pronoia

Countdown, day 5

Halfway to freedom, baby, and counting the minutes until I leave.

I did nothing productive today, I have to admit. In fifteen minutes I'm leaving for an Enneagram retreat about two hours north of here, and I'm so excited I could pop, so I've been watching the clock and catching up on my blog reading and not so much with the working. Oh well. It's Friday, right?

When I come back here on Monday, I'm going to start a series of lasts. The last time I have an event meeting. The last time I have a grant meeting. The last time my team goes out to lunch all together. The last time I think about fundraising any time soon. It will be bittersweet--a long time coming, and sad nonetheless.

In the meantime, however, I'm going to spend 24 very intensive hours on guided inner work. My spiritual life is something of a shambles, I don't have a therapist anymore, and my daily practice is for shit. If nothing else, this will jump-start that part of my life and give me some space to lean back into it. Is there anything better during a big transition than a little retreat at which you do nothing but focus on yourself? I didn't think so.

Countdown, day 4

By Tuesday evening I was half-convinced I was doing the wrong thing. I believe in the mission of the school. I believe in the students. It's a worthy cause. Does my own misery in the face of the actual work even matter?

But then one of my favorite colleagues came in to bitch, and I was once again happy to be leaving. As wonderful as the mission and the students are, the administration is making some grave mistakes, the kind of grave mistakes that will likely lead to 5/7 of the leadership leaving at the same time as the Executive Director.

I'm still happy to be leaving but I wish tomorrow was my last day instead of next week. I'm walking around perpetually annoyed and bored. I don't want to figure out how to fix that last picture in the brochure. I don't want to write the very long document that details everything I do and everything I know. I don't want to sit in on another meeting about things that will no longer be my problem. I just want to leave and be done and be able to email people for the good gossip.

The upside is that even though Mr. Burns isn't speaking to me, I've got dinner plans and lunch plans with my favorite colleagues, so I've got some reassurance that I'm not going to lose people entirely. Some of these women are just too fabulous to let go of, and now I might actually be able to become friends with them instead of friendly colleagues.

But in the meantime I'm trying to write down everything that's in my head from three years of working here. How much do you want to bet I'm going to inadvertently leave out?

Countdown, day 2

Right now I'm not sure it's even real, this other job I claim I have. Sure, I have an email with an offer letter, and I had a phone call where I accepted, but it's tenuous and dream-like right now in the face of planning next year's budget and fighting about how the fundraising program will proceed. I'm not so good at waiting.

I took the train downtown to meet Ms. P for lunch, and as I came back I watched all of the white people get off before we crossed the river. On my way into the building an older man stopped me to ask if I knew the way to Catholic Charities. I didn't, but I was happy to help him figure it out. This afternoon the students went around to different classroom exhibits on Black History Month, hollering in the hallways and shrieking as they roughhoused.

Leaving this neighborhood was no part of the reason I applied for the fabulous new job, although I imagine people assume that it is. Despite looking forward to having actual restaurants nearby for lunch when we've run out of groceries, I'm going to miss being here. I'm going to miss being the kind of person who works here.

I mean, fabulous new job is at a for-profit. I think I've worked at a for-profit for exactly three months, when I was a temporary worker at a bank the summer after my first year in college. We've joked about being the family of non-profits, since Ms. P is at one and R spent eleven years at yet a different one, one he routinely consults with today. Will my liberal creds get taken away?

When we first moved here, we joked that you knew everything relevant about us from the fact that I work in this neighborhood, but we wouldn't get out of the car in Fancy Neighborhood With Expensive Stores. It happens again; I had no problem working across this river, but I'm more than a little nervous that working on the other side of the Famous River will render me comfortable, flat-footed, desensitized to the needs of people whose lives have not been mine.

Countdown, part 1

T minus ten working days, and I'm someplace new.

Meanwhile, I'm having the experience I associate with moving. Do you know how, when you're packing up a kitchen or a bathroom, you keep pulling things out of cabinets and drawers and somehow you end up with the largest pile of boxes ever, and you can't figure out how that all fit in your tiny little kitchen? As I'm prepping to move on, I'm trying to transfer as much of my existing institutional knowledge to other people. And damn, Gina, there's a lot to transfer.

Today alone I've spent nearly two hours training one of my team members on the website: basic html, css, our website structure. I'm the only one who knows how to do it. In a few minutes I'm going over all of our exisiting and prospective grants with another team member. None of this touches on the general development plan, the communications schedule, the budget, leave time, or any of the other things that have become mine over the years.

Although I'm not sad to be giving most of them up, it's also nice to know, in a deep way, that I was actually useful to the organization.

Partying Like It's 1989

Ms. P turned 35 on Friday, so we had planned a lovely birthday bash for Saturday night complete with good beer, imported cheese, and lots of friends. In one of those unexpected twists of who-knows-what, nine of the out-of-town friends we invited actually decided to come, so the birthday bash turned into a grownup slumber party.

If that's not a great way to turn 35, I don't know what is, especially went it includes extra babies, slightly freaked-out dogs, and very old friends who bring photographic evidence of the way you partied way back when.

Happy birthday, my love. The weekend was amazing.

It's Not Me, It's You

Leaving a job is just like ending a relationship. First there's the agonizing over the decision, then telling, then having to clean up the aftermath.

That's where I am now--the aftermath--and it's not pretty. I'm getting all kinds of guilt trips about how bad this timing is (it's less than ideal by far, I know, but it wouldn't be better a month on, or two months on, or anything less than at least eight months on), how grant income has to make up a huge deficit (mostly due to the ED leaving, as several grantors have told us in their rejections), how they can't even think about searching to replace me until the end of April, at least. It's hard to sit in meetings and know that I'm creating a lot of work and stress for people I really care about, even though I think the ED and the organization as a whole have brought this on themselves.

It's worth all of it to help my team, however, so I'm sitting here for two more weeks, teaching this one web editing software, walking that one through the grants plan, writing a comprehensive manual for the department, complete with passwords, so both the interim period and the future new director will have something to work from.

Still, it's reminding me unpleasantly of the period of time when two people have broken up and yet they're still both living in the same space, and there's a sadness and anger that underlies everything, and at the same time you look at the phone, the bookcase, the silverware, the bathroom curtain and think, soon you will not be mine.

Tater Tots For Everyone

When I left the interview on Friday, I was a little disheartened. My meetings with the three people I'd be working with went really well, but when the HR person came back to escort me out, she was distant, flat, and abrupt--all things she hadn't been at the beginning. It was not a good sign.

Still, bathroom painting, a head cold, and a depressed wife will keep one occupied through the weekend, even though I'd wake up every morning dreaming of working there.

And then, this morning, I got a phone call before 10am making me an offer. The initial salary offering was a little low, so I negotiated, got it up $5K with an additional signing bonus, and I accepted. I start March 10.

I haven't been able to find Mr. Burns to tell him in person, so I finally broke down and told our Chief of Staff, because March 10? Not that far away. The timing is awful, since our fundraising benefit is on April 12, but my events person is more than capable of doing all of that herself. I'm mostly just a sounding board. Still, it's not going to play well. I know at least three of the other members of the leadership team are looking, so I may just be the first in a long line of departures.

On the phone with R I said we needed to go out to celebrate. I'd tie one on, but well, I'm a cheap date and alcohol doesn't really mix well with a head cold. The bar we're going to serves hot dogs and tater tots (among other things), so we're joking I'm buying a round of tater tots for everyone. Including you, dear friends in the computer, who have been so very, very supportive.

I got a new job! With great benefits! And stock options! To which I can wear jeans!

This may just redeem February.

Postcards From the Front

Currently struck down by a headcold in the middle of painting the downstairs bathroom bright yellow--which does limit the paint fumes, but not the lightheadedness.

Had an interview Friday for the fabulous job, which seemed to go pretty well. I'm crossing my fingers it translates to an actual offer.

Researching stocks and trying to live through the resulting cognitive dissonance.

Send Nyquil.

Resistance is Futile

I'm in my own way again.

This morning L&S called to see if we were willing to be references for their adoption application, which they're submitting this afternoon. Yes, folks, from unable to discuss adoption to putting in an application in two short months, and all because of us.

This is the part that really hurts. This is the part that makes me most sad, because we're staring at twelve long months of waiting before we can even begin the process of waiting.

And part of me wants to get really sarcastic and really mean, not just about them, but about a lot of things. About BIL and SIL not planning financially and getting all the family help, while we get punished for being responsible. About L&S applying to adopt when they've seemed on the verge of divorce repeatedly in the last six months. About J&N being bad at moving and bad at helping their kid go to sleep. About neither of our mothers being very interested in the fact that we're planning to adopt. About all of the people who are merrily going along on their family building way because we facilitated it somehow.

But it's not about them. It's about my being sad and angry that I've been actively planning to start a family since I was 28 and now I'm 34 and I'll be 35 when we apply and likely 36 or older when we actually get a kid. It's about being frustrated that we aren't in a position to do this responsibly yet, not when we've just gotten ourselves out of debt and have no desire to get back in. It's about feeling unseen and unattended to by the people who love us, people who don't seem to see past my attempts at centeredness to acknowledge the deep hurt that's behind it. It's about my fear that this will never happen for us, that we will always be the aunties and never the mommies. And when I get sarcastic and angry and mean, it's because I'm trying not to feel the feelings I really have: the fear, the despair, the sadness, the heartache.

The problem is that I'm making it worse, railing against what is. We have to wait another year, and there will be waiting after that, and this is not what we want. We envy our friends and family who have had it so easy, and we envy the friends who have all of the resources to throw at this adventure. We want a child desperately, but we can't have one right now. We're scared and sad and tired and feeling like this marathon will never, ever end. We want things to be different, and they aren't.

Our friends and family are not the problem, and they are not the enemy (except when making stupid comments about me, but that's another post for another time). But neither can they really understand where we are and what it feels like to be us right now. We need to take the time to grieve this process that isn't proceeding according to plan, and we need to find forums in which we can simply be present to our own experiences of it.

It's hard to make the space in our busy, people-filled lives to just sit with the pain of it. It's easy to put on the masks of being okay, of coping, of keeping on keeping on, but it's those masks that then turn around and come out as meanness and sarcasm. The flip side is that expressing the pain only makes people reassure us, and while I'm grateful for their love and concern, I don't want to be reassured. They don't know that everything will work out; none of us do. And that kind of sentiment glosses over what it's like to be right here, where we are: in the middle of a long stretch of desert, hoping that the oasis doesn't keep moving, that it's more than a mirage. What I want is a space to just lean in to, where the pain is acknowledged without being minimized. What I want is a witness. And maybe I have to be my own witness.

In the meantime we're painting the inside of our house a rainbow of colors. In the meantime we're making lists of the things we're doing in preparation. In the meantime we're having dates with each other. And in the meantime I need to keep going to the cushion, to my journal, to the trees, so that I can sit with myself in compassion and acknowledge what is really there.

Breathing In, I Smile. Breathing Out, I Release.

By the time we got to our spiritual exploration group last night, we didn't want to go. A group to support daily spiritual engagement is all well and good in August, but at dusk on a Sunday evening in February, it is tempting to throw in the towel.

Our spiritual practice is in something of a slump. We did morning pages last week for the first time in months; our ritual room is used more often for feeding cats than it is for prayer; and we keep missing meeting for reasons good and ill. It's hard to get started again.

We couldn't remember when it started, but no one was there at 5pm as we watched the squirrel scamper across the road on three legs. No one was there at 5:15. By 5:25 we were getting agitated, but first one person came and tried the door, then another stood on the porch next to her. We heaved ourselves out of the car, collected our potluck offering, and stood around in the cold while we figured out who had a key to let us in.

The group begins with dinner--crockpots and tins of cookies lined up on a plastic tablecloth. It's a carnivorous group, small this time. Not like the time, the story told again last night, that everyone managed to bring cornbread or corn pudding. Or the time it was all dessert. The conversation at my end of the table turned to television; most of my fellow explorers have no cable either, and it was an odd and validating experience to not be the only ones to disentangle from the advertising maelstrom.

Upstairs again, we started with silence, as Quakers so often do. The theme was spirituality in everyday life, and our facilitators had sent us short quotations to meditate upon, including part of a Mary Oliver poem I love: "When it's over, I want to say:  all my life I was a bride married to amazement.  I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." I shared another favorite Oliver quotation: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

We talked about what is it that gets in the way of daily spiritual life. Resentment, I said, the resentment of the now that gets in the way of being fully present. Wanting my job, my moment, my life to be different. One woman asked about Lenten discipline. Although I'm not Christian anymore, Lent is about sacrificing that which stands between you and God; consumption and distraction stand between me and the Divine, and I thought last night of consciously and mindfully limiting my spending and being more choiceful about how I spend my time.

I left centered and calm, inner anxiety quieted for a while. I started a happiness journal before bed, read a few pages of a Buddhist book on radical acceptance. This morning my morning pages pointed out that my relationship to food, and specifically using food as a comfort and a distraction, is one of the biggest obstacles to my relationship to the Divine and to staying present. So I pledged that from Imbolc to Ostara I will consume no dairy, wheat, or high-fructose corn syrup. I pledged to be present to my own feelings and not to drown them with substances I respond badly to.

It doesn't mean I didn't panic this afternoon when the caffeine headache hit and when I foresaw running out of the food I brought from home long before we get through my chiropractor appointment and return home. But I took a deep breath and ate another apple and asked my lovely wife to get me something that fit the bill from her much more well-stocked neighborhood.

Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I release. I am present in this moment.