It’s funny how you can have this perception of yourself – you kind of know who you are, you know what you fill your days with – and after awhile, you don’t even really give much thought to how you fill your days, just that when you wake up you do x and then after that you do y, and when your brain needs a break from life’s heavy lifting you take a few minutes for a and when you need a smile you do b, and when life is challenging you and you’re not sure how much more you can take, c always helps.

You know this, right? Because it’s just second nature to you. You know you. Kinda. Sorta.

Until someone asks you, “Tell me about yourself. What do you do for fun?”

And you sputter.

And you stall.

“Uh? Fun? Um. Well, I work a lot. I like to be busy. So, I try to fill time with work type stuff.”

Maybe you stammer out a few more useless words and phrases and then the conversation will haunt you for a week. Why can’t I answer what do I like to do for fun? I do all kinds of fun stuff! Why did I not mention this? Or that?! What was I thinking?

And then, if you are anything like me, you will blog about it – as I’m doing now.

Someone once said to me, “Sarah, you are like a hummingbird. You are always moving.” It’s an apt descriptor – I choose to be busy. When I was a kid, my dad said often, “Bored people are boring people” and at the time I wanted to screech every time he said it (because dammit, I wasn’t boring! I just needed one of the grown up people TO ENTERTAIN ME FOR FIVE MINUTES), but as an adult, I have said it once or twice. I’m sure my kids hate it too.

Idle time makes me twitchy. I’m not good at relaxing. I like to fill my days. This is partly why summer is difficult for me – I have a lot more day to fill, and I have to plan it around two children that don’t necessarily share any interests. It’s tough.

But for fun? What do I like to do?

she is something altogether different, never just an ordinary girl*

I love exercise. I am not one of those people who grudgingly adds fitness to her day – I am one of those annoying people who doesn’t feel whole without it. I enjoy the challenge of pushing my muscles to fatigue. I am elated to shave a few seconds from my mile time. When I awake in the morning and my muscles ache from a tough workout the day before? Heavenly. I enjoy that. I employ the motto “break a sweat daily” – and it’s a good rule of thumb for me – not just for my body but for my mind. I process things better when my feet are moving. On a walk or a run, the staccato of my feet hitting the pavement is a metronome in my brain – and little nagging thoughts that have troubled me often have a way of working themselves out.

oh yeah, I think it’s obvious I also like to write

Writing has been a passion of mine since I was little. My dad once said that when I was quite young, I wrote a song about an old lady giving me a penny. I don’t remember it. I’m sure it would have been better than that Rebecca Black song, though. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t write – and it’s always been something that comes easily to me. While my style is just that – MY STYLE – and may not ever net me millions of dollars (or even dozens of dollars), I find it soothing.

I love blank books with blank pages and the promise and possibility of what those pages might eventually hold. These days, I’m more inclined to write at a keyboard than longhand, and I no longer have any ambition of writing some bestselling novel, but sometimes I wonder if I could do it. Do I want to? I don’t know.

This is a fear of mine – turning things I love into obligations. Does that take away from the joy you receive? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.

I pictured us at the end of time taking pictures of nothing

Nearly three years ago, I signed up to do a photographic 365 project – taking a photo a day – and a new love was born. I found that not only was it something that brought me a tremendous amount of joy – but I find that the more I’m behind the camera, the more I am able to refine my eye.

And while I have been fearful that turning writing into an obligation might dull my love for it – I’m taking a huge breath and making an effort to turn my love of photography into a future of sorts, hoping that I can find a way to finally do as I hoped this year: do work I am passionate about.

and you’ll say girl did you kick some butt and I’ll say I don’t really remember

But it’s not just the work, and the writing, and the hiding behind the camera and the sweating out each day.

It’s the love of music and the decision at thirty(coughcough) years of age to learn something new and when given a guitar, take on the challenge and trying to learn it and becoming okay with, You know, I may never be great at this but learning it is so much fun. Something about learning something new – suddenly, I hear the music differently. I’m picking out the guitar in each song, listening to what is happening, how did they do that, why did they do that, and even if I can never do that, well, at least I know something is happening, and I understand it and I know why.

I dance in my kitchen sometimes when no one is looking – or with my daughters. Sometimes they laugh with me and join me until the dog goes crazy because what the hell is going on in his kitchen, is someone hurt, are they fighting? Silly dog, after a year, doesn’t quite understand dance.

I sing along with the radio. I sing off key a lot – sometimes jokingly, especially if I know I can’t sing it well. But sometimes I am okay. I have music genes. A little bit, anyway.

I bake cookies. Lots of cookies. I have a passion for sugar, and making things that taste good and making people happy with the things that I make. Especially cheesecake. Cheesecake seems to really make people happy.

I send cards and letters. Real ones. Hand written ones. Not as often as I should, and not for every occasion. But when I remember, it makes me feel good to send them. In this lovely technical world, it’s easy to forget the joy of finding a handwritten envelope in the mailbox.

I collect Sharpies.

I do Sudoku puzzles (slowly and badly, and in pencil).

I take bubble baths with too hot water that turns my legs pink.

I go out for coffee a lot. I curl up on the couch with magazines. I wander through bookstores and touch the books, lifting, inspecting, reading.

time expands and then contracts when you are spinning in the grips of someone who is not an ordinary girl

I’m not sure why I couldn’t describe what I like to do or who I am. And surely, it’s a good thing because when given thought, I end up rambling and explaining and clarifying and telling you just who I am. Does it matter? Hm. Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s more to me than work. There’s so much I love to do, that makes me…me. And sometimes it’s worth digging deep into it, if not for you or the next person that asks, than for myself.

* These headings are song lyrics. Bonus points if you know them. I might even send you a handwritten letter if you do.

I’ve now been off work for nearly three weeks. It’s been an interesting time, for sure – and admittedly in the first week or so, I floundered. A lot. I miss working. I do.

A friend once said that I’m like a hummingbird – constant motion – and while that may not always be true physically (this 90+ degree weather is showing how truly awesome I am at holding the sofa down), my brain is always churning. I am focusing on photography, I am focusing on some possible contract work with my old employer (oh yes), I am focusing on an upcoming interview (networking FTW), I am focusing on any of the 101 other things I have going on at any given time.

Even when I “had a job”, I had several other things going on – partly in anticipation that someday, my job wouldn’t be there and I would want options.

I don’t believe in being bored.

I am not bored.

The end of the school year events for my children alone are nearly a full time job (including the field trip for Pumpkin yesterday that ended up being a HIKING TRIP THROUGH THE WOODS. Uh. I didn’t know that when I went).

And after nearly three weeks, yesterday evening, I was asked “What did you DO today?”

As if I did nothing.

As if it was such a foreign concept, being home all day. As if I spent the day eating bon bons, catching up on daytime television and dancing on the sofa. Somehow, I felt the need to explain how I spent my day, explain how I went from A to B to C and back to A again. How, having a day with my children at school isn’t a “day off” when I spend three hours of it ON THE FIELD TRIP WITH THE KIDS!

It’s this notion that people think that I’m enjoying myself – that I’m sitting at home, loving every minute of it, that I’m relaxed and calm.

Reality? I hate this. My already churning brain is churning even more to keep my days busy. With no work obligation, I could be sunning myself outside while reading a book right now – odds are, that won’t happen (not even with sunscreen).

It’s been… tough… having to adjust my thinking from “I have a job” to “I need a job” – and while I have several really amazing things going on, filling my time, making me feel productive and useful – I haven’t truly followed my to-do list in a few days, and I feel sort of aimless.

Who knew.

What am I doing all day?

I am thinking about ways to fill my day. I am thinking about big projects and dreams and how to translate the things I love to do into a fulfilling career. I think about finding the nerve to maybe focus on photography for awhile. I think about how I don’t know how to interview anymore, and how do I prove to people who don’t know me that I am worth something. And sometimes I think about Wheat Thins, because let’s be real here – this is me we’re talking about.

My driver’s license says they’re brown.

Sometimes  they are green.

Sometimes they are hazel.

Sometimes they have funny gold flecks in them.

And sometimes they really are brown.

The older I get, the more they change – the more I am surprised when I look in the mirror what color I see in my reflection.

Back in the day, I loved the song “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison (right? Because my eyes were UNDENIABLY brown). But now? I mean, shoot… that doesn’t entirely apply anymore.

Someone needs to write a song for the girl with brownish-greenish-hazelish-flecky eyes.

Like, pronto.

Oh Sarah, seeing as how you don't actually have a job right now, maybe you should LEARN TO MAKE YOUR OWN FREAKING COFFEE?

And just as quickly as the previous chapter came to a close, the page turned and another began.

Begun? Began? Whatever. You didn’t come here for the grammar. Unless you did, in which case… I’m so sorry.

After two weeks of what I can only describe as an emotional roller coaster featuring much crying and hand wringing and “OHMYGODWHATAMIGOINGTODONOW”s, my last day of work arrived Friday with minimal fanfare. I woke up, I got dressed, got the kids on the bus, went to an appointment, went for coffee (uh, venti. When you lose your job, it’s a venti-day), then had time to spare so I puttered around Target before leaving to get to my 10:30 appointment.

Once I arrived? The manager of my department was… get this… LATE.

Let me tell you, when you’ve spent two weeks feeling sad about the end of an era and you actual sob real Oprah ugly-cry tears when you log off your work laptop for the last time, and you take a picture of the sign outside your former office building (oh yes I did), and THEN THEY ARE LATE FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT?

Um, it’s easy to take that sadness and that last littlest bit of mourning and think to yourself, I think I’m done now. I’m over this. Let’s get this shizz done and get on with it.

And when he arrived – nearly twenty minutes late – I was already over it. I didn’t (as I so many times feared I would) cry during the meeting. I dotted the i’s, crossed the t’s, signed what needed to be signed, gave instruction about things that needed to get done and how. Yes, even after I’ve been let go, I still want to be sure things get done. I’d like to say that I was badass and was like, “Figure it out yourselves, yo!”… but, that’s not me. There’s a bit of ownership over the work I’ve done – and letting it go was difficult. While I’d love for them to realize EVENTUALLY just how much I truly rock – they will figure things out and find their way and what has to get done will get done somehow and that’s not mine to worry about any longer.

When I was finally done, when every topic for discussion had been exhausted, I walked out the door. The gray gloomy morning, the clouds that had been hanging so heavy in the sky, they started lifting as I walked to my car. With each step I took, more blue sky peeked through the gloom and I thought to myself, “Self. This is what some people might consider symbolism. Take note.”

Then, I hit my favorite trail and spent an hour in the sun walking around the lake with my iPod on and music in my ears and sun on my face.

I don’t know what’s ahead. While I certainly don’t want this to turn into the “Oh, look, I still don’t have a job” blog – it seems to be what is most prevalent in my life at the moment. Today was my first real “unemployed” day and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to spend all this time because let me tell ya, I’m not going to start loving cleaning just because there’s nothing better to do.

I challenged myself in the new year that I was going to find work that challenges me, work that I am passionate about. And then, I promptly stayed put at that job because it was (and is) what I know.

That’s no longer an option.

I’m no longer sad.

I am, however, really bored. Already.

Three days left.

Tonight after dinner, I went for a drive to the store. I wanted saltines because I had forgotten to buy them earlier – I’m forgetting everything this week. My mind is scrambled and I am having a hard time rubbing two thoughts together and coming up with anything semi-coherent. I was in the car, driving, sunglasses on and found my eyes filled with tears.

The crying over a job I don’t even like has been the most surprising thing  about getting laid off.

I pushed my sunglasses out of the way to wipe a tear out of my eye and not a quarter mile down the road I realize… I don’t think I can totally see. I propped my sunglasses up and realize, yep, there’s my contact lens STUCK TO MY EYE LID. I pulled over to dig through my purse hoping to find some eye drops to clean up my contact and pop it back into my eye.

No dice.

I got the contact back in anyway (It wasn’t easy and I imagine I now have all kinds of car bacteria in my eyeball).

That stopped the crying, though. For that moment.

I have friends who are very excited about this time for me – clearly people, uh, less resistant to change than I am. I have possibilities and I have potential. There will be opportunities and this is my chance to find work that I am passionate about – work that makes me happy.

I don’t know how many times I said (and not entirely in jest) that my job was sucking my soul out — heh, I can blog that now that I don’t have to worry about getting fired – so, I should be relieved. I should be grateful. I should be doing the happy dance (Anyone remember the tv show Perfect Strangers and the “Dance of Joy”? I mean – I should be doing that!).

In my mind, I think it’s just a matter of getting through the next few days. Of getting past that mental road block – I need to physically close the door on this chapter – and then, THEN, I will feel some of this excitement that other people feel for me already. This adventure, this moment, this time.

***

There’s a crack in the gutter where a flower grows
Reminding me that everything is possible
Yeah reminding me that nothing is impossible
You gotta live for the one that you love you know
You gotta love for the life that you live you know

Singin’ hey, hey, hey no matter how life is today
There’s just one thing that I got to say
I won’t let another moment slip away
I say hey, hey, hey no matter how life is today
There’s just one thing that I got to say
I won’t let another moment slip away

- Michael Franti & Spearhead, “Hey Hey Hey”

I feel like a broken record sometimes when the things that have been on my mind most frequently are, Okay, what next? Now what? When am I going to get that resume written? Oh my god, does this mean I have to figure out LinkedIn?

I really don’t want to figure out LinkedIn.

At the beginning of 2011, I said to myself, “Self, this is the year you find work that you are passionate about.” While I am and always have been passionate about receiving a paycheck, admittedly the work I have been doing has not been fulfilling in a long time. And sure – it was once – when I was working on projects I felt I could be proud of – when I was accomplishing things that not just any hobo off the street could do. Those were the days when I felt pretty proud of myself and liked my job.

But, it’s been awhile since I have had a burst of, “WHOA. Yeah. You just did something REALLY. AMAZING.”

I miss that.

And so that is what I seek – to make a difference, to find work that makes me happy, to work with people that I truly like. I need autonomy – and I bristle under micromanagement (which is why working from home has been a good thing for me – I’m motivated, for sure – and I can get things done. I get things done even faster without being directed on every. little. detail.).

Is that job out there?

I think it is. I’m sure it is.

So it’s funny, right? Yesterday I was ina mild panic over who would watch my kids this summer – how I would get work done – and then hours later my phone rings and it’s my boss and the human resources guy calling to tell me, “Oh hi, Sarah, as you know the economy has been blahblahblahblah and people haven’t been buying morewordsyoudon’tcareabout and we have had to do a lot of evaluation blahblahblah. Your position has been eliminated.”

And it was then I kind of went into auto-pilot for the remainder of the phone call – thinking to myself, I will NOT allow these men to hear me cry. I will not show emotion.

In the end, they must have thought it was the oddest lay-off call ever – who was this perky woman with her “mmhmmms” and “I see” and “okays”? Um. Me.

Two weeks left, severance, and “We’ll be sending you a separation agreement – sign it and send it back, but don’t send it back too soon, you should read it and really think about it and feel free to have it reviewed.”

I have  worked for this company for nearly ten years and I have escaped the chopping block of layoffs more times than I can even recall. My entire department was obliterated while I was on maternity leave with Pumpkin – the ENTIRE DEPARTMENT – and I was saved only by dumb luck and the desire to only return to work part-time when my twelve weeks of leave were up.

My feelings are a bit jumbled right now.

Clearly, there is part of me that is mad as hell. I mean, ten years, y’all – that’s a LONG TIME to dedicate to a company, its visions and its brands. Part of me is bitter. Part of me is smug (“No one will EVER do this job as well as I did.”). Part of me  is relieved – I mean, did I want to do this forever – this kind of forces me to put on my big girl panties – face fear and make change.

While I am mad, sad and COMPLETELY TERRIFIED of being unemployed – and while this job was so far from perfect – I do hold on to the gratitude that even if it was a less than perfect job, they afforded me the opportunity to be home with my children while making a paycheck (albeit a reduced one). I know that many parents don’t have that kind of luck – and it was a blessing for me to get to be so present in my daughters’ lives daily, while also having that bit of my career to hold on to.

I am grateful for that. I have been tremendously lucky to be able to attend field trips and take my kids to doctor’s appointments. I hate those damn snow days, but fortunately, working from home meant that even if I was a grump about them, I was able to make them work. I haven’t had to set an alarm clock to drag myself into an office in over five years.

The unknown terrifies me. I’m so scared right now. I have the world in front of me and it’s time, soon, to figure out what’s next. I’m afraid there won’t be a next – I’m afraid of what I’ll find or what I won’t. Me and uncertainty? We’re not BFFs and this feeling I have in my chest when I try to think about where do I go from here? I really DO NOT LIKE that feeling.

I have been so blessed over the past (not even) 24 hours. The love and encouragement from my family and friends (including my mom taking me for a very therapeutic pedicure this morning). The “you can do its” and the hugs and the support have meant a tremendous deal to me.

Hours after I hung up the phone with HR yesterday, I found my fortune from yesterday’s fortune cookie (I’m kind of addicted to fortune cookies) sitting on my desk.

Somehow, some cookie fates knew. And they got it right.

And how you too can make a pest of yourself in YOUR VERY OWN COMMUNITY!

It all started on a walk on an autumn day. I walk a lot. Sometimes here, sometimes there. Sometimes through the neighborhoods around me. Sometimes on a treadmill.

On this particular day, I was walking through my town and I spotted this sign.

I’ll give you a moment to spot the problem.

Yeah. Do you see it?

No, it’s not just that the pastor gets prime parking – though this was a factor that bothered A LOT of people when I posted it on Facebook. Many people took issue with the sentiment behind this sign.

Me? I took issue with the fact that someone made this sign. Someone who didn’t know the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE made this sign. And someone who didn’t know the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE bought this sign and hung it.

Well, two years later…. that sign remained. And it remained uncorrected. Every time I would walk past it, I would bite my lip and say to myself, “HOW DO THEY NOT KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS THING?”

It bothered me so much that one day before my walk, I scrawled “you’re” on a post-it with a Sharpie and stuck the pad in my pocket so I could peel off the Post-It and stick it to the sign when I walked by.

I know what you’re thinking, and really I DO have better things to worry about – but tell me this: this would bother you too, right? Walking past this sign, having that error jump out at your face every time you saw it? I wondered if the church had even noticed – and if they noticed WHY they didn’t care JUST HOW RIDICULOUS THIS SIGN WAS.

*sigh*

I slapped on the Post-It and walked away. The next day, through heavy rain… the pink paper remained  stuck to the sign.

And the next day.

Finally, a few days later, I was driving by and not only was the Post-It missing, the sign looked a little different.

I saw the sign, with its grammatical faux-pas hidden by paint, and I laughed.

I did. Pumpkin asked, “Why are you laughing?”

I didn’t even know how to explain it – because while the whole thing was a petty little grammatical goof – the fixed sign feels like a victory.

While I wouldn’t necessarily equate this victory with fighting crime, bringing down a crack house, or even cracking down on jaywalking, I am still pretty sure my community is a better place to live in without that sign and its glaring error.

Okay, maybe not for everyone else… but it is for me.

Sometimes I think it was easier to write a blog post before I knew anyone was reading. When I was just standing at the top of some virtual mountain shouting into the air around me, never knowing if anyone would hear me – sometimes it was easier to put my heart on display, to share fears , to truly open up.

So, sometimes it’s easier to not say the things that are weighing you down. It’s easier to talk about music and books and that funny thing my kids said.

But you’re here, and you’re reading and I’m still the me who likes to write – no, needs to write - and sometimes I wonder where to put the words that hover under the surface. I’m grateful that my words aren’t being swallowed into nothing.

My brother was admitted to the hospital last night.

Feverish, incoherent, heart racing.

This isn’t the first time he’s been to the hospital in recent years. There’s a routine to these matters, it seems. Something happens, my mom finds a way to get him to the hospital – she calls me, or texts me – I’m then charged with telling my dad somehow. After all these years, they still don’t get along very well.

Then we wait.

And his myriad of health concerns mean that a little thing can be little or it can mean a week in the hospital. And you never know.

So, while we’ve fallen into routines (“Oh he’s in the hospital again”), there’s that voice in the back of my head every time that says What if this isn’t routine? What if this isn’t the same as last time? What if…

It’s scary.

My brother’s health problems and difficulties have prevented that friendship everyone always talked about (“You just wait and see, when you’re adults, you will be good friends!”). Mentally, he’s younger than my children – it doesn’t make for easy friendships. But he was around since before I was born – and someday he won’t be – and that’s scary.

None of us are promised anything – we each have the moment we’re in and we’re not guaranteed a long life where we might die in our sleep in our 95th year. Just now, this moment, here.

While I stand on familiar ground, while this is a road I’ve seen before – I may even know the intricacies of this roads twists and turns – because yes, our family has traveled it – I am still very afraid of what is ahead.

I haven’t heard anything from my family yet this morning – and in the realm of “no news is good news” – that is a relief almost.

So, we move forward with the day with one step in front of the other – hoping good things, wishing good things. Hoping for another routine stay that will blend into the background of the many before it.

***

The title of this post is from Ingrid Michaelson’s “Breakable”:
And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys