Seven Years

I've been feeling weird lately, more weird than usual. My body aches and I'm really tired all the time. It could be the flu, but it hasn't seemed to progress much past this, plus headaches, in almost a week. Very strange. I find myself exhausted during the day, and I try to get a nap around working and being a mom, but you know that's not easy.

However, the last couple of nights, I've woken up in the wee hours and haven't been able to get back to sleep. My body wants to sleep but my mind keeps on rolling. Going back to a couple of blogs ago, I think this is all the in-between mental work I was referring to. It's downright disruptive sometimes!

I've had little bursts of progress, though, and I'm really feeling good about it. I'm on a big campaign to live how I want to live, and that includes possibly random things like eating out of a bowl more, and straightening up the millions of piles around here. Less clutter, more simplicity. Little baby steps feel like giant bounds when I've been stuck for a while.

The other morning, about 4:30am, after being up for hours, I had this epiphany, and after it burst out, I was able to sleep. My epiphany is this: I have a seven year life change cycle, and I'm 42.

I was thinking back to a time when I was 21, and I was really burned out on my warehouse coordination job. I just had other priorities. I didn't want to spend all my time thinking about dock bumpers and Genie lifts and install schedules. I had poetry to write, bands to see, people to meet, and men to enchant. My job got in the way of my creativity. That job was the exact opposite of creativity, and the management was pretty shitty. It could have been a nice solid career starter, but I just was not interested in that kind of life then.

In my spare time, which I had plenty of, I volunteered at a thrift store where all the proceeds went to helping people with AIDS. I lived on Capitol Hill, where all kinds of wacky, alternative things went on, and I was, of course, way into that. Plenty of fodder for poetry and art. When a full time position opened up there, I jumped on it. My stuffy colleagues at the warehouse handling job made fun of me for leaving, and that just made my decision feel all the more justified. I consciously made the decision to leave something that looked stable to do something that was meaningful to my heart. I have not one minute regretted it, and it set me on the path to where I am today.

If I think seven years past that, I made a very similar decision. I was working at Microsoft in their media studio. I liked what I did, but I totally hated working at a big monster corporation. I was being compared to my peers on a bell curve, and not based on my ethic, effort or performance. It was so wrong to me. And, the boys club. Don't even get me started on that bullshit.

I had an opportunity to go work for a competing corporation, and they had a division that created media for non-profits. A chance to use my skills, and expand my skills, get paid well, and still do something good for the world. I jumped. I didn't care about the criticism.

That gig was actually too good to be true, because I got out just before the division folded about two years later. Then I did a little bit of freelance project management before spending a few years at a small, friendly start up. I got on full time there and spent about four years getting some amazing experience in project and account management. Things took a turn there, too, as things do, and I was no longer on board with the direction of the company. I was stable. I was respected, mostly. I had mad skills. But my heart wasn't in it.

I remember being quite elated and refreshed to come to the company I work for now. It was small, and scrappy, and we did amazing work, fueled by amazing creative brains. I was so inspired and the transition was all good. I also had just gotten married and bought a house and had many dreams about many things. I was dedicated to my Buddhist practice. Things were solid.

Almost eight years later, it's a different place. They sold it to a big, monster corporation, and many of the key creative people have abandoned ship. I'm starting to see some of the same trends that I've seen in the past, and I just don't like the way it looks. I'm struggling to make progress professionally, and I'm just not spiritually into a big chunk of work that I have no choice but to do. It feels to me now that it may have run its course. Something needs to change.

I don't like this, because I'm comfortable there, or maybe just complacent. I don't want to put the effort into picking up and finding what's next. I don't know what's out there, or if I'll find anything else that will be as richly satisfying. I have a family to support now, and the stakes are high.

Once I've had a realization like this, I know from experience that it won't just sink back into the shadows. I can try to ignore it, but it just causes a lot more suffering. I don't know what this year will bring, but if the patterns in my life are any indicator, I'm in for some changes. These changes, it appears, are overdue.

Gulp.