You know what’s weird? My back and forth, love and hate relationship with blogging. For the most part, I love it. The concept of it, reading other peoples blogs, and even a lot of the time writing and creating my own blog posts.  But then I go through these bouts of not wanting to blog. It’s not even not wanting, it’s not having anything to say. Sometimes it’s just physically not being able to bring myself to the keyboard to write.

I try to think about why that is. It’s not because things get busy. Things are always busy. I’ve blogged more during super busy times than I have during the slowest, dullest days of my life.

For a long time I thought it was a feeling happy vs. feeling low thing, with more blogging when I’m happy and less when I’m low. But I’ve blogged so much about the lower points in my life, I think that it can’t be that.

I think it has more to do with head space, and the amount that’s available for extemporaneous pursuits. It’s about how much mental bandwidth I have free, I think. Or is it emotional bandwidth? See now I’m torn. Maybe they’re one in the same.

Work has been going well lately. I’ve had to step up to the plate a lot more and I feel as if I’m really coming into my own. That’s not to say it isn’t stressful and I guess it’s the industry I chose to spend the majority of my days wrapped up in, but you never reach comfortable. You can’t ever really sit back and just be. It’s like Lucy and the chocolate factory. You can’t slow down for even a second or you’re screwed, and just when you think you’re getting the rhythm of things? The boss yells, Speed it up!

Not that I’m complaining, I’m grateful just to have a job. Grateful to live this nice, cushy life with my husband and my cat and my dog. Are things just exactly as I hoped they’d be at this moment? Gosh no. We’ve suffered quite a few setbacks in our master plan for world domination for life in general. But I guess I’m past the point of being angry about things. I’m at a place of acceptance, which is a beautiful place to be because it gives you the drive for action.

And gratefulness, what a lesson I’ve learned in gratefulness. To allow yourself to feel truly grateful in your bones for what you have, is to want what you  have. You know that saying? Want what you have. For so long it plagued me because I understood in it theory but I couldn’t feel it genuinely, in my soul. I wanted to feel it, but I also wanted so much more. SO much more. I’ve spent years feeling restless.

And now I know, you can have wants, you can want anything. But not having it won’t leave you feeling sad or anxious or frustrated or anything, as long as you feel grateful for your life and the people (and animals) in it, you’ll be okay. Funny how, as leery as I am about organized religion for so many reasons, gratefulness in prayer is the one thing I must say brings me peace.

My prayers go like this nowadays. Thank you for everything. I’d like for this to happen. But most of all, thank you for everything.

And I mean it.

Thanks for reading.

All I really wanted for my birthday was for there to be a plan, preferably one that included good food, good cake and good friends. And Andreas delivered in full. Along with all of the above, there was breakfast at one of my favorite breakfast places in Brookline, there was shopping at my favorite little bookstore, there was a calming afternoon spent sketching in the courtyard and wandering the halls of my favorite museum, there was a lovely dinner out in Cambridge with our dearest friends, and yes, there was cake.

And now, another year begins. Here’s hoping I make it a spectacular one.

Then other years blow through at gale force, changing the directions of the street signs, rivers veering off into uncharted territory. Everything is changed. Not just your physical world, but you, yourself, down to your very core. This past year has been one those years for me.

I look back at where I was a year ago today. Tearing my hair out at the height of wedding planning, a week and a half from the big day. Trying to nail down the Purchase and Sale agreement on our house. Not yet a wife, not yet a homeowner.

We hadn’t yet flown in a helicopter over Kauai or leapt from a rope swing into one of her rivers.

I hadn’t left my job to go on a personal odyssey.

We hadn’t spent our first round of holidays together as a married couple.

I hadn’t found my other true love in baking.

I didn’t know what it was to decorate my own house.

We hadn’t loved and lost. We hadn’t hit the bottom. That was the big one. Seeing our first pregnancy fade away before our eyes. Hours spent huddled together on hospital chairs. Everything else was easy. Everything else was nothing, compared to this.

This blew me wide open, left me exposed. I tried to draw back into myself, into the part of my world that felt safe. But I still feel raw from it. Easily hurt, brush the surface and I’ll bleed. Yet I’m harder too, more wary. Gone is that last bit of childish confidence that everything will be alright, which I kept up until the very last moment. Now I know that sometimes? It’s not all right.

I’ve always measured my years in two ways. One turning over in January, the traditional calendar year, the other in September, the school year. And now with our wedding anniversary in September, I’m sure that will continue. Except, instead of the school year, we’ll have the marriage year.

For us, this first year of marriage is drawing to a close. It hasn’t been the easiest, no, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been wonderful at times. One year ago, I wrote about how marriage forces you to grow up. Little did I know then how true that statement would turn out to be, what I’d signed up for. Yet through it all we’ve grown closer still. World spinning around us, we grabbed hold of each others hands and dug our toes in. Together. We hung in there.

Just like we said we would.

She was talking about how refreshed and happy she’s been feeling lately and how she partially attributes that to the fact that she’s stopped trying to find fulfillment from her job. Though she works hard, she views the work mostly as a means to an end, and in adopting that approach, she’s found freedom. And as we all know, money may not buy you happiness but freedom sure does. Instead of looking for happiness at work, she’s started creating it in the non-work space of her life. Filling up her hours with music and art and food.

In some ways, I envy her this approach to life. I know it’s one that many people, perhaps even most people, adopt. Just pushing through to get to 5 o’clock. Living for the weekend. You know. Whether or not it’s a survival mechanism, it works for them. And I know it’s true that you can be less than thrilled with your job and still be really contented in life.

For some reason, last year I got this crazy notion that your job should (ideally) be your passion. That you should spend your days doing something you love doing. I knew that didn’t mean that some people couldn’t be happy in jobs that they didn’t love, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t be.

And so I set off on this grand adventure to find my passion, yet here I am six months later, still unsure of where my passions lie, cloudy on the point of what I want to do with my life (or if not with my life, at least with the foreseeable future), and I haven’t even found a way to make money doing things I at least know I enjoy. I’m disappointed and bit embarrassed to report that all I’ve gotten myself is a lot more confused and whole lot more broke. (Damn it!)

So when I came across Caitlin’s post I thought, that’s what I should do! Give myself the freedom to not find my purpose and my fulfillment in what I do for work. Maybe I don’t have a passion. Maybe I just have interests. (I’ve always been a little averse to the word passion in this context anyways.) Maybe I can entertain those interests in my spare time and view my day job as just that – a day job. Not my life, just what I do with my day.

I’m not saying I can’t. And I’m not saying I won’t. But if I do adopt that approach, I think it will mean laying to rest a certain part of me that always hoped for better. That expected better. A little dreaming part of me, my romantic side. That little part thought I would grow up to have a great job that I love. Something that I excelled at. We all dream of that, right? Not just getting by, but being great?

I think about the examples of strong women in my life. Women who cared for their families and worked when they had to to make sure they had what they needed. They didn’t love their jobs but they didn’t really care. That wasn’t the point. It’s almost like a sacrifice but they wouldn’t see it that way. Maybe it’s a generational gap, but I can think of so many women who didn’t even factor in fulfillment when it came to their jobs. They would probably laugh at me for being so bent on this. Work is work, I imagine them saying. Stop trying to make it more than that.

And yet I have never been one to turn a blind eye on anything. I don’t bury feelings. If something is wrong, I want to talk about it. I think a lot. I analyze constantly. I strive to know myself and, once I understand something, I can’t just let it go. In fact I have a problem with letting go in general.

I guess it comes to this: if work can be a means to an end for you, then that’s great. I think there’s a strength and wisdom in that all its own. But if it can’t, if you need more, then you always will. And it will become impossible to deny that. I think I’m one of those contemplative “rare breeds” Nietzsche talks about in his stance on Work and boredom. I am one of those thinkers, one of those sensitive spirits. I do fear work without pleasure. I am choosy and hard to satisfy.

I just hope I don’t remain idle for too long.

For many reasons, we had been majorly dragging our feet when it came to getting deck furniture, the main one being that it is so. flippin’. expensive. Seriously, have you checked out patio furniture prices lately? Because it will set you back a good limb or two. Or who knows, maybe it has always been expensive. Former city dwellers like us wouldn’t know because we’ve never, you know, HAD a deck. (Or a grill!)

Or maybe we were holding back because it felt like the last straw in finally admitting that we are officially surburbanites (shudder). There’s something so permanent, so… settled about deck furniture. Either way, with the weather getting nicer, we couldn’t pass up this six piece set at Stop n’ Shop (of all places) and were impressed by the quality it offered for the price ($129.99!). While we were at it, we picked up a grill at Home Depot, bought a minivan and joined the PTA. (Okay those last two are complete lies.)

But as we flipped burgers in the breeze and enjoyed our first meal on the new table outside it was impossible to deny that being a suburbanite? Has its perks.

In the beginning, sure, we were punch drunk on homeownership. I remember looking around the bathroom one day thinking, I own these baseboards. I own this vanity. I own this little metal thing that holds up my toilet paper.

I own this toilet.

But then the shit started to hit the fan. For starters, it’s easy to forget that when you own a house, you’re responsible for it. There’s no calling up the landlord to tell them there’s a giant piece of siding hanging from the side of your house that bangs up against it everytime the wind blows and makes your heart race in the middle of the night because you’re SURE there’s a robber and Babe! BABE! Wake up! Do you hear those footsteps?

Nope, can’t do that.

Or how about if your house has this inexplicable tendency to let out what could only politely be called a loud belch every couple of hours but actually sounds more like a foghorn that you thought only you could hear inside your house but which is actually blasting straight in the direction of your next door neighbor’s house who happens to have a newborn baby but who also happens to be too kind to say anything about it? About your belching house? How about that, landlord?

Landlord?

Oh right. Heh. That’s me.

$%^$#%#&^!

This whole issue was only brought home (no pun intended) last week when our basement conveniently flooded with two inches of water when Andreas was conveniently out of town. It wasn’t until I was vacuuming up murky basement water with our neighbor’s shop vac (yes that same neighbor with the baby who is too polite to tell us that our house has taken to yelling at their house every so often) and sloshing that murky water over to a makeshift piping operation near the basement door that it hit me. Literally. In the face. The pipe leading outside burst out of the pump sending aforementioned disgusting basement water all over me and it was then that I realized that homeownership is a bitch.

And then, we’re doing our taxes at H&R Block (you know what’s not a bitch? The first-time homebuyer tax credit, athankyouverymuch Mr. President.) when we realize that we paid for our quarterly taxes to the city of Beverly when we actually didn’t have to, because our mortgage company was apparently covering that for us. Hi. Who was supposed to inform us of this? We’re just lowly first-time homeowners. We don’t know these things! Isn’t someone supposed to tell us these things? So now we’ve got to call the city of Beverly to try to get our money back. Groan.

And speaking of you, city of Beverly, thanks a whole bunch for not taking our recycling this week. I won’t even complain about the fact that you only pick up recycling every other week which, to me, seems pretty ridiculous because we generate more of that stuff than we do regular trash and we would generate more but we don’t have a place to store all of it because you only pick up every other week. (Okay so I did complain.) I’m sorry it wasn’t sorted for you. We didn’t even know you needed it sorted.

Not to get up on a high horse, but in Brookline, we didn’t have to sort anything. There, it was just like, “all recycling is good recycling so give us what you got.” And also, in Brookline, they pick up recycling every week. Just saying.

Sigh. I kind of miss renting. And Brookline. I know, I know. The house is a good investment, blah blah blah. You know what I think sometimes? I’m too young for this $%^&.

We haven’t quite bonded with Beverly yet either.  So far it just seems like it’s: 1. Far from Boston. 2. Lacking great restaurants and shopping. And 3. Being very difficult on the matter of recycling. I’m giving it until the summer though to really decide where I stand. Because like I said, Beverly is a shore town, a beach town. So you can’t really judge it in the winter, I say. And those few days last week when the weather was wonderful, I gave one of its oceanfront parks a chance. And then I went back three times in one week because it was just. so. beautiful. So there’s hope for you yet, Beverly.

But as for homeownership, well, we’re kind of stuck with it anyways. That was the other thing we learned at H&R Block. If we sell or even rent this place before we’ve lived here for three years? Adios tax credit. So, yeah. We’re stuck. Which leads me back to my original point: homeownership? Is a bitch.

Because you’re married. And you’re expected to be a grown up (that’s side effect number two). And grown ups are expected to be good with change. To understand that time passes and traditions evolve and that’s okay.

Yeah. And now I understand why people drink so much at the holidays.

Seriously. I never quite got that before. Things were all fine when I was a kid and we had our holiday traditions so ironclad you could rest a baby on them. We knew where we’d be when. How we’d celebrate. We even knew what we’d say. (On Christmas Day, you better be ready to answer the question, “What did Santa bring you?” because you know the adults are going to ask you that about 17 times.)

There weren’t arguments about who’s family we’d be with and when (helps when your Dad is Jewish and pretty laid back to boot and totally fine with going wherever on Christmas Eve, Day, whatever because what the hell does he care? Crazy gentiles.) There weren’t questions about whose house we’d be sleeping at and exactly when which presents should be exchanged. And between whom. And how.

But now that we’re married we have to think about all that and granted, it’s not the hardest problem in the world to have, I know. I know it could be worse. We could have families living hundreds of miles apart and then we’d have to make the choice about which family we spent a given holiday with AT ALL and wouldn’t that be a bitch. Or we could have crappy families or no families at all. I realize this.

I’m just saying, as a person who frequently gets the wind knocked out of her when anything changes at all, a person who clings to her traditions with the ferocity of a snapper turtle, a person who really likes to please everyone, especially parents and new in-laws, this is a challenge.

So pass me the eggnog. I’ve never tried it before but something tells me I’m going to need it like it.

“I’m leaving to… go try new things.”

Awkward silence.

“I want to go… explore my passions.”

Blank stare.

“You see, I need to… go figure myself out.”

Polite nod.

“Well,” they say. “Good luck!”

And they mean it. But they don’t get it. (Sometimes I wish I could just give them a handful of blog posts to read. Then maybe they would understand.)

I’ve made my peace with the fact that abandoning your good job during an economic recession just won’t make sense to a lot of people. And why would it? It doesn’t make sense to me. There is no logical explanation to justify this decision. But then again, this is not a decision I’m basing on logic. This is a decision I’m making with my heart.  I’m done with all that logic stuff.

Far more interesting than the reactions from the folks who don’t get it, are the reactions from the folks that do.

My uncle’s first reaction was, “She’s leaving her job, is she crazy? Has she seen the unemployment numbers?”

But then, “On second thought, when I was her age, I quit my job, sold all my stuff and moved halfway across the country to California. There was no rhyme or reason to it, other than the fact that it was what I thought I needed to do.”

I’ve gotten other such feedback.

My wedding photographer said, “I went through pretty much the same thing. In fact, ten years ago this month, I had law school applications on my desk before I had my own epiphany that I should pursue what made me happy and not what was expected of me. I am so happy for you that you’ve made this decision.”

Even a reporter I barely know told me, “I left a high position in a Fortune 400 company in San Francisco about 12 years ago on my own steam. Lost some security but gained a lot of freedom. Haven’t looked back.”

So yes, I’m going way out a limb here. I realize that. But I’m not so far out that I can’t see the tree.

And I know now that I’m not alone out there.

Now I could go on about how Bridget and I came to be such pals but she does a pretty good job of it herself here. Suffice to say, WE HAVE A LOT IN COMMON.

Bridget, take it away…

—————————————————-

When Shelley asked me to be a guest blogger on The Spotted Duck, I was a little apprehensive at first.  It’s absolutely fine to vomit up yesterday’s conversation about singing about sloots or my recent pre-occupation with pooping and call it writing on my own blog. It’s a horse of a different color to do it on someone else’s blog. People might not be expecting that on a reputable blog. You can’t just ambush them with poop. Literally or figuratively, it’s usually not appreciated.

And right there I was going to insert a giant picture of poop because I bet after that assurance you REALLY wouldn’t have expected it, but this is not my blog and I am not going to do that. It’s called discretion. I have it. See, mom, I’m not “the crude one.”

So instead I thought I’d talk about what it’s like being bizarre-o Shelley. Think about THIS: Our paths crossed on the blogosphere some time ago as we were both beginning to pull our hair out over wedding preparations. Turned out Shelley was getting married the week before I was, which was awesome. Because suddenly I had someone to bounce ideas off of and ask advice of and swap stories with because she was going through pretty much the same exact experience in Boston as I was in Philadelphia.

THEN we both started the house hunt around the same time. IT’S A HOUSING FRENZY, YA’LL. Shelley and Andreas bought a gorgeous condo in north of Boston, and I was looking just south of the city. And not my city. THEIR city. What happens when you take a Philly girl and drop her on the Massachusetts coast? IT’S AN ISSUE, PEOPLE.

I’ve spent months agonizing over the move. What’s in Boston? Where will I get my soft pretzels? Who will sit in the corner drinking beer with me and not laugh when I call water “wooder?” And I’m proud to admit that I only occasionally spend the night crying on the kitchen floor with a bottle of wine and a poster of Rocky Balboa because WHYYYY GAAAAHHH? And all the while, Shelley has given me tips on neighborhoods to consider and pumped my wine-soaked head full of grand images of Boston-living. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

Then, we both resigned from our current jobs, effective on the same exact day. And now we talk about jobs and life goals and current ambitions.  HOW WEIRD IS THAT?

As Shelley said in last Wednesday’s post, she’s all in these days.  Pretty much just like Shelley, I’m getting married, turning 25, buying a house, moving 350 miles away from my family, and starting a new job, all within a span of a few months. Could I be any more in? Is there a rule that once you turn 25 you’re expected to make all these grown up decisions RIGHT NOW ALL THE TIME? I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE. IT’S CALLED A QUARTER LIFE CRISIS, AND I’VE GOT ONE.

Who needs a drink?

Anyway. Like I said, it’s like we’re pretty much leading bizarre-o lives, doing all of the same really big life things at the same time. And when you are going through all these things, it’s really nice to know someone who’s going through them too, and understands what you’re feeling, and doesn’t judge you for having an occasional Tuesday evening meltdown.

So when Shelley asked me to help her out with a blog post, I was more than happy to agree. Because even though I haven’t met her yet, I can say pretty confidently that she’s my friend. Whether she likes it or not.

P.S. I almost just ended this post with the same picture of poop I was going to insert in the beginning because that would have been hilarious. GOD I am SO GOOD at self control today.

—————————————————-

Catch more of Bridget’s laugh-out-loud style over at her blog, Yellaphant.

We’ve grown quite close, my boss and I. It’s been just the two of us here in the office and all along, he’s been so much more than a boss. He’s been a mentor and he’s been a friend, guiding me through some of life’s most trying challenges and transitions. And I’ve seen him through some things too. We think along the same lines, to the point where we often finish each other’s sentences or “translate” what the other is saying for people.

He relies on me, you know? So how do you tell your boss, your friend, who’s taught you almost everything you know about PR, that you’re leaving to go… figure yourself out?  I was sick over it. It was such a big thing. Such a big girl thing. I was seeing myself mature before my very eyes and it felt very much like an uncomfortable growth spurt.

But. I wrote my little speech. Then I re-wrote it. Then I re-wrote it again. Then I practiced it about seventeen times.  And then last Thursday I treated him to lunch to thank him for the past three and a half years and I delivered it.

And it went well! He listened as I explained how very much the job has meant to me. How I’d never have the courage to leave if I didn’t know I’ve gotten such a fantastic experience under my belt that I can always lean on if things get rough. How this was a veryveryhardthing for me but how I felt compelled to follow my heart.

He listened and kept an open mind as I explained what’s next for me, which is the other thing I didn’t quite get into yesterday either. And the story there is that I’ve decided to piece together several part-time gigs to give myself the flexibility to try new things. In the near term, that will mean focusing this here blog, developing an idea I have for a web startup, and becoming a nanny.

Yes, you read that right. I’ve lined up a part-time job nannying position for myself for wonderful family with two freaking adorable kids not far from the new house. It’s going to be a whole new set of challenges but they’re ones I’m so excited for. Nannying hits on many of the things on my own personal love list: kids (obviously), animals (they have two awesome pets as well), and cooking (getting dinner started), plus art projects, reading and music as well.

I hesitate to throw around the word “perfect” but this job feels like a really good fit for me right now. I’ll get to be creative. I’ll get to be silly. I’ll get to help shape the people these two kids will become.

Excited doesn’t even begin to describe it.