┏┓
┃┃╱╲ in
┃╱╱╲╲ this
╱╱╭╮╲╲house
▔▏┗┛▕▔ we
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Rest in bed with cat
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One month ago, I had, let’s call it, a near death, in my home office, that landed me in the hospital with blood pressure in the 180/120 range. For the unfamiliar, that BP is a pitstop on the way to stroke city (a malady that has struck many people in my family)! I was and am still (thanks be to G) pregnant as hell.
Long story short, I got absolutely benched from doing anything (most notably for me, work) in order to keep my blood pressure down and the other severe preeclampsia symptoms at bay, so that the baby can get born as late as possible. I am incredibly grateful that I was able to take this time away from work so that hopefully I won’t bite it and my child won’t either.
People – doctors, friends, other people’s parents (for some reason) – keep asking me what I’ve been doing to occupy myself for the past month. They ask this question hopefully, like I’ll reveal to them I have some hidden interest, talent or Twitch stream. The truth is I’ve been doing absolutely nothing. I’ve been sitting in my bed, with my cat. Ever the rule follower, when I was told by doctors to rest in bed, I resolved to do exactly and only that.
But, that’s not entirely true. I’ve also been obsessing about…not working. When I sleep, I dream about projects that I left unfinished. Projects that I, for the first time in my life, was forced to drop with so little ceremony that I’m shocked that nothing…happened when I stopped contributing to these projects. If a tree falls in the forest but I’m not there to make myself feel guilty about not doing as much work as I should, does it make a podcast? Etc.
I’ve spent a significant amount of time on LinkedIn just to feel something.
It’s gotten a little bleak.
I am a boss. I was a boss. I don’t say that phrase because I have a sparkly bumper sticker that has the phrase “I am a boss” on it (because I do not know how to drive, and also that would be despicable). I say that because that is what I’ve done, and what I have been doing, as a manager in audio and podcasting for the past eight years. I manage people, I manage projects, I manage anxieties (mine and others’), I manage to get podcasts into the world, sometimes. Truly, the most important part of my work, though, is the people I work with.
It has been hard to feel so separate from the most meaningful aspect of my job for the past year. And, to cap this time period off with a total cold turkey removal from this work, from the meaning I *ahem* imbued in that work? It’s unsettling.
A lot of us in the U.S. may be going through something similar right now – a kind of crisis about what work means from an identity perspective, now that we’re about to return to “the old ways.” A return to the office means a return to a version of ourselves that many of us left (unceremoniously) in March 2020. This isn’t new news. Many people and places have covered this shift. Some links I’ve enjoyed…
· “The Great Talent Reshuffling of 2021 Has Begun” by Hunter Walk
· “Welcome to the Yolo Economy” by Kevin Roose
· “The Professional Women Who Are Leaning Out” by Olga Khazan
· “Dream Jobs are a Myth and More Wisdom from ‘An Ordinary Age’” by Rainesford Stauffer
These articles suggest that not everyone is dealing with this shift in work and personal identity by clinging on to the past with their cold dead hands. Hm…
So, what’s an alternate way to deal with this shift?
A popular answer – both on the internet, and elsewhere – is to “care less.” That is a very cool suggestion that is absolutely not doable for me and for others who are rigor-mortising their way through this shift.
Okay, but how does one care less? “Set boundaries!” Okay, so just say you won’t do stuff? But what about the guilt? “Don’t feel guilty!” Okay. But what if you’re constitutionally guilty? “Don’t be!”
“It’s just a job,” they say. That’s true. Whatever job you’re doing is just a job. But, what if you’ve transmogrified class anxiety into a constant striving that’s led to some sort of level of niche LinkedIn success, but still tend to a deep emptiness that must be filled by answering many emails? What does one do with that … chasm?
On my next Livejournal, I mean newsletter…
“Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss”: On the truly effed promise of Lean In and what to do when you’ve swallowed that promise like a multivitamin for the past decade.