I woke up to a rejection email. Thank you for the time you’ve invested blah blah blah, very competitive blah, we went with other blah blahs. I really should hold off on checking email until I’ve done something else or consumed better things: coffee, breakfast, poetry… The rejection itself isn’t surprising or new, I get plenty of them. But it set off a minor wave of panic/dread as I walked to get coffee and some breakfast. It made me want to spend my day looking for and applying to jobs – which is not really how I want to spend my day in San Diego.
On top of that, just as I sat down at the computer to procrastinate looking for said jobs (by writing here and reading the news), I read a few headlines about APEC and San Francisco. I didn’t know what APEC was (The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) nor did I know it would be in SF between November 11 to 17, the same week I plan to arrive in SF. It’s usually not a great sign when some of the headlines read “Don’t go: People warned to avoid downtown SF during APEC” and “APEC in San Francisco: How to navigate street closures and transportation woes.” I feel like I need to modify that classic airplane line from “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking” to “Looks like I picked the wrong week to move to San Francisco.” Perhaps I’ll stay out of the city for a bit. I imagine hotels and everything will be extra expensive. Maybe I’ll go to Yosemite or Tahoe or just head back to Pennsylvania.
The problem with starting my day with a rejection email (and it really was a minor one – I hadn’t even gotten to the interview stage) is that it introduces doubt. It puts me in a frame of mind in which I re-think everything. It humbles me in ways that are often uncomfortable. At breakfast, I listened to a guy talk to his friend about making money off of insurance (or something like that). My gut reaction was judgemental: what a boring life that is that your conversations revolve around how to make money and leverage insurance policies… But that judgment quickly turned inward – do I even know what I’m doing with my career or why I’m doing it? Suddenly, I found myself eating my pancakes and eggs and feeling like maybe I’ve boxed myself in by defining myself as a do-gooder, nonprofit guy who earns no money and can’t land a job. I’ve told myself that I don’t want to work a regular job (sales, marketing, management, insurance), but being rejected for jobs that I’m qualified for forces me to acknowledge, I’m not sure I’m qualified for a “regular job” even if I wanted one or knew what to look for.
When (if) I’m not careful, that minor crisis in self-confidence can quickly spiral into thinking all of this was a big mistake. This is when taking these risks on my own hits the hardest.
As a side note – yesterday, I visited Pannikin Coffee & Tea where my ex had once taken me and also once worked (I think). It’s relevant because I’m reminded of how when she was facing a similar challenge in finding new work, I had offered to cover the bills and everything so that she could take her time and decide what she wanted to do (career change, artistic pursuits, go back to working at a coffee shop, whatever). It wasn’t a gesture that was meant to be magnanimous, but was genuinely meant in the spirit of giving support and space. I mention this because I seem to be struggling to give myself that same time and space to imagine what a different version of life looks like. Or maybe because I’m trying to do the same thing for myself, I’m overwhelmed by choice. I’m not sure I realized at the time how difficult it might be to have all options on the table – to actually be faced with almost too much freedom and to have to answer the question – what do you want to do?
All of this (trying to find a place to live or make career decisions) gets a bit muddled because there’s no outside advice, guidance, or support. I can’t tell if figuring it out on my own is easier or harder than doing it with support. In my experience, this is when it begins to feel like there’s little breathing room let alone room for mistakes. This is when I can envision a hundred different possibilities, but all of them seem slightly out of reach or I don’t know where to start. This is when I struggle to envision any of those possibilities – I can see myself working remotely from a cafe in the sun, but I have no idea what I’m actually working on or what type of job I have. This is when I realize that I currently have none of the things that typically define the basis of a normal, every-day life (job, family, friends, partner, hobbies, community, home, routine). I have family and friends, but not out here. I have hobbies and interests (writing, exploring, hiking) but those things seem to work best when there’s a counterbalancing level of consistency to life (I write in the mornings, I paint on weekends, etc.). I’ve been living such an unstructured life these past two months that it’s almost hard to envision what that structured life will look like – though I’m sure it involves reading emails in the morning.