Breaking up with Unemployment

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

I am safe, I am whole, I am home

My biggest accomplishment of this week was completing the following project:

I started this project about a year ago when I was working at TLoTH. I distinctly remember the afternoon because I was hanging out with The Tenor and The Triple Point Dude watching football. I was reading Come As You Are and Dr. Nagoski returns to this phrase as her mantra throughout her book: “I am safe, I am whole, I am home.” This resonated so deeply with me that I decided I needed to see it every day, in my own handwriting. Also football is boring to me and I wanted something else to do. ^___^

I finished the last “I” while I was volunteering  at the library this week. It made me very happy but everyone around me was like…”That’s great…but I need to continue putting these books away…”

I have been working on a lot of projects, mostly related to my New Years Resolutions and my work with Sparkles.

People Keeper Project

A major new years resolution I spoke about last week was gathering about 150 people and being more diligent about staying in touch with them. My internal motivations for this goal stem from examining some of my social patterns, particularly during time of increased depression. I used to carry around a duffel bag with the following quote on it:

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” –Augusten Burroughs

It has been a good motto to live by, for much of my life. However it does not adequately address how to maintain relationships (I have very high demands with quotes). A big issue I saw was a pattern within myself when I’m depressed wherein I forget people exist. Usually not the people I see every day, but people who live far away. And it is not that I forget them entirely: I’m readily able to recall important parts of our mutual history when I think of them. But I forget to reach out.

I’ve noticed that in a lot of ways, this creates a huge cognitive burden for me. A burden so large that it overwhelms me when I’m depressed and I can’t surmount it and do one of the things that would help lower depression most: connect with people who care about me. By increasing regularity, I hope to make my life more boring in some ways so that I can concentrate on putting more of my energy into being creative and being more effective with my time. (I stumbled upon a TEDx talk about being boring and I think it’s the cutest thing ever.)

I am designing my “People Keeper” project to help me lower that cognitive load by automation. Thus far in the year I have been keeping very close track of the 150 people I chose to be on my list. I took the most recent date of contact and then did a bit of math on this (comment or ping me directly if you’d like to see my math) to predict when the next time I should reach out to each person. From there, I have spent the time putting each person in my phone with a recurring reminder based on the timeline I made in the spreadsheet. Someone commented, with glee, that he really hoped there was a spreadsheet. Of course there’s a spreadsheet. I’m a scientist.

I feel like this organizational method is already working for me. I acknowledge the immense privilege I have in being able to work on this for many hours during 9-5 period in the past couple weeks. That being said, I really feel like in enacting these guidelines for myself I have already been better at keeping in touch with people. And I’m learning how to just say “Hi” in a new way. I have finished inputting my weekly and bi-weekly folks, now working on monthly, and then quarterly.

I also appreciate that working on this project gives me concrete, achievable goals with the potential reward of having closer friends. ^__^

Accountabilibuddies

One really big difference that I’ve built for myself in the past 4-5 weeks has been creating communities of accountabilibuddies (buddies who help maintain accountability). This generally looks like co-working with 1-2 people for several hour chunks throughout the week. Sometimes it’s in my home, sometimes in other peoples’ homes, sometimes at the coffee shop. But always with other people.

I have been reading The Power of Habit (as recommended by Sparkles) and I like that the thesis is very simple, yet not easy. Habits exist because having to think through every detail would be overwhelming and exhausting. But you are not necessarily conscious of when and how habits form. You can re-write new habits onto old ones, by changing the routine. Routines change providing you use a framework starting with the same trigger and ending with the same (or similar) reward.

But the final ingredient in solidifying habits is to be part of a community who believes that change is possible. Even if that community is only two people; that can be enough.

This week I added a new accountabilibuddy to the roster for writing my novel. I have spent a lot of time in the past week doing research and preparing things. But I really appreciated sitting opposite someone and telling me “at some point you just have to write.”

Another major accomplishment today was helping the KinkyKabuki apply for a tenure track professorship in less than five hours. I swear to Glob, if you’re listening, help get this guy an interview. He’s perfect for the position.

Enjoying life

Having the time and space to work on necessary but not uplifting stuff, I really focused on having fun in the evenings.

I was invited to a burlesque show so I went in style:

By which I mean I was in a weird mood and decided I needed green lipstick. The dancing was fantastic at the show. I really like burlesque because it draws together a sense of theatricality with a sense of shamelessness. There are so many textures and sparkles and glitter and everything is very rich. There was one performer who did a number that was exactly what I had imagined the first time someone explained what burlesque was. She had a very 1920s aesthetic, complete with giant feather fans. It was fantastic.

At this point in our story I need to introduce two new people. At her request, I am going to call this friend The Thunder from Down Under, or TTfDU for short. Wow, that doesn’t make it any better. HAHA! TTfDU also has a Husfriend but he doesn’t become relevant until later.

TTfDU and I have talked, at some length, about the role of stable women’s friendships and how they are often lacking in mainstream media except for Steel Magnolias.  These relationships tend to have few conflicts as compared to romantic relationships. But due to the representation of these types of relationships (and a personal lack of role models) I am often befuddled about how to establish and maintain a stable friendship with women.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we went to see 20th Century Women for this exact reason. The movie was excellent, but the demographic of the crowd was…well TTfDU and I were about half the age of most of the audience. I declared that we are baby old ladies. Which is great because it means we can grow into our true selves as we age! Later, TTfDU sent me an article that confirms my hypothesis and demonstrated that not only is it a thing, but it’s actually trendy as hell!

This week for #babyoldladymovienight me, PartnerPenguin, TTfDU and her Husfriend all went to see Hidden Figures. IT WAS AMAZEBALLS AND YOU SHOULD ALL GO SEE IT NOW. I brought a box of tissues but then I was the only one to use them. We all had a great time and I got to learn more about TTfDU, Husfriend and three badass women scientists!

Food

To close things out, I wanted to share with you two food things that I found noteworthy this week.

PartnerPenguin and I found the gentrification of pretzel rods! They are “breadsticks” but they are intentionally stale and they are covered in sesame seeds. And the waiters hardcore judged us for eating all the butter.

The other is a dinner I had this week. I was just really proud I put it together because it looks so grown up.

Dumplings from Trader Joes. Rice is that brand that is pink on the outline and is short grained. PartnerPenguin’s relatives gave us a new rice cooker that actually works and now I’m eating all the rice. With fancy rice seasoning. Veg are daikon radish, regular white radish, carrots and shittake mushrooms in a mixture of sesame oil, canola oil, soy sauce, fish sauce and a smidge of rice vinegar.

And to close out today, I’m including a song I found by way of Marvel’s Luke Cage. I really appreciated how that show used song both actively and passively to advance plot action. However, it completely spoiled my expectations of Mahershala Ali which mildly impaired seeing him in Hidden Figures. I was very very very very relieved that Colonel Jim Johnson did not share Cornell Stokes’ disposition.

I dedicate this song to our outgoing President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Long Live the Chief.

Disuse Leads to Collecting Butter

I have a…pattern. It has happened more than once, but is not quite yet at the point where I would consider it a habit.

I let things collect butter.

It is considerably worse than letting things collect dust as the stains are considerably more difficult to remove. Fortunately only one cloth garment has been the victim of this pattern. Unfortunately it was my favorite purse.

This is how it happens: I leave butter out so that it can be at room temperature when I need it. For important things: like grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes I am not careful with where I place things (eg. the mail, my purse, my keys, etc) and I only realize it has sat in butter for the past twenty minutes when I go back outside. It is extraordinarily messy and a pain in the ass to clean up. Oftentimes I just let the thing go. Unless it’s my purse. Then I look up Talkin’ Dirty with the Queen of Clean.

Recently I had a metaphorical butter collection moment. I thought I had gotten all the mess off but it turns out the situation was un-save-able. I feel really betrayed and hurt but I think I’m going to need to let it go.

Here’s the sitch: When I was in undergrad I was hella good at creating student research positions for myself. I bargained with the department to let me use my work-study financial aid in a novel way to work in the lab. I generated a new position, funded by the NSF. I am good at mineralogy so all of these positions loosely focused on my ability to tell microcline from plagioclase.

One of the long-term research projects I worked on turned into my Senior Thesis. I owned this project, in some capacity, from start to what I thought would be finish. I came up with a hypothesis. I designated the days fieldwork would happen and organized the transportation to get there. I collected my samples, observed the evidence, synthesized my information. In my last week of college, I worked nearly 100 hours so that all of the data visualization and writing would be complete on time for grading to happen. I met my deadline.

I got an A because the professor (call them Prof 1) grading the paper does not believe in A+s on principle. Ok, fine.

I wound up staying at Big American University for some time after I graduated. I cleaned up some of my writing. I cleaned up some of my visuals. I refined what conclusions I drew based on new information I’d previously been missing.

The consortium I did my research under invited me to share during a full team meeting. This was the first real presentation of my data and I was thrilled. The data seemed to be really important to the consortium and the room was full with positive energy. I shared my research (I went over time, for which a colleague never forgave me) and everyone was very excited at the discoveries I’d made and what that meant for the project at large. One young professor whom I did not work with asked me what my plans for publication were. Prof 1 cut in very curtly and stated simply, “She’s not publishing.”

This statement has always confused me. Prof 1 never explained their motivation. My <headcannon> is that Prof 1 (and Prof 2, whom I worked with to a lesser extent) is a very high profile, famous scientist in multiple disciplines. My research was not groundbreaking. My discoveries were cute (literally, in my opinion) but they did not push the frontier of anything. They were not a paradigm shift. And when you live and die by publication, I suppose that the only things worth publishing are those things that are remarkable.

Grad Student 1 worked with me on the field work, the synthesis of information and the backlash of interacting with Profs 1&2. She helped me come to this conclusion, somewhat. I appreciated her and went to her PhD conferral ceremony. She helped keep in perspective the expectations of the department.

About a month ago, I got an email from Prof 1 asking me where I put certain visualization files. I really really really wanted to respond with “Here are the instructions to the files within Google Drive and I look forward to co-authorship with you.” I emailed Grad Student 1, who is now Prof 3 (different uni) with my impulse response to Prof 1. In response I got a 6 paragraph email from Prof 3 detailing how that was a bad idea. As Prof 3 has more experience in the department and in academia in general, I deferred to her judgment and accepted that I wasn’t going to publish.

Then this week, I was editing the Junior Ranger’s grad school apps and it just so happens she’s applying to the same school as Prof 3. So I go to Prof 3's website. My heart broke. It broke pretty hard. Then I melted to a puddle and spent the rest of the night as a puddle.

In the carousel at the top of her Professor page she had the following image as one of four images displayed:

The following was a figure in my (unpublished and, what I have grown to feel is unremarkable) thesis:

(note: bottom right, bottom swath. Also note: I had to hand-craft those scale bars in PowerPoint.)

 

 It felt like someone had taken my heart and stomped on it. It felt like it turned out the butter had, in fact, soaked into every pore of my favorite purse and there would be no way to get it out.

I decided that academia was not the place for me over the course of the past two years. It has been a painful and emotional journey. I may yet change my mind because I understand that many people have given me the well-intentioned advice that a BA is not a large enough stick to wave at a fly in scientific academia.

Yet I was frustrated and devastated by the power of the pain this action could induce in me. I thought I had surrendered. I thought I had let it go, moved on. Instead, I ran towards it and felt like I needed to fix it. To claim it. To give myself permission to give myself credit.

After an evening of allowing myself to feel through my discomfort and pain, it eventually passed. I have been trying to practice experiencing my emotions to their completion but damn is that exhausting and no wonder ain’t nobody got time for that shit. Emoting and processing all of my emotions like a well-adjusted human being is a FUCKING STEEP learning curve.

*  *  *  *

Let’s switch topics for a moment so I’m not totally bumming you out this morning!

Hrm.

PartnerPenguin and I have been kitty sitting a big tomcat named Tofu. He is thusly named because he has too many toes. Observe:

Other things: I kidsat the Bear this week! I think there may be a cognitive switch between 5.5 and 5.6 years old where children become lawyers. There was really only one argument I had no case against her, which was “but I need to figure out how this dirt works!” I swear; the kid knows exactly how to play to my weaknesses.

I had a full itinerary of errands that suck to run alone planned for our day.

1.     Lunch. I swear, if there is one thing that I have mourned more than anything else about not having regular work, it’s that I eat lunch alone every day. That is the worst to me.

2.     Turn in e-waste to Best Buy.

3.     Buy dirt. And a pot.

4.     Pot a plant.

I made a minor discovery, more like a shift in articulation, while waiting in line to drop off the e-waste. Bear was really into the OcculusRift (a virtual reality [VR] addition to gaming systems) display and was watching it with rapt attention. She said she wanted to play the games and went through which games she would like most. She which game I’d like most and I just internally went “playing/doing/being in VR would be my own personal hell.” This thought surprised me so I very quickly had to satiate the little lawyer with a wimpy answer of  “Aunty Sara doesn’t like this kind of game.” As is the nature of tiny lawyer children, she naturally followed it with “But why!” I shrugged it off but it has been simmering in the back of my brain.

Later in the week a friend’s housemate came out from playing what looked to be a very good workout with a VR setup. He was describing the merits of such a system. It finally clicked for me.

“That sounds really cool but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll also be able to enjoy this gaming platform. I really struggle with dissociation and I don’t feel comfortable inducing a state like that without a concrete path out.” I have never been able to articulate (or even consider than anyone else experienced) dissociation, specifically as it relates to depression. PartnerPenguin helped me find this article that validates my concerns.

Ok, I think I’m about done for now. Thanks for following along this week!

I feel like this song “Secrets” by Mary Lambert feels just right tonight. And for the love of Glob if someone knows where to get her dress, please tell me. I would look SUPER cute in it.