Waking Up

I feel like I am starting to wake up. Or at least I'm trying to. It's been so long that I've been head down, nose to the grindstone. I've been inside my own head focusing on just getting it done. And now that some big projects an meetings are wrapped up, I find myself sifting through a lifting fog.

It started abruptly. With giggles. On Sunday on the drive home from my parents house with H, we played a silly game with animal noises. It was so good to be in on the joke, laughing with my two loves instead of hearing them from the distance of my home office. How many of those memories had I missed? I can't be there for everything and that is ok but to awaken my senses again with the sound of laughter was divine.

And then again this morning, my senses were awakened by a different scene. Admittedly H has been sick for almost two weeks and she is most definitely a two year old but regardless, the battle to get ready every morning is getting old. As Adam and I were not so successfully trying to simultaneously coax her into clothes and NOT scream at each other, I realized how much he has dealt with over the past month. Sure I helped when I could but so many times I didn't have time or didn't make time to help teach or discipline H. We got through it, clothes were put on, apologies were said and Adam and I are both finding solace in a good cup of coffee by now but this comparison has really shown me how much I need to re-engage.

Consider me back in action.

Inertia

Inertia is the thing I fear most right now.  No, not fear.  Can’t understand.  Can’t harness.  Can’t work in harmony with.  Inertia keeps the train of my job barreling toward a cliff.  One that seems to move further and further away, only prolonging the inevitable crash (read: burn out) and heightening the anxiety in the process.

Inertia is what keeps me on the couch when I want to be moving.  It’s what keeps the stack of books next to my bed unread and the craft projects have finished.  It keeps my passion for life in a state of rest, a state of passiveness, stagnant. 

It keeps this blog from being updated.

Just today I started re-reading the book that means the most to me in all the world.  Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh unravels the two-week vacation of a 1950s wife and mother of 5.  The reflective days she spends on the beach and in her cottage away from home help the author unwind, unpack, and simultaneously regroup.  As my mother wrote to me on the inside cover, “you will know when it is time to read it again,” the events of the past two months have mounted, and are now compelling me to read.  The pages with highlights, and notes, and underlines and folded down corners are calling me back.  Begging for me to soak in their wisdom and chart into new waters.  This, I feel is my fist step in a long time to combating inertia. 

When we first moved to the city, everything was coming up roses.  And overall, I would still say that things are still much improved from what they were in the burbs.  Most definitely I do not think I would be fairing as well as I am without having made this change.  Hands down, the most difficult situation at this moment is my job.  More and more I see the effects this is having on me and I am quickly coming to a loss as to what to do.

My job (as I see it at least) is to help a old, conservative, uncool company learn how to talk to its customers, to help them have a better experience during college, and more importantly – to do that over food.  The finance department would say I’m missing quite a few words in my job description.  Like driving growth, retaining contracts, supporting new sales, mitigating costs.  Truthfully, I never show up to work wanting to support those things.  I show up to support authenticity.  Anne says “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”  In general, I do like my job, and I do like what I’m asked to do (or what I’ve decided I’m there to do).  But lately it’s gotten to be too much.  Strategizing about social media all day long means I’m hyper-connected and always picked to be a part of meetings because this is the cool new thing.  It’s flattering but EXHAUSTING! 

In about 2 weeks, we’ll have a specialist joining our team to support me.  I don’t think I could be more excited.  It gives me my last ounce of hope that I can go back to the balance I had earlier in the year.  The no working at nights and weekends.  The optimism of what we can do as an organization.  I just have to be able to get to that point and help that person get up and running.  And do what I can to protect her from burning out too early.

I’m not in a position to leave my job right now.  Nor do I really want to.  But for now, I have 4 goals to start accomplishing as of Monday (I’m convinced everything works better when you start on a Monday):

1.       Stop working at home at night and on weekends.  I can find a way to get it all done during the day. 

2.       Read my book.  And reflect on its wisdom.

3.       Fill my time at home with renewing activities, not ones that deplete my energy and sense of satisfaction even more.

4.       Reflect on my days more through this blog.  Because writing always helps.  And I want to make sure I’m letting the words help me remember my past in the future.

So I close with this.  The past two weeks, I have been away from home quite a bit for trainings, conferences, and meetings.  All three of us have been sick during this time which has added to the household crankiness.  On Friday, however, H did the most heartfelt thing I’ve seen in quite some time and it gave me tremendous pause.  Adam was laying on the couch and I told H that Daddy was sick so we needed to be extra good.  She immediately runs out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom – exclaiming, “Ooo I go get the temp-ta-ture (read: thermometer).”  I can imagine her up on her tiptoes, barely able to see into the drawer that contains the device, reaching in with hopeful little hands to find the item that she wants so desperately to help the situation.  Here methodical plodding down the stairs, careful not to slip yet full of an audible hurriedness, leads into a full on toddler run back to Daddy, on the couch, declaring that she now had the “temp-ta-ture” and that she could help him because he was sick.  This whir of two-year-old nursing at its finest was so full of compassion and sincerity and an awareness that while she may not be able to do everything to fix this, she definitely could do something.  It truly moved me.  Thank H for reminding me about the importance of compassion and doing something, even if you can’t do everything.