Fare thee well April! I kicked your butt and took at least one name.

--> Hello Goodbye April!!  <--

Only two weeks until Ky is home for the summer (ack!!!!) and, combined with the end of April, I’m feeling quite reflective today. Sometimes when I’m involved in working really hard for something and I haven’t QUITE made it a reality just yet, I feel like I’ve gotten nowhere. If that brass ring isn’t in my hand, I see it as a failure, regardless of how many inches closer to it I am this month than I was the one before.

To get away from this I’m going to try to remind myself of all the things I’ve pushed forward this month – even things that didn’t pan out perfectly (the 9999 ways to not make a lightbulb and all that…).

Left the least favorite of my two jobs! This has to get top billing.

• Actually FINISHED, with excellent work ethic and grim determination – in a series of 60 hour work weeks – the work I had left at the least favorite job. Omg. Done.
  
  
• Was offered enough solid work in my second job to take me through December in relative comfort! Woohoo!
  
  
• Didn’t let the HUGE rejection I received to a program I’d been pretty much counting on get me down for long…
  
  
• …but instead turned it into a different sort of opportunity that seems to be suiting my mind, my finances and my schedule even better than an acceptance might have.
  
  
• Scheduled time with my old career transition coach for a tune up.
  
  
• Registered for a super cool class this summer!
  
  
• Reached out to (let me check) 12 different organizations that could move me forward in my (new, wannabe) field.
  
  
• … and got positive feedback and even some offers from 3 of them (1 is especially exciting!)
  
  
• Did a Tough Mudder --> Survived!!!!
  
  
• Made a Mindmap of all of the intricate plans, thoughts, ideas and different potential avenues for the next 6 months of my life, all based on my core values.
  
  
• Woke myself up in the middle of the night to write an email I had been dreading – I think I’m glad I did this.
• Spent twice as much time with friends as I ever have – I know I’m glad I did this!
  
  
• Put together all of my thoughts about getting myself career transition coached, and blogged about it.
  
  
• Really took the time to connect to my child, my students, my family members and my friends  - without distraction or impatience.
  
  
• Wrote 6 professional applications including the neverending coverletters, statements, philosophies and specific relevant experience descriptions – this is roughly equivalent to a full 40 hour work week in terms of man hours!
  
  
• Ran 173 miles and enjoyed about 150 of them completely!
  
  
• (listened to Harry Potter Audiobooks 1.3.4.5.and 6 – does this count????)
  
  

Actually there’s even more than this but I’m kind of shocked ----- I DID all of this in April?

Yup. (back pats all around)!

This is life. Do what you love.

Remember when The Holstee Manifesto was really popular?


I’ve spent a lot of time pondering this.

If you don’t like something, change it.

If you don’t like your job, quit.

I am currently in the midst of “quitting” my job (but not really – in my line of work there are finite contracts, and I simply let my contract come to an end without doing anything to renew it – ok, that’s quitting).

Thoughts on quitting: it’s terrifying. I mean it’s really terrifying to be so highly trained for a certain line of work, and to be 40-mmmbl and trying to leave that work behind.

• I’ve been told this is “immature”
• I’ve been told this is irresponsible (and I agree with this one in a variety of ways)
• I’ve been told that everyone goes through a period of career questioning – usually in their early 40’s, and equivalent to a mid life crisis – and that the worst thing I could do would be to take it seriously enough to act on it. 
  
  

And out of all of those bulleted thoughts, the things I’ve told myself about leaving are even worse. Harsher. And possibly true, too. 

The reality: “if you don’t like your job – quit” sounds like solid logic and common sense, and is easy to tell another person, and is easy to reminisce about if you have done it in the past **and it all worked out for you, and you are now looking back at it from a good place in life** 

...but the reality is SO MUCH DIFFERENT.... 

The reality for me is that leaving my work and reaching for something more meaningful to me is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. 

• It has me questioning my work ethics, my maturity, my responsibility, my role as a mother, my role as the leader of our family and the support system for my (grown) child.
• I’ve felt lost. I’ve felt like a failure. I’ve felt like a fool, an idiot, a person who is wasting their life, a person who has been left behind.
• I’ve worked two jobs for two years now to save money – this has led to me falling asleep while in the act of eating my dinner for the first time in my life since I was in diapers.
• I’ve worked the equivalent of a third job trying to move more fully into my preferred career (unsuccessfully so far).
• I’ve taken classes, invested money, time, and SO much energy into trying to make this move.
• I’ve encountered failure and loss, disappointment and embarrassment, fear and insecurity. Hope and excitement, then loss of hope and regret.  
  
  

Six months from now this may turn into an inspirational story. If I succeed, this will be the part of the story where the hero(ine) climbs the mountain, falls, scrambles back to their feet, falls again – all with inspiration music playing the background. 

A year from now I could very well be writing about how leaving my job was the best thing I’ve ever done. I could be a success story. I could be proof that The Holstee Manifesto is totally legit and we should all live our lives this way. 

But I thought I should record for posterity what it actually feels like to live your way into the success story. It’s hard. It’s so, so hard.

Heart versus head

Following your gut is so much easier when you're young, the consequences of failing aren't as life altering, and you haven't had as much negative reinforcement to give you an aversion to making huge leaps and daring moves.

At risk of sounding like Verdi the snake, I really did used to follow my heart, and it took me to some wonderful places. If it took me someplace I didn't want to be, I'd stew about it for a while and then start to sort of daydream myself into a better story.

Now of course it's all so different. One bad move I made in 2005 had pretty disastrous consequences. It started when I was in a casual long distance relationship and I started to get this feeling that "adults" settled down, put down roots and committed. It's almost as if I felt like I'd been so lucky in my single parent life, had done so many awesome things, that I was somehow supposed to... quit while I was ahead? Maybe that, and then also like... I was being immature by being single. Like being happy and following my heart, which while up until then had been productive and successful, was actually a sign of immaturity and a lack of development. I felt like I was always eating life dessert and never eating my life vegetables. 

And I did love the guy I was in the long distance relationship with, and I was with him at a time when these thoughts were really plaguing me. My heart was telling me that I was happy and excited each day as a single mother, and this was how I should try to keep my life as long as humanly possible. And then my head was arguing that I was being childish and spoiled, and "at some point" there should be a home and yard and man and stability, so I should settle down with the long distance guy. 

And don't get me wrong - there was something attractive about the thought of stability that came from settling down. But it was only attractive, in my experience, as a way station or a resting place. A settled relationship seemed like a place to recharge in comfort before I got back to the things I'd rather be doing. And I couldn't picture a man who would be willing to love me, live with me, be my anchor and comfort - but also let me travel, have adventures and choose my own path. I've never been in close proximity to a relationship that worked that way. And long distance guy didn't fit that mold in the least. He wanted a wife that stayed in place.

After a year of heart (happy single!) versus head (I should settle down), I opted for settling down with the long distance guy. I rationalized that in a way I was following my heart by being with him - in some kind of twisted way, if I looked at it from a certain angle and didn't look too closely - my heart might be craving stability. Only there were practical issues - some blended family hurdles - and so we settled uneasily on some kind of forced limbo where I moved halfway closer to him geographically. It was miserable. I was miserable. 

I settled for a job at 'fabulously important place', which I hated, and moved into a house that felt like 'not my house', and settled on a few more life choices for the good of the relationship that made me feel like a trapped rat. I continued to rationalize that I was doing all of this incredibly unlikeable stuff in order to get to the ultimate place that would (if I didn't look too closely at it) make me truly happy (sort of) - which was the relationship and the stability it would bring. 

And then of course the relationship dissolved out from under me, and there was no ultimate goal anymore to the trapped miserable place I found myself. 

After that came months of being so lost, I couldn't even articulate to anyone how lost I was. I was living in a beautiful place, I was working at a place that would look phenomenal on my CV. I was given back my freedom to move freely around the planet. Only I was completely frozen.

For the first time in my life I had spent years building up a life for myself that was absolutely and totally WRONG for me. I had completely failed. I had (I thought) listened to my heart and hit a brick wall in a dark alley going 100 miles an hour. I found myself completely unable to make even the smallest decision for myself after that. I couldn't make eye contact with people in the grocery store. I couldn't make a decision on whether or not to go on a weekend camping trip, let alone jet myself and Ky to some other country. I felt like... I don't know, like going out on a limb was the most dangerous thing in the world. And when making eye contact with the cashier in a store suddenly feels like going out on a limb, that's a troublesome place to find yourself. 

Never in my life have I felt so stuck at the bottom of a well. Then followed a domino effect of bad decisions knocking into worse ones, toppling everything along my path. It was a horrible time in my life. I no longer trusted my instincts. I no longer trusted my life. And - because I'd spent so long convincing myself that the "settling down" plans I had been making were the plans of a mature adult, I felt like a life failure at maturity and adulthood. And I felt like I was somehow obligated to keep pressing on that path, but it was so counter to my real needs that I was always lost and churning inside.

Part of empty nesting for me is trying to get in touch with my gut instincts again. I've been trying for years, but so much fear has built up that it's been hard for me to tell the difference between my gut telling me something is wrong for me, and my fear holding me back from something good for me, giving me a false stop sign. 

Because going with your gut sometimes is scary. It's scary, exhilarating and challenging. And figuring out if you're that kind of scared - the kind that precedes an awesome, terrifying, exhilarating choice... or the "red flag warning" kind of scared that tells you not to do something ultimately bad for you - is really hard when you're not tuned in to the differences. Your mind can convince you either kind of fear is the other. I've been stuck in that tug of war for way too long.

I've always envisioned having a core of things that are incredibly important to me. Things I genuinely love, things I genuinely believe in. Those form the heart of me. Anything I do that keeps close to that heart, that stems from it genuinely and never strays too far, are the right things for me. Sometimes I end up traveling so far from my core, doing something I dislike, thinking that where I'm going is ultimately going to return and touch the core again, and that I can just "bear with it" for the greater good, etc etc - that never works. I get so far out that I'm miserable. And I can no longer remember why I thought running so far away would bring me closer. And the farther I go, the less I can remember the way back, the less I can hear and feel that core. It's a terrible place to be. 

Working back to it is very hard. And over and over I have to remind myself that when I get close to it again it will be scary. But it's a different kind of scary than being far away is. I have to be careful and re-learn how to tell the difference.

Becoming a better person

That sounds unbelievably trite, but I'm not sure how else to phrase it without new agey 'self improvement' language. At its heart, the issue is that at 40, I'm so sick of the things I'm not good at. I'm tired of making the same mistakes, over and over. I know what my big failings are - or at least I have a good idea of the things I keep tripping over, repeatedly, and the things that always seem to be standing in my way.

Every few years I do this sort of life-level spring cleaning. I use Freemind to map out all of my shortcomings, and then I have "branches" and "clouds" to group them and form solutions. I seek help from professionals for those failings that seem fixable with help, and I work diligently on my own to fix the things that only I can come to terms with.

Not body image. Not "becoming a better housekeeper" or "learning harmonica, once and for all" - but the big things in life. Developing friendships. Giving energy to the people who matter to me the most. Giving my own needs equal weight in decisions. Being warmer, more open, less shuttered in my heart. Following through when I start to reach a place that makes me happy, or gives me peace. Allowing good things to happen with open acceptance. Communicating. Admitting to myself what I truly want, what honestly brings me peace and happiness, rather than assessing my life choices from the perspective of an ex boyfriend, my mother, a coworker who barely knows me. 

I feel like I fill my life up with jobs, work, extra interests, travel, planning travel, planning jobs, planning out ways to enhance my extra interests, and even to some extent running - all to avoid sitting quietly and looking at each of my weaknesses. Thinking about their impact on my life. Deciding to change things, or to accept them. 

During the years when I do my "spring cleaning" I often use my love of hard work as a way to, strangely, avoid the hard work of sitting still with my thoughts. I come from a blue collar family. There is hardly a higher compliment than to call someone a hard worker. And hard work, to my family, means constant tangible busy-ness. Looking at two options for how to spend your next hour and choosing the least sedentary. Often this means choosing the least appealing option. 

When I have the chance to sit still and look at my thoughts, my failings, my feelings about my failings, and tracing them to how they affected my life and evaluating whether I can live with those effects - or, alternatively - to make lists, source self-help books and counselors, create a task list of things to do that can solve each problem in turn, then download productivity software that allows me to track my progress and remain accountable on each area... well, I always opt for the latter course of action. 

I once spent an entire Saturday installing black foam board panels in a checkerboard line marching around my bedroom walls, each with a pinned on title: SELF, HOME, WORK, COMMUNICATION, TO-DO, and then under each title, an ongoing list of action items that were either on the "complete" side or "incomplete", so that each morning my first view would be of the progress I'd made (or had not made) and an instant check-in with myself to start my day. This resulted in stomach aches each morning and averting my eyes so they would never, ever hit one of the boards on my bedroom wall - then complete avoidance of my bedroom as a whole. 

But the act of buying the foam boards and nailing them up onto the wall and writing out the cards was very satisfying, and made me feel like I was "working hard" to fix myself. I was hammering, I was running errands, I was taking charge. Only I really wasn't.

For the rest of this month I'd like to work on "becoming a better person" by allowing myself time to sit and think about the things I'm struggling with. I don't completely discount talking to professionals if that's what seems the best course, or writing lists if I should find myself needing to do more than one thing, but that I'll do that only after some serious, quiet contemplation of the place I find myself, and where I'd like to find myself instead. 

(I wrote that and immediately felt myself getting excited about finding the perfect place to sit and quietly contemplate, what I might use to help me relax [pillow? blanket? yoga pants? candle?] ---- no no no. Just sitting still. Just whenever I have time, just in a quiet place and just in whatever I'm wearing, feeling and smelling at the moment.)

Hmm.