This morning is an exercise in patience. I've been negotiating for 4 days with a gal I've never met to drive to Joshua Tree. She's part of the group of friends driving down there this week for climbing.
She's gonna be an hour late, and so I'm zipping my lip, because I'm often the one that's late, and people have been accommodating & gracious to me in the past. Instead I'm using this time to write - always a good thing! And take my time with breakfast & packing the rest of the truck; it's nice to be relaxed.
Relaxation has eluded me in these last weeks. I haven't been getting good sleep for, truth be told, about 6 weeks now. The entire month of October was a joke for rest...
The result is my concentration and focus at work has plummeted. I'm so exhausted that I can't actually get to sleep at night. I have no drive or desire to go to work. It dawned on my the other day, that this is probably burnout.
So what has lead me to this point? What has lead me to snap at small things at work, and sacrifice sleep & self-care for my job? It's a fear that the truth will come out to my boss: I just don't want to be there anymore. And it's not because the job sucks or whatever, it's because I want to be close to my mom. I miss her, and I worry about her.
Now that the holiday season is here, my yearning to make sure she's ok has become quite strong. Truly it's a miracle of the 12-steps that I can even say this today. For many years, my relationship with my mom was estranged.
The illusion I put myself under all these months, has been removed. While trying to honor the experience of my old sponsor, I'm not making any major moves or decisions in my life til the 12 steps are completed. However, that means I'm living a lie, the lie that I really care about my job or what goes on here. Fact is: I don't. I care about how her physical therapy appointment went today. I care about whether my brother's feelings have come back in his hands & feet yet. I care about whether my mom got through her chemo week alright.
I don't care about whether the deals I'm supposed to do get completed on time, or whether we get a meeting with so-and-so, or whether the leads are coming into our portal system or not. As ungrateful as it sounds, I don't care if I work at this job anymore.
Despite these feelings, there are lots of promises of good things about my work. I missed out on a promotion, I got promised a payraise that didn't happen, I got promised an assistant that hasn't materialized, and I got reemed when I snapped at someone by email, even though a different person snapped at me a few days earlier and my boss did squat with that information.
These factors have lead to a deep dissatisfaction. Despite my best efforts & tools of the 12-step program, I'm in a funk about my work that feels pretty heavy & choke-holding. No matter what happens there, the point is I'm far away from my family, and they are dying. It's no good at all.
Tears are being shed, sighs are being breathed. And as I turn to friends and family for help, the message I get is, "Trust". Trust in a power greater than myself, in an entity that flows through the universe undetected by my blunt senses.
It's scary, it's hard, it's uncomfortable, but trying to control my circumstances is futile, and only causes me misery.
I'm not sure what the action steps will be, and I don't need to know them. But, there are options out there for me. I do have choices. I can choose whether to tell my boss or people at work about this deep longing in my heart, to see if there are options for me while maintaining my employment. Or I can start looking for work back in Chicago, or whatever.
For now, I'm gonna keep letting the tears fall. As I embark on the 8-10 hour roadtrip to Joshua Tree, I'm not going to deny my feelings anymore, and pretend I don't miss them. I'm not going to deny my anger about the injustice of the whole matter. I'm not going to deny my resentment at having to go through all this and how it sucks.
But, I'm also going to give thanks, for what the day offers. I'm going to celebrate the successes we have. I'm going to revel in the beautiful landscape as we drive by, and stay open-hearted to the gal coming over despite her very human failings.
As I'm typing this, the program "To The Best of Our Knowledge" is playing on the radio. The show is about the troops coming home from Iraq. We all have so much to be thankful for this holiday season. A tremendous amount of families will be celebrating the Season without their loved ones. At least my mom & brother are still alive. That alone is worth dropping on my knees and giving thanks for right now. It could be way worse.
I hope you'll listen to the
program, as it was so powerful, I cried. Even if I can't find a connect to God for myself, I can pray for those families, for their healing, and the healing of our nation as well as the nation of Iraq. Both of our countries' collective unconscious has suffered tremendously. All things considered, the crap at my job seems much smaller now. Thank you Wisconsin Public Radio...
