Or three.
2020 notwithstanding.
But the thoughts are so familiar--and yet so different--that I'm not sure if this is just me, the same dissatisfaction replayed in a slightly different key, or if this is the pandemic.
2020 has not been kind to me overall. In early January, I was unexpectedly pregnant--just shy of my 43rd birthday. About a week after my 43rd birthday, I was unexpectedly no longer pregnant. The same day the miscarriage started, we had, earlier in the day, found out that a skin biopsy for my husband had come back as cancerous. In February, he had it removed in an outpatient situation, and all is well with that, but I was shaken. In the next two months, I had an ultrasound on my leg for a nonexistent blood clot and a mammogram for a--well, actually, a strange little breast abnormality that no one knows what to do with--because I was certain that my body was trying to kill me. I mean, why not? It killed my baby. My husband's was trying to kill him...
And then came March.
Besides the crippling fear of horrific death, the lockdowns and quarantines were really not so bad. Of course, we're in Texas, in a suburban setting with no city, and the lockdown wasn't really a lockdown. I enjoyed not going to the office. I still enjoy not going to the office. School drama mostly dried up for the kids. The end of the school year was easy-peasy. There were no functions to rush off to. There were no decisions to make about where to eat out because the restaurants were closed, and why would I want their plague-infested food anyway? (I know--food is not a source of contagion. But it's part of how I stay in control of my situation.) Stores were offering curbside, so while I did have to spend some time on their websites, I didn't have to spend hours in the grocery stores. I still don't. It's lovely. I felt guilty at first, but hey--people used to have groceries and milk delivered in the early 20th C. And ice. Now, there were things that we couldn't get. And it felt austere--like we shouldn't have luxuries. I got over this eventually.
We took up new hobbies. I began to crochet. I had tried once before with limited success, but between Ravelry.com, this pattern for mandalas, and amigurumi from StringyDingDing, and the fact that focusing on the stitches and the pretty colors made me stop thinking about imminent death, I have gotten rather good. And so has daughter #2.
I wrote the bulk of a book chapter that I was rather dreading. Then I ran out of steam. I guess it was working for two weeks straight with some intensity? Or perhaps it was asking for help with something and opening myself up to "you must include this person's research and these details or seem sloppy and amateurish"? Or simple burnout because you-know-what-I-never-liked-the-Histories-of-Middle-earth-anyway-Tolkien-wrote-some-perfectly-nice-books-that-he-published-while-still-alive-can-we-please-talk-about-those? I wrote to my publisher and let them know that I would need more time. January had already derailed my plans to have a complete manuscript by August. They are content to follow my lead, which I've learned is something that (some?) publishers do. They have other books to publish. Your delay is not the center of their universe. I can say this; I work for one.
Staying home with the kids--with the family--has been a breeze. First, we have a wonderful home for the first time--oh, ever. We have lots of space for all of us and all of our things. This we owe to chance, and my husband's talent for getting to know people. A friend that he met at work and helped through a job transition happened to be moving, but didn't want to sell his house. He also wanted to give his old neighbors some good new neighbors, and he wasn't looking to make a profit. In the space of a conversation, we had a new home.
The other thing is, that while people rely on activities and travel, this "new normal" feels like how I grew up. The kids and I played in the blow up pool. We played video games. Went for walks. Did crafts. Read. It just felt like life as it used to be. No pressure to be or do anything in particular. I wasn't a failure for not enrolling them in camps or lessons or activities. Wasn't letting anyone down because they were just hanging out at home. Wasn't going to have to compare our lack of travel to everyone else's travel. And conferences were cancelled, so I didn't have to worry about whether I wanted to travel, or dealing with being left behind while my husband was traveling.
And that's another thing that was nice. For a while, it felt like he and I were on the same footing, negotiating working from home. And that's where the real low points crept back in.
Because eventually, he had to go back to work on site, part-time. I haven't yet, which suits me fine. But that was a road bump, because I was simply scared. Of him being out in the world. I have had time to get used to it. And in general, I like how things are being done by his boss. She doesn't really want to open to the public. But boundaries are being pushed. So I can refuse a lunch invitation to rub elbows with someone, but he assumes that he can't turn down similar kinds of offers. He did, over the weekend, but more because of the weekend than because of wariness and risk. And because I'm dealing with prospective authors, and not as a person of importance, and he is dealing with big money donors as a charismatic charmer, his situation is different? Having either of us beholden to people with money was not my vision for our lives and careers.
But what was my vision for our careers? It has fallen apart. Working closely allows me to see him coaching others in their career development, often using skills that I taught him for tailoring job materials to the mission and vision of the organization. To see him being the expert that he has become in the years of working this job, and because he absorbs knowledge, and to know that I will never be regarded as an expert in anything, despite my Ph.D. That was a low week, too.
I have had ups and downs with my own job. I have a supervisor who refuses to supervise and then evaluates my performance based on things that she had in her head as standards that she never communicated. She refuses to check in with me monthly just to talk about how I'm doing, because that situation encourages people to hold their problems until a scheduled meeting? I worked in human resources, and this is not sound, but she is inexperienced and stubborn and will not listen. I am left to do clerical tasks while the department I'm in struggles to write material for a deadline--or a week after a deadline--or going on two weeks after a deadline. Last week I told someone in another department that if someone passed along the tidbit that I am literate, that perhaps I could help get that writing done by the deadline. As a result, I've had some people compliment my "fine writing style" and praise my editing of documents for style. This is good because it's more feedback than I had before--for all I knew I could have been targeting the wrong things and irritating people, and no one would give me any feedback!! But it's also really annoying because they know my credentials. They have seen my resume. And if they wanted to know if I could write, there are a million examples I could have shown them. Or, they might have let me do it.
As a result of my snarky comment, this week is a bit better. But last week, I was so low. I found myself continually dismissed as if I simply didn't know what I was talking about. And worse--I found myself, on my own, just questioning whether I even know anything any more. I don't know if I could teach literature and writing because I just don't know if I know what I used to. I don't seem to have the drive to write that I used to have. I am wondering... and wondering... and wondering... what the point of writing a book even is. And this does come from working with a publisher, because there are many demoralizing offhand comments about "well, no one except X is going to read this anyway." Author beware! These people are jaded because they are only looking at sales numbers, and individual books just don't sell very well.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going. I should be on top of my game, not waiting for crumbs to be thrown to me because I can rearrange a sentence. I should be advancing in a career, not listening to my husband coach people to the next level of their academic careers. I should be the go-to person for some of the things I'm supposed to know, respected for knowing what I do, and having ideas, and being able to help people develop their ideas. But I'm not.
And then there's the part of me that just wants to stay home. Because my daughters are enjoying online school this year--not through the local district, because that would be a train wreck, but through a public online school that has been around for about 10 years and doing well. I don't want to go back to work on site in a job that is going nowhere, in which I struggle to make people realize my usefulness and ability beyond the narrowly defined box I find myself in. A job in which there is no place for me to go, really, because none of their pre-defined roles suit me. But that I took because I thought it had possibilities and because I would be working with books.
I am fine today.
I may be fine tomorrow.
Editing their catalog and jacket copy so that we don't sound like a bunch of idiots on the back of our books was, indeed, satisfying, and seemed to get my brain working in a way that I could recognize again.
But oh, last week. I didn't even feel smart. Most of the time I'm simply frustrated because I can't prove to others that I'm smart and capable. Last week I didn't feel like I could prove it to myself.
So I ask you.... is this the pandemic? Or is this just... me? Atrophying?
I wonder...
