If you had asked me the day I was walking out of my job for the last time, after having been laid off, whether I would ever be grateful for that occurrence, I probably would have first laughed in your silly face, and then wanted to slap you across it.
Change is hard for me. Very very hard. I do not like things to change, I like them to stay the same, even when things are not as good as I know they can be. Even when things are making me very unhappy, or even miserable, I resist any change at all. I like for things to be familiar, and I like knowing what to expect. I will go so far as to say that in the past I have valued stability over happiness.
But, I think I am changing my tune on that, because I am finally realizing that with every major life-change I have gone through, whether it was initiated by me or thrust upon me by outside forces, I have, without fail, come out happier on the other side.
Once the New Scary Thing becomes the New Normal, no longer something to adjust to, but accepted as my reality-- in other words, once I stop resisting the change-- I can very nearly always look back upon how things used to be and feel extremely grateful for the forces that acted to change that thing for me. Whether it was leaving a relationship or a job, I have rarely looked back and thought, "Damn, I really should have stayed in that place."
That's the thing, growth happens with change. And growth cannot be bad. It is, I would argue, inherently good. Perhaps I will even go so far as to say it is the entire purpose of life.
Today, I am so grateful for the freedom of time and opportunity afforded to me by my release from full-time work in a job that was draining the life force out of me. Granted, I am poor. So poor, poorer even than I have maybe ever been. And as I have mentioned here before, I have the extreme privilege of having family who is willing to help me out*, and the privilege of having a 401k that is in this very moment in the process of being cashed in (thank god for that.)
My point is that if you are living in a situation that you don't like-- for any reason at all-- and you can't seem to think your way out of it, stop and think about what is holding you there. For me, it was plain and simple: fear. I thought that if I left the job I hated, I would not be able to support myself and my kids (this part was partially true) and that I would become homeless (this part has, knock wood, not come to prove itself true as of yet.) In the gradual slide into the present that I have done since leaving that job, I can now see that those particular fears were unfounded, because I am getting along fine. I have few material possessions. I don't have a television or a dvd player, or an xbox, but absolutely none of that stuff matters to me. I have a bed to lay my head at night. I have food to eat. I have time to do my art. I have time to wake up slowly and to enjoy my days. I have this laptop that I am working on right now (one of my few possessions that I feel any sort of attachment to at this moment.)
Some days I still wake up in a panic, and wonder what the fuck I am doing with my life. I wonder if I can still count myself as a valid, functioning member of society if my only claim to "adulthood" is that I am a part-time student and a part-time pizza delivery driver. But even in that statement, I realize that my identity is ever-shifting. I have been a stay-at-home mother. I have been a full-time, working-mom. I have been a massage therapist and a yoga instructor. I have been unemployed. None of that stuff ever defined who I was as a person. I am an artist. I am a healer. I am friend, daughter, mother, sister. What I do for money (or how much money I have at my disposal) lo and behold, does not define my self-worth for me unless I choose to let it. How I treat my loved ones does. How I commit to my art does. How I set goals for myself and work towards attaining them-- that is something I can find pride in.
Whether I am on SNAP (food stamps) or whether I have state-sponsored health insurance for my kids, or how many dollars are in my pocket at a given time, or how much I owe to my creditors, do not get to define my worthiness.
I find it interesting that I had to, figuratively speaking, lose everything in order to find this out. I have a vast network of support, and I have the ability to forge new pathways at any given time, and I have the freedom I have dreamed of for the past nine years to define my days for the most part as I see fit. I have the time to be home with my son in the afternoons, and pick him up from school and help him with his homework and teach him how to cook dinner, and still do my own schoolwork, and I am not freaking exhausted all the time, on the verge of a nervous breakdown at any given moment from working myself to the bone. I place so much more value in that freedom of mind than in being able to go into Target and buy some random crap that I don't really need.
Sure, it would be nice to have financial freedom as well as time freedom. That's my next goal. It's a 15-year plan. In the meantime, I will take what I have and be jolly-well grateful for it. Because I know that I am better off than I was at this time last year, or the year before that, or the year...
I can sit here on a Sunday and I can write in my blog, and pack for my camping trip, and not feel that horrible pressure in my chest closing in on me, that I have to go to a place that I hate tomorrow and sit for nine hours in a little cubical that makes me feel like I am wasting my life away, working for a boss and a cause that I don't care about one tiny bit. I can take my dog for a walk and rest easy in the knowledge that only good things are coming. And when the inevitable next big change comes, I can look back at this writing and remember what it feels like when everything settles again.
*The thing about having family who are in a position to help me is not something I can ever overlook, and I am fighting an extreme urge to self-censor this whole post right now because I almost feel like I don't have the right to discuss the freedom of being underemployed when I basically have someone taking care of me financially, to the extent that they can. But the nature of this help is that I do not know when it will stop, and I know the pool is not never-ending. I am aware that it is a gift, that can be removed just as easily as it was given.
Change is hard for me. Very very hard. I do not like things to change, I like them to stay the same, even when things are not as good as I know they can be. Even when things are making me very unhappy, or even miserable, I resist any change at all. I like for things to be familiar, and I like knowing what to expect. I will go so far as to say that in the past I have valued stability over happiness.
But, I think I am changing my tune on that, because I am finally realizing that with every major life-change I have gone through, whether it was initiated by me or thrust upon me by outside forces, I have, without fail, come out happier on the other side.
Once the New Scary Thing becomes the New Normal, no longer something to adjust to, but accepted as my reality-- in other words, once I stop resisting the change-- I can very nearly always look back upon how things used to be and feel extremely grateful for the forces that acted to change that thing for me. Whether it was leaving a relationship or a job, I have rarely looked back and thought, "Damn, I really should have stayed in that place."
That's the thing, growth happens with change. And growth cannot be bad. It is, I would argue, inherently good. Perhaps I will even go so far as to say it is the entire purpose of life.
Today, I am so grateful for the freedom of time and opportunity afforded to me by my release from full-time work in a job that was draining the life force out of me. Granted, I am poor. So poor, poorer even than I have maybe ever been. And as I have mentioned here before, I have the extreme privilege of having family who is willing to help me out*, and the privilege of having a 401k that is in this very moment in the process of being cashed in (thank god for that.)
My point is that if you are living in a situation that you don't like-- for any reason at all-- and you can't seem to think your way out of it, stop and think about what is holding you there. For me, it was plain and simple: fear. I thought that if I left the job I hated, I would not be able to support myself and my kids (this part was partially true) and that I would become homeless (this part has, knock wood, not come to prove itself true as of yet.) In the gradual slide into the present that I have done since leaving that job, I can now see that those particular fears were unfounded, because I am getting along fine. I have few material possessions. I don't have a television or a dvd player, or an xbox, but absolutely none of that stuff matters to me. I have a bed to lay my head at night. I have food to eat. I have time to do my art. I have time to wake up slowly and to enjoy my days. I have this laptop that I am working on right now (one of my few possessions that I feel any sort of attachment to at this moment.)
Some days I still wake up in a panic, and wonder what the fuck I am doing with my life. I wonder if I can still count myself as a valid, functioning member of society if my only claim to "adulthood" is that I am a part-time student and a part-time pizza delivery driver. But even in that statement, I realize that my identity is ever-shifting. I have been a stay-at-home mother. I have been a full-time, working-mom. I have been a massage therapist and a yoga instructor. I have been unemployed. None of that stuff ever defined who I was as a person. I am an artist. I am a healer. I am friend, daughter, mother, sister. What I do for money (or how much money I have at my disposal) lo and behold, does not define my self-worth for me unless I choose to let it. How I treat my loved ones does. How I commit to my art does. How I set goals for myself and work towards attaining them-- that is something I can find pride in.
Whether I am on SNAP (food stamps) or whether I have state-sponsored health insurance for my kids, or how many dollars are in my pocket at a given time, or how much I owe to my creditors, do not get to define my worthiness.
I find it interesting that I had to, figuratively speaking, lose everything in order to find this out. I have a vast network of support, and I have the ability to forge new pathways at any given time, and I have the freedom I have dreamed of for the past nine years to define my days for the most part as I see fit. I have the time to be home with my son in the afternoons, and pick him up from school and help him with his homework and teach him how to cook dinner, and still do my own schoolwork, and I am not freaking exhausted all the time, on the verge of a nervous breakdown at any given moment from working myself to the bone. I place so much more value in that freedom of mind than in being able to go into Target and buy some random crap that I don't really need.
Sure, it would be nice to have financial freedom as well as time freedom. That's my next goal. It's a 15-year plan. In the meantime, I will take what I have and be jolly-well grateful for it. Because I know that I am better off than I was at this time last year, or the year before that, or the year...
I can sit here on a Sunday and I can write in my blog, and pack for my camping trip, and not feel that horrible pressure in my chest closing in on me, that I have to go to a place that I hate tomorrow and sit for nine hours in a little cubical that makes me feel like I am wasting my life away, working for a boss and a cause that I don't care about one tiny bit. I can take my dog for a walk and rest easy in the knowledge that only good things are coming. And when the inevitable next big change comes, I can look back at this writing and remember what it feels like when everything settles again.
*The thing about having family who are in a position to help me is not something I can ever overlook, and I am fighting an extreme urge to self-censor this whole post right now because I almost feel like I don't have the right to discuss the freedom of being underemployed when I basically have someone taking care of me financially, to the extent that they can. But the nature of this help is that I do not know when it will stop, and I know the pool is not never-ending. I am aware that it is a gift, that can be removed just as easily as it was given.
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