Pulling back and stepping back up

Tags

depression, fatigue, first trimester, homeownership, house closing, miscarriage, pregnancy, recovery, transitions

I just checked my book sales for the first time in two months. This is the first time I’ve logged into my own website in nearly three. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably forgotten that you follow me on Twitter. If you’ve worked with me at all for the last few months, you might have noticed that instead of being prompt, responsive and committed to meeting my own high standards, I’ve been juuuuuuust squeaking by.

Sorry, world. It was unavoidable. Something has been sucking the life out of me in a greedy quest to feed its own existence. It’s a baby. And I am, of course, more than willing to let it do so for the next 19 to 25 years. Though I was fully unprepared for how difficult the first trimester would be (the fatigue! the evil, stifling blanket of fatigue!), everything that I am and all that I believe preclude me from blaming my need to temporarily recede from reality on a pregnancy. Oh no. If only that was the only thing.

Some houses are worth waiting for. We think this little cutie is one of them. And we will not leave it for the rest of our lives.

For the past many weeks, my husband and I have also been homelessish. In early August, the house we have been attempting to purchase for nearly five months (really) was delayed past the end of our last home’s lease, and we had no idea how long the interim period would be. We stayed with our parents for a week. Then in a hotel for a few days. Then we spent another week in the home of a friend who was on vacation. And then it became evident that we needed a longer-term solution. So we have been living in an extended stay hotel for nearly a month. With our giant dog. Across the street from the mall.

I am aware that being legitimately homeless is far more soul crushing and exhausting than what we have been doing. I know many people’s situations are much worse than anything I’ve ever faced. That said, trying to remain an active member of society, let alone a productive creative professional, when both your home and workplace are shifting from beneath you for an undetermined amount of time, and while half your day is being sucked up by managing the paperwork hellstorm that is a two-month delayed house closing, is a tad difficult.

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, it’s this. A lot of this.

Then there was the anxiety. Not just about the house-that-might-never-be and the homelessness-that-might-never-end, but also because this pregnancy, which we have wanted so much to celebrate, was my second this year, the first one ending in miscarriage. And thus, I did what I assume every woman with an 0 for 1 pregnancy success rate does upon learning she’s pregnant, which is to assume the worst and fret over everything. All day, every day, I was overwhelmed with a fear I couldn’t shake. Add to that a hormonal mandate to take at least one nap a day and, even on my best days, only being able to accomplish about 70% of my normal output due to a fatigue so paralyzing it bordered on depression, and life has felt pretty damn near impossible for the last few months. And as someone who prides herself on multi-tasking and daily achievement, it has all been rather demoralizing.

And then last Wednesday happened. I had an ultrasound appointment, during which the tech had a difficult time getting the right angle for a particular measurement. The result was that I got to spend nearly an hour watching a live sonogram of our baby, which looked, for the first time, like a baby. And it moved. It waved its tiny arms all over. It kicked its skinny legs. Every once in a while, it would kind of arch its little neck and roll its head around like it was working on getting comfy. By the time it was over, whatever the last thing I had convinced myself was threatening my pregnancy was completely gone. Because there it was, being an incredible little thing, growing and healthy, and existing totally outside of the hurricane of fear and anxiety I’d been living in for so long. Somewhere I could exist too.

At that exact same time, our house was under final inspection by an appraiser. By the time I left the appointment, we learned it had passed the inspection. Nothing else was going to prevent us from closing. We were in the clear.

They say first semester fatigue lifts like a fog and pregnancy truly becomes enjoyable one magical day around weeks 12 to 14. Though it seems impossible that the timing was sheer coincidence, I woke up the next morning with my fog gone. Our baby is going to be fine. We’re going to move into our house (closing is Friday!). I accomplished more that day than I had in months, with an energy and drive I happily recognized as my old normal. I didn’t even need a nap. I haven’t napped since!

It pained me to have to pull back from my normal life. I worried, at some points, that by the time I was capable of functioning like a human again, the world would have moved on without me. But now, I’m feeling fine about my momentary withdrawal. It was necessary. I survived it. (We survived it. Poor husband, who has basically managed both of our lives for months.) I don’t worry about the forthcoming stresses of pregnancy or parenthood having a similar impact on me later on. Just not worried about it. After an exercise in pulling back, I feel fully prepared to step back up. There are simply too many exciting things to step up to for me to do anything but. Bring it on.

 

P.S. OMG, we’re having a kid.

The right goodbye at the right time

Tags

baby time, Capital Gains, dogs, freelancing, Gunshy, mourning, transitions, writing gigs

Here’s my former Gunshy iPhone wallpaper. He was a handsome fellow, no?

The same photo has been the wallpaper on my phone for years now. Gunshy in a bow tie was the obvious choice before he died last May, and it never even occurred to me to change it. Until yesterday. I might have gone on gazing on my departed little boy a hundred times a day indefinitely, but another baby boy showed up in my family this week, and everything in the world has changed. When my sister shared a photo of herself and her two-day-old son at home in front of the Christmas tree, my heart exploded, my brain fell out of my head, and all I wanted to do with the rest of my life is stare at that baby.

So I changed my wallpaper, and now I can see him all day. I did it excitedly, without thinking, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having a little cry later, feeling mournful that Gunshy is now even more a part of my past then my present. But they were tears of happiness too, because I now get to have this precious little human boy for the rest of my future, and he’s more than just a photo on my phone. He’s an entirely new person, and I get to love his face off forever.

Now this handsome little man lives on my phone. Or sleeps there, rather.

I made a similar (albeit less mortality related) decision recently when choosing to step down from a gig I’ve been doing for three years. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it anymore as much as it was that I’m simply too busy, and it was the thing that made the most logistical sense to drop. It wasn’t that straightforward, however. Becoming a news editor for Capital Gains was first regular contract I landed when I jumped into this freelance writing adventure three years ago. Without it, I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to grow that (incredibly risky, probably not super smart) experiment into a viable career. Moreover, I love everyone on my team and don’t want to stop working with them. It was a tough decision. Super tough.

But there is also a joy in being able to make decisions based on too many good options instead of a range of dumpy ones. I’ve left a lot of jobs to prevent myself from punching people in their faces, or melting in to a puddle of misery. A lot of them. I cremated dogs for a time, people. I was an actual indentured servant once. In those cases (and in many others) the question was always “how soon can I get out of this” rather than “how long can I keep this up?”

Not unlike letting go of my daily interaction with Gunshy’s photo for the chance to giggle with joy at my new baby nephew, I’m stepping down as a news editor for Capital Gains without losing any perspective on how important that role was to me, and with excitement about new projects in my present and future. And with a deep appreciation for reaching a point at which I have to make tough choices from among many great options. It’s been a great year. Cheers to another one on the way, full of baby time and new opportunities.

The Fall of Roam

Tags

change, freelancing, life changes, life decisions, restlessness, transitions

Surely I’m not the only one contemplating the fall of Rome today. But in an effort to avoid the hyperbolic fray of the government shutdown, I purposefully shifted my thinking from large-scale crises to small. Though I doubt the Washington drama will result in the end of civilization as we know it (fingers crossed! Survivorship skills aren’t top on on my household’s list of talents.), the end of a personal era is definitely upon me. And it’s making me a little itchy.

A typical moving scene from four years, two cities and one job ago.

Between 2002 and 2012, I lived in seven different cities in eleven different residences and worked 10 various jobs. I finished an undergraduate degree; I completed grad school; I wrote a book. It was exactly as exhausting as it sounds, and I could not be happier to be cozied into the second year of a lease on a great house in a city I never want to leave with a spouse who falls under the same descriptor, and the job I have always wanted. Ta-dah! No more roaming.

But then again, a body that has been in motion for so long tends to want to stay in the same, constant motion. Freelancing is ideal for this, as there’s always some shifting and changing going on with clients and projects, but it still feels weird sometimes to not be in major transition. Sometimes it’s hard to get anything done at all if I don’t have way too much to do that I’m nearly falling to pieces. That, I’m quite sure, is a recipe neither for success nor happiness. Somehow, I have to come to peace with my own peace.

Celebrating our first bonfire in our “real” home on our new patio last year. I sort of want to stay here forever.

I don’t know what the answer is. It certainly isn’t what it’s always been before when I’ve felt restless, which is to pack up up leave the city/home/job that isn’t fulfilling all my needs. I’m definitely scrutinizing every idea that pops up into my head as suspect: Do I really want to put energy into buying a house? Does thinking about having a kid right now really make sense? Is saving a bunch of money to go on a trip abroad the best investment we could make this year? Are any of these actually things I want, or just potentially drastic decisions made for the sake of change?

So I’m trying to think of ways to change differently. Though change without benefit is a waste of time and energy, evolving as a person and as a professional is crucially important, right? That’s what the people who say all of the things say. Perhaps this current itch for change gives me to the opportunity to grow in a new way – changes in routine or the way I pitch myself to publications or the way I try to market my work in general. Maybe I’ll start flossing. I’m not sure what the changes will be, but I’m going to make sure they’re meaningful ones, even – no, especially – if they’re focused inward instead of outward.

I am definitely going to start by painting my office yellow this weekend. OK, so that’s closer to my old way of changing than the new, but I have a feeling a slight change to my (happily) unchanging surroundings will be an acceptable way to inspire more.