Let Go
July 17th, 2006
I flipped Adam off this morning before I left for work. I didn’t mean to, I swear. For some strange reason, I decided to flash him two-fisted “rock on” hands (as demonstrated hilariously in this site) with my arms over my head as I was walking out the door this morning. This alone would be cause for alarm, but instead, my hands did what I was actually feeling towards the world, and I threw up two middle fingers and walked out the door without explanation or even a vague awareness of what I had done.
And the PMS train rolls on. Today’s casualties include not only a third box of Triscuits, but also two pounds of cherries and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This is among the rich, rational myriad of reasons I’m truly terrified to become pregnant. I see 100 pound weight gains in my future, because something else took hold of my body while I was eating those cherries. My mind was saying “No! NO! Put them down!” and my heart was saying something totally different, as there is a pile of pits next to my wine as tall as the end table.
I also sunk further into the depths of hormonal despair and found myself crying at a restaurant named Porky’s (in the Everglades, no less. Adam kept screeching, “YOU CANNOT CRY IN PORKY’S. PLEASE.”) while I regaled Adam that I was a woeful failure in life, as my salary is somewhere in the range of the high peanuts since I gave up my corporate career. And then we’ll move back to Massachusetts and I will be forced to get a job at Big Lots because no other newspaper will have me, and so I spent the day (the DAY) searching for freelancing jobs so that I could write people’s resumes, random copy and, I don’t know, help a Nigerian national figure out how to get his funds back in the United States just so that I wouldn’t have to go back to Big Lots and I could earn my keep.
God, I haven’t learned anything. Funny how you can change circumstances, but you can’t change the person. I felt like a failure when I was working all those hours at my last job because I wasn’t living my life and I wasn’t being the best corporate drone imaginable and I thought if I didn’t do it perfectly every day, I would lose something. If I didn’t kill myself and make it as miserable as possible, then I wasn’t achieving what I needed to achieve.
Not much has changed. Sure, I’m less anxious about some stuff – maybe I now know that the world won’t end if I make a mistake, or if I don’t work 100 hours a day. But I’m still yanked out to the point of obsession that I’m not doing enough to be successful as a human being, in some sort of strange, elusive definition of success that only I can explain or define. I write a column for a publication with a circulation of 50,000, and I’m still not happy with it. I should be doing more. I should be king of the newspaper business after a mere six months of this, and have finished five books by now, and have no fewer than six professional blogging gigs, in addition to various and sundry freelance writing projects in order to call myself a successful writer and/or person because anything less is just cheating.
In other words, I’m good at setting realistic goals for myself. Clearly, I still don’t know what it means to be successful. Is it leaving the world a better place than you found it? Meeting some strict set of personal goals? Working until you drop, or until someone else says you’ve made it?
And then I remember that a year ago, I never could have imagined what I’d be doing. That I’d be a professional writer and editor. That I’d have a dog. That I’d be a little (a little. A LITTLE) closer to having a baby. And that I should honestly just shut the fuck up and go get the ice cream and peanut butter and see where life takes me.
But gah. I CAN’T. Send beef jerky.
*Frou Frou
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
14 Comments Add your own
1. Lawyerish | July 17th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Dude. DUDE. I know EXACTLY (!!!) how you feel. I am going to write about this soon, but I took a leave of absence from my firm for two years, and I managed to make even that — something most people dream about, an opportunity to write and try new things like acting — totally miserable and stressful for myself. The lost income, the stasis compared with my peers from school, the uncertainty of what would happen left. It was really rough.
I don’t think there’s a perfect solution. At least, I haven’t found one yet. Working in a structured environment has its benefits and drawbacks (I FEEL you on the whole world-ending-mistake and 100-hour days thing), and being out on your own does, too. I think it’s good to revisit your decisions sometimes to make sure you’re where you want to be; but sometimes you just have to support your own choices by letting them play out for a while and getting out of your own way mentally. WAY easier said than done.
You’re doing awesome. We loves you out here in ether-land!
2. Yez | July 17th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
I’m just helplessly laugh-weak, here, over the two-fisted flipoff X-D
And I totally get the food. But as you know, I totally don’t get the Type A stuff, so will leave quietly, taking the back stairs….
3. E | July 18th, 2006 at 4:54 am
As you well know, I can relate with the never feeling like you’re doing enough/accomplishing enough, etc. I don’t think that little nagging voice can ever be completely stifled because I just think it’s hard-wired for some people to be that way, myself included. But I’ve noticed that the nagging voice gets quieter the more I laugh at things. Everything is absolutely goddamn absurd! Love it! Embrace it!
Oh and the success thing? You’re already there dood.
4. christine | July 18th, 2006 at 6:04 am
You’re already doing pretty damned well. Keep on keeping on.
And flipping off Adam…hilarious. You crack me up even when serious. And you are a writer, and a pretty fantastic one at that. (Ask Carol! She knows)
5. Gypsy | July 18th, 2006 at 6:25 am
I’ve always sort of felt like I should be successful without really trying. Like, it should just come to me. Naturally. I’m still not quite over that. What? You mean, I have to, like, work really hard and sacrifice? Let me get back to you on that.
6. Kathryn | July 18th, 2006 at 6:42 am
In July 2002, I left my corp position for a break. I hated the culture of the co. I worked for and had to get out before it was too late. I had this quixotic (nay, insane?) idea about getting some “little” job to pay the bills until I figured things out. Ha!
I was stressed (STRESSED) for over two years, because I never figured out a thing, I felt like a loser and was constantly calculating the lost income, and it’s impact on my retirement, and how I was falling behind my peers (BAH!). Plus, I couldn’t bring myself to take a “little” job or commit to anything because I kept thinking that my life was just around the next corner.
Then? I took a little job. I was humiliated, but I also wanted to work. I was tired of the whole not working thing. In the course of my little job, I figured out what I want to do, which is why I’m going to grad school to switch gears entirely (I always glumly thought I’d get an MBA, what a weird, happy turn my life has taken). Now? I’m focused and looking forward to the future.
Our lives are not the same. You already know that success is different things to different people (no one wants to do what I am going to school for, and it is kind of looked down on). I think that I’ve finally found mine. I’m just saying that I I think I know how you feel – a little.
While I don’t want others to feel my misery, it comforts me to know that I’m not alone.
You are not alone.
7. jonniker | July 18th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Ish: Two years. OMG. I would die. DIE. I somehow knew you’d get it almost exactly.
Yez: You always said that a career would only get in the way of your life, and that is entirely true. I remind myself of that quite a bit.
E: You’ve gotten so good at that. And in fairness, you were always better at what you do than I was at it. Always. So good. And one word: Robert. He loves you. Meanwhile, he’s still wishing I would die.
Christine: It’s taking every single bone in my little body to resist arguing with you. So just, thank you.
Gypsy: See, I think I should have to work so hard and kill myself and never experience success because LIFE IS ABOUT SUFFERING. I grew up in Pennsylvania. I think that’s the motto there.
K: Thank you. What you said really does help so much (and I’m so interested in why you’re going to school! I can’t remember, though I think I once knew. And I doubt it’s frowned upon!)
8. -R- | July 18th, 2006 at 8:09 am
I can completely understand what you are talking about. I haven’t switched careers yet, but right now I feel like, Is this all I’m doing? I am successful by a lot of people’s standards, but I don’t know if I am fulfilled or satisfied. I am working on figuring all that out. Way to make my comment all about me, and not really about your post. Sorry.
9. GG | July 18th, 2006 at 8:53 am
It looks to me like you need to join me in my soundproof room for some GAH-ing.
Ugh. I don’t know what to tell you, except wine is always good. Sometimes I wish I had more of that Type A quality in me – I have a tendency to fall into a slump – get so overwhelmed with the CONCEPT of the rat race that I just trudge through the whole thing. I mean, hell, I’m sitting here in a cube making PENNIES while working for my in-laws (who, incidentally, don’t believe my academic/professional credentials simply b/c I don’t have my PA bar license, the dumbasses), and yet it is TORTURE for me to look for something greater/more fulfilling, simply because I’m overwhelmed and in a sort of stasis.
Wow, talk about blog-novelling. Did you get the cutie Target dress yesterday?
One of these days, will you explain to me how you found your current gig? (Feel free to email instead of taking up your comment space with it).
10. Claire | July 18th, 2006 at 10:32 am
it looks like you’re read by a lot of people that feel JUST LIKE YOU DO. I am so overwhelmed with the thought that i am never going to do anything with my life, i have slumped into an awesome depression and don’t care if my world keeps going without me doing anything to change it. I hate my job, THINK that i may have found somewhere to re-focus my attention, but am not convinced that i have any skills whatsoever to even get started.
i hate where i live – not just area, but the damn house itself – and have somehow lost all of the people i used to care about. they’ve all moved away and lost touch. and it sucks to feel alone, i know.
But YOU – you are actually doing what you LIKE which is more than most of us can say, like, EVER. And you’re good at it, too, for crissakes.
Jonna, i think we all need to get together and go to Vegas for the weekend or something. ugh…
11. Leigh | July 18th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Yum. Cherries. I’ve been bingeing on bings myself!!
Anyhow, I think you should immediately get pregnant because becoming a parent gives you so many MORE opportunities to feel like a failure.
No seriously, you speak for so many women when you talk honestly about these feelings. It is very common for women to feel as if they are a) one step away from collecting cans for a living, and b) not good enough at whatever they are doing.
A (brilliant and wildly successful) woman friend of mine said once-when we were having a mutual “we suck” session-”You know, incompetent people don’t worry a lot about whether they are competent or not. So if you are worrying about being competent, you probably are.”
I am inspired by you and your blog. You write beautifullly, honestly, and with such discipline. I wish I had half your dedication to you craft. And you didn’t even mention the blog in your description of your current lifestyle! This is an accomplishment!
And being a dog mom is no small deal, either. Give yourself a pat on the back.
12. jonniker | July 18th, 2006 at 11:29 am
GG: I’ll totally email you the story later. It was, in fact, dumb luck that I got this job, I cannot lie.
Claire: Aw man, Vegas. Yeah. That would be great. And yes, I am lucky in that I like it, but because I am an Anxiety Person, I start thinking about the waaay future and panic. Nice, right? I’m so fun to be around!
Leigh: Stop. STOP. You are being too nice! TOO NICE! Alarms are going off that scream, “NOO! I am not worthy!” ALAAARMS. But truthfully, all I can say is thank you. And yeah, I could TOTALLY see motherhood as yet another daily failure. Heh. And you are right about incompetence – my friend E. and I (she’s up above and a real life best friend and former coworker) used to talk about that all the time. The incompetent ones – they just left! They didn’t CARE! They just LEFT AND WENT HOME LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. And life went on. Sigh.
13. jes | July 18th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
And, while emailing the story to GG, email it to me, also, because Dumb Luck is what inspires me in life to play the lottery and dream of eating bon bons by the pool without gaining an ounce.
What is it with the constant hungriness? I’m not even in my PMS phase, and I’m just so hungry. I polished off the raisins today, and I REALLY DON’T EVEN CARE FOR RAISINS.
14. jonniker | July 18th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
OMG, Jes, I ate an entire carton of Thompson raisins last week. And I, too, hate raisins. Who knew?
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed