This week is the week when I should have been welcoming nervous, adult education students back into my classroom for my 10th year of teaching ESL. I should be taking their first day of school pictures and doing get to know you activities. I should be.
Instead, I am jobless and directionless, a woman wandering around the halls of middle-age, not quite sure what she is looking for.
I joked with Alex this week that if someone asks me what I do, I’m going to tell them that I’m a professional putter.
Not like a golf putter. If I start taking up golf, then someone call a doctor because there is something very wrong with me.
No, I’m a putter, like I put things places. I guess I could have spelled it ‘puter’, but that word would be pronounced ‘pooter,’ which sounds like I fart for a living and I’m not ready for that either. Maybe someday.
I’m spending my days putting things in places and usually putting them somewhere else later. I put the clothes on The Baby. I put the stuff in the backpack. I put the backpack and The Baby in the car. I put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I put the clean dishes away. I put the clothes in the laundry. I put the clean clothes away. I put things on the grocery list and put myself in the car to go put things in my cart. I put The Baby back in the car after school. I put the stuff in the backpack away. I put the Baby in a bath and put him in pajamas. After I put food into him, I put him in bed.
I’m a professional putter.
And while I recognize that I’m wildly privileged to have this problem, it is still a problem. My days are just a constant shuffling of clean and dirty things and people. Every task feels the same.
I’m used to being a doer. A person with a plan, who knows where she’s going and has mapped all the contingencies. I like this about myself. I have done some really cool things, things that I’m proud of, because I don’t sit well. I spoke in front of Dallas City Council about the decriminalization of weed. I’ve been on the local news. I did forty things before I turned forty. I’m writing a book! That little tickle at the back of my brain that says, “You should be doing something! Go forth and be a tryhard!” has been with me for my whole life, probably. So, this very quiet pace of life right now feels off-putting. (pun intended)
I’m just…off.
And it’s not just the unemployed part of me that is aimless. I feel aimless in most parts of my life right now, which is really unusual. I’m used to trusting my gut and moving forward with gusto. Strong, confident, self-assured, a real go-getter. But my gut has recently put up a “CLOSED FOR LUNCH” sign with no return time and my heart and my head don’t know what to do without it. Do I call that person or do I leave it alone? Do I look for a temp job or do I find something part-time? Do I find a place to volunteer? Do I take a nap or mop the floors? Alex asked me what I wanted for dinner on Sunday and I tearfully wailed, “I DON’T KNOW.”
I don’t know. And I’m not used to not knowing.
I think it’s the evangelical part of my DNA that likes having things laid out nicely. Black and white. Do this. Don’t do that. God, that was so comforting. I haven’t identified as evangelical in over a decade but that desire for order and structure and a plan seems to have become a load-bearing part of my personality. If I remove it, it feels like it will all come tumbling down.
My therapist thinks this period of discomfort will be good for me, of course. “Take this time to be curious about why you’re always on the move and just sit with feeling lost. Let it teach you something,” she told me, as I put my head in my hands and groaned.
I really don’t want to, but I’m going to try. I’m going to try to sit in the feeling of being lost without flailing around looking for something, anything!, to do. If I do it long enough, maybe I can figure out how to separate my sense of self from this bottomless need to do anything. Maybe I can be enough, just being myself.
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