the tricks my mind plays on me. I started with my stress over creating invitations for a fundraiser. (This task has taken hours and been more complicated and frustrating than you could ever imagine.) Then I moved on to my anger over how I shouldn't be doing this at all, because someone else said he would take care of this fundraiser and then backed out at the last minute, in a rude and insensitive way, leaving me completely in the lurch. Then I moved to my fear that the people I rely on to pay my salary are not really invested in raising the money they need to pay that salary. Then to my feelings of abandonment, of being alone in a big scary world. Then to the fear that our organization will fail, that I will lose my job, that my resume will be tarnished by running a failed organization, that I won't be able to find another job and (as a technically self-employed person) won't get unemployment, and that we'll end up broke and living in a singlewide trailer somewhere. Whew! That was quite a ride down the slippery slope of catastrophizing, wasn't it?

Really, the specific situation isn't the problem. No, my job isn't perfect and its funding is somewhat precarious, but that's pretty much the nature of having a job. The only way out is to become independently wealthy, and I still haven't figured out how to make that happen. The problem is the way I allow myself to get hijacked by my fear. It's the way I get caught up in all my imaginary what-if scenarios. It's like I walk myself out into the middle of the dark woods and then tell myself a terrifying ghost story and then wonder, "Why am I so scared?"

I'm trying so hard to take the advice of the wise zen masters, to just drop the story line and sit with the fear. To just feel the energy of it, the way it moves in my body. To watch the thoughts it triggers but not get swept away by them. To bring myself back to my breath, to this moment in which I am safe and warm and just as employed as I was a week ago--when I wasn't worried about this at all. But the reality is it's so, so hard. Fear gets in your face, and it won't back away, and it's hard to keep your composure and remember your strategies when it's breathing down your neck.

But at least now, in the light of day, I can see the fear monster for what it is. It's just me, telling made-up ghost stories in the dark. And if I keep working at it, I might learn how to stop repeating those same old tired tales night after night.

Words for the sake of words

Every fiber of my being wants to skip this today, but here I am, facing the blank screen again. I feel sure I won't write anything worthwhile, but maybe it is just good practice to be here, to fill the space with words whether I feel like it or not. Or maybe there is something much, much better I could be doing with this time. We'll never know.

The big thing on my mind seems to be work. We are having some negotiations over my salary, and it is really stressing me out. I don't know why exactly, except that it feels as if the tone has changed. Until now, things have been very casual. But now, they feel more formal. The board is worried about how my pay compares with other non-profits our size. Considering that we are tiny, I'm concerned that they'll discover that the normal pay range is something far below what I'm willing to work for. And then where will I be? I don't know. I feel pretty sure that their number one priority is to keep me. But it feels so odd to have to argue for my salary. I don't like it one bit.

I also want to write about our possibly imminent adoption of a dog, but maybe we'll do that Monday. The words are just not coming easy today.

 

Wet blanket

We went away for a long weekend and did nothing but swim and eat and drink beer, and I was feeling so happy and full of possibilities. And then we came home and that old feeling descended almost immediately. I hardly know how to describe it. It feels like I am covered in a heavy wet blanket, every movement takes five times the usual energy, every task feels insurmountable. I crave stillness, sitting. I don't want to talk to people. This feeling seems to come to me fairly regularly these days, almost always on Mondays and unpredictably on other days. Too much time spent aimlessly on the computer seems to trigger it. It is so hard for me to get things done in this state. I look around and feel defeated by my messy house. I feel panicky at the idea of figuring out the interminable meals we have to eat. Playing with Mia takes every drop of my energy. I don't know what it is. Maybe I just hate responsibility.

I am sadly realizing that I am not an ambitious person. My truest career goal is to not have to work at all. It feels like my time to play around and figure things out, that time I had so looked forward to after being laid off, evaporated all too quickly. My dreams of roaming my neighborhood with a camera, doing volunteer work, cooking elaborate meals, where did they go? Now I am squeezed between a job that feels stressful and, possibly, futile and the responsibilities of childcare and errands and housecleaning. Oh my lord do I hate housecleaning, hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. There is more of it than ever because I fired the housekeeper when I got laid off, and Mia and I now spend exponentially more time in the house. Every surface is covered in crap and, most days, I just can't bring myself to do a thing about it.

And the work situation is disconcerting. There's a good possibility that my job won't exist a year from now or that, even if it does, I won't want to be doing it. I feel incompetent in this new role. Sometimes I feel like the whole thing is a setup for failure. And then I keep hearing about this "double-dip" recession, and I think, "What if I never find anything else?" Or what if, possibly worse, I have to go back to a full-time office job?

My meditation practice is stagnating, deteriorating. I am back on the sleeping pills because I couldn't stand not sleeping. I want to try accupuncture for insomnia, but the logistics of figuring that out are just too much for me right now. I don't know what this post is about, except maybe a personal attempt to figure out why I often feel so weighed down and unable to move. I am not trying to be whiny, really, I am just trying to get something out, and maybe this is the plug that has been blocking the pipeline of words.

I need to write more. I think I need to spend a year or two on some crazy adventure and then write a book about it and get rich and never have to work again. But let's just start with writing more, even if it is non-sensical bullshit like this, written while eating a rubbery microwaved burrito and putting off the much-needed trip to the bank and ignoring the disaster of a house around me.

Hey, go read what I wrote about my vacation.

Where did my laid-off life go?

If I don't post something soon, I'm just going to have to close this thing up. But I have nothing for you. The layoff buzz is wearing off, and I am completely overwhelmed by my new job. I am trying to figure out the entire world of non-profits and raise enough my money to keep my job in existence in six months of part-time work from my living room. I'm like a chicken racing around in circles, with no idea if I'm headed in the right direction. I feel a lot of pressure resting on my shoulders, because it's very possible I will no longer qualify for unemployment after this six-month stint is over. There is a tiny voice in the back of my head asking, Are you working yourself into being trapped in another job that is stressful and annoying? I think I just need to accept that, in order to earn an income, I am always going to have to do some annoying things and give up some control over my time. But for the moment, this new endeavor is sucking up every moment of my daycare time and I'm not pursuing any of my other professional goals and I'm not writing and I'm spending most of my non-working moments either dealing with Mia or stressing over my ever growing to-do list, which is made up of crappy stuff like housecleaning and grocery shopping and going to the bank.

And I don't know if my attitude has changed or if Mia is just acting like a pain in the ass lately, but our afternoons have been less blissful for the past couple weeks. Like today, when I told her we were going to the children's museum, which caused her to literally jump for joy. But then when I asked her to go upstairs and get her shoes, all hell broke loose. She wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't do it, and so we had to do a half hour of her screaming and crying before we could go to the museum. It just feels like I cannot do anything, anything, without her demanding things of me and calling to me from the other room. Why can't she just come in the room where I am if she wants to ask me something, rather than calling to me over and OVER and OVER!!!!? And every minute she wants to be making arts and crafts, doing playdough, playing board games, pretending to be a dog, whatever--and all of it, all of it, requires my participation. She will not even walk upstairs by herself to get her shoes, even when I am doing 14 things at once and the reward for getting her damned shoes without assistance is a quick departure to the children's museum that she loves.

Sigh.

Now I am out of time, and all I have done is moan. Life really isn't so bad here in my sunny little oasis. I'm going to make it my goal to come back here tomorrow and write about some happy things. I think it would help me to try and focus on them.

An open door

I am wrung out. I have spent the morning lying in bed with a book, and now it is lunchtime, but I cannot fathom getting out from under these warm covers. It has been almost two weeks since the big news, and what a wild ride it has been. My initial plunge into fear, humiliation, desperation. And then my soaring trip into a sort of euphoric mania. My mind has been buzzing with ideas and plans, filling me up so that I hardly notice my feet on the ground. I jumped on the eliptical trainer at the gym earlier this week, and the ideas came at me from all directions. When my 30 minutes were up, I had no memory of the burning of those 300 calories. I didn't feel the pain in my legs, just the buzzing in my brain. Contacts to make, meetings to schedule, jobs to apply for, businesses to start. The kind of creativity and excitement I haven't felt in years has come flooding back. Suddenly, a dead end has turned into an open door. I've spent the past week in the office practically radiating happiness, unnerving coworkers who think they have won the prize, not me.

And then yesterday the office was humming with activity, people engaged in their jobs, me quietly cleaning my desk, feeling adrift on my own private island, and I thought, How dare they say I am not  good enough to participate in this? I deserve to be in the thick of it. I am better than most of them. How, how on earth, could they have looked at this room full of people and chosen me to cast out? But then I tamp those thoughts down, remember the costs of being chosen to stay on this team, and I know this small outrage means nothing in the scheme of things. It is worth every unspoken judgment and pitying glance to get this severance package and leave it all behind. Without question. Still, I look at the 10-year-old journal buried in my desk drawer, full of angst and guilt and hope, a record of a younger self who believed there was such a certain path ahead, who saw herself as her only limitation. I have already mourned that person, that career, that dream. But it is still like pulling out the photo album full of pictures of a beloved dead relative. You can't help but feel the sting of what is lost.

Right now, I am standing on a precipice. The door is open, but I don't yet know what is on the other side. I trust that there is firm ground there and sunshine, a whole new life waiting to be created. But the flood of emotions that comes with taking these first few steps is damned exhausting.

Finally

Here's what it's like to be laid off. Oh wait, did I forget to tell you? On Monday I was informed that my job will be eliminated on Jan. 29. Anyway... your coworkers all walk by your desk with long faces, sighing or wincing at the sight of you. Some tell you how sorry they are; others studiously ignore you (cowards). In private, they think about things you might have done that caused the bosses to pick you, and then they try to convince themselves that you brought it on yourself, that it's not going to happen to them. What they don't grasp is that I am elated. I'm the one who has been sprung from this prison. They are the ones who have to continue working here, covering night and weekend shifts with fewer people, laboring under increased pressure and the fear of more cuts, with no hope of advancement. They're the ones who have to continue convincing themselves that it's going to be OK, that this is still better than the alternative, that they must do whatever it takes to hang on because unemployment=death/failure/poverty. They are all so convinced of my tragedy that I'm starting to think I'm delusional, because I am truly giddy with happiness. Last night I actually cried a tear of joy.

Yes, on Monday, I was teary and terrified. I was scheduled to go in late (working the night shift!), and my coworkers started calling and emailing, asking if I was safe. Apparently, they were tapping people on the shoulder in the office, and everyone wondered why I wasn't there. Oh no, I assured them. No one has called me. I'm just working the night shift. I'm safe. But I decided to call my boss just to reassure myself. So I asked him, "I'm not laid off, am I?" And he said, "Um, are you coming in?" And I knew. So they told me I was talented and had done great work and they were sorry, and they handed me a big brown envelope containing the details of my severance. The fear that afternoon and evening was intense. I thought we would lose our house. I thought I would never find another job. I thought we would be desperately poor. I thought I was a failure. I thought the worst had happened. I went to bed and woke at 6, my chest thumping with fear.

But on Tuesday I spent some time figuring out what my unemployment benefits would be. Did you know that shit lasts almost two years now? And that the feds will subsidize your COBRA health coverage for 15 months? Between that and the severance I got for my long years of service, we can be fine for at least a year. A year! Even if I don't make a penny! And that is really a conservative estimate. We can easily make it to the end of the 15-month COBRA period. I keep thinking that I must be miscalculating. There must be something screwed up about my math. But I have thought about this, and whipped out the calculator multiple times, and I think it's true. Now, I won't be putting much into my retirement accounts. And we won't be adding to our savings, so if we have a large unexpected expense things could get a bit hairy. But we have worked hard and saved a lot of money, and we will be OK. The moral of this story is that I spent years fearing that we would be penniless and thinking that losing my job would be the Worst Thing Ever, and it turns out they're paying me not to go to this miserable place anymore. I get a year to figure things out, and I have never needed it more. 

I'm starting to feel that this was the most incredible stroke of luck. I'm going to look at this as my year of exploration. I'm not going to think about reasons why I can't do things. I'm going to brainstorm ways that I can do the things I want to do. I'm going to see if I can make things work as a freelance writer, work on a couple personal projects, think about going back to school for early childhood education, and who knows what else. I'm going to call every contact I have and ask them for advice and help. I'm going to strip the ugly wallpaper out of the bathroom, scan old photos, cook delicious meals. I'm going to go to meditation classes and meet friends for coffee. I'm going to cut Mia's daycare to half time, and spend every afternoon with her until she starts kindergarten in the fall. We're going to go swimming and do art projects and go to the park and go to play groups. And with any luck, I'm going to figure out a way to earn a living and still be home when she gets out of school--for at least the first year or two.

I have always said that I would love to work part-time, but that I just can't afford it. I went through two years of hell because I believed that getting this paycheck was more important than just about everything else. But I'm starting to see that you cannot put a price on being happy. That maybe that paycheck wasn't worth my sanity and my sleep. Now, at least for a while, I get to have what I thought was impossible--thanks in part to the generosity of the federal government. Maybe this won't turn out at all as I'm imagining. I'm sure I'm overestimating the amount of free time I'll have and idealizing how blissful it will be. Maybe I'll be miserable, or maybe things will be tougher financially than I thought. Maybe we will both need new cars and the house will need a new foundation and we'll be screwed. But for now, I feel like this is the seismic shift I have been waiting for. The years of being stuck in one place, desperate for a fresh start, are over. Things are about to change, and I've got to believe they're going to get better.

Oh my god

I am losing my mind around here. Today has been a wild ride that landed me at the edge of the cliff — ready to jump, excited for the new adventure — and then yanked me back from the edge. I am left utterly disappointed about not getting to take the leap. You see, all the laid-off people are about to have their last days here, and we're trying to figure out how we're going to function without them. And a proposal was floated today in which I would end up with a miserable shift that I do not want. And so I offhandedly said to my boss something to the effect of, "I would have taken the severance and left if I'd known this was going to happen." And so he called me into a conference room and told me I could have the severance if I told him in the next few days. Holy shit!

My heart started to race, and I couldn't help thinking: THIS IS MY SIGN! In the next hour, I created a list of reasons for leaving that was pretty damned convincing. Our financial situation continues to deteriorate, and the next round of layoffs could involve little or no severance. Maybe the only way to find my way forward is to step into the unknown, to take the chance, to make it my full-time job to explore my options. This place has become a misery, and what other chance will I have to leave with several months of pay and insurance coverage, plus unemployment benefits? What clearer sign could I ask for?

And then my boss called me back into the conference room and told me, actually, you can't have that severance after all. Legal issues, whatever. I am left utterly deflated. Lord, when will my real sign come? Have I already missed it?