I Need a Sick Day: Why Working is Easier

When I was working, I would often come home and make bread and watch Little House on the Prairie.  People think that making bread is so time consuming–it’s really not.  You just mix some flour and yeast together, knead for ten minutes or so, and then wait.  During that wait time, I’d watch an entire episode of Little House on the Prairie.  Or Friends.  Or Roseanne.  I loved those shows, even though they were all reruns I’d seen a million times.

I haven’t watched an entire TV show from start to finish in months.  I refuse to even turn the television on, lest someone somewhere realize that I’m–gasp–not being productive during my year-of-productivity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a lot of fun.  I just got back from an amazing solo trip to California, and I had a wonderful time.  But none of that time was down time.  And very little of it was devoted to, well, eating or sleeping.  I’m exhausted.  And I’m starving.  And I won’t let myself stop doing things to eat or to rest, because I feel I don’t deserve to–because I’m not working.

So for those of you who are watching and judging–I imagine there are many of you–here’s what my days look like:

I get out of bed and find something to cover my nakedness; a robe or a dress I’ve already worn.  I walk five feet into the office, where I sit down.  I spend the next seven or so hours in that office, writing blog posts, applying for jobs, editing photos, and occasionally chatting with people on Facebook (seriously–there’s a reason why new moms show up on Facebook more often than normal–people need adult human contact).  I leave the office maybe three times to pee, and if I’m feeling really wild, once to make a cup of tea.  On alternating days I do take an hour long break to run, which is the single thing in my life that I still love and enjoy.

I leave the house around 3:00 every day to walk the dog.  Sometimes I make dinner.  I rarely eat it.

After paying attention to whomever needs paying attention to–my husband, my friends, my mother–I return to my office in the evening and continue doing whatever I was doing earlier.  It’s 11:42 pm and I’ve had a total of four ounces of salmon and three ounces of ice cream to eat in the last 36 hours.  I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I’m hungry.  I’m still on Pacific time after my trip–from which I just returned yesterday and need to write 16 blog posts about and edit 2,578 photos from. I need a sick day.  But I can’t take one because I don’t have a job.

Which really, really sucks.

I can not wait to go back to work so I can have some time to myself.  Seriously.

Career Break Swan Song: How I Failed

I’ve been using the terms career break and career change interchangeably for the past ten months for one simple reason–I wasn’t sure if this year would be a break or the beginning of a change.  By now I’m sure you are all well aware that I was planning and hoping for it to be a change.  Well, as of about ten minutes ago, the verdict is in:  it was a break.

The Human Resources office at my district sent me a letter about a week ago, asking me for a decision as to whether I was coming back or not.  They needed to know by May 1st–four days from now.  Understandably, I was putting the decision off.  And so, also understandably, they called me to request a decision more assertively.  And there was literally nothing else I could say other than yes, I will be back.

And then I cried.

I feel it is appropriate, given that I live my whole life publicly via my several blogs, that I openly and honestly address why I am so upset about this. First I’ll deal with what’s not bothering me.

I’m not sitting here upset because I have to go back to a job that I feel is so, so awful.  To all of my teacher friends–I’m not that terrible of a person and I don’t hate teaching that much.  Yes, I’ve become frustrated with the teaching profession for many of the same reasons most of you are frustrated.  And yes, this is possibly the worst time in the history of our nation to be a public school teacher.  Strike that–it is the worst time.  But I did love my job–once.  So I imagine that it is possible that I will love it again.

I’m also not upset because I’m once again picturing my life stretching out before me, unchanged and unexciting–which is how I felt midway through last school year.  I took this year off, and I will do it again.  Next time I won’t be coming back–but for now, I have to.  For at least one more year. And the fact that my time as a teacher does have a time limit makes me feel a little better.

Finally, I’m not sad that I have to go back to work–to any work.  I’m sick of being at home.  I miss having coworkers, I miss having a reason to get dressed in the morning, and I miss having a reason to look forward to the weekend.

I am sad because I failed.  Plain and simple.  I completely, totally failed.  I gave myself the gift of an entire year of existance to make a better life for myself, and I could not do it.  I did not find a way to combine what I love to do with making money–hell, I didn’t even manage to combine what I sort of like doing with making money.    I did not find another job.  I tried–believe me, I tried–I’ve probably applied for three dozen jobs in the past few months, and I’ve heard back from exactly two.  And both of them said thanks but no thanks.  Via form email.

Worse, I did not finish my book.  It’s almost done. But I fell out of love with it and haven’t worked on it in months–possibly because I’ve been spending so much time looking for another job.  But to be honest, it would take me one week–one five day work week–to totally finish drafting it.  But I just don’t do it.  I apply for jobs, I take trips, I go for runs–but I don’t work on my book.  It’s like I can’t for some reason that I don’t understand.  I’d even go so far to say I’ve completely given up on it.  Which makes me almost more sad than anything. Almost.

But more than sad, more than frustrated, I am ashamed.  So very, very ashamed.  I have failed.  And I imagine myself walking back into school in September and having people look at me and whisper mean things.  Guess her book was a failure, huh?  Guess she didn’t find anything better.  Guess she isn’t as great as she thought she was.

And those whispers will be completely accurate.  So feel free to whisper them.  But know that I agree with you.  That doesn’t make it better–but I just wanted everyone to know that yes, I’m as ashamed as I should be.

Of course, this is not to say that I regret having taken this year off.  It was a freaking fabulous year, and it will continue to be fabulous for the next three and a half months.  Hell–I’m going to California for a week and a half in four days.  That’s pretty exciting–and I refuse to let this cast a shadow over all that I have yet to do.  And I promise at some point I will write a post about how many great things I got to do because of this year, and all the ways that it changed me for the better.  Because it did.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m not still ashamed.  I am, and I will be likely forever.  I just thought you, dear reader, should know that.

Please note:  Despite the fact that I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon–the time when, once upon a time, was happy hour in my world–this post was written without the aid of any alcohol.  Trust me–if I’d had a few glasses of wine before writing it, it would be even more depressing.  

I’d Like to Work Here

I’ve been living my life like any normal person–doing things like going to the dentist, picking up a salad at Wegmans, waiting in line at the dry cleaners.  But lately, every time I’m anywhere I think–now this would be a nice place to work.  Take, for example, the lab I visited today to have my blood drawn.

When I entered the lab, there was no one there.  The front desk was empty, and so I sort of stood around for a while.  Eventually someone noticed me–mainly because I slowly inched back towards where it sounded like there were people chatting and the lovely receptionist lady saw me out of the corner of her eye.  She checked me in and then handed me off to the blood-drawing lady; blood-drawing lady took a vial of blood and I was on my way.  At no point did anyone else enter the facility, and as I left I heard the employees resume their chuckle-filled conversation.

And I thought–I’d like to work here.  It’s so…quiet.

I’ve been thinking that a lot lately.

I realize that many of my still-teacher friends read this.  But I’m going to say it–I don’t want to be a middle school teacher again.  In fact, I’ll not just say it, I’ll put it in italics AND bold.  I realize that I probably have to be a middle school teacher again, as I can’t even seem to secure a nine-dollar-per-hour job with my Master’s degree, eight years of teaching experience, extreme online presence, writing ability, or website design skills.  But I really don’t want to be a middle school teacher again.  Not even a little.

Isn’t there any job out there for a hopefully-ex-teacher that does not involve telling thirty five thirteen-year-olds to be quiet and get back to work every forty-five seconds?  I’m confident that I could learn to draw blood–or, even better, to not sit at a receptionist desk and not welcome people into my blood-drawing facility.  I could definitely do that.

Running Revelations: A New Kind of Clock

My neighborhood is interesting.  Some homes are owned by older couples or single retired people, others by small families, yet more by young, childless professionals.  And this time of year, our differences are expressed in our yard work habits–or lack thereof.  On my run this morning, I passed yards freshly shorn and gardens recently mulched. I passed overgrown gardens, under-pruned gardens, and several front lawns practically overrun with dandelions.  Much to my horror, I also witnessed several homes that had ‘planted’ fake plastic flowers in pots about their yard in some clearly misguided attempt to celebrate the spring holidays (when really, I can’t think of any worse way to celebrate the resurrection of one’s savior than by adoring anything with dusty, petroleum based ‘tulips’).

But whether well-tended or sorely neglected, all of the homes and gardens in my part of Pennsylvania are saying the same thing–spring is well under way.  And, as I’m sure you all know by now, that completely freaks me out.

But that freak out is not my point.  You see, as I ran, freaking out about the daffodils and dandelions as I was, I realized something–I’ve finally started measuring time like a normal person.  I can see that the days, weeks, and months are passing because the seasons are changing.  That’s normal.  That’s what I wanted, way back when I started thinking about taking some time away from teaching.  And it happened–but it took me until now to notice.

I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that it took a while to adjust my concept of time.  After all, I did spend eighteen years as a student and eight years as a teacher measuring time by class periods, quarters, and semesters.  I broke my days up into 44 minute chunks and only looked forward to the next chunk (or, more accurately, to the end of that next chunk).  I knew that if there was this fund raiser going on, it must be fall; if it was time for the yearly musical, it must be spring.  September meant stress, December a flurry of chaos followed by a week of peace. The winter thaw was less about a groundhog seeing his shadow and more about a marathon of state testing.

But not this year.  Not for me.  This year spring means budding trees, baseball, and the yard work that I should be doing.  What a strange but wonderful way to tell time.

 

The Smell of Desperation in the Springtime

The air is warmer, the days are longer, the trees are budding--and I am freaking out!

It’s March 14th.  That’s mid-March.  The month of March is halfway over.  April is quickly approaching, and then after that, May.  My year-of-writing-a-book, my year-of-creating-a-better-life, my year of finding-a-new-career–it’s almost over.  In five months I will be getting ready to go back to my classroom.

I don’t want to go back to my classroom in five months.  I don’t want to go back at all.

Last night while wandering around Target (a great use of my time, I know) I made the mistake of picking up a book called The Happiness Project.  It’s a book–written by a real woman who actually finished her book (unlike me) and had it published (obviously)–about a year-long self-created project wherein the author made conscious decisions and followed a logical plan to live a happier life.  And as I stood there in the florescent light of the Target book department, I had a mini nervous breakdown.

What have I done with my year?  I didn’t follow any wisdom of the ages.  I didn’t find a higher power.  I didn’t circumnavigate the globe, I didn’t start volunteering, I didn’t clean out all of my closets, de-clutter my laundry room, or start eating whole foods.  Hell, I didn’t even lose the twenty pounds I know I need to shed.  And, worst of all, I didn’t find a new career.

And so, as March 15th approaches, and the 16th, 17th, 18th and beyond all roll slowly past, I’m beginning to feel a bit desperate.  I need to find something else to do with my life.  Something that will make me happy.  Something I am good at that I can do in exchange for money.  Is that too much to want?

 

Career Break Month 8 (ish): Where I’ve Been

I’ve been on the road.  I’ve been at sea.  I’ve been in the air, in Walt Disney World, at Mayan ruins, and jogging down my own street.  I’ve been job searching and dog sitting and grocery shopping.  

I’ve been busy.  

This may explain the fact that I’ve also been neglecting this blog.  And I’m bummed about it, because I really meant to document my entire year off.  But maybe this lack of documentation does serve a purpose–it shows that even given an entire year to ‘do whatever’, things still move to fill in time.  Life is like a goldfish–it will expand to fit its container. 

And you’ll never get enough sleep to keep up with it all. 

Let’s consider this my ‘Career Break Month 8′ post.  Even though I’m almost at career break month 9.  Really–where does the time go?  

Career break month eight-slash-nine was clearly a pretty full month.  As I’ve said, I took two trips and the time in between them was oddly hectic.  But there’s a lot that I didn’t do in that time.  I didn’t finish my book.  I didn’t find a job, full-time or otherwise.  I didn’t clean my house or improve my running speed or distance.  

There’s one other big thing that I didn’t do–I didn’t plan another trip.  For the first time in months, there’s nothing on my calendar involving a flight confirmation number or hotel reservations.  I don’t know that I even want to plan another trip–though I always say that 48 hours after returning home.  I know many of my friend and family are betting on how long it will take me to start looking at the next place to visit–and I know that I typically return to Kayak and Expedia after about ten days at home (you know, when the butt divot in my office chair starts getting uncomfortable).  But I’m honestly kind of tired of traveling.  So perhaps career break month nine-slash-ten will take place right here in Pennsylvania.  Stay tuned! 

 

Career Break Month 7: Tracy Uncensored

Once again, I forgot to write my every-21st-of-the-month post on the actual 21st of the month.  However, the forgetting is fitting.  You see, at this point in my year off, I’ve officially become something I never thought I’d be–laid back.

Month seven marks the halfway point in my year, as it’s really more of a fourteen-month-break than a year-long break.  And honestly, at this point, I do feel completely different than I did when I walked out of my classroom last June.  It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what has changed, but it can be pretty accurately summed up with this sentiment:  I just don’t care as much anymore.

I don’t care what people think.  I don’t care how much I get done.  I don’t care that everything isn’t perfect and wonderful and organized.  I don’t care that there are crumbs on my cutting board or dust bunnies under my couch.  I don’t care that I’m not losing weight as quickly as I’d planned, that my hair is frizzy, or that my boots don’t match my bag.  I don’t care that I’m leaving on a trip in two days and I haven’t packed anything.  It’s fine.  It will all get done.  Or it won’t.  Whatever.

I sincerely hope that I can carry this new ‘eh…’ attitude back into the classroom with me next September.  I truly believe that, for a long time, I just cared too damn much about everything.  And it was stressing me the hell out.  I wouldn’t even write the word hell or the word damn in a blog post, for fear it would be offensive to someone somewhere.  Seven months later, I can honestly say–fuck that.

The best part about not caring about stupid shit (I’m on a cursing roll, apparently) is that I now have time to care about the shit that really matters.  I’ve been oddly busy for the past month, and not entirely because of the holiday season.  Lately I’ve been more social than I have been in years.  More than that, I’ve been social with people not associated with my job–which is a kind of social I’ve not experienced since I started teaching eight years ago.  All of a sudden, I have friends again.  I have far away friends and virtual friends and real-life friends and past-and-future coworker friends.  And I care about all of those friends more than I care about the coffee rings on my counter top.

It’s strange.  As people grow older and ‘mature’–in quotes for a very good reason–they tend to see their social circles shrink.  In high school and college, you may have had dozens of friends.  But over the years, as your life became more complicated, you slowly allowed those people to slip out of your life.  After all, you were too busy.  Buying houses, getting married, starting families–all of those things take up time, and that time had to come from somewhere.  So you gave up your friends when you became a grown-up.

This, dear reader, was a grave error.  You see, what I’ve come to realize in the clarity of my suddenly-not-busy life is that friends matter.  And you need them even more as an adult than you did as a child.  Life is harder now.  All the more reason to have someone–or, ideally, many someones–to laugh with.  Or drink with.  Or cry with.

Speaking of friends, this coming month is going to present some opportunities to not only make some new friends, but to spend time with existing ones.  I’m leaving in 48 hours for a solo New Orleans slash cruise trip that’s turning out to be not-so-solo, considering I already have multiple dinner plans with several friends-to-be.  And one month from right now I’ll be flying back to Orlando to spend a week in the happiest place on earth with one of my favorite long-distance friends.  With all of this camaraderie, career break month eight is shaping up nicely.  Stay tuned.

Now…to start on the packing…and the cleaning…and the wiping up of coffee rings.  Or not.  Whatever.

New Year, New Plan

Here's hoping this year is better than predicted!

If anyone out there was paying very close attention, they might have noticed that I completely forgot to post my ‘Career Break Month 6 Post’.  Ooops.  Sorry.  I’m not sure what I was doing on December 21st, but I imagine it had something to do with last-minute holiday preparations…and/or drinking.  In fact, I was probably drinking wine whilst wrapping gifts.  So yeah…ooops.

But now the holiday season is over and, even better, it is a brand new year.  And in 2012, instead of simply hoping that this year will be better than the last, I’m going to make it be so.  Damnit.

I kind of felt like I spent all of 2011 running from something–that something being my teaching job.  I was trying so hard to do something, anything else for a living, that I wasn’t really enjoying anything I was doing.  Which is why I’m actually happy to make this announcement–I am officially going back to my teaching job in September.

Shocking?  Maybe.  But it is all part of my new plan.  I’m still finishing my book.  I’m still enjoying my remaining time away from teaching.  And I’m still traveling as much as possible in the next eight months.  But I am going back.  For sure.

In fact, my decision to return to work will allow me to travel guilt-free, as I know that soon I’ll once again have an income.   I’ve already written about my dream destinations for 2012, and while I won’t hit all of them, I’ve spent a bit of time looking at the calendar and truly planning out the next few months.  I don’t think that one trip per month is too unreasonable, so that’s what I’m aiming for.

As it turns out, I’m not a huge fan of working from home.  I need social interaction.  I’m also not a huge fan of working for no money.  I need to be financially independent, so even if we really could live (poorly) on my husband’s income, I know that would not make me happy.  That would make me crazy.  I’m so glad I figured this out before my savings ran out and before I gave up my teaching contract.  So in a little less than eight months, back to the classroom I shall go.  And it will be fine.  I loved it before–maybe I’ll love it again.

I feel so much better now that I’ve made this decision.  I didn’t even realize how stressed I was about the whole thing.  Coming to terms with it was my New Year’s gift from the universe.  Thanks universe.  I needed that.

 

Revelations on Judgement

Mud on my shoes proves I'm trying, not that I'm clumsy. Though I may also be clumsy.

Until very recently, I only ran during the day.  Why?  Because there are fewer people home during the day, and thus fewer people to see me huffing and puffing and bouncing down the street (really, it’s not pretty.)   But the other day I found myself jogging down the street at four o’clock in the afternoon.  And do you know what?  Nothing bad happened.

I live my whole life online.  Well, almost my whole life.  Between my travel blog and this blog and Facebook and Twitter and the variety of forums I participate in, Google me and you shall find darn near everything about me.  Strangers can know almost as much about me as do my friends, and my friends are free to read all about my life–if for some strange reason they care about the minute details I choose to share.  And, up until recently, despite the fact that I openly share all of these things, I still cared about what people thought.  I cared a lot.

When I first told people I’d be taking this year off, I cared about how they reacted.  And, of course, the reactions were quite varied, ranging from sincere congratulations to doubtful and insincere ‘good-luck-wishes’ (Can you hear the tone?  Good luck!)  And now that I’m in the midst of book-writing and life-finding and travel-planning, I’ve been having some very serious concerns about what other people think.  Do others think that I’m wasting time?  That I’m wasting money?  That I’m being irresponsible?  That I’m not getting enough done?  That last one was a big one, to the point where it  frequently became a crippling fear (which, really, is quite ironic.)  I’ve even gone so far as to really care about losing weight, because I feel as though my outward appearance needs to change to ‘show the world’ that I’m making some sort of progress, even if it is only in the realm of health and fitness.

But what I realized the other day, out running for all the world to see, is that there are really only two kinds of people that could possibly be watching me: those that run and those that don’t.  People who do run were all beginners at one time or another, and so they understand what I’m going through.  They see a girl huffing and puffing up the hill and should remember their own humble beginnings.  So I can’t care about those people.  Those people understand.  And people who don’t run–well hell, at least I’m trying.  What are they doing?  So I can’t care about those people, either.

And so, the moral of the story is–I’ve decided to stop caring what other people think.  I’m going to keep running–and writing and  traveling–and maybe I’ll never get very good at any of those things.  But I’ll have a better chance at improvement if I don’t waste my energy caring about the judgement of others.

Goodbye, Old Me!

Old me--circa 1996.

I had an epiphany the other day.  I’ve been going about this whole life-changing thing all wrong.  For months and months, I was trying to find the old me.  The happy me, the less stressed me, the wannabe-hippie-girl-dancing-in-a-field me.

Can you see where this epiphany is going yet?

The old me wasn’t so great.  Sure, she was happier than I’ve been in recent years, but it’s easy to be happy when you are so f-ing clueless and naive.  Which is for sure what I was.  I also had some very serious self-esteem issues, made some very poor choices, and generally acted like a person in her early 20s.  Because I was a person in her early 20s.

But I’m turning 32 next month, and I don’t need to be that girl anymore.  I don’t want to be that girl anymore.  And more than that, focusing on ‘recapturing the old me’ is preventing me from doing what I should be doing–creating the next, better me.  That’s who I need to be focusing on–the Tracy of 2012, not the Tracy of 2001.

So I’m bidding farewell to the old Tracy.  It isn’t even that difficult to do–hell, I’ve already bid farewell to all of her old clothing (was I ever really a size 3?)  Goodbye old me–I’ll miss you greatly (you and your size 3 pants.)