Just a Phase, Not a Crisis

There’s such pressure when returning to something like blogging that it feels like I should give an account for where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. Have I been writing, is something new in the works, etc etc. Surely the reason for this absence is nothing short of marvelous, so that I might emerge with brilliance and wisdom that would give merit to my disappearance.

I wish that were the case. I wish I could sit here and write—this, the first prose I’ve put to paper in six months, save for a handful of journal entries—and not feel the daunting, engulfing fear of trying again, maybe failing again, maybe admitting again that I got things wrong and had to step back, that I’ve wondered if any of this is for me or what exactly is for me anymore.

It feels like the bends, like I’ve been submerged and breathing through some artificial apparatus in the darkness of the water, finally hitting bottom and shooting up to the surface too quickly. Do I remember how to do this? It feels disorienting.

Earlier this year, in a moment of frustration and feeling like something had to change, I decided to quit my work-at-home writing job of a decade. I’d been thinking about it for a long time, longer than I care to admit. But after a weekend of soul searching and grieving a job that had given me so much flexibility when my kids were little, I emailed my boss to say it was time for me to move on, even though I had no idea what I’d be moving on to.

It’s one thing to champion change in other people’s lives, to get behind the idea of risk and reinvention, but it’s a wholly other thing to do it yourself. Especially when you’re not exactly young anymore and the stakes feel higher: the kids are getting older, you have a mortgage, retirement age is something you’re thinking about with more frequency, etc.

I had no idea what I was going to actually do or what it would feel like to return to a workplace again after so long. All I knew was I wanted to work part-time, in-person in a job that felt like it could become a career (as opposed to working at a favorite coffee shop, which was on the table for about five minutes). About six months ago, I started working for a nonprofit foundation planning fundraising events, doing communications, and writing grants, all of which have been so wonderfully challenging and wholly disorienting in their own right.

It’s all to easy to put on paper that hey, it all worked out. In some ways that’s true, but the adjustment has been so rough at times that I’ve bounced between feeling empowered, bawling my eyes out, and conceding to long swathes of time bingeing reality TV, sometimes all in the same day. All summer, my husband and I traded our kids back and forth after realizing that thirteen and ten are not quite old enough to handle being left home all day. My reading habit has slowed to a crawl, as have some of my other life-sustaining activities: writing (of course, especially publicly), seeing friends, exercise (especially yoga).

I’m still learning, I think. I’ve still got a lot to learn.

This year, I have written dozens of poems, many of which are so messy my attempts to revise them have confounded me. I pick them up a few times a week and make notes. I created an organizational system for revision, a kind of Kanban with manilla folders and now my office is filled with stacks of paper and manilla folders that litter the desk, the chair, the floor. Lately, trying to make sense of it all makes my head spin.

How many times a day is it normal to think, I don’t know how to do this? By last count, I’d say at least a dozen on a good day.

On the one hand, I keep wondering who I am, something I didn’t realize I’d still be contemplating in my forties. On the other, I notice myself doing something and think, Oh, there you are and feel comforted at the thought of simply being me.

I recently listened to a podcast about changing careers in midlife and heard a researcher describe this phase of life as a second puberty. He said not to think of it as a crisis because crisis implies it urgently needs resolution. Instead, he suggested, think of it as a phase, a shift from one place to another. When your child is going through puberty, you don’t call it a crisis. Midlife should be treated the same.

The overarching, resounding call seems to be toward gentleness in all things. Being gentle with ourselves, with our spouses and kids and extended family, with our colleagues and community members, with the grocery clerk and librarian. Exceeding and ever-expanding gentleness. The there-there, honey we all need as children—now it’s all I do.

Except that I’m the worst at being gentle on myself. I still gravitate toward holding myself to impossibly high standards or nothing at all. Thankfully, going back to work at an office has broken some of it down. Instead of the work-at-home hustle where every minute counts, I have had long, meandering conversation with coworkers and found myself in meeting after meeting, some productive and others not so much. Instead of every minute counts, it’s been more of an ebb and flow—work then rest then work again. The rhythm of it feels good.

When it comes to writing, the question of why haven’t I gotten there yet still haunts me because the path I’m on is where I thought I’d be many years ago, when I was a young, wide-eyed poet with big dreams. I always thought the dots would simply connect themselves and my writer-self would figure it out. But now I’m asking myself where do I want to go now? I keep wrestling with that one.

The other day, on a whim, I looked up a photographer whose work I used to love back in the good old days of Flickr, before everyone on the internet was trying to make money and we were all just having fun. She took these beautiful film photographs of children with a large format camera and posted one every day until she announced she was headed toward an MFA in photography and all but disappeared. A quick Google search and I couldn’t find much about her or her work, especially not in the last three years. Her website domain expired, but the Flickr account, which hasn’t been updated since 2014, still exists.

And I think, why? Why did she stop posting and sharing her beautiful photographs? Why did she let her website lapse? Is she still taking photographs? I have no idea what she’s doing now, and all I can think is, all that talent wasted!

It’s thoughts like these that keep me awake at night.

Now I have the bends and the ongoing urge to write despite my uncertain future and I’m officially middle aged and so much of the work I did in the last decade feels like a waste and I’m wondering what on earth I’m doing. I’m sure this is all normal.

I just need to be gentle with myself, right? Just talk to myself like a dear, dear friend.

Dear self, dear friend, dear wounded heart among wounded hearts, I am here with you. I see you. I know you can’t see the path ahead but that’s no matter now. Look down to where your feet are planted. Look around and see what’s here. Your life is not words on paper or a photograph or any made thing. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Don’t lose heart. Your life is not over yet. What wisdom and experience can teach you is incalculable. You don’t have to be somebody out in the world to be somebody in your life.

Dear you, dear heart. More than anything you want to be seen and I see you. You want to be heard and I hear you. How many eyes or ears need to bear witness to your life. Perhaps just one. Perhaps just this. Hold on. You’re walking your own path. Let that be enough.