Refocusing with less violins to distract

I dread the possibility of becoming a negative person.  And yet, the events over the last few days, the last week, have drawn me down, so that all I can see is down low.

These events aren't so important, really.  Things I thought I cared about going away.  Things I did actually care about. When I try to put into perspective (I have my health, Pip is doing okay, kicking along, I have my partner, I have a job, etc.), it doesn't take. It's more like a distraction, and then I will go on and do other things, but before I know it my mind wanders back and my heart is breaking again.

I guess that there are fundamental questions I need to ask myself.  For instance, how committed am I to working at a job that I treat in a sincere manner?  I have always been a person that has given 100% in her work, even when that work was menial.  My work now is not menial in that I am doing something that others would class as needing skills and garnering some respect, some status, but actually day after day, year and year, it has become menial.  The kids I work with can give respect and sometimes do, but there is also a "substitute teacher" vein in the larger culture that eventually gets to them.  I thought I had overcome it, with my commitment to my own dignity and the dignity of others, but I was reminded the other day that I am "only" this role.  A massive part that I had stepped forward to add on, that gave me a lot of meaning and that required a lot of my attention and effort was taken from me and given to someone of the appropriate status.  On one level, I know it is for the best.  The person who will receive this responsibility, when the time comes to transition, is a good person, with good intentions. He will do a fine job, and perhaps, although we cannot know the future, this will be the best thing for the kids, which is the most important thing.

But I am shocked at the seismic proportion of heartache I feel.  I feel like I am staring down the barrel of daily work that is sustainable in that it will continue and perhaps it will be better for me, me as a Mom, Pip, my family.  It just all feels so patronising and devoid of the sort of meaning that I gave it.  It was like when I managed a gas station back in the US.  I had a bit of a tendency to look after the homeless people that would come in and by their things there.  They were people I knew by name and when they disappeared for a while, I would ask after them.

Was I their "social worker"?  No, I do not have that qualification.  I was a person who cared, who was good at caring.

I gotta remember that it will be ok.  That this sadness, though unimaginable to others in a similar position and role, who have this responsibility like a yoke around their necks, not wanting it, in a larger culture that seems to take pride in not feeling, is ok for me to feel.

I just don't want to cry at work.  Please, universe, don't let me cry at work.

So, I am feeling less the negative person now, and just a bit miserable.  See, this too shall pass, is

Pema talks about how many people pride themselves on not letting their hearts be touched.  That they gird themselves against pain and anything getting inside and see this as a triumph when really, letting ourselves feel it, however horrible the "it" is, means we ultimately grow and move and get on.  This is the victory.

And I try to consider that just having a job, an in-and-out, don't suck up your life sort of task that pays the bills is ultimately a good thing. I never wanted to be a teacher.  It was looming up on the horizon as the other options fell away.  I didn't want to be that kind of teacher, the kind that didn't know what else to do, so they did this thing, this teaching thing, that actually requires much more of a person than that.  If they want to be a good teacher, the kind that makes a difference in young peoples' lives. So, why was I trying so hard to devote my life to this school in this way?

Bless Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology.  My horoscope this week was a meditation on refocusing: "It's possible, my dear, that your tendency to overdramatize is causing you to lose focus. Let's trim the 90 violins down to ten and see if maybe that helps." Refocus.  Remember. This was a job for now, until the thing that you really want to do that you can't quite yet.  The thing where you will make the difference (and incidentally garner more for you in terms of status and in cultivating skill, a role that can't look menial, not even on Tuesdays.) 


Or write.  Continue to write.  Lay down the lines and then the next lines. Tell stories.  Some true and some made up.


There are so many things I would rather be doing.  This is the thing for now.  The job.  It's only a job.  I will find the middle path.  The meaning and the meaninglessness.  I will let go and hold dear.  


If I spent my life working in a school, I would consider it wasted.  I don't even really believe in institutionalised education.  Not at least how it is practised where students emerge mostly with an apathetic view of bureaucracy. Imagination is too important.  Freedom of self is too important. 


Remember this.  These kids will thank you for remembering this. Your kid will thank you for remembering this.  Your inner kid thanks you for remembering this.  

Hungry for Stories

I realise increasingly that I am constantly hungry for stories.

I read PostSecret religiously.  The fact that I made it to Wednesday this week before reading Sunday's secrets only indicates my baby brain has truly taken hold.  I haven't done that unless I have been truly out of e-contact... for like years.

I used to read the wedding announcements on the New York times website every Sunday before I got utterly sick of the classist perfectionism.  The snobbish money-ism. Did that increase recently or did I change? It used to be that my favourite stories were the improbable ones.  Not "she went to Harvard as did he where they met doing their PhDs in MBA blah blah", which seemed rarer, and you just know that these poor souls are striving for someone else's narrative, and measuring themselves in finite units.  I preferred the ones where he was her divorce lawyer as she tried to extricate herself from a difficult marriage.  (Actually, come to think of it, that was my great-grandparents.  Good story, but moving on.) But the ones where they were sweethearts in the forties, but fell out, but always missed each other, went on to marry other people, have a bunch of kids and really decent lives.  But when they saw each other the buffet sneeze guard, it was as if not a moment had passed...

I think that is another reason FaceBook and Pinterest are inextricable for me. Although to a lesser extent. And that's ok. Music with stories, with scenes, with original sentiments.  Cary Tennis. Pamela Stephens Connoly in the Guardian.  Heck, the whole family section of the Guardian.  Also religiously, but on Saturdays.

And I think this is a good indicator that my life's work really is to be some sort of a therapist or counsellor. I don't want to share the secrets and stories.  I just want to know that the boundaries of what people are capable of are ever-expanding with every glimpse into a story I hear.  That peoples' humanity can always surprise and impress me. That the longer I carry on in this lifetime, the less I will believe those people who set up short barriers and close-in boundaries as fact and then ask me to commiserate: "you know how it is".  Men are like this.  Kids are like that.  Work is like you-know-what.

No, actually, I really don't.  Tell me why you think that.  That is more insightful for me. 'Cause the one thing I know is asking why is one of the most natural impulses I have and it's always been that way. And you containing your life means something for you. Those are stories too.  Because it takes audacity to tell one's own story outright.  That's why PostSecret is so radical and safe.

And that's why I yearn to hear what people say behind those safe doors, with permission, in the somewhat privileged place of listener, confidant, guide, questioner. I am grateful that I know that, however "late" (to some peoples' minds) and however far off it is still will be. In the meantime, I have ye olde internet, depository for the human condition.

With a different perspective, all the time aspects of the scenario, of whatever scenario, are perfect.

Pregnancy is (7 months, one week, 2 days... approximately)

Pregnancy for me right now is wearing an apron to make even the simplest dish (avocado toast) even just for me... because I will spill on my belly.

It's being mystified and surprised by my energy levels.  One day, I can only drag myself through the simplest yoga class.  The next day, I am crushing my opponents (or so I imagine) swimming lengths in the community pool. (Ha HA, goes the inner dialogue.  Take THAT, beginner.  Slowpoke.  Watch out for me and my Pip!)

Pregnancy is, when totally sick and exhausted from said yoga class, swinging around, back and forth, back and forth, like I learned a baby likes in my antenatal pregnancy class and seeing... no, glimpsing my toes. (I thought I still had sparkly purple nail polish on.) Hi, toesies! Practicing peekaboo.  With my feet.

Pregnancy is being grateful a lot for how people help me out, even if I don't always really need it.  For the students, who have suddenly sprouted ancient manners way beyond their years, awkwardly trying on chivalry.  It's sweet and entertaining if nothing else.

Pregnancy is insisting that no, I can still carry very little things.  Being lovingly tricked out of carrying out the rubbish by my partner and walking as far as I'd like, thank you very much.

Pregnancy is something I already feel is escaping away from me in the finite way that temporary states do. Seven months already. And knowing that I want to only do this once makes it sweet and sad.  Very, very special.

Pregnancy is forgetting to wash certain parts of me because they are hidden other, or rather, on the other side of certain other parts of me.  I almost have to have a check-list in my head.

Pregnancy is re-launching this blog although I long for a more apt moniker.  Why?  It is silly, but it is me.  From childhood, across the ocean and a few trips here, there and back to another childhood.  One that I am growing with my greatest, best intentions.  Getting this thing reloaded now has the feel of preparing the bottle for a message to be sent out.  There may be times when, at home with Pip, on my own or overwhelmed, I may need to cast it out there and see if anyone is around.  Though the ocean seems a more friendly conduit than the internet.  More comprehensible.

And pregnancy means that I am in training, multi-tasking and super-efficiency training.  I know that I will have to get smarter about how I do things with the arrival of this baby.  The mommy olympics.  London 2012.

Heh.

Pregnancy means pregnancy brain, which means I get my jokes at least. The pressure to be intelligent is officially a lost cause, and therefore, off.

A covering letter that was good for my soul to write.

Once on Talk of the Nation, there was a segment on this horrendous economy of ours. I cuddled up in my pubicle, processing lawsuit claim forms and listened as people phoned in with fascinating stories of surviving and survival jobs (the jobs that we would never take under any other circumstances, but these) and the surprising ways they grew, nonetheless. In any case, one dude called in and said that he had landed a sweet gig by break from the mold of respectful and boring demureness to say what he really wanted to. He threw caution to the wind, (and this is my interpretation) trusted the universe, and leapt, only to find a sweet-ass, golden-threaded net to catch him.

I am not keeping my hopes up so high, but while searching for jobs to apply for, opportunities of any sort, I somehow stumbled upon Weiden+Kennedy's website.

Maybe it was listening to Grace Jones or M.I.A. or that I needed some job-searching that didn't demean my being, but I wrote this, cut-and-pasted here for your entertainment:

Gis a Job

Wieden + Kennedy London

16 Hanbury Street

London E1 6QR

020 7194 7000

london.jobs@wk.com

10^th of July already!

Hello!*

I am interested in applying for the as of yet unadvertised temporary job that you will inevitably need to fill for the summer.

I am inexplicably attracted to your firm, having stumbled upon you through a series of non-linear turns of perhaps fate, and perhaps it is only the latter 90% of my brain that I do not have direct access to that will know why I am feeling such motivating to write this letter. Perhaps this numinous thread will reveal itself in a dream. My waking self loves your style, however, and not merely of the adverts you have created and displayed on the website (clever, inspiring; there’s nothing like a good advert), but in your style of communicating your expectations for any prospective minion.

As a prospective minion, I am outlandishly open and flexible. I can be surprising things, which means I can do surprising things. I am originally from the US (with full rights to work in the UK, no worries), have lived in five countries on three continents, have varying language skills, a Masters Degree in Anthropology, extensive organizational and office experience, and have been practising insider art and writing since I was eight. My style would best be described as artfully mixing the likes of a disciple of Grace Jones while colluding imperfectly with Frida Kahlo and meditating as a student of Pema Chödrön. My skin is thick (I have been literally physically harmed at work and returned for more, but not because I am a masochist, but because it was a worthy cause) and my humour, like all things balanced, combines the dark and light.

Three things I am most passionate about are art (whatever form it takes; whoever does it), sustainable health (spiritually, mentally, tangibly, ecologically, socially) and love (as defined by bell hooks: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”).

A moment in my life where I embraced failure was when, upon reaching the UK with my partner last September after travelling literally around the world, I realized that visa policies had gotten a lot more stringent and inflexible than they had been when I had last gone to live abroad and that there was no way I could stay in the UK legally. And I had very little money. So I lived beyond sparingly, tapped unknown resources and figured out a way. It included returning to the US, getting married to my partner there, and returning after living apart for eight months all the while cultivating a lot of character. It inspired a chapter for my book entitled, “Rejected by Empire.” It was a very good time for me creatively and soul-wise.

I am currently breaking the rules of our larger society even as we shift away from an ethic of blind, unequivocal pursuit of profit. I have employment come late September, and although I have been offered several permanent roles, I have turned them down despite the fact that I am quite broke, because to take them would mean lying about how long I plan to work there. I believe to live unethically, to lie, or to divide oneself up living in an unintegrated fashion (i.e. without integrity) hurts these organisations, which affects the already dying economy of such a former philosophy, hurts individuals’ abilities to trust each other which unravels the social fabric, as well as hurting myself as someone living without a complete integration of my own life. It is for the greater good. We will see if this will offer any tangible or material benefit to this particular individual in the end.

Clearly, I would love a response from Wieden+Kennedy. Let me make you tea or answer your phone. Let’ see what we can come up with. If it is meant to be, everyone involved will benefit in exponential beauty.

Be well,

Britt {last names}©

---

* How’s that for avoiding gender mishaps/dichotomies? And a sincere greeting to boot!

© PS I tried to work in some sort of reference to chocolate, but it would have been too much an obvious anomaly, even for me. But dark, organic chocolate with ginger…and that whole thing about integrity? Out the window.

I gotta... WRITE!

Like that scene in Dazed and Confused when the guy in the back of the car sorta randomly and non-sequitously says, "I gotta DANCE!" Accept that I think he says something else, but that is how I remember it, how I prefer to remember it.

That is how I am this morning.

Yesterday, I went for quite a good interview at quite a good company. The job would have made me happy. The unhappy part? It was for a permanent gig, so after a fair amount of soul searching ("where are those ethics of mine? I know I had 'em in here somewhere?") I decided to withdraw my name from their list of candidates. After all, I have a job that I am really excited about and committed to come September.

It's just the money in the meantime issue... again.

I feel like I've had this issue this entire last year. When I was in Portland, it was the same thing. I wanted to work, but couldn't commit to six months or a year. The crazy lady (and I use this term with deep respect being a crazy lady myself and all) that wanted to hire me as a manager at Target because of my personality and anthropology background "if that whole fiance, marriage thing doesn't work out", but wanted a commitment? Out of the blue, odd, and I am glad I turned it down. But then of course, temp agencies in Portland employ people sometimes. Here, it feels like there are a million people wanting temp jobs and about six to go around.

So, I am broadening my search. I am going to go around to neighborhood pubs with my CV that has zero pub-related or drink-serving related experience on it and offer myself up anyway. I am going to call my one temp agency that has gotten me some work and lower the bar for the amount of money I will accept as an hourly wage. Short of standing on a corner in a mini-skirt asking guys if they want a date or dancing around a pole, I am really opening myself up and trying to think creatively. (Do you live in London? Do you need child-care? Painting? Cleaning? Yard work done? Where is Craig's List when you need it?)

We are not desperate. Thank goodness for T. He has work and enough money coming in to keep us housed and fed. But it would be nice to visit my Mom this August in Moldova, go to the coast once, go into London to a museum? It would be nice not to be hella broke... still... again... and it would be nice if I could contribute to our household costs.

It just feels like about the fifth time in the last year that I have been looking for work/money/resources and the effort I thought it would take times 7 still doesn't cut it. Not to whine. Not to complain. Just to notice a pattern and have faith that this too shall pass.

++Author's note: as I was writing, I got a call from the temp agency for a permanent role in a school being a mentor. Agh! Why these conundrums?