Augustine: writing for a life I don't know yet

Dear Athena,

I'm out of bed before 9am, spending money I probably shouldn't on food that I probably ought not to eat. I've chatting with Liz, the server, about DnD and shared my mario kart d&d rules with her. I'm wanting to start doing resumes and cover letters, but it puts me in the wrong headspace. Taylor Tomlinson was talking on Pete Holmes podcast about morning pages and I want to write more. To put myself in a head space for the rest of the day. I looked up some prompts and maybe on other days they are the thing I should write to, but today, the only thing I can think to ask myself is what is it that I want to tell Athena? What is it that I want to tell myself? For myself I just want to "solve" the joblessness, but I thought this morning about how I'm always unable to lose weight so long as there is another problem to solve in my life. My body goes into "crisis management" and it's been living there even as I've been looking. I want to "solve" for this Thursday's interview at Boulder or make a plan for what comes after that falls apart. It's all part of the thinking and the chatter, it's not that I shouldn't do it, it's that I will get part of the way through it and find myself burned out and needing to recover. Letting go, it comes after 'avoidance', 'scapegoating', and 'fixing it.' It is 'acceptance' of how things will be.

 

“The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don’t even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, “What are you trying to teach me?” (Richard Rohr)

 

I'm afraid of losing the ability to tell a story of my life that I am happy with. That everything will just become pain, exhaustion, and loss. I'm afraid that our society will construct a day to day life so miserable that I don't want to live it.  But…but…BUT I've already been there, I am there now some days. I was there while I was working. I'm so afraid of losing work and housing outside of my parents and that I'm somehow "falling behind" because if it gets bad enough then my life won't be worth living, but I already thought of my life as bad enough to not be worth living.

I can hold onto all these tangible achievements and I can still lose the story of the life that I want to live. It already feels like a ship on the horizon, routinely moving on without care or notice of me, in need, on my life raft. The only thing I have is to let it go. Maybe I'll still be "rescued" by a ship, and yes I can still shout and wave my hands when one passes by. But largely, it will be the currents and shipping lanes that determines if and when I am spotted. What is left to me while adrift?

 

“All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect.

That place is called freedom. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .” (Richard Rohr)

 

You do not need to be good. I do not need to be good. We do not need to walk on our knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

Love,

Augustine

 

Athena: Verbal Processing

Augustine,

I know you know this because we spoke on the phone today, but for posterity's sake...I found out today that I didn't get a job that I applied for. A job that I was more than qualified for (my previous position, just on a different team), where I knew the hiring manager very well--she's a long-time friend as well as a colleague.

What hurt the most is how personal the feedback felt--though I know it was given with the very best of intentions. I spoke too fast. I needed to pause longer for questions [though...I did]. Though this wasn't mentioned, I think that I really would've been better to have more explicit visual aids--they weren't required but I think it would have have helped. I found this out an hour and a half before another interview for a distinct position on the same broader team. The position that felt like more of a stretch for me, that I figured I would be less qualified for. Now all I can think about is how badly I feel like I flubbed that interview too.

I'm too much. My thinking is...jumpy. It's connected, but I don't always spell out all the pieces every time my brain makes connections because it moves too fast for me sometimes. I love context so sometimes I want to give that background for an example and I feel like that makes me long-winded. Or rambly. And this time I felt like I was so vague in some of my responses so as to not be helpful. I feel. sunk.

I know that I need to move past this. That whatever happens, today's interview is in the past. Me not getting the first job I applied to is also in the past. It can't be undone or redone or fixed. But I'm prone to ruminating.

Why wasn't I enough? Why does my mind work like this? Why is it that I know the importance of thinking before speaking and collecting my thoughts so that I can seem poised but as soon as I'm asked a question I panic or get so excited that I can't stop? My mind can't stop, it never seems to stop. Isn't this a strength as well as a weakness? My mind can dart quickly and make connections where they might not occur to other people. I can flit through a problem and visualize all of the different pieces, playing it through. Why couldn't they see that? Why can't I explain that better? Why can't I rein myself in? What if I fail here too? What if I don't feel and I occasionally have to work with team members who...it feels like judged me. Didn't want me for something that just...I don't know. It could be a big deal, maybe they just didn't understand me at all, couldn't see the ideas through my words. But I didn't think I was so bad as to be incomprehensible. Maybe I'm losing self-awareness. I need to do better. I need to consider this feedback and grow from it. I don't feel ready to do that yet. But maybe tomorrow I will.

I could write for longer. Sometime I should, maybe it would help. I should write until my fingertips have poured out all of the thoughts in my head (Would there be an end? Or would I just end up going in circles?). And then I should pare it back. But honestly...in writing I'm given the gift of time. I've wrangled all my thought sheep before leading them out of the pen--it takes me awhile to do it, but I do that before I ever start typing. Spoken words are different. Even if I take a pause as soon as my mouth opens I end up at the mercy of the connections that my brain makes, thoughts that trace and trip through my lips.

Today, I feel sad. I still did the interview anyways and I tried my best even if I feel badly about it now. Tomorrow, I will focus on my thesis. I will pour myself into something else, something that feels positive instead of soul-crushing, even if it also feels a little bit daunting. Maybe the day after I will begin to figure out a way to make myself fit. To figure out how I'm going to pare and prune the thought trees that spring up at the easiest spark. To focus. To make myself fit in the ways that I need to in order to feel better about myself in front of others. I will practice and practice and practice until I can fake it. And I will keep the soft, rambly, connected core of myself and protect it. I will cherish it and hide it, keeping it only for the people whom I can entrust it to. Maybe it doesn't fit, maybe this is one way that I am not enough in this moment at this time. But I can save that part of my heart for a team that I've built trust with, who will see beyond the weaknesses and to the strengths embedded within.

+Athena

Athena: 70 Pound Packs

My dearest Augustine,

For some reason, a memory came to mind tonight that I haven't thought about in years--and I don't know that I've ever really paused to reflect on it. I was reading some articles on LinkedIn about setting boundaries, delegating, etc, when all of a sudden I flashed back to La Vida.

My group was pretty small--six of us plus our two sherpas. There were a total of three guys in our group, the rest of us were women. And before we made our packs the very first time, our head sherpa made a point of emphasizing that we should "make sure to take our fair share" when packing.

Of course, me being me, was so worried about making sure that I was taking my fair share that I did. And more. I don't remember why the number stuck in my head, it may be totally inaccurate, but later that same sherpa was like, "Goodness, why do you have a 70 pound pack?"

Within maybe an hour of hiking on the first day, I had an asthma attack and needed to take my inhaler because I had taken way too much weight in my pack. The sherpa realized this after having said asthma attack and then we re-distributed again. I can't remember if he asked why I had taken so much, but of course it was because I was worried.

Worried about being a failure. Worried about not pulling my own weight. Worried about inconveniencing the people I cared about, though I only barely knew them at that moment in time. Worried that I wasn't doing enough.

I feel like somewhere there are "normal" people who hear the sherpa's words and go, "Okay, will do!" and somehow can figure out what is appropriate. And maybe they take a little more than their fair share, but they don't try and take 20 pounds more. They understand their limitations and they take that into account.

I have never been that person. I don't know how to be that person.

Instead, I am the person who will way overload myself because I so deeply fear not being enough. Or causing work for somebody else. At times it can be paralyzing or I can get myself into really unhealthy situations. Honestly, that was a large part of what happened at work--with the added complication that the workload was unrealistic in general. But I took on the stress of it more than I probably needed to, because...maybe if I could do that and stress and figure it all out, I could help. I could figure out some miracle ot make sense of it later on down the road.

I didn't. I couldn't. Instead, I left. And some days it feels like the most utterly selfish thing I've ever done, but I also know that it was absolutely necessary.

I don't know that I can not be a person with a 70 pound pack. I don't know that I'll ever be able to hear some scolding or guidance and not think it's somehow directed at me and panic that I'm not doing enough and double-down.

But there won't always be another person to recognize my overloadedness who can help me stop, take a breath, and then re-distribute the load for me though I insist I'll make it. I need to start learning to advocate for myself. And I need to know that I'll have a listening ear on the other end.

+Athena