From A Different Shore

Alright, just so everyone knows, the beach is not really an ideal place to force yourself into thinking about the real world, whatever that may be to you. Personally, I don't care for the real world all that much, but seeing as that's where I usually find myself, I think I can find a way to get along. For one, at least in the way I tend to imagine things, everyday life shouldn't have to include a lot of excess bullshit we aren't interested in doing or worrying about. Here and there, maybe, but in the general scheme of things I picture feeling a lot more free. So if you found me one day actually living on the beach, sandy and unkempt, I'd probably just say something ornery like WHAT, this doesn't look real enough for you? Secondly, if the whole point of vacation is to vacate your house and mind, one being easier than the other, then I've been doing my best to follow the rules of having a fun and worry-free week. It is not as easy as throwing on SPF 60 and sitting in the sand. Most of the time, if I want to stop thinking, I had better be asleep, and even then I am not completely off the hook.

STILL, while on vacation, with a lot less to do that seems pressing and urgent, I find myself with a lot of dangerous free-brain time. As I said before, I'm lost in thought for most of my waking life, anyway. But not having additional commitments or unchosen monopoly of what I will always (and unapologetically) consider MY TIME, I've had a little more occasion to devote to sincere consideration of the options before me.

Less time to actually work on such thoughts, however, seeing as the internet connection has been spotty and the distraction of the sandy shore is in my literal back yard. (Prioritizing doesn't mean we acknowledge everything that proclaims importance. It's just a way of realizing what's important for right now.) Sorry to say it, folks, but this week was more about getting prematurely sunburnt and baby terrapins (YES) and red beach cruisers with wide white baskets and matching saddles. I stuck my feet in the ocean and shrugged it off. I read books from start to finish and I ate a lottt of boardwalk food. I feel a little sickish, but it was worth it.

All said and done, I continued to look (occasionally), I applied for two jobs, both hopefully promising. (All those interested in a challenging but personal workplace that promotes both excellence and sense of humor, see Tough Mudder.) I worked on my Linked In profile a little bit. (Do you have one of those? I'm still working out the kinks, but I imagine it to be somewhat useful sometime soon. We'll see.) Basically, I tended to my duties without disrespecting the fact that there were beachside sunsets to watch and seagulls to shoo away and lots of porch-sitting to do.

It all ends tomorrow. And I would go back to work on Monday, but. Well, that's another post. The point is, there is no reason to ignore what we want, even if it means we continue working through the vacation time (paid or not) and the storm (however long it holds out). Change doesn't take a break. And I guess, neither do I.

New Air

I don't know about you, but my moods fluctuate.

I'm not a crazy person, most days, and I find the paths of my ups and downs to be comically traceable, most days. (I tend to be more and more obvious to myself as the days get by me.)

Still, what I've never had much experience with before is this strange sense of panic. At least, that's what I'm guessing it is. It's an altogether new quality in myself that I don't much care for and frankly, due to its sudden arrival, don't know much about. How do you even begin to tackle an unfamiliar facet of yourself? For the most part, I thought that the person that I am was here to stay. That, at the ancient and wise age of twenty-four (oh HA), there wouldn't be any more surprises on my end of things. If any unprecedented obstacles came at me, I would be able to predict in an almost uncanny fashion how I would handle things, react, or carry on.

So I guess this is me being surprised and even humbled by my own unpredictable self. It's newness. And I don't like it all that much.

See, to me, panic is the opposite of what I need right now. I don't know how to freak out without wasting a lot of time. While I'm not yet scary or running around in circles or crying publicly (wait..), when I give myself more than thirty seconds to stop and consider my situation, I get a weird tension in my body, a million bad thoughts in my brain, all usually ending with me imagining myself somewhere in a trailer park, middle-aged, eating cat food (or, more appropriately, grass), and fully out of my mind.

You can see the obvious danger that this process potentially brings.

So I've decided something. The best way for me to harness these moments of losing-my-cool (which, broken down into all meanings, might be something I'm always in the process of doing) is to transform these times into something productive. Yes, I could take a nap or deep breaths or rely on some sort of substance assistance to get me through it. But after I waken or hold my air in again or sober up I'm going to find myself in the exact same circumstance. The same situation, only a little groggier, and most likely a little sloppy.

My moments of feeling terrorized or taunted by the future are usually paired with lots of list-making, even more Google searches, temporary fits and then, even more lists. These lists end up being jumbled nonsense that make sense only to me, but I find them useful. I write down things that I have yet to try, options I should look into, research on different school programs. They are essentially my hand-written way to make sure I don't leave any stone unturned. And trust me, my forest is currently undergoing a major makeover, ever boulder and pebble and tree flung to the side in search of a hidden or unrecognized option.

And if all of that still leaves me feeling a little nauseated, I break. I take a slight sidestep into whatever book I'm obsessing over, I write to a friend, positively, about what's going on with me and ask what's new with them. I think about someone else for a minute, because for all that this search has become, I am not the only person in the world struggling with this particular issue. For that matter, I am simply not the only person struggling with anything.

I meditate on such certain T.S. Eliot words such as,

For I have known them all already, known them all:-

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

The coffee spoons part is just an added irony that I happen to enjoy. J. Alfred Prufrock knows.

Anyway, the point is to figure out what works. Letting your thoughts spiral out of control and leaving you with your hands tied, of your own doing, I might add, is only going to make this harder. Let yourself find certain anxieties as merely challenging, not debilitating. After all, if you're working on it, a change is going to come, ready or not. I'm trying to stay ready.

What's so funny?

It sounds like somebody's laughing.

Lately, every time I've sought out some new form of employment, tossed ideas from one side of my head to the other, applied for something I feel dangerously under-qualified for, or (sigh) something I have no interest in actually getting an awkward telephone call about, I hear something. It's like a tiny little chuckle, an air of oh-please-aren't-you-funny, maybe even wiping their eyes for mercy, oh come on, they say, stop, my stomach hurts.

Whew.

It turns out, it's me. The laughing is coming from inside my own head, which I can see is starting to present a different sort of problem than the one I'm focusing on. But the truth is, I find it to be a shame that we can't be our own advocate. I mean, I understand why, I suppose, in the face of such a daunting task, in the every day likelihood of being rejected or, worse, ignored. I mean, obviously I have yet to be hired, let alone get a single response, so it does sort of seem like the world's biggest practical joke. Here are all the available positions, they say, give it a whirl. So you do, you take your best guess, you close your eyes and swing for the center, and suddenly all the kids are howling at you, you who is standing nowhere near the pinata, but instead somewhere by the neighbor's car or under the wrong tree waving a giant stink in the air like a lunatic.

It's circumstantial, sure. But the human side of me is having trouble hanging on to hope, all the way to the point where I have begun finding hilarity in my own determination. Being turned down is certainly in the natural order of things; it wouldn't really be right to have all things going for you at the same time. Ask anyone; it really doesn't happen.

Still, if the theme here is still perseverance, then I guess we have little choice but to continue on.

One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, who ironically had her own form of struggle before she could do what she loved, has said something on hope that I find both endearingly and pertinently honest (which tends to be her constant mode of communication):

"Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

She's really not giving us any wiggle room here. Either you believe or you don't. She doesn't seem to say anything about believing fiercely, though, which I know (and she knows) is not always easy to do. Still, if I know anything about Anne from reading her boldface prose, she is perfectly aware of our ability to err. She almost acknowledges our mistakes as a necessary part of the process, and I find I'm in agreement with this sentiment. If we were always good at being hopeful, there would be no such thing as disappointment, bad days, getting angry. We'd always be on the lookout for a good thing, and heaven knows that is not the case.

At Anne's advice, however, the best combination of both of these two trying worlds would be to acknowledge the shit. Know it by name, face, what have you, be aware that it's never far behind from where you stand. But if at all possible, put more effort into the faith of better things. It's, as she says, a choice to be made, often times over and over again.

Hope is really the only reason you will keep applying, keep rewriting your resume, keep searching out new avenues. Yeah, you need a better paycheck, you don't like what you're already doing, of course. These are real reasons, too. But they're driven by the expectation that somewhere someone will find you worth hiring.

That's a hope, no matter how you spin it. My grasp lately has been a little slack. Should you feel a similar stagnancy, hold onto it anyway. For the love of it, for the sincerity of Anne's charge, hold tight.