Arwen/Elizabeth

Unemployed

So.  If you've been around for a while, you probably remember that I quit my job at the end of September.  Those of you with passable reading comprehension skills - and I'm assuming that's all of you - may have noticed that there has been no mention of a new job, or even of the hunt for a new job.  A good reason for that is that I have no new job, and I am not looking for one.

Okay, you say.  Why not? 

Well, first of all, in the happy tradition of the pathologically verbose, let me tell you why I thought I should find a new job.  We'll work backwards.  Using as many words as possible.

I am fundamentally a lazy person.  I should qualify that: physically, I am a lazy person.  I've got plenty of emotional energy, and will expend it until I become a confused, weepy shell of a person.  (You need only to see the guys I hung out with my first years of high school - two in particular - to be sure of that.  Fortunately, I now pour that emotional energy into worthier subjects.  But pour it I certainly do.)  Physical energy, on the other hand, is scarce.  I would rather not work than work.  I know this about myself.

After graduation, I probably would have preferred to stay home and be a housewife, if you're not offended by that term.  (Actually, even if you are.  There's nothing wrong with the word housewife, and certainly nothing wrong with being one.)  But knowing that I am lazy, I figured I should get a job, mainly because I didn't want to get one.  How very Kantian of me.

(I once wrote an entire paper for my sophomore-year ethics course about how Kant's categorical imperative is an inadequate moral theory.  It was scintillating, let me tell you.)

So when a job offer dropped into my lap last May, I didn't think twice about taking it.  And after all our summer traveling was over and I had to start working full-time, it took me weeks to realize that it really was the job itself that was making me miserable, and not just my dislike of work in general.  It took me a week or two more to become convinced that it was okay for me to leave the job.  I really thought that it was wrong for me to leave - because I wanted to leave.  If I'd wanted to stay, I would have felt quite virtuous about leaving.  (Who said Kant was wrong?  Me?  Oh, that's right.  I'm good with the concepts, just not so great at translating them into practice.)

So I left, and breathed a sigh of relief so big that I'm surprised you didn't hear it.  The relief didn't last long, though, because I had to start looking for a new job.  I cleaned up my resume and starting sending it out, but every cover letter felt like a huge burden, which was weird because I love to write.

After a few days of this, I lost it one night over something very unimportant, and poor bewildered Bryan held me until we figured out what was really wrong - that I don't want to work.  Fortunately, my dear husband is much more level-headed than crazy me, and he helped me realize that not wanting to work is a good reason for not working, rather than for forcing oneself to do so. 

(Incidentally, I cried through the whole conversation, which is what I seem to do during every big decision, and frankly during many small ones.  I remember crying a lot as a teenager, but that was nothing compared to this.  If the powers that be replaced my head with a pink balloon full of salt water, my husband might not even notice for a few days.)

We are blessed that it is not necessary for me to work.  I have spent these past weeks at home, grateful for my new career, which is the one I'd planned on having eventually, except it is much quieter now than it will be in a few years.  Hopefully.  (I don't mean I hope it is quieter now.  I mean I hope it will be less quiet then.)

I love staying home.  I cook dinner every night, and visitors remark on how clean our house is.  (It is cleaner, but it's still not pristine, which makes me kind of embarrassed, because it must have been awful before if they're commenting now.)  I especially love having the time to plan meals and cook, so if you have any stellar recipes, send them my way!  It's okay if they're complicated - after all, I've got nothing better to do!

Surfacing

Tuesday morning I pulled myself out of bed and into the shower. Michael had driven to the chapel to cover our adoration slot – 8 to 9 am – and since we had only one car to get us both to work, I had to be ready to go when he got back. I stepped out of the shower and felt the tears coming, pushing themselves up from my chest until I slumped my shoulders and gave in, hugging myself and sinking onto the top of the toilet, not even toweling my hair. The water from it streamed down my back, and normally I hate that, but I was oblivious. This was a storm of tears. These tears would not stop coming no matter how many deep, slow breaths I took. 

Somehow I unearthed jeans and a t-shirt and pulled them on, irrationally determined to be ready to go to work even though there was no way I could go like this. I found my Bible and opened it to the book of Job, to God’s answer to Job’s lament. It helped some, helped fill up a little bit of those empty places inside of me. But the tears kept coming, and when Michael came home I was curled up on the couch, staring out the window and sobbing.

He held me and we prayed together and I fell asleep on that couch, exhausted from the storm. Neither of us went to work that day. When I woke from my nap we went to Noodles and Company for lunch and ate outside, where my sunglasses hid the tears that kept threatening my cheeks from the relative safety of my eyes. The rest of the day blurred by: a movie, grocery shopping with my sister, a game of dominoes. There may have been food in there, although I don’t remember being particularly interested in it. Tears kept coming whenever I let them.

The hardest thing about Tuesday, for me and for my poor husband, was that I couldn’t name exactly what was wrong. Generally when I’m upset, I ponder until I can pinpoint the problem, and then we can do something about it, or discuss it, or pray that we will be able to endure it peacefully. But on Tuesday everything just felt big and heavy and sad – so overwhelming that I was at a loss to find any solution. I could hardly think. 

I’d planned not to work on Wednesday, to take the time for prayer and reflection. It was a surprisingly good day. I went to noon Mass at my alma mater, taking some time in the chapel beforehand, writing in my prayer journal. I felt peace stealing in very slowly, clearing my head, clearing my soul. I could think again, and think I did – while puttering about my house, while playing Text Twist (current high score: 807,080 and that game’s still going). I thought a lot that day, I felt like myself again.

The dealership dropped off our new car on Wednesday. Michael and I had an errand to run, and beforehand we took our new ride to dinner at Arby’s. Over greasy but delicious food I told him what I’d realized that day.

Infertility is something uncontrollable. There are fertility treatments, sure, but those don’t guarantee conception. Nothing guarantees conception. Adoption gives more certainty of having a child at the end of the ordeal, and we can decide to adopt, but there are still many, many factors outside our control. For someone like me, who suffers from perfectionism, not having the ability to control this part of my life is very, very hard. Over the past months I’ve been working so hard to come to peace with this and to trust God. That’s a good thing, but unfortunately I’d also started to treat other parts of my life as if they were like infertility – in a certain sense, outside my control. And in some of those other areas, that’s simply not true.

I haven’t been talking about my job much these past months, partly because it’s boring to talk about, and partly because: do I really need something else to complain about here? But without going into too much detail, I can tell you that it was dragging me down. For countless reasons, in countless ways. I worked hard not to bring my personal life to work, but it had become impossible for me to avoid bringing my work life home, it upset me that much. It was awful. But I had somehow convinced myself that it was absolutely necessary to keep this job (for several reasons, not the least of them being that we were using a large percentage of the money I earned for our adoption fund) and so I felt trapped. 

Now, just four days past that mindset, I can see how nutty I was being. On Wednesday I couldn’t quite see, but I realized something during my reflection that day. I’d been suffering through each week at my job with the hope that in another year or so I’d be able to quit and life would be better, but shouldn’t I work on making life bearable now? Of course! Being childless is hard enough – why let other things that are actually within my control make me more miserable? 

We decided that it would be a good idea for me to quit my job. I was surprised at how relieved I felt after making the decision. I hadn’t realized how much it was dragging me down. I handed in my resignation in a brief but comfortable meeting with my boss. I think he’d been expecting it. It’s a good job, it’s just not the right job for me right now. It doesn’t fit. 

I’ve been feeling a lot better since I became unemployed. I’ve still got reflections about what caused Tuesday’s meltdown, and about depression and about where my life is right now. Reflections are always forthcoming. But for now, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed. I just wanted to let you all know that I’m fine, that I’m feeling better, that life goes on. One foot in front of the other always seems to do the trick, and even though on Tuesday I felt like I could never be relieved of that deep sadness, I found that I could. And I was. Thank heaven for that.

Still here

I haven’t posted for a week, because I have seriously had no free time!

Did I tell you that Rosie’s fiance, Anthony, is staying in our guest room? He’s been here for almost a month, and it’s completely awesome having him around. But we hang out with him in the evenings, and that gives me less time to blog.

Last weekend we went back home and built a deck on my parents’ house. When I say “we” I don’t mean me, of course. Me? Build things? Anthony led the project, and my dad, husband, and brothers did most of the work. Rosie and Katie helped a lot. I helped hardly at all. But it was a busy weekend anyway, with no time to blog.

One of the busy things last weekend was that Maggie went to her senior prom. If I had pictures on my computer I’d post them, but I don’t. Trust me when I tell you that she looked absolutely beautiful. She wore this dress. It’s from a Mormon dress company (Mormons have some kind of rule about covering their shoulders) and is very well made, and was stunning on her. You can read about her experience on her blog (link to the left).

She also graduated from high school.  Commencement was Wednesday night.  I'm really proud of all her honors and awards, but I'm even prouder of the person she is.  I wish you all could get to meet her.  Here's a picture of the whole family:

(Left to right: Rosie, Katie, Dad, Tommy, Maggie, Mom, George, me, Michael)

I'm loving my new job, although it, like the rest of my life right now, doesn't leave me a lot of time to blog.  It's a very casual atmosphere, definitely the most casual office I've ever worked in, and the smallest.  Rob (the attorney I work for) was renting office space to a few other attorneys, but they've just moved out, so now it's just him, his secretary, and me.  It's the first job I've had where the days actually speed by, so that at the end of the day I can hardly believe eight hours have passed.  In my other jobs, even the ones I liked, I was counting the minutes until I got to leave.  So, yeah.  This one is going well.  I think I'm going to be happy here.

Just to give you a clue how crazy things are - I've been writing this entry in paragraphs all day.  I'm at my parents' house now, and we've just finished a rousing game of charades.  It'll be bedtime soon. 

I really love you all, my readers, so please don't be upset that I haven't posted, and love me back anyway. 

How I got a job

Last Monday we had some family friends over for dinner, a married couple and their three daughters. We met them because Rob sails with Michael’s father, but he and Stacy are only about fifteen years older than us, instead of thirty years older like our parents. They live about twenty minutes away, and they’re so much fun that we try to get together with them fairly often.

I got great advice from you all about what to do for a job, but I’d already decided that I wouldn’t look for anything permanent until fall. We have a lot of trips planned this summer, and I figured I’d have a hard time finding a job if I started off by telling them I couldn’t work during most of July. I planned to just do temp work (I’ve had good luck with Manpower) through the summer, because it’s very flexible.

But Rob is a lawyer who started his own practice a few years ago, and it has just gotten to the point where he needs to hire an assistant. (He has a receptionist/secretary, but he needs someone to do actual legal work.) He mentioned this at dinner last Monday, and I mentioned that I was looking for a job, and he told me to send him my resume . That was how I ended up in his office on Friday, with him telling me that he wants to hire me to do paralegal work for him. I’ll be training through the summer, with very flexible hours, and as the fall comes around he expects that I’ll be able to handle a lot of the stuff that he does himself right now, including preparing a lot of legal documents, meeting with clients, and going to court with him. He’ll only be paying me $10/hour while I’m training, but after I can do real work, it’ll go up quite a bit.

I’m excited about this job because it seems like it’ll be more interesting than the standard clerical work I’m used to doing. I’m also thrilled about working with Rob; he’s laid-back and hilarious and I think he’ll be a dream to work for. Granted, I might hate legal work, but Rob’s not a trial lawyer – he does mostly commercial properties, leases and things like that – so it won’t be too stressful, and since I’m so detail-oriented I might love the work. It’ll certainly be a good chance for me to find out if I want to go to law school, which is something I haven’t completely ruled out for the future.

The best thing about this job, though, is that it will provide significant extra income for Michael and me. We can live on his income alone, but we have to live sparingly. Up until this point I thought we’d never be able to afford adoption, but now if we decide to adopt, we’ll have the money to do it. For now, we’re going to use it to pay off some big debts (student loans, anyone?) and then by fall, perhaps, we’ll start putting money into a “possible adoption” fund. I’m really excited about that. 

I start tomorrow!