My Spinning Head

I have a lot going on in my head right now. The currents are threatening to thrash me about and pull me under if I let them.

• At the suggestion of a friend of mine who already works there, I applied for a job in my former field at a big university in a state my husband and I have never considered living in before. I had a phone interview a couple of weeks ago and have been invited for an in-person interview next month. I always have the tendency to worry about things ahead of time, and while I’m shoving the actual logistics of being offered and accepting such a job and selling the house and uprooting my family to the furthest dusty corners of my mind, they are still making their presence known. I have been having all kinds of feelings about this prospect bubble up, sometimes simultaneously – excitement, dread, panic, happiness, flattered, a positive outlook toward a new adventure, the irony of having applied to many university positions years ago with nary a bite and now to have it happen when I don’t know if I really even want such a position anymore, the irony of having decided to make this the year I go freelance and get more time with my kids. It’s a lot. I’m excited to interview, to see the situation that’s available. The idea of a stable job with real benefits and a pension and paid time off is appealing. But it’s not what I wanted. On the other hand, a lot of people don’t get what they want, and providing a secure environment to raise my children may be worth the sacrifice of my wants. Again what I’ve talked about before – others’ needs coming before my wants.  The position though is interesting, a mix of creativity and organizational work, and the situation seems posh. But this may be yet another year of BIG DECISIONS AND CHANGE for us, when I thought we were fairly settled. So there’s that.
• I have two freelance projects I’m doing – one for an individual client and one for an entity – and both have been fraught with delays from other people. So now, on top of my full-time job and sneaking out of state for an interview next month, I’m going to be working incredibly hard to pull off these two contracts. Other people holding me up is frustrating. Having to chase after people for contracts and money and answers to questions to start working… it’s a pain.
• I’m finishing the last part of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea, and it has been challenging me in really great ways. But now I’m contemplating the workings of life and humanity deeply while all this other stuff is going on.
• I’m letting myself carry more than my share of the outside world lately, allowing myself to get sucked down by it all.

So, in the midst of all of this, I have to keep myself centered. I have to take care of myself in the ways I know how and shut my mind up enough to be able to listen to the intuitive inner self. I need to keep stepping forward in the creative process. It’s going to be really difficult, but I am up for this challenge.

Back at Work with Baby

I started back to work on Monday. I only took 8 weeks this time because I couldn’t afford to do a month unpaid (for my non-US readers who don’t know, the United States “maternity leave” is a joke – you get 6 weeks of disability for vaginal delivery and 8 weeks for cesarean, and disability is less than $200 a week). My work gave me two weeks of maternity leave, on top of the disability, and came up with an extra project for me to do now that I’m back to make up the difference in my salary, which is great and more than my previous employer did for me, and I have the flexibility of being able to work from home and make up hours as convenient and I get to bring the baby with me as much as I need to, which will be all the time at least through the end of the year.

But I’m exhausted. Trying to do it all is physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting. I’m getting about 2 hours less sleep than I have been and I’m not able to rest while nursing at work like I do at home. Monday was tough on both the baby and I, Tuesday was good, yesterday was tough again, and today is good again. I had hoped to get a break and get some me-time and extra work done in the evenings after my son goes to bed, now that the baby is taking one bottle a day from my husband, but she needed me both Monday and Wednesday night as she’s transitioning to being out of the house all day and teething at the same time. Monday I was holding her, too tired to even cry even though I felt like I needed to, and last night I just accepted it – after screaming her head off for the entire 30 minutes I was putting my son to bed, she immediately calmed when I took her from my husband, then I tried passing her back to him ten minutes later and she went off again (he feels really bad about it), so we took a bath together, she and I, and then I just held her and read the rest of the evening.

It is harder than I thought, but every time I want to whine, I just remind myself how much better I have it than so many. I get to make the choice of having my baby with me, I have a supportive husband and family, the company I work for is transitioning to being even more supportive of it’s employees and trying to avoid us all overworking quite as much as we’ve been in the past. So I feel like an ingrate when it doesn’t seem like enough. The hardest thing for me, I think, is now that my son is in school all day and I don’t get home sometimes until 5:30PM, I feel like I get maybe 15 minutes before bath time and then our 30 min at bedtime for stories and cuddles and that’s it, and it’s not enough time for me. And I look at all the projects I want to do around the house (we still haven’t even finished unpacking) and all the creative projects I want to do for myself, and I have to remind myself that an infant is hard enough to take care of all by itself and everything else will come in due time. I have to continually let myself off the hook or else the tension starts building too high.

On the plus side, I’m feeling good about getting back in the swing at work now. Things are getting organized, we’re in the planning stages that I really like to be a part of, and there are some really fun projects coming up for me, as long as I let myself have fun with them and not stress out. And I’ll soon lose all the baby weight I gained (already more than halfway there) because of all the manual labor I’m doing on top of wearing the baby for hours every day. There will be days that I know I’ll barely be holding things together, that I feel like all the threads are starting to unravel, but it’s all worth it. At least, I hope so.

Is Work Bliss or a Chore?

This week, I was so excited to be doing one of my many projects for work. I actually was getting to draw and watercolor and thoroughly think a project through instead of flying by the seat of my pants as is what inevitably happens much of the time. Literally, I had been giddy last week leading into this one, so excited to sit down and do the creative work.

Then it came time to move from the rough sketch to prepping the watercolor paper with a background wash, to penciling the final images, and I immediately started getting frustrated at myself with the way I was drawing hands and feet. I wanted to throw the project down and go sulk, and I almost started berating myself over the imperfections. I took a brief break, and I realized that I was in the process of ruining something that I had so been looking forward to due to being overly hard on myself. It doesn’t matter if the feet and hands aren’t up to my high standards. It has literally been six years since I’ve done this detailed of work for this type of project, and I’m rusty, but I’m never going to get un-rusty if I don’t take on projects like this. I was able to take what would in the past been a downward “beat myself up” spiral and find joy again in the creation process.

This is really important to remember as creatives and as human beings trying to go about our daily lives. Anything can be a chore, even the work that you love to do the most. And anything can be bliss, even the dishes (I like to put music on and sing while I do the dishes, when I do them. Though usually my husband does them while I’m putting our son to bed.) You can get satisfaction or annoyance from almost any task that you set yourself to do. I actively choose bliss and satisfaction whenever I can. And I’m getting better at catching myself when I do tends toward the self-degradation and negativity that would make everything seem like a major drag on my life.

Which do you choose? Can you find small ways to bring yourself more joy into your daily and creative life?

Let Yourself “Be”

I’m tired… the kind of tired that comes from working hard physically and mentally, that comes from carving out time to hike and play outside, that leaves you collapsing into bed at night and sleeping so soundly that nothing can disturb that rest. I’m tired, and I’m happy in the exhaustion. I’ve got so much going on at work and in life right now that my head is spinning, but I’m enjoying the dizziness for the moment.

But I almost self-sabotaged. Not six hours after finding out the details of my new position (as well as my new official salary and benefits), I had this horrible fear suddenly grip me. That I wasn’t going to thrive, that instead it would become an abusive situation of giving more than I felt capable of giving, of having too many expectations thrust on me, of not being able to maintain any semblance of a work-life balance. This was going on while I simultaneously was experiencing deep inner spiritual/creative growing pains that shook me to my core and had growing pressure put on me regarding certain “big decisions” that have to be made. And I started feeling trapped by it all, like a big cage was descending over me that would bind me and hold me against my will.

It was a difficult week adjusting to everything. I asked myself “why can’t I just let myself be happy?” I had to dive deep and experience the fear and the pain, and then I let it go. And I found that I could let myself be happy. I can find joy in my life, in my work, in the path I tread. But I wouldn’t have been able to maybe if I hadn’t had everything rising up at once.

Life is of course not perfect. I do miss my son horribly working these long hours, but the way he greets me as I walk through the door every day and the way he holds me so tight as we cuddle is worth everything to me. And there is still some things that need working out in the realm of inner growth, a lacking that could fill me with despair if I dwelled on it. But I’m so busy right now that I can’t worry at it, which is a blessing at this point I think. I was ever one to worry ahead of time, and this is not something that will be rushed. So for now it is just a single black drop in my crystal-clear waters that I am mindful of, and, if anything, it only helps me see how fortunate I am in every other area. Which maybe is the point for the frustration right now.

Anyway, life is good. I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time because I am allowing myself to “be”. I’m experiencing each emotion as it arises and then releasing it, and I’m finding joy in both the small and large moments in my life. After feeling a week of being trapped, I feel freer than I have in a long, long time.

Career Verses Motherhood

My place of employment where I am part-time salaried and freelance on certain projects is pushing me up to full-time hours for three months starting in a couple of weeks, and they should know soon if they will keep me permanently full-time (all depends on whether certain funding they are hoping to get comes through or not). And I am having mixed feelings on the matter.

On the one hand, I’m really excited. Between the full-time hours and the extra freelance fees, I have a chance to make an actual, grown-up living wage for the first time in my life, from one place of employment, plus fairly decent benefits (as far as working for a non-profit goes, that is). My hours will still remain flexible, in that some weeks I’ll work more and some weeks I’ll work less, and I can still do some of the work from home, but the bank of hours that I draw on will literally be doubled. The projects that are planned for the coming year are incredibly interesting and varied, and having the full-time hours will give me the time to really go in depth on those projects and do the high-quality creative work that I enjoy doing.

On the other hand, it is twice as many hours that I have to work, which means less time spent with my son. Less time to work on personal creative projects. Having to really lock myself in to quality time with both my son and my husband because otherwise I will get too distracted by work and forget. Less time to cook and bake for fun. Less time to take on freelance projects. It means I have to fully relinquish control of the household to my husband (which I’ve already done a lot of) for all of our sanity, which is a rather difficult thing for me to do. But the potential lack of time to spend with my son, even though it is way more than many other parents get to have, is what aches the most.

The dreaded Mommy Guilt is something that will never go away. Balancing everyone’s needs and wants is a difficult task, and one that I’m not entirely sure I’ve accomplished. But we’ll take things as they come, as we always do. As we have to do.

What You Miss Out On By Freelancing or Running a Small Business

I have come down with the plague. Not two days after I posted about how productive and good I was feeling. That’s what I get, I guess. But it got me thinking about the things I used to have as a salaried employee, working for “the man”, that I don’t have now as a freelancer and sole proprietor. No one contributes to a pension fund, I have to provide my own life and health insurance (we actually currently don’t have life insurance policies, so don’t try to kill me because you’ll get NOTHING), no office gatherings where the CEO or the boss picks up the tab, but the biggest lack I think is in not having paid sick time. I mean, in theory as a part-time salaried employee on my regular creative gig, I have a handful of sick days that I can use, but as I set my own schedule and as the work I didn’t do today still needs to be done by the end of the week, it is a moot point. For the freelance job I’m trying to finish up, I need to try to force myself to work for at least a few hours later this evening, if I can. I emailed my client to tell them that there would be a delay, but I owe photos of the work in progress, and I need to get this job out of my queue so I can move on to other things.

But this is one of the problems of going towards an increasingly freelance/contract job market, and one that has yet to be solved. This, in addition to the rise in service industry jobs and part-time jobs, means you have a pool of workers that have very little protection should they get sick or worse. You have more and more people without any maternity leave, not even the paltry six weeks disability that most companies give. You have employees pushing themselves to come to work even when they really shouldn’t be. And don’t get me wrong, I love the flexibility of my current work schedule. But there are prices to pay, and the price for many people are too high.

Anyway, I do not succumb to illness with any kind of grace or dignity but rather with a grudging acceptance that I need to rest in order to heal. My stubbornness and sheer determination makes it very difficult for me to give in, though. But sometimes I have to.

Back at Work and Happy as Can Be

First of all, let me confess, I did NOT finish the first draft of my graphic novel as I wanted to last week. The tumultuous nature of our half retreat coupled with fighting off the bug my son had made me just completely incapable of focusing in on anything for long periods of time. I managed to get several scenes written, but my brain was mush. But I am focused again, with only a few sniffles remaining, ready to dive into ongoing and new projects, and today I’m back at my steady creative job after a week and a half off (and only a few hours the previous couple of weeks). Yes, I’m typing this up while at work, but I had to take a little break to eat lunch, right? But anyway, I woke up this morning full of energy, gears turning and motors humming, excited to be back in the thick of things.

I have seen a lot of posts at the start of this new year about the trap of “busy”, of taking on too much. That people see their lack of free time as a badge of honor, but in reality they are using it as a way to disconnect. And maybe this is true for some people. For me, being busy makes me happy. I just work better having ten different things going on at once. Working on one thing lets my brain problem-solve something else. And I’m actually more likely to accomplish what I want to in a given day. When I’m busy, I don’t have time to trip myself up. When I’m not busy, I start worrying at things I shouldn’t worry about, lose momentum, let other things slide, and wind up getting sick. Granted, it is all about balancing. Because if I have ten things going on at once and then try to add two or three more, I start to tip over into overdrive, and that’s not good for me or the people that have to put up with me.

This morning, though, was wonderful. Had a nice leisurely cuddle with my son, did my morning pages and exercised, a little organizing, did a few homeschool preschool worksheets with my son, and got myself ready. Now, at work, I find several things that didn’t get done while I was gone as they were supposed to, but it’s fine. It’ll get done. I have some new toys to play with, a work trip to finalize details for (plus I get to do some socializing, yay!), I get to reconnect with some creative souls I haven’t seen for months and meet some new ones, and once I get home, I’ll be so energized by work that I’ll spend a good chunk of tonight writing before bed. I might even throw a few layers of paint on my in-progress paintings while I’m at it.

Bottom line, though, is that you need to do what makes you happy. And when creating, you need to discover what works best for you, what gets you out of your own way. Decide how you measure progress, and then use that measurement against yourself. Don’t worry about labels, or how you match up with someone else. For me, I need to find the right blend of “busy” to motivate and energize me and keep me happy. I don’t wear that as a badge. It’s just how I am.

A New Path

I am officially starting my sweet new gig tomorrow.

Why is it so amazingly awesome?

• It is a part-time salaried position with flexible hours at the place I did freelance work in my former field earlier this year, designed to give me a steady paycheck week-to-week while allowing me the freedom to get my assignments done. Flexible in that I can work many of the hours at any time I want (aside from scheduled meetings, of course) with many of those hours from home, and also in that if I work extra hours one week out of necessity, I am to work less in the following weeks. They want me to keep a spreadsheet and make sure I am not working extra hours.
• I can have my son with me whenever I need to. This is obviously huge for me. He’s already sat in on some meetings, and as we start to introduce some homeschooling for him (he’s 3 1/2 now), he will have more to occupy him while I’m doing work and simultaneously spending time with him. And with the flexible hours, I can still just play with him a lot. My husband had a promising interview last week, and if that comes through, we may end up having to do a once-a-week session at an at-home caregiver for our son, but that might be good for his socialization anyway.
• I get paid an additional fee for any extra projects I do, which means all told, I’ll make as much working part-time as I did at my former full-time office job. Not a princely sum, by any means, but enough to survive on, meaning any freelance work I take on can go into savings.
• I can stop working through the shop, but I left the door open to pick up work if I need/want it. That is a stress I am glad to no longer have to deal with. Plus, if I pick up freelance work rather than work through the shop, I make a lot more.
• I get to be in charge of my own little empire in this organization. Tasks need to get done, but how they get done will be on my shoulders to figure out.
• If I’m very careful with my time-management, I will have time to work on all of the creative projects that I have going on both here under the Kat Micari name and in freelance work under my real name. In fact, I am in talks right now to do my biggest freelance job yet. And I’m considering taking a few months of vocal lessons every other week and trying to get out to a life drawing drop-in class at least once a month. Which is very exciting.

The happiest part about the whole situation is finally starting to put roots down someplace and settle into a home base. We’ve held off on so much these past several years because we didn’t know when we’d pick up and move, both for ourselves and our son. So we are changing all of that!

Walking the Inner Balance Beam

My life is shifting in some big and rather wonderful ways, on a lot of fronts. I will hopefully be able to get more into specifics on that in my next post, but basically, if I can focus myself and keep really organized, I can make full use of the opportunities that life is thrusting at me. And I want to. I’ve made vast organizational strides the past couple of weeks. I’ve also set myself back on a regular creative schedule. And I’ve carved out quality family time too. But now, my brain is rebelling, in a very self-sabotaging way.

Internally, I am a creature of contradictions, a walking oxymoron. Hot-blooded and passionate and emotional while simultaneously cold and logical. Wanting order and structure and everything in it’s proper place in my daily life but needing mess and chaos to create (seriously, when I paint or draw, smudges always end up on my face, and when I bake, flour gets everywhere). Craving a sense of belonging while needing my independence. Knowing basic truths – about myself, those I’m connected with, and all of humanity – through my intuition but questioning the validity of that truth since I lack hard facts to back up the intuition. Empathetic and caring until I get overloaded and then I have to step back, so I send mixed signals to others and end up feeling as though I’m separated in a bubble of my own creation. Highly sexual and sensual but with a strong moral compass and also exuding purity to the point of almost having a Snow White effect on animals and children (and some adults). Business-oriented but with the need for regular playtime. Feeling confident in my abilities while feeling that confidence waver if I don’t get positive feedback. Wanting to nurture and love while also wanting to aggressively go after what I want in life. The artist constantly struggling with the intellectual. And so these contradictions battle for control, and I’ve struggled to find and maintain balance and usually successfully walk the line. With the new position and path I’ll be taking, though, all of these mental struggles are rising to the surface.

But it’s not just the inner balancing act that needs to happen, but the outer as well. Because I don’t live by myself, but in a family, and beyond that, in a community. So how does one decide what to give and what to take? How much can a person love and nurture and support others until they wind up being taken advantage of? How much can someone carve out time for themselves at the expense of others before it becomes selfish? And are those questions answered differently depending on who you talk to? And it’s when I get to this point that I realize my focus is gone and I want to just stop thinking for a while and retreat to my inner realms of fancy, which if I linger too long in, causes me stress and exhaustion down the road.

But I had an amazing realization last month and that is this: I am no longer afraid of myself and my potential power for change. It was a huge moment that began growing from a meditation last September, and it caused some shaky times in the following weeks as I readjusted to my new self-view. I accomplished my 2014 self-improvement goal, though, which was to learn to move despite my fear, and the world has now opened up a new path for me. I will not allow myself to throw these opportunities away or trap myself in old patterns of doubt and self-debasement, and instead will learn to balance everything with grace and strength.

The real trick is now that I no longer fear myself, I have to learn to trust myself, even with all of the inner dualities. That’s going to take a little more work.

Time to Pause, Heal, and Catch My Breath

My contract jobs in my former field finally are done, except for some cleaning up and dealing with paperwork over the next couple of weeks. It was a marathon of work – last week, I clocked over 70 hours, and over 60 the two weeks before that. I pushed myself to the limits of my strength and endurance to accomplish the job, and the entire time, I was wondering why on earth I was killing myself. The pace I set myself at was entirely unsustainable, and I’m glad to move back to a manageable 30-35 hours work week (for shop work and a couple of commissions) this week and 20-25 hours next week, to take some time to spend with my family, and to work on the creative projects that seem more significant to me.

Before I can make a true, rational decision about the next path of my life, I need to give myself some time to heal and distance myself from the projects I’ve just finished. I think maybe a couple of weeks will do it. But I am so worn out – physically, mentally, emotionally. This is the pattern I used to do in the past, take on more and more projects until I feel numb and to the point of collapsing. I use work as a way to disconnect myself from feeling too much sometimes. Which is bad. We had to put our older cat to sleep a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to process that. I didn’t have time to do anything that would help me sort out how I’ve felt about that or what’s going on in my family or in the world. The absolute worst moment was last Tuesday, when I only got 2 hours of sleep to finish something, and my son begged me not to leave in the morning. I almost lost it.

In the past, I used to literally collapse for a week or two following one of these bouts of overwork. I would say I deserved to just sit and read or watch movies, and numb myself some more. This time, I feel like I can’t let myself do that. I need to keep moving forward, nurture myself and take the time I have to work on the projects that are important to me. I need to spend time with my family and get outside and remind myself why I work so hard. So that’s what I’ll be doing.