Experiments with Energy

So to start it off I sat down and then the existential dread set in. Yay perfectionism? I am sure you’ve noticed my inconsistency with writing, pretty much since I got back from TLoTH. I’m not really sure where this post is going to go. I am a ball of mush so I’m hoping you’ll just look at the puddle of words and think kindly of me later.

I am not a fan of saying that I’m too busy for things so I need to be more honest with you, my reader base, that I’ve had to prioritize other things recently. Firstly, there have been some weird and bad things happening within my life and community that I’m not interested in making public. If you’re super curious you can ask me about it but realize I may or may not want to respond. That took up a good two months’ worth of brain space so I fell off the bandwagon of writing. </end vaguebooking>

One of the major reasons I haven’t written as much is that I have seen most of you. I have made a concerted effort to meet with each of you, make eye contact, offer a hug if I’m feeling up for it. In the past year, I have travelled extensively: finding myself, finding you, defining how I want to live after spending so much time hurdling myself through time and space without taking notice. I have spent so much time seeing you that I forget you’re not experiencing all of this with me.

Does anyone else get this? There is a point of intimacy with friends and family where I literally forget that another person did not experience an event. Mostly this happens with PartnerPenguin for me, because we’ve been in each others lives so long that I falsely assume he’s experienced all the same things as me. I think that I let myself feel this way about other people because I post so much on Facebook. I know there are many people who see all my posts go by so I feel like it’s almost obsolete to write about my experiences. But by the same token, I only post about positive things (generally) on social media because I am caught in the trap of only presenting the best version of myself publicly.

This ties in to my very real struggle to strike a balance of what to share, what’s over sharing and with what audience is appropriate to share what information with. This can sometimes feel like a daily struggle for me. Oddly, the more positive stuff I have going on in my life this issue intensifies. How do I share my success without building resentment among my peers? How do I remember all of the sensitive subjects for all of my friends so that I’m not boasting and making them feel bad? Do I just recklessly live in complete abundance? I know too well that sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down so while I hope my path continues to push solidly upward, I don’t want to alienate those who have been there for me while I’ve been down.

Annnnyyyyyywaaaaaayyyyy

I have continued to network ruthlessly with geologists, engineers, hydrogeologists and botonists, sometimes meeting with three different companies in a day. I’ve gotten a lot of really great and sometimes intense feedback on my resume so now it’s in a state where companies actually read it. In fact, I have an honest to Blog interview next week. In Key Route City. With a company I’d like to work for. Fancy that!

Networking with folks (mostly White people, mostly men) has given me a much better idea of how the field of geology works in practice. It also gives me a much better understanding of how narrow the world of academia was. I had literally been told to leave things off my resume by folks in academia that would have been the one detail that mattered most in private industry. There is a weird social system around ownership in academia that unless something is 100% your project, it doesn’t count at all. This creates very weird mental blocks when I’m trying to own my experiences. “Owning” my work experience and selling myself have been the hardest parts of my pivot to private industry. I think for someone with no history of mental illness this would have been a challenge. My history of anxiety and depression compounded how ambiguously bad I feel about taking more credit for things I’ve done.  It’s possible, just challenging. And I’m super happy that I now have my friends, family and communities that care about me to make sure I am supported in working through my own brain hair-balls.

* * *

Probably the biggest thing that you didn’t know was going on in my life (or maybe you did!) is that due to the ENORMOUS success from my last post…

I STARTED A JAM COMPANY!!!

Wheeeeeee!! This is my logo:

It has been really interesting to go through all the paperwork and seeing all the different agencies but for positive reasons. The Key Route City was, dare I say it, happy to have me start a business. Everyone whom I spoke with was cheerful and energetic and congratulated me. I really like how straightforward the process of starting something so simple as a jam company is. There is a well-paved path with absolutely no off-roading or steep hills.

In my honest opinion the best part of starting a jam company was finding the kitchen I’m going to work in. The Key Route City is an epicenter for innovative co-working--which extends to industrial kitchen co-working. It has felt like the best parts of dating and now I’m super looking forward to the relationship starting. The kitchen I’m going to rent with is owned by a woman in her 30’s who wanted a build a kitchen for her younger self to succeed. Our “intake” conversation was full of laughing and helpful information. I met some of the other tenants of the kitchen who were all nice. There is a snack shop attached to the front of the kitchen so I could potentially partner with some of the bakers in the space to sell jam-toast.

I will soon start on the next level of jam making activities, now that my initial funding goal has been met. In the meantime, my main “website” of sorts is on Facebook and I will leave the GoFundMe open for a while if you’d like to help me financially.

And now to close out with a song! Here is song by a group I’m really excited to see this weekend: Amadou and Mariam!