Sticks and Stars

I think I’m going to quit my job. I feel so conflicted even making that statement, but I also think it’s the right decision. After the first couple months when my initial workload died down to a trickle…and even calling it a trickle is making it into much more than it actually is, I started feeling pangs of doubt about how satisfied I might be with this job in the long run. I’ve tried to talk to my supervisor about adding responsibilities to my position but her response is to either give me busywork of the worst kind (“Here’s a room entirely filled with documents to be shredded. Oh, and our shredder can only handle one page at a time and it’s still going to jam on probably every third page.”), or she looks at me suspiciously and asks what I have in mind, as if I’m secretly plotting to steal her job.

I spend my days looking busy while I’m actually reading blogs, writing posts and writing emails. Last week I was at work for two days and in that time the only work I actually did was to hole punch a piece of paper and file it. For the other fourteen hours and fifty-eight minutes I did absolutely nothing. And the worst part is that my computer monitor is situated so that anyone walking by can see exactly what I’m doing so I feel constantly tense about my non-working, as I’m being “bad” and am waiting to get punished. If there was work to do, I’d happily do it. In fact, I’m eagerly anticipating the end of the month because then my next round of monthly reports are due and that’s good for at least two or three days of work, plus I have another handful of reports due by the end of June, so I might be able to generate an entire week of work.

Ideally I wouldn’t mind getting paid to email my friends and read their blogs, but with money being so tight I feel extra annoyed at my job because I don’t get a sense of satisfaction from all the work I do, so I can’t even feel like a good martyr who’s sacrificing her capitalist dreams in order to Make the World a Better Place. Instead I’m merely overdrawing my checking account every month so that I can spend my days making the blogosphere a better place.

Two straws broke this martyr’s back. The first was when my boss recently tossed a report at me and told me to complete it. I was confused at the absolute lack of guidance as to what data I should be providing, and when I checked with her she merely shrugged and said it’s pretty much at our discretion since the agency to which we are reporting doesn’t actually use this report. “So this is just bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy?” I asked. “Yep,” she confirmed distractedly as she stared at her computer screen. And by far, this isn’t the only report I complete for no reason. I’ve made gross errors on my monthly reports, like accidentally changing the date on a report but submitting it with the previous month’s numbers. I always catch any such errors and correct them the following month, but the thing is, no one says a word. Apparently it doesn’t look at all concerning that my agency didn’t serve anyone at all for a whole month (since the numbers didn’t increase from the previous month)…or perhaps it’s just that my emailed reports are carefully filtered into a folder labeled Trash.

I understand that even if the work I do has no actual meaning, that these hoops still must be jumped through in order to ensure that my agency can continue to do it’s work, and that’s fine. But I don’t want to do it. Maybe if I was saving kittens or washing crude oil off ducks or something I wouldn’t mind “bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy,” but I don’t feel an emotional tie to the clients served by my agency. These are people who yell at me for smiling at them as I’m coming into work. These are folks who panhandle me every day and then harass me when I tell them I have no cash because I’m carrying a cup of coffee that I clearly just paid for. I think it’s great that my agency is working to help them find housing and manage their mental illnesses, but I get no sense of accomplishment from being “a part” of that work.

The other straw that generated a loud and painful cracking sound was when my friend Kristin told me about an opening at her workplace. The work is work I’ve done before and is certainly easy enough, but the pay is so much more, the benefits are so much better, and there are even stock options that could become extremely lucrative. All night after she told me about it I imagined what it would be like to have so much more money. I mentally reconstructed my budget to include categories for things like clothing and contributions to my savings account. I savored the thought of being able to go to a book store and buy a book without having to first squelch down the tide of guilt and worry. I greedily imagined adding a dining category to my budget so that it would be okay to sometimes splurge on Thai food for dinner. I calculated how much money I’d get if stock prices rose to certain levels and imagined being able to pay off my student loans or put a down payment on a condo. I thought about all of these things so hard that when I woke up the next morning and faced the reality of my checking account and bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy, I felt angry, angry at my stupid job and the fact that I don’t make any money, that eating Thai food is a luxury I can’t afford, that my savings are slowly decreasing instead of increasing, that my student loans are going to haunt me until I die.

But thank god for this new sense of power I have in my life because my first angry thought was, “Fuck this shit! I’m getting me a new job.”

So I think that’s what I’m going to do. At first I felt really scared because it seemed like I was bringing a huge amount of instability into my life, but after working it through, I realize that it’s less instability than I thought. I recently learned that, because of how much money I pay for childcare, my boys still qualify for state sponsored medical benefits, which means that even if I don’t get benefits right away or decide to take a temp-to-perm position, my boys will still be covered. And while I don’t plan to take on true day-to-day temp jobs, I could because I do have a substantial (for me anyway) amount of money tucked away that I could rely on if I didn’t work for a while.

But what I realistically imagine is…well, okay, I don’t really know. What I want is a relatively high level administrative position that pays at least $10k more than I make now and offers reasonably good benefits. My first impression is that applying for jobs through the paper is not going to get me what I want but I could be wrong. I’m not really sure where to begin otherwise. I suppose I could register with temp/recruitment agencies because then at least I could specify my demands, so maybe that’s where I should start, but I don’t know about that either. I think maybe my first step is to just keep talking about this with everyone I know and see what comes of that. I belong to a list for single moms and I know that a good portion of them are relatively high level professionals of some sort, so asking for advice on that list might be a good idea too.

I’m not going to give notice without something great firmly in hand…after all, my job isn’t intolerable, I just don’t like it. But a change needs to be made.

Almost one year ago to the day, I moved out of my ex’s house and into my own apartment after nearly ten continuous years of cohabitation with various partners. I remember, a year ago, how exciting it was to plan my apartment, to decorate it, to buy all new stuff, and then I remember how horrible the first week was, how once I was unpacked there was nothing to do except sit and think about how desperately I missed my ex and how he didn’t miss me at all and was in fact probably glad to have me gone. Although I was supposed to have moved out so that he and I could work on our relationship, so that we could return to a place of romantic dating and rediscover what we loved about each other, it became clear almost immediately that there was too much insecurity on my part and too much disinterest on his for something like that to work. I wanted to move back in but it’s amazing how fast that door slammed shut. After a week apart he decided we should break up for good. By sheer refusal to allow it, I forced us to be “together” for another three months, but really, the day I moved out is the day our relationship ended.

In the beginning it was so hard. I was desperately unhappy, crying constantly, and the only thing that saved me was tv. I watched hour after hour of every tv series I could borrow from Netflix or the local video store because the tv characters were my friends. They had lives that didn’t revolve around love or betrayal or rejection or the intense pain I was so desperate to escape. I dreaded every weekend until I remembered that I had a few more discs to help me make it through and often I’d even look forward it, look forward to coming home to my one-sided friendships.

I was so unhappy, so miserable, and one thing that helped me to breathe through my tears and to feel a tiny bit less desperate was to think, for a second, of how things might be in a year. I had no clue how they might be, maybe my ex and I would be back together, maybe I’d be with someone new, maybe I’d find some magical way to actually be content alone, but regardless, surely I couldn’t be so horribly unhappy in a year. Surely the pain would be less if nothing else. Surely I would have moved on at least a little. Remembering that time passes helped me to have hope that there was a future for me that wouldn’t look like my present.

A year later I’m sitting on my couch in a new apartment, in a new city. I have a different job. I have different friends. A lush container garden grows outside my window. My copy of The Artist’s Way sits open to this week’s tasks, partially obscuring a catalog of classes being offered at a local bead store. Next to them sits a sculpture magazine and a magazine about ecological architecture. My wallet sits next to me on the couch with my library card on top, not yet put away from the selection of cooking and food theory books I just reserved. iTunes is open on my desktop from my search a few minutes ago to find bands similar to an amazing band a friend introduced me to, a band so fucking awesome that I can’t stop listening to their music and haven’t been able to since I first heard them weeks ago. In a few minutes I will leave my apartment to join my friends for an evening of discussing our creative lives and how we are learning to live them. Tomorrow I will slip out of work for a couple hours to amuse myself at Folklife and next weekend I will dress as a wench and join another friend at the renaissance faire.

A year ago, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that this is what my life would have become. I couldn’t imagine actually being happy alone, much less preferring it. It never occurred to me that art, that being creative might make me happy. I never would have dreamed that I would be seriously thinking of returning to school to become an architect. Or that I’d be making jewelry and scheming how I could incorporate a kid-safe workspace into my home. Or that I’d be eagerly anticipating a sunny warm morning so that I could sit outside and write while feeling at peace on my patio.

Every time I think to myself, I’m happy, I pause to gently feel around the edges, looking for tender spots and I can’t quite believe it when I don’t find them. I tell people I’m happy, but I say it with surprise in my voice and I have to tell them over and over because I can’t quite believe it myself. I almost feel like it’s a question that I’m asking: I’m happy? And the shocking answer that keeps coming back is yes, yes I am. The part that I almost don’t dare to whisper aloud for fear of being struck by lightening is that I might even be happier than I’ve ever been in my life.

The craziest part is that it’s all my doing. Back in late December 2006, as I pondered my upcoming move and job and life change, I hoped these changes were signs of good things to come. 2006 sucked pretty much from start to finish with really nothing good along the way and I sent every prayer I could to the universe that 2007 would be a better year. It didn’t occur to me that I might have some say in what kind of year I had. Yet here we are, soon approaching the halfway mark of 2007, and my year has been a great one, but not because the universe has sent me a winning lottery ticket or a handsome girl- and/or boyfriend or a prestigious job or some other wonderful gift, but because I wanted to be happy and I made it so. I did it.

A year after the event that truly devastated me and what I expected from my life, I’ve become a different person. It hurt, but I grew, stretched through my skin and expanded. I know myself so much better these days and I like myself so much better and I still discover new things I wouldn’t have expected. I can’t say it doesn’t hurt to think about what happened with my ex, to think about how he treated me, to think about what’s happening even now, but instead of that hurt comprising an entire ocean within which I am adrift, desperately clinging to a few boards that might euphemistically be called a raft, the hurt has become one small puddle in this glorious garden where raindrops sparkle on every leaf and the air smells fresh and new, and as I stumble through in awe of the beauty around me I barely notice when I step in it.

One year. So short, yet so, so long.

Today my friend Kate came over to teach me to grill and to bring me a tree to grace my patio and little container garden. She didn’t actually teach me to grill but she did bring me not one but four trees, two vine maples and two Japanese maples. Then we set off to a nearby big box home improvement store to purchase soil with which to fill the tree pots (and of course, a few more annuals to fill maybe just one or two more pots to add to the garden). Let me tell you, Memorial Day weekend is not the time to go to big box home improvement stores, but we did live to tell the tale.

She potted while I grilled and after a sumptuous dinner of steaks, mushroom and onion shish kabobs and lovely lime margaritas, I stood back to admire my patio which, by grace of the trees, has been transformed from nice enough for a concrete bunker to a lovely bower of green serenity. I was torn about how to focus the container garden — whether to arrange it for the eyes of the folks walking onto my patio (and thereby impress them with my lusciously mossy green thumb), to arrange it for the eyes of the folks in the living room (namely, me), or to arrange it for the eyes of the folks sitting and enjoying a nicely condensated beverage from the vantage point of my little bistro table and chairs, but ultimately I came up with an arrangement that suits all three and I am smitten. My patio looks so beautiful now, I can’t believe what an amazing difference the trees make. Kate and I both agreed that now I just need a couple more trees a couple more small pots…and maybe a couple hanging pots, and it will be perfect. Indeed, even right now it’s the perfect place to sit and write on a warm summer morning…or to watch my four year old ram his trike into the containers while my one year old tears the flowers off their stems.

I wish I hadn’t dropped my new camera and broke it. I’d post some photos.

Last night the boys and I decided to stop at a produce stand we pass to and from childcare and see if we could avail ourselves of some corn on the cob in honor of the gorgeously sunny and warm day that was gracing our fair city. After acquiring said corn (as well as carrots, tomatoes, artichokes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, onions, onion ring batter mix, smoked salmon and all natural gummy fruit snacks – god, produce stands are just as dangerous as bookstores and animal shelters) I came home feeling very summery and wanted to write a post but felt pressured to come up with more than just, “corn is yummy.” I decided I could write a post about summeryness and bounty and sharing the simple tasty joy of crispy dripping corn on the cob with my boys (or boy, rather, as the cob delivery method was somewhat beyond my little one – and if I correctly recall my government-sponsored child nutrition brochures, my little one is still too young for corn anyway), but all I really had the energy for was, “corn is yummy,” so I didn’t write at all.

This is the story of my life lately. My life that seemed so bright and rich a few weeks ago seems back to its usual dull greyness. The inspiration and hope I felt was replaced by the creeping knowledge that I’m not going to actually produce anything, I never produce anything, so maybe it’s time to just give up trying.

Then this morning during my bus ride I was reading this week’s chapter of The Artist’s Way (even though it seemed a little pointless to do so) and the author talked about how we creative folks tend to be just a wee bit dramatic about things and so instead of taking scary baby steps toward leading a creative life, we race to edge of the cliff and wring our hands about how we will possibly leap into being rich and famous and successful creators.

Bingo.

I’ve been feeling very down on my creativity and I couldn’t figure out what was the trouble. Or truthfully, I was pretty sure that I knew exactly what the trouble was, that I was a complete failure at all creative endeavors (and writing in particular) and should just give up and turn my life over to a career in accounting with a hobby of paper clip collecting on the side. Rather than taking the small baby step of actually sitting down and writing or thinking of ideas about which to write or even reading books about writing, I’ve been standing at the edge of the cliff lamenting that if I can’t even sit down to write I certainly can never be an actual writer; and that inviting a tense and anxious career of writing is only asking for a life of misery; and how since everyone else writes more prolifically and with more clever ideas than I do, if there are writing jobs/contracts/book deals to be had, they’re obviously going to get them instead of me; and how my writing isn’t even that good since I can’t even think of things to write about, so obviously I am a creative fraud who only qualifies as a writer because I keep insisting on labeling myself as such.

After being stuck by lightening on the bus this morning I realized that I need to narrow my gaze, I need to institute some nearsightedness into my life so that I can’t even see that stupid cliff anymore, so that I can only see enough to take some tiny baby steps. I need to take myself back to that process of baby steps because for weeks I was incredibly high off of it. It was like the best, most magical speed I’ve ever taken, treating myself to luxuries like skipping out of work for an hour to browse a toy store or an art gallery, stopping to smell the prolific flowers that line my walk from bus stop to car, buying myself a soft, lacy blue matching bra and panty set instead of the practical white bra I intended to buy, lighting candles at dinner time, spending an evening drooling my way through a stack of cookbooks borrowed from the library with no intention of cooking any of it. The Artist’s Way gave me permission to focus on the process of creating a creative life, to treat myself and pet myself and tell myself how wonderful and brilliant I am with the assumption that the end result, whatever it is, whenever I get to it, is going to be awesome. And that makes sense. Assuming I’m going to live to be 100, I’m pretty sure that 70 years of lacy bra buying and flower smelling is going to do a hell of lot more for me than sitting paralyzed in front of my computer, brain as blank as the screen in front of me.

I got lost in the results. I spent a few weeks on the process and so I was ready to see some production. Art galleries? Check! Lacy bra? Check! Indulgent sculpture magazine? Check! Mood ring that makes me smile? Check! Check! Check! It’s all here, so where’s my short story that’s supposed to come from all this creative living? Where’s my painting, my sculpture, my sketches, my movie script, my collage, my dance routine? And of course, once I started focusing on the results, I lost the process entirely. Why bother to stop to admire the ripples in the sand on the beach when I know it’s not going to get my novel written? Why waste time taking myself on artist dates when my sketch pad is going to remain just as empty? But today I understand. It doesn’t matter if my novel ever gets written or if my sketch pad ever gets sketched up. If buying a fish tank for my cubicle at work makes me smile every time I think about it, if listening to new music makes me dance around my apartment until I fall down laughing with my four year old, if every day I find myself compulsively smiling during my bus rides home because I’m just so fucking happy with my sweet life full of little pleasures, isn’t that enough? Isn’t that better than enough?

I really feel compelled to blog today. I just returned from a three day trip to the coast where I enjoyed, among other luxuries, a river rock massage, the best damn salmon I’ve ever had in my life, a steam bath, room service breakfasts, walks on the beach and a spectacular view of the ocean from my room window every time I cared to look out (which was as constantly as two small bed leaping children would allow). It was a wonderful trip and was made even more wonderful by the fact that it was financed in its entirety by my dad and that my dad and my brother and my brother’s girlfriend were all very helpful in making sure that a) my boys had a blast, and b) I did not go insane in the solitary caretaking of my two small havoc wreakers.

Now I’m home and I feel amorphous blog entries welling up inside me but I’m having a hard time pinpointing them. My friend Kristin (the one who so kindly set up this blog for me) came over tonight and, as always, I had a blast hanging out with her and drinking margaritas and eating organic blue corn tortilla chips with tasty guacamole and surprisingly sweet and ripe strawberries for May. She told me about a job opening at the company where she works, and all of a sudden the cloud I’ve been under for the past few weeks started to dissipate and I actually saw a few peeks of blue skies. It makes me wonder if what I really need in my life in order to feel excited and happy is change, constant change and growth and expansion and newness.

But anyway, I’m too tired to delve into any depth this evening, I just wanted to post so that you all could feel a bit of relief from the terrible missing of my posts that you’ve been experiencing over the past few days. It’s okay everyone, I’m back and I won’t abandon you again.

Today is day one of my new blog. I feel that I should write some philosophical essay about the nature of blogging and privacy, or if not a philosophical essay, then at least I should spill some dirt about what has brought me to this new and auspicious location, but unfortunately all I feel inspired to write about are the cute barista boys at the coffee shop where I get my morning cup of wakefulness, and the barista girl who’s surly and plain but who, because she’s surly and plain, compels me to strive to make her smile. If I was going to date one of them it’d be the girl, partly because the boys are just too cute for me, but more so because I like ‘em surly and plain.

I’ve been thinking, though, that I should forget about dating men for a while (if not forever – ha ha). One thing I do with regards to new folks I’m dating is to hold them to these insane standards of perfection and then feel embarrassed that I’m dating someone so flawed every time they dare to show the faintest sign of their imperfect human selves. It’s not really as productive as you might imagine, and although I’m consciously aware of what I’m doing, I’m powerless to stop it. The best I can do is grit my teeth and pretend that I don’t notice their blatant imperfections in order to maintain the mirage that they too are as perfect as I. Ultimately, the more I get to know someone the less my bizarre standards of perfection matter but it also sets up this dynamic where throughout our involvement I’m still conscious of their imperfections and I regard those things as something I so generously tolerate. Nice of me, eh, to allow my own perfection to be sullied by everyone else’s pathetic humanity?

I agree.

My ex presents many good examples of this. I occasionally find myself remembering something about him with which I previously found fault and I have to think to myself, wow, you were critical of him about that? Jeez, no wonder he always claimed that nothing he ever did was good enough for you. There are many things he did because he was trying to be nice or thoughtful or whatever, but they didn’t turn out perfect, and that’s what I chose to focus on. I, of course, acknowledged the intent, but I also couldn’t help but acknowledge how the intent fell short and guess which one looms larger?

But anyway, the reason why this matters now is because I find myself unconsciously comparing every new potential paramour to my ex. And while my ex has become a Grade A Asshole now that we are no longer together, when we were together, at least while he was still interested in us being together, he was actually quite good to me in many ways. And so that’s what I’m choosing to remember these days, and that’s the standard to which I hold these new folks. So the combination of me blowing out of proportion the tiniest imperfections in folks I’m dating while simultaneously comparing them to the best that my ex had to offer is not leaving me terribly satisfied with the selections available to me in the all-you-can-eat dating buffet.

However, since my ex was a man, and since everyone I’ve dated since (with one not-worth-mentioning exception) has been male as well, I’m thinking that I might be able to break this cycle by focusing on women instead. And besides, I recall two things very clearly about the early days of being involved with my ex: 1) With my newfound exposure to straight people, I was absolutely shocked at the amount of bullshit straight women put up with from men and how they didn’t even seem to notice it, and 2) how very clearly I felt that while my ex seemed like a good example of a man, it was still far more satisfying to date women and so if things didn’t work out between us, I’d happily go back to women and not look back. After five years of putting up with male bullshit and finding myself unhappily interred in heteroworld, I find myself much too oblivious to things that would have been intolerable five years ago. I think it would be nice to get back to my all women utopia where I can sidle my perfect self up to some other perfect being and we can communicate forevermore in perfect harmony.

And maybe women will be more tolerant of the single mama business…although that begs the question of how I will explain away my five year lapse in judgment while remaining secure in my queerness. I’ve seriously considered brushing it off as a sperm donor situation gone awry, but that seems like an awfully sticky web to weave. Damn me and my stupid, complicated life.

Anyway, here we all are! Welcome to my blog! Let me tell you, I’m a hell of a lot more feisty when I’m not worrying about who might be preparing to use my words against me in a court of law! But more on that later…