I’m technically working and living my dream life right now.  I sought to work from home, to have the freedom to do the things I wanted to do as far as taking care of myself, my family, and my own projects.  I sought time freedom in general, the ability to create my own schedule so I could create the life I wanted. I knew there were facets of my life I had to work on—no one is perfect and I’ve more than shared enough about those struggles here (and will continue to share)—and I knew I needed more breathing room to do it.  The life I was living before was unsustainable and I had achieved the level of leadership I wanted with the intention of going higher only to realize that it didn’t feel good and I was quite literally killing myself.  I realized that the leadership I sought in that field was the result of me trying to control the situations around me so I could have the time I wanted.  I ended up buried under other people’s shit and navigating through crap that never should have existed in the first place—so extra work and time away from the things I needed to focus on and then still having to address those things as well.  That level of leadership was all about babysitting and volleying tons of emotion and energy and solving other people’s problems.  There were parts of that I loved, truly, because I did have INCREDIBLE employees but it was apparent on many levels that the ideas I had that would support my way of life would not be supported in that environment.

With that being said, I stepped down from that because an opportunity came my way, and I want to be clear before I go further that I am SO incredibly grateful I made that choice and I wouldn’t change the fact that I did.  I have an amazing boss and a wonderful team surrounding me.  I also want to be clear that (spoiler) I’m aware the issues I’m about to discuss mainly come from my own head and an unfamiliarity and discomfort with uncertainty/lack of clarity.  There’s still something off in this though.  Like, I know that adjusting to a new life is disorienting and I know that I’m irritated with myself because I have to keep adjusting even with all of these things coming my way.  I struggle with doing the work and then it pivots because of conversations that happened without me.  I struggle with being expected to do the work and not having a say in how it gets done but at the same time having all the freedom in the world to choose but not being sure how to execute.  Life is this weird mix of discipline and freedom and you can’t have one without the other but how do you garner discipline in a system with no real rules?  For a task oriented mind I keep throwing tasks on myself and trying to find approval for it.  The more I check off the list the better I feel but the more that comes in.  The mind still has to shift and reprioritize every few minutes of every day and it’s tough and I nearly lost my shit this week because a single project shifted direction 3 separate times even after getting the group to agree. 

In expressing my frustration about that confusion at work, it hit me that it’s that confusion that’s permeated all facets of my life.  Personally, I’m pissed that people were never that open about the struggles of middle age.  Like, they don’t tell you what it’s like to navigate growing children developing their own personalities/identities with aging parents/relatives and reconciling their demons while they face their ailments/regrets whatever it may be.  They don’t tell you where our own lives fit in because, at this age, we too are facing hormonal and emotional shifts, we too are now dealing with our own aging and facing our habits, and asking what we want to do because we can see the clock ticking from both ends.  We too are dealing with the shift in identity as we move from “mom of young children” to “our children are no longer babies” and the people (our parents) we looked up to are going to be leaving us at some point so it’s the feeling of loss, again on both sides of the spectrum.  Our entire lives are shifting and we don’t know where to look to get that stability back because we don’t know what to focus on first.  We know what needs to be done but we don’t know where to get started.  So, for me, great, I opened the door to the life I wanted and I allowed some other shit to flood in (I’m human), but what is the most important thing? I see the things I can do something about and get so PISSED that I do nothing.  The balance already feels so delicate as far as choosing what we want to experience and all the while time is moving and there is nothing that can be done.  We want to do it all but we now realize we can’t and it’s terrifying.

Is this some kind of petty princess story where we’re miserable in getting everything we want?  Not really.  The truth is there are psychological traumas related to huge shifts and open time with no direction.  I’m not necessarily talking idle hands crap, I’m talking more of the fact that there are things we want to engage in but our mind blocks us from moving on any of them because, instead of seeing the beauty in the choices, we feel the overwhelm of trying to do it all.  They say the grass isn’t always greener (that’s true) but they never tell you what it’s like to reconstruct the lawn you have.  It’s still tending to the life you have but tearing it apart for something new and that requires some planning and a lot of clarity so when distraction comes in, or when plans change mid-build, it can really fuck with our heads.  Suddenly we question who we are, what we need, what we’ve done with our lives, what we can do with our time left, and the world feels like it’s spinning too fast with the rug ripped out from under us.  I felt like I was losing my mind (still do) as the pressure has gotten to be too much.  Wanting people to think I was competent, that I wasn’t a flake that I knew what I was doing when all the while they were witnessing me flailing, failing, and falling all over the place—it felt humiliating and frustrating and confusing.  I got angry at the confusion and was told that it isn’t about control. But the truth is, for me, these were legitimately all controllable things so why the hell was this still going off the rails?  It made no sense.

Short answer is I still have no fucking clue why my brain decided to take a nose dive in its function and create the ever-failing scenario.  Now don’t get me wrong, there were real mistakes being made both at work and at home and they pissed me off because I was concerned about making myself look like an ass and not having the chance to do it again—I didn’t want to blow this chance at creating this life I’ve said I wanted for so long.  The longer version is that I’m scared for so many reasons and on some level still don’t’ feel like I’ve earned this life.  I feel like I haven’t done enough but I have so many blessings but they aren’t quite what I was looking for so I feel guilty for it so I over compensate to look a certain way and prove I earned it, prove I know what I’m doing yet I know I’m still going to lose everything anyway so is it even worth it?  Like, we literally all lose everything in the end because we can’t take it with us when we go so is this the right way to live my life anyway.  The choices don’t need to feel that heavy, and after a full on meltdown over the condition of my home/career/life choices along with some wallowing in a drink or two and some pizza and ice cream, I woke up differently.  I realized that I would NEVER tell someone going through this the things that have gone through my head.  I’d give them grace and listen and tell them everything they feel is totally reasonable and understandable and that it hasn’t even been a full year in this change.  That no one is responsible for knowing and being it all and really, the fact that they’re here like this after all that shit is amazing.  So I’m telling myself that now.  I’m going to focus on one thing at a time, drink my water, breathe, and think.  Life is hard and I have no obligation to do it “better” than anyone else.  The laws of humanity apply to all of us.  So in the face of fantastic change, we can accept it is still overwhelming even if we asked for it.  The sea doesn’t stay stormy forever, we just need to stay the course until it smooths out.  We will always find our way.