by Lauren Randolph
…in which Lauren finds herself in between — and, surprisingly, that's not just ok, it's better, because it confers many benefits that wouldn't have accrued otherwise…
My sisters will tell you I'm a control freak. That's because they are too, and they recognize it for what it is. In fact, we consider it genetically encoded, so seemingly unavoidable.
So I'm surprised that the in-between period I'm in actually feels ok. I'm no longer working and while I have definite plans for the next phase of life, I don't seem to be in any hurry to embark on them. And this doesn't particularly bother me.
A concrete symptom of this is my new inability to get anywhere on time. Including the doctor's office, which is absolutely socially taboo. Ask anyone that knows me well: They will tell you this is an unimaginable development. Maybe this is related to my refusal to wear a watch anymore, but I doubt it.
I feel like I'm floating, waiting for the right time and space to set myself down. Sort of like the main character in the movie "Danny Deckchair," about the guy who attaches helium balloons to a deckchair and floats off and literally finds a new life. I feel an element of being blown by the wind but only in direction(s) that make sense. So it's not random. And I'm not afraid. For the first time.
I'm trying to avoid the inevitable "recharging my batteries" analogy, which sounds like recovering from an illness that makes you "as good as new" so you can return to what you've been doing only to have it continue breaking you down again.
It doesn't feel like that at all. It's a completely different energy. It's more constructive, hopeful, and empowering. But it's communicating in its own way, so one has to listen more carefully and be patient to hear its message.
I've honed my listening skills over many years of communication work, so I'm good to go there. Patience, or rather its evil twin IMpatience, is, like control, genetically encoded. Still work to do there…
I'm surprised I have so little need with "more productive" people to justify what I'm doing or how I'm spending my time. I really don't care what they think. This is a new one for me too.
I knew I had to leave work for good because I understood at some level that it was causing me to act like everyone else, in a way that felt increasingly foreign to me. (I wonder how many other people feel this way but tolerate it as business as usual, thinking it won't be different anywhere else. I wonder if it's because people, young ones especially, don't know any different.)
I couldn't live with the hypocrisy: All the mouthing of the word "teamwork" when it was nearly impossible to find, at least in the part of the organization I worked.
There it's really about self-styled alpha males duking it out to determine who's top dog. And because I worked for the top dog, I got caught in the crossfire a lot. I was a much easier target than said dog. It took me a long time to figure out this had nothing to do with me. This, I realized, was the other edge of the sword of the excitement of working for the powerful man. To which I had always aspired.
Even my sweetheart complained about top-dogism recently when he relayed a story about his boss. The boss, who's long championed my sweetheart and benefited greatly from his talents, outrageously suggested my sweetheart take out some life insurance on the boss to protect himself in case of serious injury to or the demise of the boss. This was not a joke. The implication, pretty clearly, was that my sweetheart would have been nowhere all these years without this boss. And that comes from one of the nicer dogs…
Yes, the danger of being dependent on a single person's whim or career success (or failure)…I've seen many people rise and fall, depending on which (sometimes the same) coattails they traveled on. Myself included. Up, then down. Down is an important lesson.
Better to try to determine one's own fate than being dependent on someone else's. Because I thought I had a pretty secure seat where I was…
Now that I'm completely away from work, I'm surprised by how little I miss it.
Resigning, surprisingly, turned into a very black-and-white experience for me. (Fatefully, I decided at the time of departure to leave my university e-mail address behind. What, and lose the credibility the university confers? Now I say: What credibility? Then I told myself: If you're going to make a change, then for god's sake make it. Note to self: Good advice.)
This came home to me the one time I've been back for a visit. It wasn't an intended but rather a necessary stop to get my sweetheart to work, then me a bit later to the airport. I was surprised at what little sentimental attachment I had to the place after six-and-a-half years. But it was worse. I had a visceral reaction: I didn't want to be there at all.
That world felt so far behind me, so long ago, and it'd only been a month since I'd left. Made me wonder if I'd waited too long to leave. But I had to get my finances in order to give me that freedom.
I'm now so clear that turning my back on science, engineering, and technology is the right path that I've turned down a few freelance jobs of a similar type: I'm not just not interested, I expect I'd do a relatively poor job (though I wonder if anyone would notice, given the garbage I produced my last several months on the job), and I'd feel annoyed about doing it. The latter's the real message.
Now that I have time to actually think, I'm realizing we make big choices and small choices. We make conscious decisions after worrying and fussing about issues for a long time: whether to change jobs, whether to move, whom to marry or not, whether to have children hoping of course we can, etc.
But then we also make unconscious decisions, almost non-deciding because we're so tired or overwhelmed, such as unconsciously deciding to stop worrying about the war in Iraq. We lull ourselves into thinking we're doing enough if we read about the war in the newspaper or watching it on the TV news. We tell ourselves: We're staying current, and there's nothing we can do to affect the course of the war anyway much less enable inward bound of the troops.
It's easier to avoid the war in Iraq than what seems more pressing: day-to-day issues like work, spouse, children, an aging parent who should have a higher level of care, needed car repairs, what to have for dinner, whether that mail-order package arrived today…
I've stopped caring about a lot of things I used to think were critically important: my career and socio-economic level, explaining what I did at cocktail parties. Things that my sense of self have been horribly bound up in for years.
I'd like to claim I don't care so much about other things like what I look like, my graying hair, my weight and how to shed some (many?) pounds… Consider me a work in progress at least.
Different concerns of course hold the attention of different people. I just wish we would all have more courage to get off this treadmill in whatever ways we can. But, in the spirit of full disclosure (and sadly, I might add), I've only gained a bit more perspective on this since I haven't been working. Is that time a luxury or necessity?
What would happen if everyone had (made?) this kind of time to really start thinking about life and how to make the world a better place? (Sadly, it doesn't seem a value held by society…but it could be…)
Because it seems to me that that's really what we're all about.
It's just that we've been so co-opted by false preoccupations about how young we look, how much money we make, what kind of houses we live in, what colleges our children get into, and what kind of vacations we can afford, then brag about all this to our friends and college bulletins. It's all about competition, which is what I decided I needed to shed at work. It was just too toxic. And it's just as toxic more generally in society.
As a friend of mine says, we're so conned into overwork to be able to pay for all of the things we claim we need that we have no time or energy leftover to care about anything else.
But if you decide you don't care about these kinds of things, what kind of time and energy do you then have?
At the very least it's the power of the individual, which can be monumental. Just recently I read a book about the effect one person can have.
In "Three Cups of Tea," Greg Mortenson with David Oliver Relin tells an inspiring story about a former rock climber (Mortenson) who, after taking a wrong turn back down off the mountain he failed to summit, realizes his mission of bringing education particularly to girls in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the key to improving the standard of living. The book describes a 10-year period that, among other amazing stories, includes the experience of him being kidnapped for a week. His wife is due with their first child momentarily and has no idea where he is; had she known, it would have been nearly impossible to contact him, phones being in such rare supply there.
Mortenson is literally headed for a beheading, being the "prize" between two warring groups, until his champions win out, they have a big celebration of him with him, then release him. At book's end, he's personally been responsible for building more than 50 schools and seeing the concrete results of such empowerment socially and politically on the affected communities. And his impact on how the U.S. is seen in that part of the world, because of his actions, is invaluable. Now there's a tale of communication that we so-called professionals should take note of.
So what does a post-menopausal, educated, financially secure woman do now with her recently freed-up time, energy, and anger? Especially when she doesn't care what people think, doesn't need Botox or (finally) antidepressants, has lived the bulk of her life (even when married) being alone, and has realized it's ok to be over 50?
I bet there are an awful lot of women out there like me.
The keepers of the status quo better be paying attention…