Today felt like a productive day. I enjoyed reading and writing in the morning, researched jobs, applied to two, posted a new poem, and submitted some poems for publication. I’ll meet my goal of new poems written for the month and I should be able to meet my goal of submissions. All of that in addition to feeding and bathing myself, I’d say it was a successful day. I did not get back to the recounting of my life through conference travel, but the thread is started and I can pick it up pretty easily.
I’ve only just started going down the trail of job prospects and applications. Unfortunately the CEO position I was looking at out in Reno was taken off the table – current CEO decided to stay. I have active applications out in Michigan, Florida, and Kentucky and one remote writing position. I’m looking at a handful of places in California (Oakland, El Segundo, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara). The cost of living might be prohibitive. The opportunities here in Memphis, and Tennessee in general, are few and far between. I wouldn’t mind staying in Memphis, and I’m trying to see if I could cobble together some freelance work – but who isn’t doing that these days.
I talked with my dad tonight. He’s worried that my situation isn’t sustainable – he wants me to move in to his house at Penn State. It’s a consideration. He was trying to make the point that I might just want to get any job – a beggars can’t be choosers type of approach. I don’t disagree, but I’m also pretty stubborn. I’ve always had these invisible equations playing in my head – I’d be willing to work a crappy job if it paid me a ton of money. I’d happily work a meaningful job for less money. I’d work a crappy, mindless, and poor paying job if I had a lot of flexibility or was somewhere amazing or with someone amazing (and I could still pay all the bills). I suppose my stubbornness and refusal to settle could put me on a crash course to being alone and penniless, but I have some time yet. I was trying to make the point that, more and more, I derive meaning from things other than work. He said that I’ve been on that path for some time – people and experiences over things, meaning over money. I moved down to Tennessee thinking that I could throw myself in to work as a way to refocus or re prioritize the future I was seeking and lost. I kept telling myself, if I can’t have the partnership and visions we were creating, I can fill my life with music and adventure. The job was short lived. But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure it would have been enough, and that working environment made it extremely difficult to lose myself in the work. An interesting and common turn of phrase – we look to lose ourselves when faced with difficulty and loss – fill voids, turn inward, turn to other things for meaning.
The job loss experience along with being alone in a pandemic has only convinced me more of the value of significant personal, romantic, and self relationships – a wellspring of tremendous fulfillment. While I have little control over that special person finding their way in to my life (a fate influenced by the cosmos, geography, time, and maybe a few dating apps), I still try to read, learn, and reinforce those practices and habits that contribute to maintaining a successful relationship through the inevitable rough patches (kindness, patience, understanding). And if I’m being honest, I read stories of couples who work through their issues as a way to tell myself that my last relationship had normal growing pains. As much as I believed that what we were experiencing was pretty common (for me the highs were far greater than the lows), it’s always a little comforting to read about people who had similar challenges, stuck it out and were successful. That attainment of happily-ever-after (or we love each other and sometimes want to kill each other) is, at the very least, a two part process – finding your person (takes forever, but you know it when it happens) and keeping or holding on to your person (both terrible words that make it sound like chaining them down).
To the point of keeping…. I read the article, “A Therapist’s Simple Rule Transformed My Marriage.” The author and her husband both work from home. For them, maintaining marital bliss is pretty important. She describes their initial problems as that all too common push-pull dynamic that I’ve mentioned a number of times. It’s amazing how common it is. I suspect that while many mature relationships end because of a drifting apart, many young relationships end because of this intense back and forth dynamic. Everyone is trying to find, and stay in, the sweet spot. Our therapist often told us the first year or so is the hardest. As the author, Jancee Dunn, tells it:
For instance: Recently, as we were tapping away at our computers, Tom unleashed what I call a “screeze” — a nerve-jangling combination of a scream and a sneeze.
A few years ago, I would have yelled at him. I have always been the hothead in our relationship. Our fights usually followed the classic, and corrosive, demand/withdraw pattern, in which one person demands to deal with an issue (that would be me) and the other shuts down and walls off. The more Tom glared stonily into his screen, the more upset I would get, escalating from pleading to shouting and swearing.
They sought counseling and their therapist’s advice was quite simple. He recommended what he called Full Respect Living: “Nothing you do or say to each other should drop below the level of simple respect.” He gave them a list of behaviors that were off the table: “No name-calling. No swearing. No ridiculing. No shouting. No venting. No ignoring.” She said that as they practiced, they saw how often they were disrespectful towards each other and wondered why she might treat strangers with more civility than the person she loved most. I suppose it sometimes comes down to the stakes being higher (you can choose to never deal with the stranger again) and a level of comfort – we take for granted that the other person will always be there, will suffer our barbs. Personally, I might swap out one or two of the forbidden behaviors. While swearing isn’t great, it happens. The same thing for venting – sometimes it might be needed. Instead, I’d say no pettiness and no passive-aggressiveness (things I know I sometimes struggle with).
As we hung up, my dad seemed surprised – said I sound like I’m in good spirits. All things considered – no job, no partner, and a whole lot of uncertainty – I suppose I am in decent spirits. I may not be in control of my destiny, but I’ve found a level of freedom that is restoring the lightness of being that I felt when I was with my ex, B. For me, I’m learning that much of my happiness comes down to having the freedom to be creative and exploratory. In terms of traditional creativity (writing), I can’t remember being more engaged than I am now – it’s how I fill my days. Work is work, and I’ll land something – but I know that if I can be creative in that environment and I’m given the chance, I’ll be pretty kick-ass. As for the relationship… I absolutely see love as an act of creativity. With B, I was just getting started. In time, it will fall in to place again. I’m pretty kick-ass when given the chance.