May 2024: Rest
No more mea culpas. Life be life-ing… I miss this conversation with you, and I’m glad to be back for however long life permits this time.
I’m sitting in a hot bath on a Monday morning, overcome with awe and gratitude. I recently left my job of 6.5 years, and I have the good fortune of three months of time to rest. Deep, necessary rest that I have cried and begged and tried to strong-arm the universe into sending my way. This brief bout of “funemployment” comes as a welcome relief from four years of intermittent physical, mental, and psychic illness.
I do not know the details about what’s next. Trust me. I have applied for many jobs and gotten to the final round on multiple occasions. None of them panned out, so I am terrified that I will ruin my tiny family’s finances in a city that is rife with homelessness and poverty. Walking away is the most terrifying but most necessary decision that I have ever made. My need for room to breathe, to grieve, to cry, to sit in the sun and merely exist overtook my fear of destitution and failure.
When people ask what’s next for me, I am honest about not being totally certain. In this period of time, I’m planning to complete first drafts of the comprehensive exams that will determine whether I will advance to doctoral coursework in the fall. That’s a response most people can wrap their brains around, even if it’s only partially true.
When I chose to go back to school, I trusted that something more than tens of thousands of dollars worth of student debt would come of it. I was already spending hours of my free time studying astrology and tarot, so it made sense to invest extra resources into the traditions and symbols underlying those practices. The debt I was anticipating is there for sure, alongside tens of thousands of dollars that my beloved and I have paid out of pocket, but so is a clearer sense of the beauty and magic in the world. I went back to school seeking enchantment and the will to live after an unsettling bout of depression. If I was going to suffer, I at least wanted a say in what that suffering looked like, so I enrolled in graduate studies that require us to read up to 1,000 pages per class, attend in person classes three days a month for up to eight hours a day, and write three, 8-12 page papers every quarter minimum – though usually there are additional presentations, reflection posts, or lit reviews due, too. Suffer indeed…
Both the choice to enter grad school and to leave my job were leaps of faith; I do not know what will come of them. I’m learning to follow flashes of insight and moments of synchronicity to order my steps, which tends to work in my favor much better than trying to control outcomes. I’m also working on a creative offer that will invite others into my interests in myth, speculative fiction, and social justice. With every encounter, myth and speculative fiction remind me that we can have a different world if we want it. In the depths of despair, I heard myself saying over and over again, “We don’t have to live like this,” so I decided to let that neurotic fixation blossom into a “positive obsession” - a mantra and a research question1. I intend to launch the creative offer within the next year, so I welcome this respite to write, create, be, and figure out the details.
I look forward to being back in your inbox soon 🙂
See “Positive Obsession”, Octavia Butler, 1996. https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2021/01/positive-obsession.html?m=1
Jasmine, I've been going through pretty much the same thing as you know. Took that leap of faith and now scrambling to find a job as I try to keep my focus on the program. It was helpful to read this. I understand those feelings of doubt, but brave of you to keep pushing on and doing the good work! Good luck with the comps! - Dan
You're back! And I am with you I am here to let it be; to know that the moment is the moment and I don't have to clasp it in a grip scared that things will never come but instead that things come in and out as they do and each moment is abundant and each moment has its own time.