Starting this piece, I have no idea whether it’s going to be
multiple entries or just a brain dump all at once. Or it could just be really
short? We’ll go on this ride together.
The past couple of weeks have been a literal whirlwind of
events and emotions which pretty much any Jew could tell you is just what
happens in Elul. Some of the
events that have transpired in, let’s be generous and say-the past month:
·
I met one of my favorite authors and she signed
the final book of her trilogy with “Hey Sara, you rock” with a picture of a
rock
·
I saw the total solar eclipse.
·
I got invited to a family reunion by some folks
I met on the train en route to the eclipse. Yes. I’m going.
·
I got to see my Brother, who live in the Great
North. We had pizza (I customized mine without nightshades), it was epic.
·
I house sat for nearly 3 weeks and got to hang
out with some really cool animals.
·
I got to take the dog on lots of hikes
·
I was
offered a job that is PG track and in the Key Route City (at least part
time).
·
PartnerPenguin lost his job.
·
My new job offered me to put my name in a hat to
do relief work for hurricane damage. I accepted this offer, I do not know yet
whether I’ll be chosen.
·
I am not singing in the choir with my synagogue
this High Holy Day season due to scheduling conflicts.
·
I bought a new phone and got a new phone number.
·
I cut 16” of hair off.
·
I tried oysters and snails.
·
We got PartnerPenguin’s dad’s old van so I have
a car to commute to work.
In short: the routine for my life I had about 4 weeks ago is
no longer a routine I have. Much of my emotional struggle right focuses around
the grief of routine loss, in some way or another. Humans are creatures of
habit and boy oh boy is it uncomfortable when our habits all change permanently and irrevocably. But that’s how we get
stronger.
While I am experiencing a lot of change, I am also
celebrating a milestone of steadfastness in my life:
I have lived in the
Golden State for 10 years. Happy decade to me!!
My decadal celebration and my embarking on a new
professional journey are very related in my mind. Ten years ago I left the home
I grew up in and all the people I ever knew and cared about. 98% of people in
my life stopped talking to me, including most of my biological family. Some of
that was my doing, some of it wasn’t. The 2% of people who continued to talk to
me did so mostly to use me for my emotional labor of helping them process their
emotions. Almost no one helped me process my own life’s implosion. In fact, I was
actually lectured by the people I lived with for being honest to my therapist
at the time for “telling lies” about them. So my processing of the trauma in my
life had to go completely underground and I pretend it wasn’t happening.
This…did not help.
This has left an indelible mark on how I perceive human
interactions to happen. My emotion brain is convinced that no matter how much
people appear to care about me, there will always be an event that they
abruptly stop interacting with me and cut me out of their life with no remorse
or regret. This is incredibly painful to admit. But I have built into the
framework of every relationship I’ve formed that things will end, they will
probably be my fault, and I will be alone again. It’s left me believing that
unconditional love doesn’t exist.
So I have worked a lot to figure out the conditions under
which love does exist. This has actually been very helpful to figure out
boundaries. I have had some really good role models like Mama Bear who once told
me which behaviors I was doing were unacceptable instead of just cutting me out
of her life without explanation. That was one of the hardest conversations I’ve
ever had, but also one of the most productive. It allowed me to see that,
provided I tried to change my behavior (which I am capable of doing) I would
not be cut off from the support I receive.
I usually don’t bring up this particularly cynical view of
the world but I feel that it’s become increasingly relevant with impending
enormous changes in my life. I fear that I will lose most of my friends with a
changing schedule.
I have started to share this set of fears with some of my
friends IRL and also electronically. Many have been like “don’t be an idiot,
we’re here for you.” Which is exactly what I needed to hear. And what I will
continue to need to hear. There are a couple reasons why I don’t full believe
everyone when they say it, but I really need to hear it as often as people are
willing to say it.
Reason 1 why I think
my social world is ending: Time
This past year I have spent an EXTRAORDINARY amount of time
focusing on relationships. I had the time. I had the space. I had the spoons. I
had the resources. It was one of the most amazing years of luxury and privilege
I’ve had in my life. Unlike previous years where I had this amount of resources
(like when I was a child) I was actually able to appreciate my privilege. I
knew I would have a meal over my head and a roof to eat. Wait, strike that.
Reverse it. :P
The thing is, I set out an extremely rigorous set of goals
for myself to stay in touch with people. I wrote my PeopleKeeper experiment and then committed to it. I would say that it was an 80% success. I
entered all of the people from the weekly, bi-weekly and monthly lists into my
calendar and have generally stuck to the schedule I set myself. The quarterly
people…not so much because I didn’t actually put them in my calendar. Lesson
learned. I live and love by my cellular communicator.
Even though this isn’t 80% of the people on the list, I call
it 80% successful because this intentional friendship thing has deepened and
strengthened relationships like no other experiment I’ve ever tried in my life.
Opportunities have opened like never before and there I was to accept them.
I’ve travelled thousands of miles, laughed, cried and held my friends all over
the country and had positive experiences I could never have even dreamed
possible.
The first reality of this new job is that it is going to
take a lot of TIME. My first week is in a training location that is 1 hour from
Key Route City, if there’s no traffic. And there’s almost guaranteed to be
traffic. So my options then become: try to drive for 2 hours each direction
each day or try to find a spot to crash closer to the training location. We’ll
see. The van should be big enough for a sleeping pad, worst comes to worst.
Anyway, this is just the first week and I’m only going to
bill 40 hours worked. Assuming I don’t get chosen to do hurricane relief, I
plan to have 40-hour weeks while I’m in the office. 16 of my billing hours will
be in a place 1 hour away from Key Route City. Again, estimated without traffic
which can double driving times If I commute both days, which puts my time spent
at work+commute to 44 hours, with no traffic.
In the field, however, things will be different. From all
the networking I’ve done, I have set the expectation that field work for entry
level geologists can often involve 12 hour days. Fieldwork might also involve
travel so this will effectively mean a week or two off the grid at least every
quarter. Hurricane relief work could be several months long, depending if I’m
chosen and which project I’m chosen to participate in.
Keep in mind: this is
what I want. I very knowingly signed up for this. This job is exactly what I asked for. This is
exactly how I continue on my professional path forward as a Professional
Geologist.
I will be signing up for the Geologist in Training (the
pre-test to the license that’s $450) in November so I can take it in Spring
2018. Eventually I’ll need to study for it.
I still plan on making jam with Queen of Strawbs and
keeping my space in the community kitchen I’ve rented at least until December.
I committed to three months to see if the business goes anywhere, I’m hardly
someone who backs down from her commitments easily. Or breaks contracts…lol. I
haven’t made a website yet but maybe that might be a thing to do so I can
handle customer flow online without having to keep that in my cognitive load.
But I haven’t even figured out when the next batch of jam is to be made so I’ll
get there when I get there.
Oh! I made a new flavor too! I’m excited to see if it
scales. It’s blueberry based and is a really nice compliment to my strawberry
jam which is very much like “HELLO HOW ARE YOU WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO
ACCOMPLISH TODAY.” The blueberry jam is much more “Good morning dear. Have some
peaceful contemplation with your breakfast. You are wonderful.”
The other thing that could happen is that I’m being
considered to give a presentation in the UK in October. If that happens, that
will also eat about 3-5 hours/week. It may not happen because I just don’t know
if I can make that kind of time commitment.
But all of this boils down to the very real issue that I
just will not continue to have the
time for all of my relationships. I do not know how I’m going to handle this. I
am still working on it.
Reason 2 why I think
my social world is ending: Location
As briefly mentioned in my previous point: I accepted
working part time in a location that is quite far from my primary residence in
Key Route City. I am already looking into getting a part-time residence up in
that area, maybe with someone who wants to AirBnB their place on weekends but
would be ok with me bunking there twice a week.
This cuts the amount of time I can physically see my friends
by 2/7ths. Reduction of in-person time with friends is an issue a lot of people
experience in their mid-late 20s. Somehow in the past year I have actually increased the amount of casual social
interactions I’ve had. PartnerPenguin and I go to a gaming group once a week
where we play board games and schmooze. We also have a weekly “Family dinner”
where we have dinner once a week with at least one friend. Sometimes we have
dinner with the Bears instead.
I need to also keep Date Night with PartnerPenguin because
the two of us need to actually see each other for our relationship to work out.
Date night is not often an actual date, just a time in our schedule where we
can spend together and talk and make food sometimes.
If I live in a different part of the area 2/7 nights a week
I will lose a lot of the casual and low maintenance ways that I interact with
many of my friends.
Also having a distant location will put a strain on my
ability to commit to certain things and see certain people. Obviously my answer
will be to go be gregarious and make oodles of new friends. But that is also
time consuming. I will live.
Reason 3 why I think
my social world is ending: Mental
Illness
Hey! Now it’s time to talk about something uncomfortable!
Yaaay. :{
A big thing that I have discovered from the way that I’ve
interacted over the past year is that a lot of my friends are very happy to
hear from me—but they are also incapable of “picking up the phone”, so to
speak. Automating my reaching out has helped me with my own depression and
anxiety (it has generally helped, no system is perfect) and interacting with
people has helped even more. Having the opt-in of figuring out how to not feel
alone when I’ve feel alone has been magnificent.
It turns out that mental illness is concurrent with a lot of
other things I like in my friends: like intelligence and interesting
personalities. I haven’t done a survey but like….a lot of my friends have some
kind of mental illness, or have struggled with one over the course of our
friendship. (Cue Chili Peppers) They have certainly been there through
my struggles with my mental illnesses as well so no one is perfect or blameless
here.
However: My being the one to pick up the phone, open the FB
messenger, send that text, is often how our relationship continues. I am afraid
of losing most of these relationships. If your internal wiring prevents you
from doing things you love like contacting your friends, I can’t help you
change that. And if I’m not initiating contact all the time, I will probably
lose your friendship as a casualty.
I feel these relationships have come very far in my setting
boundaries around emotional labor and I don’t want that to change. This has
been a big deal for me, to even know I could set those kinds of boundaries.
This change is really really really distressing to me. I
grieve losing friendships almost more harshly than I grieve the dead. I feel
helpless that I can’t change the situation. I feel angry and upset that
precious relationships will be lost.
I don’t know if there is any way to solve this problem.
* * *
Anyway, to close out I’ll share this song because it’s just
so preposterous in is heteronormative machismo.
But so catchy! "The Man" by The Killers
And I feel like no summer (farewell, my favorite season) is
complete without this song and eating LOTS of grilled peaches. This video is so preposterous and 90's!! "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America
