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On Writing My Own Job

posted 29th April 2012    Written by: Sarah    CATEGORY: Creativity, Family, Job/Career/Work, Sarah

I never pictured myself the entreprenurial type.  The idea of striking out and doing anything on my own felt painfully uncomfortable.  I don’t know anything about running a business.  How could any take me seriously?

I’m a super rule follower.  That’s probably why I ended up with a government major and a government job.  The government provides tons of manuals and rules and requirements.  You don’t have to come up with anything yourself.  In fact, it would best if you didn’t.

But it turns out I wasn’t so well suited to cubicle work.

After Kate was born and Dan and I decided I’d stay home with her, I not-so-secretly found myself gleeful over getting to leave the workforce.  Not that motherhood doesn’t offer it’s own set of challenges.  Really, it should come with combat pay.  But motherhood wouldn’t require me to input data into spreadsheets that I didn’t understand or care about.

So I quit my job and made motherhood my full time job.  But that didn’t feel that great either.  I needed something else, something more to get back to my identity and the Sarah I knew before she was a wife and a mother.

In the height of the loneliness and identityless feelings, I looked back on all my previous jobs.  Did I want to go back to work full time?  Where?  Back to a job like all the other jobs I left?

When I thought back to my employment history, it read like a textbook case of a misplaced girl with a liberal arts BA and public policy Masters.  And nothing about those jobs said “Sarah.”  They only said “traditional path.”

Since I’m a rule follower, I assumed that traditional path was the only path.  The only right path.  There could be no other way.  You don’t just make your own way!  That would break about 565,598,716,894 rules in my Good Girl Playbook.

But I finally saw what all those jobs didn’t have in common.  Anything I loved doing.

It was all rote, paperworking stuff, Excel-filled, jammed printer trauma drama.  Nothing I did felt important or meaningful.  I’m pretty sure no one was interested in my thoughts and ideas.

Writing, sharing, storytelling.  That’s the stuff I love.  I started my blog because work crushed my soul.  So after I left the traditional work force, I wanted to more with my writing.

But I was scared.

I didn’t get a degree in writing.  Or blogging.  Or social media.  Or creative endeavors.

Who was I to call myself a writer?

But I knew I didn’t want to go back to anything I’ve done before.  So maybe it was time to do my own thing.

Coming up with something I loved to do while still being Kate’s mom presented a challenge.  I still wanted to stay home with her.  But I needed something outside motherhood that made me feel good about myself.

So I started toying with the idea of freelancing.  Freelancing is a tough road.  One just doesn’t decide to be a freelancer and sit back while publications vie for one’s writing.  It would require putting myself out there and selling myself, two things I don’t find particularly comfortable.

I almost quit when I realized I would need to write pitches and send them to editors.  Unsolicited.  And say I’m the best writer to take on that pitch.

Oftentimes I find myself falling back into these old constructs where I decide I can’t fully embrace this newer, stronger version of myself because that’s not how I’ve always seen myself.  I’ve fallen all over the less-than-confident spectrum throughout my life.  I’ve told myself, oh I could never do that, for no reason other than I just decided I could never be good enough.

Owning my talents and skills is not my best thing.  And telling other people about my skills and talents?  No, thanks.

But after becomming part of the Stratejoy community, I saw these other young women who admitted, yes, it’s scary to put yourself out there and do new things, but what they have to give is meaningful and valueable and so worth celebrating.

So I decided to take a risk and pursue freelancing with everything I had.  I made a website.  Contacted publications.  Pitched articles.

Sometimes I heard a thanks, but no thanks.  Sometimes the editors didn’t email me back at all.  But one time I got back a yes.  And that one yes was all I needed to start owning my new path.

My first article came out in Washington Parent Magazine this month.  Seeing my name in print just about blows my mind.

When people used to ask me what I did, I used to mumble and fumble around for words and say oh, I’m just a stay at home mom.  But now when people ask me about myself, I say with confidence, I’m a writer.  I blog.  I freelance.  And I’m a mom, too.

Setting up my own rule book?  Yeah, it feels pretty good.

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Radical Acceptance

posted 22nd April 2012    Written by: Sarah    CATEGORY: All Posts, Family, Quarterlife Crisis, Sarah

“How did you do this?  How did you entertain me for hours on end and not got crazy?  I won’t be mad if you said sometimes hid in the bathroom.”

My mom’s laugh comes through the phone as I press speaker and redirect Kate’s crayon-filled hands from my walls to her Elmo coloring book.

“I don’t know, toddlers are tough,” she said.  “This is the time when you need to practice some radical acceptance.”

Radical acceptance.

She’s said that before.

And each time I’ve wanted to throw myself on the floor like my toddler and kick and scream because I don’t want to accept.

I want to change things.

I want motherhood to be easier so I can get things done.  I want more time to myself to think.  I want to ward off temper tantrums.  I want Kate to nap in the afternoon, so I can pursue things that are important to me.  I want some space.  I want her to eat her dinner instead of throwing it to the dog.  I want to come up with bunches of stuff for her to do instead of millions of boring trips to the same park.

But in this moment in my life, there are just things I can’t change.  I can’t change how long she naps or temper tantrums.  I can’t change the little time I get to myself.  I can’t change her age or my age or where we are in life right now.

So it seems the only thing to do is accept.

Acceptance is my achilles heel.  My arch nemisis.  For a girl like me who likes to change and do and be better, acceptance is not something I take to kindly.

Because acceptance feels like giving up.

Like if I accepted my life stage just how it is, that I would die inside from a lack of ambition.  All my gumption would dry up.  And then there’d be nothing left.

The thing I like most about myself also ends up making me an enemy of myself.  This insistance on doing more and being more keeps me motivated.  But it also drives me crazy when circumstances force me to slow down.

But railing against my life isn’t working.  I’m not a nice friend or parent or spouse.  I feel disjoined, irritable, unhappy for no particular reason.  Like there’s some invisible irritant poking and proding me until I can’t bear the weight of the frustration another moment.

So ruminating and fixating on how I want to change things isn’t working.  There has to be a better way.

And maybe that way is radical acceptance.

And maybe it’s not about giving up.

Maybe it’s about being okay with what is in this moment.

It’s not acquiescence.  Or a tacit agreement with myself to live in mediocrity because that’s easier.  But rather acknowledging those feelings of frustrations in my life and allowing myself to lean into the frustrations.  Instead of spending all my energy pummeling my frustrations until they bounce back in my face, I accept those feelings and let them wash over me.

I don’t have to like every moment of everyday.  But I also don’t have to spend every moment of everyday fighting myself.

In a way, radical acceptance is freedom.  I can’t be doing more or being more.  Because much of my day is out of my hands.  I acknowledge I feel thwarted.  But I don’t let that feeling carry me away.

I radically accept that I have a toddler who’s wishes and demands are unpredictable.

I radically accept that I might not get time for myself today.

I radically accept that my days don’t always go as planned.

I radically accept that the things I want to accomplish might take days or weeks or months.

I radically accept that this season of my life is a challenging one.

And I radically accept those sweet hugs and kisses from my toddler, any time together Dan and I have to be a couple instead of a couple of parents, and for all those times when I release the frustrations and set myself free.

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My Dream of Being the Most Innocent Adult EVER!

posted 21st April 2012    Written by: Cassie    CATEGORY: All Posts, Cassie, Love/Relationships, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 6

Here, let me be completely honest.  This whole writing-about-my-true-feelings thing is frightening.  The only thing more frightening is admitting that I know what sex is.

With a friend I met while doing comedy in Chicago, we author a blog that is meant to be a collection of our views as female humorists.  It started out being based around life, sex, and dating, but all I really wrote about was comedy and good/bad hair days.  I used an Alias because not only is it cool, but no one would ever know it was me.  Silly me used my real last name but with my middle name as my first which fooled no one… So a week before our Stratejoy posts went live, I sucked up my fear and stopped using my Alias on our blog.

It’s time for me to be able to stand behind my words.  After all, they’re a representation of me!

 

My biggest worry was that my parents would read these things.  I honestly am afraid to write a collection of essays because then they’ll realize what a dirty mind I have.  They’ll know that I started writing Adult Fiction at one point because I was sexually frustrated and wanted to hone it into something creative.   It’s better than running off and having sex with the entire town, right?

Really, sexuality is one of those things that I feel was never completely covered in my education.  Even more so, all of the emotions that whirlwind around it! I have grown close to mine by writing through my feelings and identifying why I feel a certain way around a certain someone.  It allows me to make clear decisions and not act brashly.  No one will ever find peace by throwing themselves at someone to fill a void or to self-medicate.

Don’t think that I consider sexuality to be the devil’s work!  I have a friend that gets embarrassed any time I or any of our friends make dirty jokes.  He feels that its a part of his being to be looked down upon.  I’m not sure if he got this through parents or religion but… I mean, every aspect of ourselves should be embraced.  Embraced in a smart  and safe way- physically and emotionally.

I have been told that I have unrealistic expectations for my future husband, but I don’t wake up feeling used.  I haven’t had that scary moment when I see the little pink plus sign and then wonder which of my “partners” it belongs to.  I haven’t had that scary moment when I realize it belongs to the idiot I’ve been shacking up with for months because I was bored.  I have luckily never had to live through those moments because these are roads I chose not to take.  Though, it was a hard decision to make with an overactive libido shoving me around.  Having purposefully sat down and written out qualities of a man that I deem worthy of “my gift” (go ahead, call me old fashioned…) has made it very easy to walk away from less than savory opportunities during dry spells.  I feel complete and whole on my own and I’ve never regretted saying “No, Thank you.” to sex and “Here’s a cupcake. Now leave.”

There were a few months between when I graduated college and before I moved out to California for my internship where I worked a terrible call center job and directed a wonderfully talented cast in a sketch revue.  My days were pretty balanced with hate at work and immense love during rehearsals at night.  This was a weird time for me, also, because I was grieving over losing my step mother to pancreatic cancer therefore was super depressed gaining back all the 75 lbs I had lost the year before, couldn’t understand why my dream jobs weren’t hiring me, and my new best friends were bed bugs that I carried home from this shit call center I worked at.  Through all of this stress, this was also the time that not one, but three guys started trying to get with me.  I didn’t ask for it.  I didn’t flirt with any of them.  It came out of nowhere.

It would’ve been so easy to “get some”, but it’s just not what I wanted.  What I really wanted was to smack them all with my red, itchy bed bug bitten arms because I didn’t have time for their stupid game.  I guess metaphorically, I did smack them with rejection.  I was a very unhappy person during these few months but I am very proud of myself that given my extreme low, I didn’t give in to temptation that I wasn’t even tempted to in the first place.  It was also when I realized that I don’t have to settle with what stumbles in front of me.  There will be more.  There’s no need to be desperate!  I need to have and know what my standards are.  I am enough and I am worth more than one night stands.

Mark this date on your calendars, everyone.  Today is the day that I admitted to having dirty thoughts and sexual urges, wrote the word “Penis” knowing people would read it, and fully resigned to ever winning “The Most Innocent Adult Ever” Award.

(Mom and Dad, you should have seen this coming when you stored your dirty Valentine’s day card with all those love notes in my closet when I was 10.  I read them.  You guys are sick.  But I love you.)

 

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On Finding What Was Never Really Hidden

posted 16th April 2012    Written by: Arielle    CATEGORY: All Posts, Arielle, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 6

One of the truly amazing things about life is that you never know when inspiration is going to smack you upside the head.

In early March, I received a Facebook message from someone I didn’t know. Lee Anne was a fellow Stratejoy tribe member and Brooklyn resident, and wanted to introduce herself when she saw that I was part of the next season of bloggers.

A few weeks later, she posted the following status: “Anyone up for this Mad Men viewing party at the Roosevelt tonight?”

As it turns out, I had been planning on going to that same party but my viewing buddy had taken ill (read: hangover) and was no longer able to make it. I told her I was down.

During one of the commercial breaks, as we were standing amidst a sea of dapper men, whiskey cocktails and candy cigarettes, Lee Anne asked me, “So, what do you do? I know you’re a writer, but what else do you do?”

I was flustered. “Oh…um. I’m not really a writer, outside of Stratejoy. I mean I like writing, but no one pays me to do it or anything.”**

She looked at me like I was stupid. “So? I’m an actor. I don’t get paid to do it every day, but it doesn’t mean I’m not one. It doesn’t matter if no one pays you, you’re still a writer.”

I was completely floored. I had never met this person before, and all she knew about me was whatever one could glean from two Stratejoy posts. But her words were powerful.

Ever since that conversation, bits and pieces from my memory will pop up at random as I go about my day.

Writing “books” when I was young and covering the front with clear tape to make them look fancy and laminated.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of my very first blog post (March 18, 2002).

Journaling. ”This is what I did today” journaling to Joy Juice journaling to journaling as a method of escape during a rough patch I went through while studying abroad in Australia.

Finding joy even in writing insignificant “come with me to this random event!” emails to friends.

Taking a course this past fall called, “Career Changing In Your 20s and 30s,” and doing an exercise where we had to reflect about different stages of our lives, and at those times, what we wanted to be when we grew up. “Author” appeared in every stage up until adulthood.

My whole life was flashing before my eyes. Only I wasn’t dying, I was living.

When Lee Anne referred to me as a writer, something I’ve never thought to call myself, it resonated with me because I was just beginning to rediscover my love of writing. You see, despite the fact that I’ve churned out hundreds of blog posts and thousands of pages of academic papers over the years, the times I felt truly alive while writing were unfortunately few and far between.

Until, that is, I started writing for Stratejoy.

All of a sudden, because of how deeply I care about each of these posts, the effort I started putting in far surpassed my average. Even in just those first 2 posts, I put in so many hours of writing and rewriting and “holy shit, when did it become 2am?” situations.

I felt a mixed sense of relief, excitement and achievement when I had an idea about my 2nd post that turned it from my crap excuse for a first draft to what ended up here. I am insanely proud of that piece, not necessarily because it’s all that amazing, but because never before had I transformed my writing from something I hated to something that so accurately reflected what I wanted it to be. It was the most gratifying, fulfilling experience I’ve had in a long time.

Writing has been staring me in the face since I was old enough to string words together, and it seems ludicrous that it took some innocuous words from a near-stranger to bring me this moment of clarity like DUH OBVIOUSLY I WANT TO WRITE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND PROBABLY EVEN IN THE AFTERLIFE AS LONG AS THERE ARE LAPTOPS IN HEAVEN (or wherever I’m going to end up, which is up for debate).

Only now comes the hard part: the questions laced with doubt.

Am I good enough?

How do I get started?

What would I even write?

I could never make a career out of writing, could I?

Does anyone care about what I have to say?

Perhaps the most pressing question of all is, “What about life after Stratejoy?” When I no longer have quarterlife crisis blogging to keep me happy, how do I keep my passion alive without reverting back to mindless blog posts about my weekends?

When the well of inspiration runs dry, how do I find a new well?

As long as I figure out how to answer this last question, I know I can be happy. Sure, I would love to get paid for my writing – to have the kind of job where I’m consumed not with corporate jargon but with the best way to phrase a sentence. But I accept that if this isn’t in the cards for me, as long as I can foray the “YES” feeling I get when I write Stratejoy posts into something else, I’ll be okay.

All I need to do now is figure out where to go from here.

 

** In college I actually made $300 by successfully submitting a story to Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV. It’s so cheesy that I am fully and completely embarrassed by it.

(Photo credit: CC Chapman)

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The Memory Keeper’s Granddaughter

posted 15th April 2012    Written by: Sarah    CATEGORY: All Posts, Family, Quarterlife Crisis, Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Grandma, me, and Kate at three months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sister, Megan, Kate at twelve months, and my Grandma.

For the third time that evening she asked me where I live.

You know where I live, Grandma.  Same place I’ve lived for a long time now.  With Dan and Kate.  The house with the black shutters?  Remember how my daffodils are coming up?  We talked about that.

My family moved to Virginia the summer before my 8th grade year.  We picked a house five minutes down the road from my Grandma.  She’d been a widower for a while by then, still living in a house much too big for one person.  But she kept herself busy, worked a couple of hours a week.

Middle school was a rough time for me.  I was the new girl with a mouth full of braces and curvier than my narrow-hipped friends.  And my parents and I got into it with the usual teenage angst stuff that ended with me slamming my door and it coming off the hinges as punishment.

But I had an ally.

My Grandma Rosemary, my mom’s mom, and for whom I get the Rosemary in Sarah Rosemary, became my confidant.

I’d call her up when my mom refused to buy me the latest and greatest jeans, and she’d drive on over in her white Subaru and take me shopping and out to lunch.

After school I’d walk over and she’d pour me a diet Coke and offer me her signature, baked-to-a-crisp, chocolate oatmeal cookies while I whinned about mean middle school girls and how my parents didn’t understand me.

When I got my driver’s license, she let me drive her all over town.  Whenever my parents said no because they were in a hurry, I knew I could count on my Grandma.  She’d hand over her keys without me asking and away we’d go.  She never cared where we went, hasseled me over my following distance, or braced herself when approaching a stop sign.

One time my parents were out of town, so my sister and I spent the night at my Grandma’s.  I needed to get up early for my morning shift at the vet, so I jumped into my parent’s van at the top of my Grandma’s curvy driveway.

It was dark.  I was a new driver.  Backing up was not my best thing.

Misjudging the path down the driveway, I veered too far to the left, smashing into a fire hydrant.

I slammed the van into park and got out to assess the damage.  I broke the tail light.  Bits and pieces of reflective red plastic littered the grass.

My Grandma padded down the driveway in her dog-chewed slippers and picked up the largest piece of tail light.  Maybe we can glue it back together she said.

She told me she’d take care of it, just to get back in the car and go onto work.  I spent the day in knots, wondering just how my parents planned to kill me.  When I got back to my Grandma’s house she said she had a plan.

This is how it’s going to go she said.  I’m going to call your dad and say I did it.

I was pretty sure letting my Grandma take the fall for me would rank me up there as one of the Worst Grandchildren in History, so I told her thanks, but no thanks, to let me face my parent’s wrath myself.

She nodded and started dialing my Dad’s number.  When he answered she put on her best gruff voice and said now Michael, Sarah has something to tell you, and you better not yell at her.  It’s not her fault.  She’s only 16.

I got in pretty big trouble for that broken tail light.  And I shelled $80 for the repair.  But my Grandma softened the blow.

But now, when I look into her eyes, I see symptons of the disease taking over her mind, her thoughts.  I repeat the same answers over and over again.  Calmly explain remember, we had to sell your car when she calls me up and asks what happened to her Subaru.  Print out a list of family members and friend’s names, phone numbers, and birthdays in size 100 font to tape up on her fridge.

My Grandmother’s 85.  But it feels like she left me years ago.  She gets frustrated and angry.  Upset with herself, my mother, me, the cashier at CVS.  Doesn’t understand this world we live in.

When I suffered through my mini-teenage crisis, my Grandma came to my rescue.  Now, at this quarterlife crisis stage, I can’t call her up to moan about feeling lonely in motherhood or complain about Dan’s travel schedule because I’d have to remind her who Dan is.

It’s almost as if we’re both moving through a life crisis, her at the end of her life and me, in so many ways, just beginning.  When I brace her for a hug, I wish her mind would come back and she’d be my confidant, help me through my QLC with her sage-y grandma-isms.  But I know she won’t.  So I’ll help her.  I’ll keep reminding her, repeating answers, filling those gaps in her memory to keep her spirit alive.

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