Novaturient

A friend posted this on  Facebook recently, and "tagged" me in it.

Why, yes. That's me. I'm going to not concern myself too much about this word not being found in dictionary.com and accept this not only as a description, but a compliment.

It's probably no secret that I'm feeling a bit shocked to not yet be in the next job on my career track. I've gone through a variety of emotions about this from angry about my title and paycheck disappearing to grateful to be released from a job and set of expectations that was weighing me down to optimistic about new work possibilities to pessimistic about new jobs back to angry about the vagaries of unemployment and optimistic about applications to pessimistic about how "the system" (doesn't) work and all the way back to grateful again.

This trip I'm on is a funny ride. It seems to drag out much longer than the tickets I exchanged to get myself a seat on this roller-coaster would normally give me time for. It seems somehow as though I've been around the roller-coaster track more times than I thought I was signing up for. But at the same time, I blinked and it was September. I put in one breath at a time and before I noticed, I was one week away from the fourth quarter.

Roller-coasters being what they are, parts of this ride have been exhilarating and thrilling and even fun while other parts have been harrowing and crazy-making. But like the roller coasters I rode at Busch Gardens last fall, I'm never sorry afterwords. I get that not everyone is an adrenaline junkie, but I kinda am. I used to spar BIG men who were faster, taller, and stronger than me because the rush of getting a strike in was . . . well, a rush. I used to cliff dive. I fully intend to jump out of a plane someday and I love me some roller coasters. (It didn't hurt that I was riding with a stone-cold awesome pre-teen who also loves him some coasters and was stoked to share the experience with me.)

In part I love them because my dad trained me up early to love them. My mom suffers from serious motion sickness and my dad really wanted me to be able to get on rides with him so he started early by putting me on rides that spin and go up and down as soon as carnivals would allow it. But mostly I like these rides because the experience is thrilling and often thrilling+unnerving AND it never fails to make things look and feel different afterwords. Things we take for granted like walking and balance are suddenly not to be trifled with, my senses are sharpened and colors are brighter. I like the quick "boot to the head" perspective change.

This metaphorical ride shares characteristics with real roller coasters. I feel things differently. It causes me not to take things that seem "basic" for granted. I am forced to evaluate things in a different light and . . . while it's scary to step outside the bounds of how I always thought things should be, it's not all bad. For one, as I recently reported to a friend I had not been in as frequent touch with as I'd like to be, "This is scary and hard, but strangely, still happier than I was in my job at this time last year. "

The other thing that is not just "not all bad" but actually GOOD is that I am very, very awake and aware that I'm not just hoping/wishing for things to be better, but seeking change actively. It's not that I was completely unaware of this before . . . I mean, let's be clear. I knew I was unhappy and that things in my world had reached a dangerously, precariously, out of balance place in my personal sphere when I started this blog. But, I had no idea what to do about it. I had no perspective on the whole picture and so I could see good days and bad days, days where I wanted to live inside a box of cheezits and days where salad and chicken seemed reasonable and even preferable, and individual unhappinesses with work or family or myself or relationships. But all my senses were dulled by accepting less, expecting too much from myself, and not seeing the whole scene. Sometimes it takes things getting turned upside-down in order to see the whole picture. This is the use of roller-coasters.

And breakdowns. For some people this is the reason for drugs and mind-altering experiences. And for others jumping out of planes does it. But every once in awhile we need to remember that there's more than one way to look at things. Every once in awhile we need to have the snow-globe we're trapped in turned over so we can see THAT view and notice the things that seem commonplace otherwise completely anew.

Brene Brown jokes about her breakdown/spiritual awakening and how it rocked the foundations of her internal assumptions (roughly 11:20 in this video if you're interested). The joke isn't that she saw things more clearly and made changes to the way she walked through the world, and the impossible track and pace she had set herself to. The joke is that without what felt like a complete earthquake to her, she couldn't have had that epiphany and awakening.

I know the feeling.

My therapist and I have discussed that I was never going to pull the trigger. I had just enough in the tank to turn a vague "break" (one of many I will add) into a break-up but it took enormous piles of data showing me that that person was irrevocably locked into a cycle of denial and dishonesty with me. And I was left so miserably exhausted by the process that not only did I not have it in me to leave my job (even when the piles of evidence that the job had grown  unhealthy for me were so big as to nearly block out all other views), I had halted what (at that point) had been a year long job search because I just didn't have it in me. I was in line to board, but I was never going to get on this particular roller coaster on my own. I needed a solid shove to the center of my back.

This is why my therapist wanted to congratulate me on the day I lost my job. I get it now just as surely as I wanted to smack him in the face for saying it at the time. You know that "aha" moment you might remember having when everything came together as you completed a long algebra problem? I have this  in terms of LIFE on a near daily basis now.

Without a powerful force working to jolt and shake me out of the routine of being ok with things being less than ok pretty much all of the time I never would have calculated up the numbers this way and seen how sub-par had become so normal for me that I felt helpless to do anything but numb it. And as Brene says (and others, to be sure) in her TED talk about vulnerability that one cannot "selectively numb emotion." (15:30)  You can't say I don't want to feel X without numbing the more comfortable emotions. As she predicts, I numbed everything, and that meant I couldn't feel my pain fully but this also meant I couldn't feel my joy. Without joy, I couldn't reliably steer towards anything better. But without my pain, I couldn't be informed about what was truly wrong and wounded and needed to be tended to.

As Pema Chodron says, prophetically I think:

"In life, we think the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem. The real truth is that things don't get solved. they come together for a time, then they fall back apart. Then they come together again and they fall apart again. It's just like that.

Personal discovery and growth come from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for misery, relief, for joy.
....

Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don't cop out on yourself. Don't run away and hide under the covers. Lean into it. "

- When things fall apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times

It's hilarious to me (in a head-smacking-palm way) that THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE recommended this book to me starting from last October . . . a month which we are now a week away from again. This is to say, a year ago, it was apparent that I was in trouble and needed some strategies and that was when I was with-paycheck as opposed to now, sans-paycheck.Wow, Christie. That was time well spent avoiding the truth, avoiding things that would help me. Siiiiggghhhh. (shakes head)

This is my ("fricken" 8:00) breakdown/spiritual awakening. Of course, as Brene calls us to admit . . . it may not be possible to have one without the other. I have to be angry. I have to be sad. I have to have the long, hard, two days I had last week where I panicked, cried, felt crushed by the weight of "what if" and then, ultimately, my face and head a mess, looked at my person and said, "I can't be tough about this all the time." And a few days hence followed that with the difficult question, "Can you please tell me something I'm doing right - I feel like I am utterly sucking at everything right now."

I have to remember the other parts of Brene Brown wisdom about vulnerability and shame (6:00 or thereabouts). "Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change." She also says, prophetically I hope, "Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage. "

When I am feeling . . . untethered and scared and dark and pessimistic, there are a few things I can point back to and know I am still better off on those days than I was on days I felt sure and grounded and had a plan I thought I could/should count on. For one, even when I'm feeling pain, I am feeling. For another, the realization that plans aren't always where it is at shakes the foundations of my life. But I think those foundations were pretty cracked and worn from all the weight of the plans I had piled on and on and on. I am still working on separating out could from should, and that is a dark rabbit hole for me to travel through. My whole life has been about what I SHOULD do. When my therapist said, "You have the kind of personality and ability where you could do things that change the world. But you never will UNLESS you make a complete break away from how you've done things in the past, the judgement, and the constant weight of expectation," I cried not from sadness but from recognition of truth staring me down.

Finally, pessimism is an interesting marker of hope. As a very wise friend said to me about my religious musings, "you can't be angry at a God you don't believe in." True story. I'd add to this that one can't be pessimistic about things they don't harbor some hope for. Another way to say this is that even when I'm feeling rooted in anxiety about this not turning out well, it means that somewhere I have some thought that i could turn out as a full bowl of awesomesauce.

Seeking powerful change can't come without fear, and that fear can't be navigated without vulnerability. This is a profoundly opening experience. I feel raw and skinless on a regular basis. (As I relayed to one of this year's bestest gifts, my new friend, the other day, this is not always helped by the fact that I am trying to learn three brand-new things all at once right now.) I make harder and harder decisions each week and am scared each and every time that I am on the precipice of the next choice that I will make the wrong one. But once the roller coaster turns on the track, I don't much find myself looking back. (Perhaps this is the gift of roller coasters - the velocity is so  great that it physiologically prevents us from looking backwards.) This means, I think, that despite all my vulnerability and dark and twisty moments, I am more confident about my core worthiness, my ability to build a life of meaning, and what may come than I was when I was working.

I have learned not just about leaning into pain and being it's student, but also that vulnerable moments are my best opportunities to be honest and brave. I have considerably more courage than I had ever plumbed the depths of. It's one thing to ride a roller coaster, and another to do it with your eyes open. But there is someone else very literally driving that train. So, getting on a bike that has to be powered by me (and perhaps more notably, balanced by me. Eeeeeeee!) is far scarier. The thing about doing scary things is that they leave you exposed. But it's that feeling, it's the "here I go, sparring someone much better than me" or singing on stage (alone!) that are most thrilling. I am most inspired and feel so much via those experiences that are most intimidating because taking charge of them, moving through them, leaning into them, reveals the me under-my-skin that is more powerful, authentic, and lovable  than I could see with my armor-skin on. "Do it anyway" has become a bit of a motto for me. "Risk it anyway," is the only way I can navigate this.

I say this by way of apology to my readers (who are also mostly all my personal friends. Nice how I can kill two birds with one stone, eh?) because my breakdown/spiritual awakening certainly wreaks occasional havoc on my writing. At the moment that I'm most dark and twisty, the tears and swollen eyes and second guessing don't lend themselves much to writing . . . hence the pause in the blog the last couple of weeks. And I can't promise a steady pace moving forward. I can't say what will happen next, or how I'll feel about all of this tomorrow. And I know that for every dose of wisdom and positivity I feel, there's probably enough negativity and difficulty and dark and twisty to seep in here anyways.

What I can tell you is that I am changed by these 9 months, and even on bad days, I know I am changed in good ways. I can tell you that reading Brene Brown's book, The gifts of Imperfection, speaks powerfully to me because perfect is so damaging in my life when joined by it's evil twin judgement (and it is ALWAYS joined by the evil twin. They are conjoined, for sure). I can tell you I should have listened to advice sooner to read Pema Chodron and I know that this won't be "solved" but simply change, and then change again. I need to be able to roll with that and so this ride is teaching me not to focus on much more than today (whenever possible. Ahem. Ok, let's be clear: I am still a planner. I still have a color coded calendar. Three, really. It's a process, ok?).

I know that I have to feel this much, and it has to be this alarmingly, gapingly open and vulnerable in order for me to really change. And I know I want the creativity, the innovation and the change. Novaturient, yes. Powerful change, progress towards a better me, regardless of jobs and title and paycheck, I HOPE.

Flaws

Recently, I posted about romance and reality. Reality isn't always as pretty or clean-shaven or over-the-top emotional as a Meg Ryan movie, but it is honest. And honesty and romance have been irrevocably intertwined in my head. As I was doing some "field research" for the romance post (aka asking deep questions and sharing my thesis with my dear friends via skype) I found myself tearing up and getting the wobbly voice when I said, "I've just been lied to so much in my life by so many people . . . " A Facebook post my friend put up recently struck me as the simplest way I can state how profoundly important honesty is to me: The truth may hurt for a little while but a lie hurts forever.

I've, of course, written about honesty before. A couple of times at least. I value honesty in all the relationships I have, from the friend who tells me, "Umm, no, you can't put your hair clip like that. Only a good friend would say that to you though," to the sibling that says, "You're difficult but that's part of YOU." And I try to give as good as I get. To me, trust comes from saying what you mean, and then following up your words with actions.

I am lucky that I have some good examples of people I know finding ways to thread honesty, accountability and romance together, like my friends who, instead of traditional wedding vows, had a conversational set of promises they made to one another (in front of us). I also, in my research of what people promise each other, was sent this fabulous example of how honesty can meet humor, fun, and romance. (These vows are heartfelt, to be sure, and so true - not IF you get sick or IF you get angry but WHEN -  and genuinely loving. And let's be clear, I wish I could have zombies at any party or wedding celebration I might plan in the future.)

What strikes me is that honesty, like terror and charity, begins at home. For me, perhaps honesty trumps flashy shows of romance because there was such issue with it in my home. I come from a family that struggles with honesty - with one another, and with themselves. In my house this didn't always mean outright lying, but often just a lack of the whole story being conveyed about any number of things or willful ignoring of the skeletons in the closet . . . this is, after all, how it happens that I have a sister I didn't grow up with.  (In point of fact, I didn't know she existed until I was 21 and she was almost 30.) This is how people I lived with for years and love and share blood with ignored the obvious problems while deftly stepping over that lump in the rug barely concealing what they swept under it. Their stories aren't mine to tell, so I won't talk about what I see when I tentatively lift the rug up, but the important realization for me is that I don't just crave honesty. I worry over it.

I make it a deep and daily concern to check in with myself and try to take stock of my ability to be honest with others and myself because, I think, deep down, I am afraid that if I relax on that priority, I will find proverbial rugs and more than proverbial lumps swept under them. I live in a hardwood floor apartment for a reason, and I don't own any rugs other than bathmats, so, this would be alarming.

For me, honesty is, in huge part, about knowing one's self. It's hard to "speak from the heart" if you can't hear your own inner voice, and it's impossible to react and communicate honestly if you don't know how you feel. And for me, an important piece of that is trying, whenever possible, to trace backwards far enough to know WHY I feel that way. More often than not, my feelings come from fears, limiting beliefs, judgment, and insecurities. And more often than not, those fears and insecurities and weak spots in my tough-girl armor come from knowing how flawed I am.

The word flaw actually means: a feature that mars the perfection of something, defect, fault.

This always reminds me of craftsman looking at a piece of wood and rejecting it because of a knot too big to work into the chair or wall they aspire to make, or a big dark spot in the middle of a diamond. Something visible. Which is ironic and alarming, because I work so very hard to make sure my flaws are as invisible as possible. I want the world to see good hair days, no pimples, and certainly not the moments where I am fighting the tears over having to send an email that makes me judge myself by imagining how someone else will judge it. I want those things tucked under the floor boards (since I live sans rugs).

But, I've been brought up short by being unemployed, by going back to therapy, by realizing that people love me not because I am perfect but for other reasons, by seeing a moving TED talk about vulnerability and then reading the researcher's book, and realize now, the flaws in the wood make it richer and more interesting, and I've never cared for diamonds anyways.

So, in going back and re-reading Elisabeth Glibert's book, Committed (about marriage and misgivings and love and honesty and tradition and ways to buy into it without the bullshit . . . in my opinion, better than her more renowned Eat, Pray, Love ) I was reminded that something she and her beloved did before confirming they could marry (even with misgivings) was to present a list of their own flaws to one another and . . . double-check that they were ok with what they were signing up for. They were searingly honest. Witness:

1. I think very highly of my own opinion. I generally believe that I know best how everyone in the world should be living their lives - and you, most of all will be victim of this.

2. I require an amount of devotional attention that would have made Marie Antoinette blush.

3. I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy.  In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion.  You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart.  This will be unbelievably tedious.  I apologize in advance.

4. I am openly prideful, secretly judgmental, and cowardly in conflict.  All these things collude at times and turn me into a big, fat liar.

5. My most dishonorable fault of all:  Though it takes me a long while to get to this point, the moment I have decided that somebody is unforgivable, that person will very likely remain unforgiven for life--all too often cut off forever, without fair warning, explanation or another chance.

What made it ok for her and her partner to leap into this cesspool of uncertainty was BECAUSE they could share these lists of terribleness with each other and say afterwords, "I can work with that."

It sounds terribly unromantic (even less romantic than slaying a zombie head in a wedding ceremony in lieu of lighting a unity candle) but it is an incredibly loving act for another person to say, "I take all of you. Even the hard parts. Even when you make them sound really bad." It makes me wonder: how many of us are able to love ourselves that deeply, looking really deeply into the mirror and seeing every visible flaw, every humiliating or hurtful moment, everything under the rug and beyond? I don't. Do you?

How many people spend the time to know themselves that deeply and then say, "I love me anyways."

If I inventory my flaws, I sound really terrible to myself.

1. I talk too much, think too much, and generally cannot rest until I've analyzed the breath out of everything, everything, everything. Myself, how best to set up the laundry room shelves, my family, my goals, what shoes to buy, how to get $10 a week off my grocery list . . .  This data gathering and analytic machine does not rest and it is exhausting for every other human on the planet, but I can't stop.

2. I am a really judgmental person. I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. Generally, I don't make snap judgments (see above: data gathering) but when I've thought something over, I typically have a pretty good idea of what I think should or shouldn't happen, how to implement my plan, and why it will be awesome. My niece once asked me if my plans always work out and I answered, without missing a beat, "When my plans don't work it's almost always because someone has failed to follow them." I have tried, in recent years, to speak up promptly when I have no opinion because there are times I meet a topic where I genuinely don't care or haven't formed a thought on, and I want people to get a break from my constant assessments and perspectives. I've tried also to get better at making room for new data, to have my mind changed, and to hear others. I've tried most of all to recognize when judging others comes from judging myself (Almost always! SHOCKER!) but it remains true that I am the most outspoken, annoying, insufferable know-it-all most of you will ever meet.

3. I am what some people call stubborn or persistent. Those are far kinder words than I think apply. I am beyond determined, I am attached to willing things to be the way I need them to be. This often gets me stuck in a rut of patterns that aren't working for me, or what one friend charitably described as me being "dogged, at times." Yup, that's me.

4. I am very attached to my plans, my pride, and my independence. This means that I will jump in and help almost anyone, almost all of the time but will refuse to let my person take a shopping bag from me when he sincerely offers to carry it. I will run myself into the ground being a caretaker for others, all the while ignoring my own needs. It's extraordinarily unhealthy and detrimental to seeking balance and although I've addressed it with a vengeance this year, it will be a lifelong struggle for me to put myself first, ever, and not feel shame about it.

5. I'm deeply principled, and hold myself and others to painfully high standards. But mostly myself. When I can't meet them, as I've described, it's not a matter of failing and then picking myself back up. It's inevitable failure, then kicking myself while I'm down, beating myself up after the kicking, rolling around in the mud, and then expecting myself to write an essay about how I'll do better. This means that although I've been successful at many things I have no natural aptitude for, I'm not what you call resilient. I rebound . . . eventually, but it takes me an inordinately long time to pick myself up after a fall and because I'm so resistant to help (see above) taking a hand up doesn't even occur to me, even when it's offered.

6. I am tough, sassy, and strong. I have same-day surgeries without pain killers, travel like a champ, have almost no phobias, and generally act like I am unaffected by pain, injury, illness, and fatigue. Yet, I have incredibly thin skin. Even small accidental moments can hurt my feelings and sting years later. Having an unyieldingly killer memory does not help this cause.

7. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in letting go of anger and wounds, because otherwise you carry them with you and hurt yourself and others with them over and over. I believe in second chances. I often give third and fourth and fourteenth chances, because despite all of my toughness, independence, and judgment, I see the good in almost everyone. But, when someone has hurt me badly enough or often enough, when all trust or faith in their ability to be decent has been eroded, I am completely incapable, at that point, of the kind of forgiveness that leaves what happened in the past. (The memory thing doesn't help much here either.) It would be far kinder for EVERYONE to just stop earlier and close the door more gently on people that aren't good for me.

8. I have only felt pretty, smart, and appreciated all at the same time for three or four days of my entire life. This means, that when someone tells me I am attractive, I am suspicious they think I'm stupid. When someone praises my intellect, I wonder if that is code for them thinking I'm ugly, and that if they see both, I assume I'm unappreciated for these and any other good qualities. I am constantly undermining myself by playing old tapes in my head of being unworthy of real belonging.

9. I have a horrible, horrible habit of making fun of things I actually care about quite a lot because I can't quite bear to let people see me care that much and be that vulnerable and drop the sarcasm. I suspect this is offputting or at least tiring for many people.

10. As in introspective extrovert (or a very social introvert depending on which test I take and how I interpret questions as applying to my life ) I am often caught up in being what is needed by everyone else, and, as mentioned above, caretaking everyONE but myself. But, I also require an enormous amount of time and mental resources to process all of the data I'm gathering all of the time. Sometimes this all comes to a head and I find myself lying on the couch watching terrible re-runs or staring at the ceiling and not having the will to do anything for a couple of days at a time. At these times, I'm completely incapable of taking out the trash, doing my dishes, or meeting friends when we've made plans. This means my people get lots of attention from me when I am "on" and then suddenly, when the switch flips, I am suddenly 100% MIA. I know I hurt people this way.

11. There is almost nothing in my life that goes unprocessed (see number 1). But, I am accustomed to delaying emotional processing. This leaves me isolated, and often angry, and it puzzles and hurts people when something they thought nothing of resurfaces as an issue I'm still dealing with days, weeks, months later.

How can that list be compatible with being lovable? And yet, despite all of these things working against me, I have friends who call me family that I've had, respectively for 33 years, 17 years, 15 years, and 12 years. There must be something there. I reason it this way - they don't HAVE to see me at Thanksgiving and pretend to like me, they choose me over and over, and I them.

I saw a cartoon once that showed on the left pane, a field of flowers. Daisies, lilies, pretty, pretty flowers. Underneath it, it said, "How we see flowers" In the right hand pane, the same flowers, but with faces in their centers, and all of the faces had big ugly glasses, warts, crooked noses, pimples. Underneath that it said, "How flowers see themselves."

While we are staring in the mirror and side-stepping the lumps in the rug, we're all the while consumed with the pimples and the secret-keeping, which makes it impossible for us to see what is wonderful about us. We're burdened with the things that are less than awesome because we have to carry them around on our backs, and are always angling to stand in front of them so that no one can see what is behind our backs . . . like when we were children trying to smuggle cookies out of the cookie jar by keeping our hands tucked behind our backs. If we stood those things up in front of us and made peace with them, maybe we could see what was fun and useful and easy and memorable about us to others. If I loved my flaws, the bumps and knots in the wood, would I see the good things more easily?

Here's an interesting thing that happened as I was writing this post. I had assembled some of the pieces of this post last week, and sat down to write last night. I got about as far as I had hoped I would (up to the sentence, "If I loved my flaws the bumps and knots in the wood, would I see the good things more easily?") but knew I wasn't finished. So, I decided to sit down with Brene Brown's book. Her writing is just as captivating as her presentations are. I found myself laughing and empathizing as she shared her own struggles with imperfection and courage because they are all of our struggles - being too busy, trying to hard to fit in at the risk of missing real belonging, wanting to send angry emails to snarky people, etc. But I also found this quote:

"When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness - the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing and proving. Our sense of worthiness - that critically important piece that gives us access to love and belonging - lives inside of our story."

When I read this, I realized, if I had just dug into this book a month ago then I wouldn't have needed to spend the 2 hours it took me to pull the pieces of this post together and write all those paragraphs. Brene has already said it more articulately for me.

My story is one of hustling, as she says. Of trying to prove, to please, to make my worth and value known by showing others how useful I can be, how hard I will work for it, how much I am willing to do for others rather than just locating my worthY. When I do this, I attach my feeling of being good enough to external things. Accomplishments and work are the main culprits. And, so, when I look at it that way, being unemployed is my first opportunity to stand apart from what I do or who I am in service to others or my job title. It is, if I do it right, a chance to get very honest in a way that isn't hurtful to the person I'm looking at in the mirror, but instead embraces the knots in the wood so that I can clear a path to seeing how I am good enough, job, no job, and whatever else comes next.

Secret Introvert?

I have some friends and family who are closet introverts. I know them for what they are, but much like people used to use all kinds of not-very-clever euphemisms for being gay and would only say the word "gaayyy" in the "cancer voice" (Margaret Cho's mother comes to mind. "Mommy knows all about the gay! So many! So many Gay, allll over, all over the world. Wahhhh!") I have never much called them out of their safe closets of introversion where they recharge their batteries in peace. This is because our societal norms are pretty judgy about introversion.

Yesterday, I was telling the story of my New Year's Eve 2011(henceforth on this blog, NYE 2011) to a friend who is new to my life, but has taken up space in my heart and life very rapidly. I was describing how, for years, I've helped my besties, my boys who are my family, cook and plan and clean and host and then met their friends (who are fun and amazing people and who have become my friends) at the resultant celebration. I said how awesome it was when MY friend came wanting to see me and meet them but how I had to be a bit of an intermediary. My friend wanted to party, but not stay at the house; while my Robby wanted everyone to stay at the house because in his mind post-NYE breakfast is lazy people in PJs in his living room (yes, that's right - we cook for days and make not only a stunning set of appetizers, dinner, cocktails, and dessert, but breakfast for the next day. A moment of silence for our awesomeness, please). I intervened and said, "I know you want to be an awesome host so make the offer, but if he says 'no' that's not the I'm-being-polite-but-you-can-push-harder signal, that's him saying 'I want to party and then go have some space to recharge as an introvert.' And in that case you need to accept that being a good host means respecting that need."

The new friend I was telling this NYE story to has been married for 3 years, and with her husband for 6 years before. Her husband is very much an introvert so she said, "It's so rare that non-introverts know that. It took me years to learn it and not take it personally."

We're an extrovert-centric culture. My more-than-friend, Rob(by), and I joked for a long time that the last frontier of prejudice was a world that assumed everyone is right-handed, and expects him, a lefty, to adjust everything without complaint. True, desks, scissors, tools, and spiral notebooks all assume use by a righty, and lefties just have to suck it up and learn ambidexterity or other ways to compensate. But it's also true that there are now stores that specialize in making lefties more comfortable as lefties. There are no stores for introverts . . . unless you count Best Buy and Elliot Bay Books as havens for the introvert who just wants to be left the heck alone with their media and their internal process.

The message in our culture regarding introversion is both unsubtle and incorrect, in my not very expert opinion because there is an assumption that being outgoing is preferable in all scenarios and that introverts are the opposite of this: shy. As it turns out, introversion isn't about being shy, or anxious about other humans, it's about where resources and energy go, and where they come from. (As someone who used to be a multi-focal trainer . . . and hopes to be again someday . . I often think about this as the difference between internal training and customer-facing training in an organization. With many of my clients' small businesses I would recommend and even provide training as a means of developing their operations, sales, and other business needs. But internal training was about developing resources on hand, and processing what was happening inside the four walls of that business, and drawing energy and participation from within the group/organization. Customer-facing training is all about putting energy into people outside of "yourself"  - where yourself equals the business/staff/organization in this example -  with the expectation of getting that investment back in increased customers, loyalty, etc. In parallel, introverts do their best work and understand the world best by facing inwards and drawing their energy and motivation from that, and extroverts shine most when they can invest in and be energized by others. )

From, Revenge of the Introvert "While extraverts spend more time overall in social activities than introverts do, the two groups do not differ significantly on time spent with family members, romantic partners, or coworkers. Moreover, extraverts and introverts both report a mood boost from the company of others. For introverts, however, the boost may come at a cost. Researchers have found that introverts who act extraverted show slower reaction times on subsequent cognitive tests than those allowed to act introverted. Their cognitive fatigue testifies to the fact that "acting counter-dispositionally is depleting."

A culture that prizes extroversion and gregariousness often conflates anxiety and introversion, placing not only positive bias on being extroverted, but negative assumptions on not being extroverted. It's nice that experts agree that introversion isn't the same as being shy. It's even more important that we consider what being introverted DOES mean and trying to understand, as this Ted talk says so eloquently, the power of the introverts around us.

Let's be clear, in America we are loud, rowdy, boisterous, and love the person who can party or make everyone feel good. We expect to be entertained at all that we do so we interview people for jobs seeking extroverted characteristics. In my recent interviews I've been asked the following questions:

• Tell me about a time where you had to make a connection with someone quickly
• Tell me about your team work experiences
• What can you say about your strategy for convincing groups of people to ________
• What are your strengths in facilitating groups?

This would make sense, of course, if all of the positions I've looked at were customer-facing training positions, or sales support. But in fact, none of my last three interviews were even TRAINING positions. We assume that our bosses, teachers, co-workers, and leaders should be the life of the party, and moreover, excited to walk in those shoes. We elect a disproportionate number of extroverts and we assume, somehow, that the person who seeks to work alone, be alone, process alone does so because they are too shy to operate as the social butterfly would.


Because we love the extrovert here, and we misunderstand the introvert as being awkward, shy, hard to draw out, unable to connect with people, and thus, somehow socially disabled. In reality, introverts may eschew small talk because they'd rather dig for deeper meanings and connections, they may choose not to go to every party, they may not only crave but need time alone to process and recharge, but they like people just fine, if possibly in shorter doses or via more careful selection.

As one of my closest friends is an introvert, I've actually done quite a bit of reading and considering on the topic of how extroverts and introverts can live together in peace, how to be supportive of introverts around me, and even, how shall we say . . . well, I'll just quote this article, Caring for my introvert(s). My own experience suggests that by respecting boundaries, learning to enjoy quiet, seemingly solitary activities with them (watching TV, studying in the same room, reading), and being very open to real conversation that goes beyond weather and gossip, an introvert will show that they have paid deep attention to what has been said and, sometimes importantly, what has not been said, will share things that reflect deep emotional connection and awareness, and will ultimately let you inside their introspective, quiet place. Introverts aren't about what's on the surface, and part of the bias of an extroverted world is not only judging introverts for not playing the surface-niceties game, but to also judge introverts only by what they show on the surface . . . and there's so much more beneath that layer. My friend from college and I had our deepest talks when alone in a dark lab at 2am or when I was massaging him. (That sounds dirtier than it was. Giving massages was just part of my friendship with him) I know things because I stopped asking-asking-asking and started shutting up and listening.

I did all of this with the idea that I was on the outside of this circle (or to be more accurate, the individual circles the introverts I know have for themselves, and expand oh-so-very selectively, letting others in very carefully).

I knew my college friend as introverted long before it ever came up in conversation, and since the inception of that friendship, I've had a few other important connections with introverts, including the relationship I'm in now. I have two other close friends here in Boulder that are introverts. One of these makes no bones about it - she prefers to spend time with me one-on-one whenever possible so we can deep-talk, and she feels most connected with people in this way and sometimes overwhelmed (not shy, just too stimulated to process) when in bigger groups. The other puts on a great show, and truly is one of the most entertaining people I know, but often reports to me being tired by that. When we were first hanging out, because she is so energetic and hilarious, I worried she wouldn't want to spend time with me . . . that I wouldn't be cool enough. But as I thought of fun things for us to do, time and again she would choose to just come over to my house, eat dinner, talk, and watch TV. Secret Introvert.

One of my brothers is a secret introvert. He often claims, "I hate people." He'll make me come for certain holidays so that I can "buffer." The truth is, he talks about people more than he talks about anything else (including working out, beer, and sex, so that's saying a lot): our sister, our other brother, my mom, his best friend, his best friend's new baby, going out for drinks with my besties which happened, like, 3 years ago. He doesn't hate people - he hates small talk. He hates being "nice" because he isn't (not by most people's limited standards, anyways), and because he has a slow-to-warm-up personality that makes him often pressured or misunderstood. And, after a big family event, he craves retreating to run, read, sleep, watch TV on his own the way my knocked-up friends crave chocolate. Secret introvert.

I have shared a lot with introverts in my life . . . but always thought of myself as an extrovert. But recently, my person sighed and said, "Ohhhh, Christie. You can say you're an extrovert, but you are telling me things that make me think you're an introvert."

This was almost as stunning as when he referred to me as a writer, weeks ago. I've just never considered myself as anything other than extroverted. How much of this is about extrovert-bias and how much is true? It's hard to say since most tests of this personality spectrum from the introvertedy-introvert all the way to the most extroverted there can be are based on either self-assessment or self-reporting or both. So, even if I look at the fact that I always test as an ENFJ (or, in the past, very occasionally as an ENFP) I may be responding to misperceptions of myself, and those perceptions, in turn, may be shaped by extrovert bias. So hard to say since all of the questions on such instruments are open to so much interpretation, which requires comparison, which of course, again, are shaped by biases and bad information.

So logically, let's look at my family: I grew up with two siblings. One is the most extroverted anyone could be; the proverbial social butterfly who places himself in the center of activity at any party, gathering, or family event and can talk and entertain for hours. Alone time seems a punishment to him and so he seeks out shared living (while my other sibling and I have admitted that living alone is our greatest luxury) and careers that require constant contact with others. The other sib is described above - secret introvert. I have one parent who is genuinely miserable when by herself (the textbook extrovert who wants to be out, with others, all the time and when alone picks up the phone ASAP) and had another parent who very much fit the mold of the introverted engineer that he was. It would make sense for me to be either a moderately expressed extrovert or a moderately expressed introvert, not heavily weighted on either side, given this set up. And while early personality-type research suggested that firstborn children were more "dominant" newer research suggests that firstborns are less likely to be extroverted.

Ok, so, not crazy given my family. The next natural thing would be to observe myself . . . except that there are arguments both for and against the present circumstances I find myself in. On the one hand, not working is pretty exceptional for me. I've been working for more than 20 years. And the toll of not working has been difficult, to say the least. On the other hand, there's an argument to be made for looking at NOW as the Christie-in-her-natural-habitat; not responding to others' needs, not running myself ragged for a paycheck, but just being me. Viewed by the former lens, it's easy to discount where I'm at as situation-specific and to say that my tendency for more solitary reflection is about the natural disappointment at being in this position. Viewed from the later perspective, these five months are more telling than the 5 years that came before them.

And the truth is, for the last 5 months, it has made the most sense to me to sit still, to think hard, and to be very, very open about who and what I am. This speaks very deeply of some previously unnoticed introverted tendencies that are nonetheless core to who I am. I like to talk things over with people, but I don't run over to the phone as soon as I am alone, and in fact, I'm quite choosy (some would argue, too choosy) about who I let in . . . and have written about that many, many times on this blog. I also do some of my best reconciling life with myself by staring at a ceiling, or processing solo. I am a multi-tasker so sometimes this means laying on my couch and staring up quietly, but more often it's me being a whirrling dervish of laundry, cooking, cleaning, while turning things over in my head and letting them set down and find a soft landing site. I have never been one for small talk, and right now, it just seems to have no place in the life of meaning and understanding I'm trying to envision and then build . . . from scratch. I just had my birthday and for me the best thing about it was having just a few awesome folks who all liked each other . . . read: no real work for me to facilitate it. I felt tired at the idea of a big party, and excited at the idea of the right group of people and getting to catch up with them and drink beer.

For my person, the argument here is that if I am at my healthiest right now by giving myself the time, and the space, and the reflective alone-ness to understand and make friends with myself, then it is an indication that it might not have been healthy for me to peg myself as an extrovert and then invest myself in passing as one. For me, the image in my head is of the little girl I was in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade (importantly, old enough to have a recognizable personality, but young enough to not yet have been fully tainted by the expectations of others and the social machine young girls wed themselves to so painfully early) who would clamor to get off the school bus in order to run up the hill, grab an apple, and throw her legs over the arm chair with a book . . . alone. This was the same little girl who had one or two close friends and didn't much care to surround herself with more. It's inconvenient that recalling this also means remembering the bad dresses she wore, and that her mom favored the pig-tails hairstyle but . . . I do this in the name of some unpolluted data.

Even this blog is a mixed case - I am opening the door, at least in theory, for anyone to know the things I write here. But the act of writing it involves a lot of reflection, a lot of collecting data, connecting the dots, navel-gazing about meaning and theory and deeper connections. And I almost never experience more of the person I am or could be than when I'm writing it on this level.

So, pure data isn't so pure. I shouldn't be shocked after my four semesters of graduate level statistics, during one of which the grads all heard the best quote ever, "you can torture your data all you want. sooner or later it will confess to something." I retook the Myers-Briggs personality test again in preparation for this post and found that if I reinterpreted a couple of the questions to fit my current lifestyle (and by a couple, I mean exactly three questions) I tested as an INFJ with moderately expressed I-ness. When I read the ENFJ type that I've so often been reported as, so much of it reads true . . . I am prone to placing the needs of others above my own, I am chameleon-like sometimes, I do have a talent for bringing out the best in others and I am loyal and straightforward, sometimes to a fault. And I read the INFJ description and see pieces of myself there too: I am overly sensitive to conflict, and don't handle it well, I am prone to creative, independent pursuits (ahem! This blog, my 365, and even my previous job which had me running a remote region solo), I do tend to be overly orderly and I do, indeed, hold fast to values and find myself prioritizing and re-prioritizing in order to make sense of my world. (Again, Ahem! This blog).


It is also true that I love my friends and positively light up around them and that after processing on my own, or taking my long walk, or reading and writing, or immersing myself in ideas, I want to share with them. I want to affect others, I want to influence and be influenced, and importantly, I am energized by others . . . if it is the right others. Maybe I'm just a miserably picky bastard with trust issues. Or . . . maybe I'm a secret introvert. Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, the the world may never know . . . and it may never be important. But, if it's a secret I've kept from myself, I'll be watching to see how thinking outside of the "extroverts are excellent" box  changes how I see myself.

Birthday List

Nearly a month ago, I noted that I needed a job before my birthday. Well (shuffle, shuffle) . . . ummmm . . . ahhhh . . . errr. Yeaaaaahhhhh.

In a week, it's. My. BIRTHDAY.

I've been joking around about this being the one week countdown to my midlife crisis (yes, yes, I know most people wait until their 40's to do this, but I figure a running start is warranted. I also think, as long as I'm freaking out, I should multi-task my anxiety and just package this in. And, a good friend pointed out to me today that Dante had his mid-life crisis at 35, so, there's precedent!) but I'll admit this is dfficult for me.

My birthday is also the anniversary of my becoming a Colorado resident, and, for anyone who has read this blog, you know that the story of how I came to live here isn't really a good one. I remember that first birthday here as a blur of unloading boxes and furniture after having been driving for close to a week (it feels like most of that week was spent in Nebraska. Ugh). Somewhere in there, there was a bad movie, and a broken promise. So, birthdays here in Colorado are always seem to come part and parcel with feeling a little tender and tentative.

And this year, my birthday also feels like it is bound up with other drama. My need to figure out my living situation. This arbitrary deadline I set for myself to get a job. The end of the month . . . yayyyyy, more bills due. And, well, 35 doesn't feel like a small number. I want to not have hang ups about that, and to be enlightened and to feel that age has made me better, but without a clear picture of where I'm headed, looking back and saying, "all of that got me here" doesn't work as well. Meh.

For many weeks, as this date approached, I had the ostrich reaction and my instinct was to stick my head in the sand and IGNORE. NEGLECT. And, if things got really bad, maybe uproot from the proverbial sand, RUN AWAY.

But the truth is, I will turn 35, and be unemployed, and wake up with these same unsettled questions whether or not I acknowledge this birthday. So, I'd better get on with it and acknowledge the impending arrival of my mid-life crisis. And as long as I'm acknowledging it, I should go ahead and celebrate. Sitting here, right at this moment, I'm not sure what there is to celebrate to be painfully honest. But I have always adored birthdays (yours, mine, birthdays are just great) so I'm trying to fall back on that.

Of course, what everyone has asked me is, What do you want for your birthday? I have some pretty phenomenal people in my life, both near and far. Some of them have settled this questions by telling me what they are doing to celebrate my day, and others have asked me. One of my smartest, funniest friends put it this way, "what do you want for your birthday aside from word peace and an awesome job?"

Actually, if those things could be gift wrapped, that would be just awesomesauce. Way to hit that nail on the head, RR!

I don't think Amazon has a category for those, so I've put some thought into what else I'd enjoy. My mom askes me to make two lists, each year. A Christmas list, and a Birthday list. I try really hard to make the first no longer than 10 items, and to ask for things that aren't things (Can you make lasagna? Can we go get pedicures?) and the later no longer than 5 things. This year, something about free-falling and not having my feet on any kind of solid ground means I feel free to ask for just EVERYTHING I want. Here goes:

• I would like to excise the parts of my head and heart that tell me, with searing repetition, that I have become "less than" in my weeks of unemployment.

• I want to be able to do the bound yoga poses without fear of losing my balance.
• I want someone to create head bands that don't slide off the back of my giant head

• I'd like for dresses that accommodate girls with GIRLS to be made more flattering.

• I want to put honey in my yogurt without the honey bottle getting all sticky.

• I want my friend to be released from prison and exonerated. I'm grateful that he still has a loving heart, and kindness, but I want him out sooner rather than later to keep it that way. 

• I want children to be wanted and planned. And loved beyond all belief. All of them. 

• I want all of my friends who love each other and are willing to risk everything to be allowed to get married and have those marriages be recognized by my government.
• I want for our country to stop thinking that separate but equal works. Because it never does.
• I want for the U.S. voters and leaders to remember that in a free society you need a reason to make something ILlegal, not a reason to make something legal. And, bee-tee-dub, "the bible" isn't a good thing to point to when it comes to our laws since we eat shrimp and don't sell our daughters.

• I want women to not feel so limited and judged that they treat life as a zero sum game, and learn, all too well, to tear each other down. 

• I want men to not feel so pigeon-holed and pressured that they feel competition and destructiveness are expected. Required even.
• I want a cure for cancer.
• I want to hear my dad read Brer Rabbit stories, with the killer accents and voices, one more time.
• I want more people to go to therapy prophylactically.
• I want more people to hold themselves accountable for their own issues, wounds, and baggage. I need people to be accountable for how their actions affect others.
• I need for us to realize how broken our education system is. How wrong it is that we will spend money to incarcerate, but not to educate. How forced into lock-step my teacher friends feel. How unhappy parents and students are. How wrong our curriculum is and how sticking with it is throwing good money after bad. And, why, oh why, do we think it is ok for us to require college in order to aim higher than Walmart in the job market, but then expect to pay them with no regard to the cost of that education . . .which keeps going up.
• I want people to be kind to each other. And if that's too much to ask, can we at least not be engaged in (and horrendously thrilled by)  being cruel to one another?
• I want things to stop being at this constant fever-pitch of black/white, right/wrong, good/evil where somehow we picket funerals, call women "sluts" on national broadcasts, and say that we wish certain groups of people would die out. (Can you believe it was a pastor who said this?! It actually made me physically ill.)
• I want a way to have all of my closest people at one dinner party - my Colorado people, my Florida, Maine, OK, Illinois, NY, Boston, and Jersey people. And my brother in New Haven for good measure. Then I want, as I once did with Heather, to come up with a curriculum so that people understand each other better, as David and Rob and I have, talked about how to actually do good for people in the world. Then, I'd put Wil in charge of implementation. The rest of us would be his minions. I'm sure I'd be hired on as a personal masseuse. (And if that comes with health insurance, that solves my job problem. La!)
• For just ONE day (it would have to be limited for reasons of will power) I want Dunkin Donuts to be down the street from me so I can spend $3 or less on really good coffee and a donut.
• I want more choices available for streaming on Netflix. Don't you?
• I want popcorn to be magically carb free. Especially when I eat it at 11pm

Barring all of that, because, really, I think it will be hard to get Dunkin Donuts to set up shop here on time, and because none of us know what to do about the crazy people who take it so lightly to propose concentration camps for gay people, I'll take some beer, a burger, and a nice quiet birthday with a few of the people who I think of as teachers and friends and loved ones. But, you know, if you happen on some carb-free popcorn that tastes as good as the stuff I make at home . . . send it on over.

Some principles

In February and March, I wrote a number of posts deeply examining my insides, my difficulty with change and belief, my growing faith in . . . something as of yet undefined, and rediscovering who I really am and who I really want to be as I continue to (sometimes painfully) grow up a little more. I wrote about values and the idea of a mission statement. I did not write the mission statement. But, a friend who has stuck by me for what is nigh unto half my life now, did.

He wrote something for a young friend, and it got me thinking about what are the things I think are important to be and understand and see and do to develop ones' self. So, this collection of ideas, (many borrowed from my friend and other places) is for my young friends, and especially for my nephew who is graduating from high school VERY soon.

 . . . And if I seem all too wise here, remember, I drew from many sources, and these are things I am still working on. All the time.

(Many thanks to Wil Doane for inspiring the thought of this post and for writing several phrases herein)

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Learn who you are - talents, strengths, needs, blindspots.
Do what you need to do to have as clear a view of that as you can -
therapy, meditation, long walks, long talks, pushing your limits, listening to constructive criticism.
Then learn how to not be afraid to be that person, even when things get hard.
Find and maintain the friendships that appreciate you for exactly that.

If you have a friend or loved one who sees you for your best self,
and loves you through your less than stellar moments, keep them if you can.
Don't replace them simply because your life is moving on.
(My three best friends have made all the difference in my life - good moments and bad)

How you behave when you are alone is much more defining
than who you are when you are looking cool to your friends.
I often check myself by how I behave when driving alone -
do I yell at drivers, flick them off, and drive aggressively?
Find the environment you can check yourself in.
Knowing you can live up to yourself without observation is invaluable.

Set high standards for yourself,
announce your goals,
and do everything you can to live up to that bar.
Forgive yourself if you fall short; try again.

You cannot forgive anyone else if you don't first
learn how to forgive your own faults and weak moments.

Do not ask others to complete tasks or live up to standards
that you aren't able or willing to live up to.
Don't ever be "too good" to do something that needs doing or
to help when you are asked to help.

Be accountable.
Try to agree to do things that you know you can follow through on.
Try not to make promises that you have to back out of.
When you are unable to deliver on something, be honest about it, as early as possible.

Be consistent in your own beliefs to the point that you know who you are
and what values you hold dear,
But do not hold so tightly to them that you can't consider new information and questions.
Beware belief systems that construe commitment and consistency
as condemning others.

Figure out what you stand for and then stand for it all the time.
And when something challenges that, ask yourself, carefully,
if it is because your principles have changed,
or because you think you can manage stepping over the line and then stepping back.
Beware the later.

Learn to cook, even it's just for yourself.
Cooking helps you understand food better, and this in turn
creates a healthier relationship with food.
Sometimes popcorn for dinner is a necessity, though.

Be willing to let someone with one item go ahead of you at the checkout.
If you are young and healthy, do not waste your time circling for a closer spot.
Park and walk in.

Beware of people who insist on looking good
rather than being good.
Remember that goodness comes in many varieties.

Respect others and expect respect in return.
Avoid those who do not.

Always do your best work.
Be willing to accept, in return, feedback on ways to make your best better.

When at a performance or presentation, be polite.
Try not to text, start side conversations, or openly scorn those taking risks even if
what they are producing is less than you hoped for.
They put time and energy into getting up there.

Offering criticism need not solely be about being critical.
Recognize that almost everything can be improved.
Naming problems is one part of healthy progress.
Offering multiple solutions is the other part.
Figuring out how to implement them is where the real growth happens.

"Fake it until you make it," will work in some situations.
Asking honest, sincere, interested questions works in almost every situation.
Give suggestions, but voice more questions than opinions.

Be an active participant in your own learning.
Communicate often with your peers and mentors.
Strive to ask meaningful and well-formed questions.

When you find yourself connecting with people who support
and even challenge you to be the best version of yourself,
appreciate them robustly.
Let them show you who and what they are.
Remember that gaining someone's trust often means trusting yourself to them.

Choose these people carefully, but love them wholly.
Help them make connections of support with each other.

Make explicit your own principles and core values.
Find the things, people, and communities that connect you back to them.
Find the things about which you are driven and most passionate.
Make these the center of your studies, relationships, connections, network, and life.

Find something or keep doing something just for fun.

There is probably no such thing as a life without regrets.

Do your best to make the wisest choice by analyzing the information you have at any moment.

The rest is out of your control. 

Plans help.
Being able to adjust them helps more.
Learning from your regrets is best of all.

Try not to do things that you couldn't bear to tell your best friend about.

If you feel yourself rationalizing something,
giving the reasons out loud for why or why not,
this is more a sign of convincing yourself of something,
rather than convincing who you are telling it to.
Guilt is not the same as regret.
Examine if the guilt is about a regret you want to address,
or the response to someone else's expectation.

You will have failures.
Watching yourself when you are reacting to and navigating through those moments
will tell you a great deal about your strengths and weaknesses.
Try to leverage your strengths to overcome and improve on your weaknesses.

Your principles matter most when you have to act on them.
This is also when it will be hardest to do so.

Failure is not an option

As it turns out, my friends are a very accomplished bunch. Lots of Master's degrees, PH.Ds, fancy post docs, and important jobs that actually make people's lives better. As a result of aiming high, it means that there is a lot of success, but also a lot of experience with falling off the proverbial horse and fighting back.

As my Sensei used to say, increasing success means increasing failures. In theory, the idea is that by increasing the number of attempts you make, you may have more failures, but you will also make enough attempts (and learn from the failures) such that you achieve success faster. In reality, it means having the resolve, the resiliency, and the relentlessness to keep getting up each and every time you fall. And it means having a deep confidence and unshakable faith that getting up each time matters and will cumulatively get you that much closer to your objective.

I've been thinking this a lot as I've seen the stars align or not for me, and for my friends over the last few weeks. One of my beloved friend's succes and a new option might mean a drastic change for another friend in how he looks at his future employment options. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, another dear friend has worked his everything off to jump through hoops and get all the appropriate initials after his name, to find an environment that not only matches his qualifications and interests, but that allowed him to positively impact others only to give them 2 years and not be invited to keep infecting others with his passion next fall. I have as many friends in academia who have jobs as those who don't, at this point, and let's be clear - these are not just very well trained individuals in their fields, but also some of the smartest people I know in real life.

Of course, I thought I was leaving that game when I Mastered out of my Ph.D. program. And now I lie on my couch and marvel at how people with degrees from MIT and people who have Ph.Ds from top 10 programs in their field are asked to take more time to do post-docs (read: supervised research paid at a very low rate in some OTHER ostensibly "more established" Ph.D's lab) and postpone their career . . . you know, after passing every exam known to man, defending papers and proposals orally, living on pittances for 5-7 years, and achieving graduation from the 23rd grade. Yes, absolutely, more training and waiting to dive in is what makes sense, no? And how can these people not being able to find good employment that aligns with their passions be in common with me?

When I left grad school, it followed what I can only describe as prolonged trauma that made it impossible for me to continue the research I had entered my studies aimed at. That trauma was what caused me to pack the personal items I had in that lab and on my desk and become a nomadic grad in one of the rotating "TA" offices for the year. I spent a semester looking for a new lab and advisor, but politics and circumstance prevented that avenue of soldiering forward as well. So . . . I made plans to exit.

Sounds simple, and logical, right? It was anything but. It was everything but. There were a lot of exit interviews and job hunting, but mostly there were two tapes I had to keep playing in my head and two I had to try and drown out. The two loops I had to try and eliminate from my internal sound-system were, "You're a quitter," and "You will regret not sticking it out." The two tapes I tried to queue up over the top of these were, "You're stopping something that is harmful. You are preventing what amounts to abuse. It's not the same as quitting. Not the same AT ALL." And, equally important," you WILL get a job and figure out what happens next."

I got a job out of sheer will and luck and persistence and putting the time into job hunting over and over and over. But I had to play these tapes in my head diligently every day in order to keep moving forward as options I pursued winked out one by one, moving to different labs, moving to different programs at different universities, jobs I wanted and didn't get. Otherwise, it would have been very easy to feel defeated, which would have been the worst response and would have prevented me from seeing the new opportunities popping up. So, I kept moving forward, choosing to feign faith in the results I had no idea if I would garner.

Failure wasn't an option, and so I made it work that way. I had a six month deadline to get a full time job or else commit myself to summer jobs that it would then be very hard to back out of. And I got a full time job about 2 weeks before I had to set all of that in motion. I "made it so", in Picardian fashion. It wouldn't have been terrible to run 4 weeks of Karate camp and have taught for 6 weeks but it would have meant remaining engaged with the university I needed badly to leave, at least for half of that work, and perhaps worse, I would have had 10 weeks where it would have been very hard to extract myself for interviews or to start better jobs with futures beyond Labor Day. I posted a note in my kitchen saying "Failure is not an option," and adhered to this. This was a throw back to the one or two all nighters I would pull every year in college trying to complete final calculus assignments, take home logic finals, and papers after having worked until midnight or so. (The busiest times for Hampshire's version of RAs to pull off programs and events, do peer level counseling and meetings, and actually work with students during house office hours were . . . go figure, the end of the semester. And of course, this was also when we were hiring staff for the next semester so, what was a 15-20 hour a week job always became a 30-40 hour a week job during the last 3 weeks of the term. at least some all-nighters became expected for me as a matter of reality, not bad planning.) I used to hang this sign off of the nearest book shelf, facing me, as I feverishly revised papers. And it worked.

So, why hasn't it worked for my friends? They too need jobs and not to need to take steps backwards. Bills to pay, households, marriages, and responsibilities to tend to. They need to not do stupid things for money, and things that take them away from their chosen professions . . . at which, I would add, they are not only very well trained, but exceedingly skilled and good at. And, why hasn't it yet worked for me in this job search? In this case, I do not have stupid summer jobs lined up. Failure really, really, truly, really-really is not an option. I can tutor for $13 an hour this summer, and find some other part time job to try and fill that gap. But, in actuality, that's going to put me in a hole pretty fast. So, for reals now, a job before my birthday is what's needed.

I shall note it on my birthday list.

I'm of some different thoughts about why the failure isn't an option strategy isn't getting results now, for me, or for my friends. On the one hand, finding the right job, the job that makes you want to get up in the morning, the job that pays you well enough and allows you to have the work-life balance that works for you and yours, the job that excites you enough that you're willing to pitch in on the un-thrilling days . . . well, that's a bigger problem to solve than finishing a paper. That's a bigger problem than trying to finish four papers .  . and that's saying something since my papers at Hampshire were often 30+ pages! You can't just will it. I mean, I did, but (and here's the other thing) - that was six years ago. So, yes, that's right, I am going to reference how bad this job market is (for what I believe is the first time on this blog). Six years ago was a different story, for shiz.

I also think that it's possible that we three have not had exactly the failures we need yet. That, in reality, of course, failure is an option and may be what paves the way for success. That failure has uses, even when it feels . . . untimely or inconvenient or even beyond uncomfortable. As in, "Ok, it seemed like a good job on paper, but now that I've interviewed I see what they really meant when they said ____ in the posting and that should've been a red flag," or "Hmmm, next time I should follow up on that app sooner so I can stay on their radar."

Or, it's just possible that this will be like what one of these very friends mentioned above told me once, on a bitterly cold night in January as we waited for a bus. He said, "At the moment I give up, it will arrive. But I can't tell myself to give up and fake it out. If I'm only saying I give up, then it won't show. But at the moment I truly am done believing then the universe will provide."

This is hard to explain to people who don't know him but this was the first moment I knew my friend to be a hopeless optimist. Possibly glass overflowing, sappy, optimism at times. He may, occasionally, show some sand-paper to the world rather than baring his skin. He also is steeped in how to make things better and in his world, this means being very clear about what is NOT optimal. To some this looks like complaining, but to me, I know it comes from deep belief that things CAN be made better and a logical progression that requires him to fist be explicit about what needs to be improved. I didn't know it until he talked about how giving up being related to how good things happen, But he believes in some structure of the universe. Some force for good. Some way of creating balance with the force.

It may seem strange that I've tagged this post about failure with "optimism" but I think what I'm saying is, failure sucks. For me, it hurts and wounds and leaves bruises. It makes me want to give up and pull covers over my head in the moment. But sometimes it makes me step out of things that weren't working for me. I failed to get a Ph.D, but succeeded at standing up for myself, getting a Master's, and finding a job in my field. I have failed, so far, at finding the right new job in 2012 (but I only have to get it right once, eh?), but have succeeded in purging a lot of demons from my head, and reconfiguring how healthy and ambitious can align in my life moving forward. And while I've had some very disheartening interviews and frustrating almost-job-offer situations in this four months of unemployment, I've also honed in on a closer approximation to what kind of jobs could turn into the right ones for me. It only takes one thing to change and turn all of that into total success - and not just success that looks like a paycheck, but success that looks like a wholly renovated life for me where all those failures stack up to me sitting in a completely different place, with a much better view than when I had my last paycheck.

I think that I still think that the universe will provide. And I think I still think it will happen before my bank account hits zero. And I think my friends will find what they need for right now, and, eventually, in the long run. So, even though the glasses have some failures in them, and though they may not be half full, I think there's enough there to keep us going. That is the most I can ask for today . . . but watch out when my birthday approaches because I will certainly feel free to ask for more then.

Mirrors and potholes

I have a friend who recently was incarcerated.

It shocks even me to write this, so I imagine this is news to any of my readers.

He is not just my friend - more like an adoptive big brother. He and his wife took me in when I was lost and lonely. They may not have realized that's what they did, but that's how I remember it.

I arrived in New Jersey for grad school attached to someone. And suddenly that whole situation changed and with it, my living arrangements, my feelings about relocating from one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been, to one of the meanest. And about three weeks after that I was diagnosed with a very serious and complicated illness. So, then not only alone, but scared and alone and pretty miserably unhealthy.

Some months later a series of weird coincidences brought me into a karate school of all places. And within a week I knew I was hooked. I had zero natural ability for the sport but I was fascinated and determined. I was also sick and hoping to do what I could do to feel better. So I kept going. As the months went by I had treatments and medical procedures, I had good days and bad days, I had care packages from my best friend from college, and homework, and tests, both academic and medical, but I also had karate classes, growing confidence, and a better handle on what it felt like to feel powerful and safe as I walked through my new world. (Which, for me, as a young woman who had experienced some  violence, was a pretty significant change in my outlook and sense of security.)

The routine I settled into was to go to class on Monday and Wednesday, and so I would pack my lunch and dinner, show up for classes, cross the river to head to the lab on the north side, do some research, and then head to the karate school . . . because it was time consuming to cross back and forth over the bridge. So I'd go to the dojo about an hour early, change, and ask permission to microwave my dinner. I'd sit and watch the pre-teens and teens work out, and think about what it would take for me to get to that level of technique. It only took about a week of this before a tiny little brown baby girl (she was almost 3, but talked like a 6 year old, and was small enough to look like she was still entering toddler-hood) walked directly up to me and said, clear as a bell, "That smells good. Can I have some?" I asked her mother, and discovered her mother was my Sensei's wife, and we all agreed roasted veggies or rice and beans were good food. That's how S brought me into this family. Sharing dinner with S became them wanting to share lunch with me . . . on Shabat. And that became babysitting. Babysitting became them thinking, "If we trust her with our kids, we can probably trust her with other people's kids. And that became them expanding the Kinder Karate program and adding me as a new instructor.

Over time, I stopped just working for them, and started working with them, and, additionally, being part of the family. I would help with things as disparate as bathing kids, moving the dojo, teaching karate, writing lesson plans, covering birthday parties, setting the table for Shabat, making salad, and saying prayers with the daughters and mothers. After a couple of years, it actually became an expectation that I would bring fruit to Shabat and to other holidays, and for certain holidays it was routine for me to help out with the preparation of certain dishes. I spent almost every Friday night at the Shabat table saying prayers, eating dinner, drinking shots, discussing (read: questioning. Asking questions is not at all considered rude or disrespectful to belief in the Jewish belief system. In fact, it's considered a responsibility of that faith) Torah, and telling tales of the karate school that week, teasing and being teased for four straight years.

Family. Plain and simple.

Ask yourself this - if someone in your family went to jail, would they still be part of your family? Of course, the answer is yes. At least if you're me, it is.

When my friend was first accused of this infraction, I actually never even wasted time asking if he did it, or anything like it. I knew everyone involved, knew the politics, and knew my friend's heart. There is just. no. way.

But, can I say this? Even if he had done it, he's still my family. And his family is still my family. I still love him, and them. And so even if we, the extended family and loved ones of my friend, really thought he did this, I think we would still be struggling with the same question: how could this happen to the generous, funny, sometimes-difficult-but-also-eye-opening person we loved and what can we do to be part of the good person and worthwhile objectives we knew him for?

Having indulged me to say the above, I will also admit to you that it's much, much easier for me to arrive  at that place because of my certainty that he was not involved in this crime.

So, I ask myself a lot of tough questions when I think about him and my family :

• What do people say about him to his kids?
• What do his kids know or understand?
• What must it take for his wife to get up every day and keep going, knowing that everything is, and always be different, knowing that it's all on her to keep her family safe and healthy at the moment.
• Why does accusation equal guilt and responsibility in the court of public opinion?
• As someone who believe victims of violating crimes should speak up and be heard, and not treated EVER as having been at fault for what happened to them, what kind of stance can I take on the fact that sometimes people do lie about this and have other goals beyond telling the truth
• What does it mean to plead guilty to a crime you didn't commit? What did it take for him to stand up in court and agree to that?

Some of this is why I've been working on this post since December 14th (for reference sake . . . t-minus one week before losing my job). That was the last time I spoke to him on the phone, knowing he had already plead guilty, and knowing he would be facing sentencing and leaving his family in two days. His family threw a Chanukah party, and family and friends came from all over to celebrate, and have a moment to love and support my friend and his family.

Another good friend had tipped me off, and I was able to call and talk to my friends for about an hour before the party got too loud, too busy, too much. And we did what we do best - we talked deep.

Of course, there are some obvious lessons to this. For one, however angsty I am feeling about unemployment, and the prospect of re-creating my life from the ground up, things could be worse. That's the gimme. That's not a reach as something to keep in mind.

The other thing this has caused me to dwell on is what justice means. My dear friend being faced with losing his home, business, and life as he knows it, for a possibly longer jail sentence vs. saying he did something he didn't do and accepting 1-3 years inside, isn't what I thought of as just. But in the same way that someone being acquitted doesn't mean their innocent, my friend pleading guilty doesn't mean he is. What I said to him when we talked that night was, "Hashem (God) knows the truth. And your real friends do too."

To a lot of us, justice is about acknowledging, or righting a wrong, or the administering of a punishment or reward in order to partially give back something which was taken. But justice is also defined as morality, or adherence to a moral code, just conduct, or rightfulness or lawfulness. It's lawful that he's in jail, in that the law provided for him to plead guilty, and he did. But it's not right. It's not moral, to me, that those were the choices he faced. But, it was a moral choice for him to not spend years putting his family through this.

What I've thought a lot about is that our court system isn't really about justice so much as it is about applying laws(often imperfectly). In general, when things get taken into a court room or trial, things have already failed deeply enough that they can't really be recovered. A really smart lawyer once shared with me, "In my experience, people are rarely satisfied with a legal resolution to their problems." Honestly, it was really easy for me to understand that from the complainants perspective before, but I also now know that it applies to defendants. It's all so easy for us to hear about someone hauled into the police station for hurting someone, or accused in court of something really violating, and assume that if they were accused they did it. But hey, one out of every nine times we sentence someone to die in this country WE'RE WRONG. We're so wrong, DNA proves that we're wrong. (I like what this speaker says. If airline pilots were wrong this often, if pharmaceuticals were distributed in error 10% of the time - we would never accept it as a society. But we accept it in our legal system. Crazypants) If our justice system has this much injustice built into it in crimes where the burden of proof is so much higher not just for trial, but for sentencing, then how often are we wrong for "lesser" crimes?

And what do those errors mean for real people? For my friend it means 1-3 years of not being there for his wife and kids. Of not earning money. Of not voting or being a citizen. And it means a lifetime of people assuming that if he was accused, he must be guilty, and worse, with an irrefutable criminal and prison record following him to help people to that conclusion.

But I've also spent some time thinking about something he and I started to talk about that Chanukah night. He said, "There are people that are mirrors for us. and I just want to stay grateful for the people who have held up that mirror for me and kept me honest, kept me walking towards what's good in me. And there are potholes. They can slow us down, but they only stop us if we let them. I just need to remember that every day in there. I'm still me. And I appreciate so much you saying that my real people know the true truth. I hate the idea that people think of me as a scum bag. And I need to remember that I get to choose whose opinions I care about. I get to choose my mirrors, if not my potholes."

Of course, he and I haven't spoken since then. I hope in 12-36 months to sit at his Shabat table, drink some shots, and talk about this topic with a lot of heart, and attention, live. And in the meantime, we write. Nearly every week. and this is often the theme. I mean, he also tells me about his friends on the inside, how inmates make wall hooks for pictures, and trading for apple peels or playing basketball. But we also talk a lot about his faith, about his attitude, about his understanding of what this means to him. In his first letter he said, "It's not that I'm happy to be in prison, it's that I'm choosing to be happy while I'm in prison."

More recently, he reminded me that not everything is good, but that we can always choose to get good out of it, to work the bad together into a good. It's a little humbling to be sitting on my comfortable couch, with all the wall hooks I need, being reminded this by my friend in jail. Mostly, I'm proud of him and hope that his heart can stay this strong, and positive.

I need to believe that the bad can be worked for our good. If he can do it, there is certainly hope for me too.