Hello!
So, as you (hopefully) already know, it's Monday, and Monday is, obviously, not Sunday. This is coming late, is what I'm saying—but I have a good excuse! This weekend was full of family and fun and good food and hiking and all of the other things requisite for good mental health. It was a sorely needed reprieve during this period of continued uncertainty.
Which brings us to today's reflection on uncertainty and sureness. I'll say up front that I don't have any particularly great insights here—I'm using today's newsletter as an excuse to process. Thanks for continuing to be free therapy! I'll pay my bill someday!
So, to jump in: I'm in a pickle. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. Pick your idiom.
On the one hand, and as y'all learned a few months ago, my life has imploded, a bit, with the leading factor being an end to my term as a federal employee. Consequently, I'm searching for a new job to pay the bills—which is, you know, unpleasant in the best of circumstances. This, then, is my current uncertainty. What do I do?
On the other hand, and as y'all know from reading this, I've been, you know...writing. A lot. A lot a lot. Because I'm out of work, and because I can, and because I want to, genuinely. Ardently. Aside from job searching and settling in a new city, I've gotten to trial the life of an author for the past two months, and it's been—to put it simply—everything I've ever wanted. It fills up my cup. It is the sureness: I know I want to write, to be a writer, to continue leading this life. I know what to do.
But these things are in tension. Knowing exactly what to do and not knowing what to do are, obviously, in tension. Looking for something to pay the bills and loving something that won't, for the foreseeable future, pay the bills, are clearly in tension. And that's becoming an issue.
(And listen—I know this is very low on the list of problems in the world. But you're my therapist today, so chill.)
See, I'm trapped in this vicious cycle of loving the writing I'm doing, but feeling guilty because I should be job searching, then feeling burnt out on job searching because of, you know, everything, and because, really, I wish I could just go back to writing, and then writing, and starting the cycle again, and not really making the progress I'd hope to on either.
It's a bit of an intractable problem.
If I had to guess (and thanks for pushing me for an answer here, doc), I'd venture that there's a dual-pronged solution of shifting my mindset and setting boundaries. I don't know—something like viewing both as valid and meaningful parts of my life, for now, and blocking separate and distinct times for writing (mornings, perhaps?) and job searching (maybe an hour or three a day, in the afternoons?). And, in addition to that, I need to start working on my applications to creative writing MFAs again, which would be a solution to both the job thing and the writing thing, at least for a few years!
Gosh, doc, you're really good at this. Thanks, again—I hope you got something out of our session today too. Talk soon!
PS I'm kind of making light of therapy here—jokes aside, it's wonderful. Seek support always and often!
PPS In the last newsletter I mentioned that they hadn't yet posted the recordings for the National Book Festival. Those are now available, and you can find the playlist on YouTube. Enjoy!
