Week 21
The liberating failure to be sensible
I have known the job I’ve been in is not optimal for my health, though I’ve marched on and on (and on) in hopes that it— or I— would get better. I’ve spent the past few months and weeks knowing that I needed to make changes for my health, but none of the reasonable options were coming forth to give me permission to leave my current situation. I finally decided to take my foot off the gas pedal and unclench my hands in their deathgrip on the steering wheel, so to speak. I surrendered. I knew that there had to be something else, but nothing was making sense and I was exhausted. So I just threw my hands in the air and said I am not willing to settle for my current state of reality, but I don’t know a way out, so I am leaving it up to you out there, God or Universe or Love or Fate or Serendipity to help.
A day later it hit me getting ready in the morning for work, to ask about a different kind of job that was posted on my organization’s website. I was pretty sure it wasn’t really open or available, and I’d seen and immediately dismissed it weeks earlier. I asked my supervisor about it and she immediately confirmed that no, it wasn’t open for the taking. I thanked her anyway. Then she asked me if I’d wanted it. The old me would have said “no, we were just wondering about it, thanks anyway” and moved on with the bitter sense that nothing I really want is available to me, that I should just be happy with where I am and what I’m doing now. Grateful. I should always be grateful and without complaint.
But without thinking of anything other than my new little pesky truth-telling habit I’m trying out I blurted “desperately,” and then spilled about how I do not feel well in my current placement, that my personality is not particularly suited to the role in the best of circumstances and really challenging with my two new medical diagnoses and health goals, and that I want nothing more than out of my role as it is now.
“…Give me a little bit to talk to HR.”
Two days later I was being handed a way out of this job that has felt like an albatross around my neck on the best days, and the worst days a noose. It meant that my organization would work to find a creative way to piece together parts of jobs, justify the new position’s existence, and move around a couple of staff members (to which I am truly in gratitude and owing a few huge favors). It meant having some hard conversations with the people I have really loved working with.
It means that I still have work ahead of me to make a clean break and a smooth transfer, but I feel freer than I have in a very, very long time. Who knew that being honest and saying what you really want/ don’t want can actually be a magical shortcut to getting it/ getting released from it? Not me!
A day or two after it was finalized, still on the high of being able to enjoy a summer without spending a good portion of each day dreading the impending school year, I wondered what I could do to fill my time joyfully so it won’t get completely sucked away by an onslaught of chores I’ve been putting off the last nine months. Sitting on the couch scrolling my phone while thinking about how wonderful life would be with buttloads of money to travel and spend, I wistfully remembered ziplining and whitewater rafting in Costa Rica, surfing in Maui, and wandering all over London by foot, tube and the back of a motorcycle. These are the times when I felt really, truly, completely and joyfully free. If only, if only. Then I spent my typical amount of time mourning the fact that I don’t live by an ocean, and all of the cool water sports I could regularly partake in if I did, and how incredibly in shape I would be in body and in spirit. The vitamin D alone would be a game changer. Why did my family have to settle down here? Why didn’t I run away to California straight out of high school, or come to think of it, run away and join the circus like I had wanted to at three? And then I looked at my wonderful husband, house and dogs and fresh water from the tap, both filled with gratitude and a somewhat reluctant realization that I am indeed on the path that is right for me. I just wanted it sprinkled with a little more adventure.
So if moving was not an option, nor spending a large sum of time or money on travel, I decided there must be something I could do right here and right now to put myself back into my body, learn a new skill, and capture that exhilarating, joyful freeness. We don’t have an ocean by Chicago, but we do have a great big lake, so certainly there must be something I could do in the world of water sports. Suddenly kiteboarding popped into my head out of nowhere, and I googled if there was anything like that in Chicago. Jackpot. I found a whole kiteboarding school! After about six or seven hours of googling everything related to kiteboarding (on lakes vs. oceans, on the best female kiteboarders, on the history of kiteboarding, on its upcoming debut in the Paris Olympics), I was officially obsessed and would do almost anything to ride.
Next thing I knew, I was gearing up for my first lesson of kiting on land. Sure, it is not practical. It could even be described as senseless for where I am in my stage of life. It requires a lot of time and practice to be good at it, and it is considered a sport with a fair amount of risk (though that risk can be greatly reduced with adequate training and knowledge). It requires a good sense of direction and a basic understanding of physics and the ability to be very flexible and chase the right wind patterns, and none of the mental aspects of the sport come naturally to me. It feels quite ridiculous to be pursuing this endeavor for the first time at my age and stage and shape and fitness level and all the other sensible but boring reasons one could give to not do it.
But I’m doing it. And so far I have loved every second of it. And next time, I get to get in the water!
I am sure my next two lessons are going to be beautifully packed with failures, but for now I am basking in the delightfulness of my failure to be sensible this week, instead throwing caution to the side shore wind.
Learning to gear up for my first lesson on land.