This morning I had the good fortune to be invited to a breakfast where I was able to hear Dean Savoca speak about the pressures of a career in hospitality and event management for those that choose to be a part of this industry. He spoke about recognizing the tipping points of burn out.
Perfectionism. Check. Worry. Holy hell, double check. Busyness. Check, check, check. And it got me thinking about my own tipping points. And I think I had been denying that the above tipping points for me had been reached years ago. During the last few years in my career I had started breaking boundaries I had set when I moved to Colorado and started working remotely. Leave work in the office. Don’t answer calls or emails after 6 PM. Practice daily mindfulness. Work smarter, not harder. More is not more. And slowly, I’d slip comfortably back into my old ways. The yes person. The people pleaser. The work horse. My boss would email me at 11 PM EST on a Sunday night that he’d need that executive PPT summary by 9 AM EST Monday morning. And I’d work into the night to finish it and have it ready by 7 AM MST. And I was so hyper focused that I couldn't see how abnormal that was. To be asked to jump and ALWAYS say, how high? It's not a badge of honor. It's not a calling card to proud of. It's a fast track to burn out. I had stretched myself so thin in my own role, that I couldn’t offer my team the leadership that they relied on me for as their manager. Tipping points. Boundaries. Non existent. And I think why I have struggled so much these weeks since losing my job of 17 years is that so much of my identity was wrapped up in the idea that work equals purpose. That getting up every morning to a full day of busyness defines success. I was so wrong. Busy is a comfort zone. All the lists, all the deadline reminders in my calendar; all the risk mitigation, spreadsheets, contingencies and fail safes…none of them kept me from losing my job. There was no amount of control I could exert that could have changed that outcome. And because I have tied busy work with success for so many years, I felt like I had failed. That somehow, this was my fault. I swear, until this moment, I would have taken accountability guilt to my grave. What a mistake that would have been. I believe the universe has been screaming at me for years to learn how to let go of control. And, for the past 17 years I could not squeeze those handlebars tightly enough. So the universe put a massive cliff in front me to get me to stop. And only then did I realize that busy does not equal productive. Work does not equal purpose. The universe did a fantastic job of making me so fucking uneasy with all this time on my hands that I finally understood that busy is my comfort zone. So effective immediately, I am halting applying for jobs. I’m closing the planner. Uncoupling myself from my phone and computer. I’m going to sit with all this time and be uncomfortable. I’m going to sit and figure out, as Mary Oliver so eloquently states, “What to do with this wild and precious life”. Certainly it's not answering emails at 11 PM. It's definitely not tied to a desk. It's not in bottom lines, or CRMs, or ROI, or town hall meetings. At least not for me. Not anymore. Thank you universe, for the gift of unbusying me. The control is yours. I think I'll let you steer for a while.
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I have hated this shell and I have loved this shell. I fought to be seen for years, but have also preferred the blurry space of shadows. I picked apart my body for so many years it became a habit. It has only been in the last few years that I stopped looking in the mirror because I have been ashamed of the extra weight I have gained. I turned what I had gained into a story of loss. I lost love. Self respect. Self worth. My identity. The more I gained the more I lost. I let this awful self image teach me to doubt the words of a man whose heart is pure and kind and honest and who loves me. I let that doubt sneak into tender, beautiful moments together and turn them ugly. My body dictated my life. On nights I couldn't find something to wear that made me feel thin, I wouldn't leave the house. I wore my self-consciousness like a scarlet letter. The more I tried to draw the attention away from me, the more people would notice. The more makeup I wore, the less I recognized myself. I was a walking paradox, a woman who preached about holding space to love others, but couldn't find a way to love myself.
I wasn't always this way. I wasn't always so critical. But doubt is an insidious thing. It creeps up like smoke under a bedroom door, rolling slowly across the floor, billowing out to all four walls. You don't see it coming until it chokes you awake, setting off alarms. But then one morning you wake up sick of feeling betrayed by your own body. You pad to the bathroom in the half dark of dawn in your rumpled yellow tank top, the hands of sleep still covering your eyes, begging you to guess who. The floor is cold and your feet are bare. Your spaghetti arms hang loosely at your sides, and as you turn the corner into the bathroom you catch a glimpse of the vague silhouette of your body in the mirror. Your eye catches the "s" curve where the small of your waist gives way into the bend of your hips and starts the outward shape of your thigh. You squint into the dimness and blink. And all at once you see yourself with new eyes. You don't know it at the time, but that small instant of acceptance will serve to uncork the ocean of self-love you allowed to be confined to the trivial space of an unedited photo. To the thought that somehow because you were no longer a size eight that you weren't sexy. Or empowered. Or fun. And ultimately that day you will wake up in your own skin for the first time in a long time. And it will feel so good. And so powerful. You will have befriended again the soft being of yourself. There then, at the bathroom mirror in the half dark, you will forgive yourself. You will forgive yourself for your own limiting beliefs. For the hours you wasted not giving over to passion when it seared hot in your chest. For not acting on the ache in your soul for that connection, that intimacy, that you have deprived yourself of for so long. This is my story, my confession. I forgive myself for failing to see my own light. By doing so I dimmed myself so others couldn't see it either, keeping only an ember, barely smoldering, with just enough oxygen to not be extinguished completely. So here's to the awakened women out there. Here's to the new narrative you have written for yourself. And to the ones still asleep, let this be the alarm that rouses you in the middle of the night prompting you to get to safety, before self-doubt sets your whole life on fire. For the first time in a long time I feel compelled to let others see me the way I should have seen myself this whole time. For the first time I won't agonize over every detail in the mirror. The roundness of my belly. The lack of definition in my arms. How much bigger my butt is than the women around me. My double chin. I instead choose to see the softness of my body as feminine and womanly. These wide hips will easily give life to another human one day. My high cheekbones and olive toned skin belie my age and tell the story of my Mediterranean heritage. These calloused feet have walked the grounds of fairy tale music festivals, shores of oceans, and the streets of Indonesia. My shape has inspired Botticelli and Ruben. The goddesses of Roman literature were not depicted as waif-like damsels in distress. They were warriors, Amazons. Pillars of strength. I take all of this and I ingest it, swallow it deep down to the core of my being and promise myself I will never let my body deceive me again. That I will always treat this vessel of life for what it is. Beautiful and resilient. Comfortable and unrefined. Flawed and flawless. I love you. I love you. I love you. My inspiration comes in flashes
and I guess I haven't been struck by lightning in a while. Lately my life fits into a tidy little box. There are no messy edges, no carelessness. There's nothing to write about. And yet here I am still struggling to put words to my humdrum. Passion to my plaintive. I don't know what moves me to do this. I don't know why my pen always finds the page. I am inspired by a lot of things. Today it was a little girl in red mittens, A sign in a living room window, The wandering man outside the Damen St. Liquor Store, pushing a heaving cart of bulging garbage bags. I know its unwise of me to envy his messy edges, but I do anyway. My inspiration is fleeting, It never sticks. I subsist in it for as long as I can, backstroking happily through waves of insight and revelation and then nothing. Poof. Like a dream, it's gone. I wake to find myself staring at that homeless man's face, feeling nothing as the woman in the car behind me begins honking her horn. And all at once, I'm just a girl in a car at a stop sign. I don’t want to be just another moment
in your history. Just another book on the shelf of your infinite library. The song on your iTunes playlist that you loved hard for three weeks straight and now just skip through to the next. I don’t want to be the water that cuts so easily under your oars as you paddle away. Because you made me believe less in me and you and more in us and we and now I can’t go back. I shed the impermeable layer that kept me from letting you in and now I can’t stop absorbing you. All that energy I didn’t put into us I’m now taking in, radioactive with remorse. And at times I feel as though I might burst with all these emotions I worked so circumspectly to train to roll right off, not in. You brought truth to me in a way I was not ready to reciprocate. Part of me always thought there would be a runner in this story, but I had no idea your gym shoes would be so effortlessly laced by the time I realized it wasn't me. By the time I realized this wasn't what I wanted, you had already cut a path through the trees and I could barely make out your dizzying shadow. You gave me no choice in loving you and now you leave me nothing but to trace and retrace the outline of your footsteps in the soil, still warm with the heat of you. Can I get a moving walking
For all this emotional baggage? I’m tired of carrying it around. Better yet, make like a real airport and lose it. Drop it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean To be pulled and plucked at by the lips of curious ocean fish. Or strap it haphazardly to the roof Of some suburban mini-van And see how far we can get. Somewhere along the curves and bends Of some lonely interstate highway I’ll smile, As it topples over the side Following the passing of an eighteen wheeler. I’m free. They’ll flutter out of the open suitcase As it lies agape by the side of the road, Like a giant face Caught in a yawn. Moments, Like shredded newspaper ads, Litter the azure sky, The road, The windshields of cars. Travelers switch their wipers to “On”, Unware of what they are brushing away. As we speed further down the road, The wrinkles of my mind ease and slacken, Spreading my memory out flat. I hold in a sigh. I let out a grin. Miles behind, Caught in between the blades of a beat-up Toyota Is the memory of us. And with a casual sweep, It is gone. She said, “He died, and a part of me died.”
She took a puff of her cigarette and stared at me intensely, challengingly. Like a fresh wound her words gingerly gave way to some raw release inside of her – I knew her statement was more for her than for me. I already knew which part of her was gone. She nearly always used me like a knife to a cutter. I was merely the conduit, a way into being honest with herself. A cork board on which to pin her own pent up emotions. She nearly never knew when she did this. “I know,” I paused, and exhaled smoke and tried to think of something different to say, just once, “I know.” I am in love with a sherpa.
He floats over worry with the weight of a cloud. Curling all ten toes over the razor thin cliff’s edge of life, leaning into it. I am writing a book of poetry.
But perhaps I am just attached To the fingerprint That connects To the giant collective hand Of the universe. And it is writing me. It's been a long, sad winter
Black-streaked cheeks And hands made for wringing Somewhere Someone said That the eyes are a window into his soul But for me I am the bird flying Full speed ahead Hitting the glass In poetry I find freedom.
The freedom to sing a song About the world With lyrics The universe wrote That only I understand. I create meaning in grass. In traffic. In the taste of bone marrow. |