Dear me (Part 2): What is your problem?

Where future-me changes her tune

Diane the Life Wizard suggested I write letters to myself from two years in the future. The first week's efforts frustrated and confused me, but—ever the gold-star seeker—I was determined to finish the assignment.

Return to the office

I turned every heating element on high and bumped the car over frozen ruts and across the covered bridge. The mid-January morning sky was midnight black and moonless. I tapped the brakes for turkeys crossing our dirt road and sipped coffee from my company-logo travel mug.

In two and a half hours, I'd see the Boston skyline. It would take another hour in chaotic traffic to cover the last ten miles to the office. The long commutes, a few days each month, were worth it—to come home to Vermont's intentional quiet.

Once on the highway, I watched for black ice and wildlife. The sky glowed red in the east. Red in the morning, sailors take warning— I remembered the old Yankee adage and hoped foul weather wouldn't delay my drive home tomorrow.

I didn't mind the traveling, but I was already in a bad mood. I'd scanned emails in the bathroom that morning, and more than one had rankled. Why did I still care? I was a short-timer, counting the days until I'd quit. Heck, I changed my password over the weekend to "@December2018"—the month I'd announce my resignation. I should be relaxed, giddy even.

Try as I might, I couldn't stop remixing the greatest workhits in my head. I'm terrible at my job. I hate my job. No, goddammit, I'm great at my job. Maybe I should try harder? I still have room to grow. Shit, no, urrrrrghh.

What would future-me say about this playlist of inner conflict? I tapped record on my cellphone.

Audio note from the future

Overthinking, gut-wrenching, flip-flopper. This is your future self. You say you hate your job, but there are a lot of times when you really seem to enjoy it—coaching your team, brainstorming ideas, getting shit done.

Do you realize you are just a cog in a Rube Goldberg-like corporate contraption? You have one job. Catch the hard-boiled egg and let the weight of it trigger the next thing. There's no right or wrong way to do it—only (cue Yoda voice) "do or do not."

Your job is not what you were meant to be. Does anyone declare their life's purpose is to be a midlevel marketing manager? No.

You got your first job because that's what you were supposed to do, and then you kept working because that's what you needed to do, and sometimes it's what you wanted to do. But a job is not who you are—especially not this one.

I promise you'll look back and you'll believe me. The office is horrible. Everything is in flux. Careerists are jockeying for promotions, and the goalposts keep moving. The pressure is unsustainable like the whole goddam world depends on the products you're selling.

It doesn't feel good because it's not good for you. Not anymore.

Besides, it's not just this job. It's the career you no longer want.

You think you're confused. You think you're not good enough to stay, and you're not good enough to go. That's dumb.

You're fine. You know what you want. You're waffling because you're scared—and rightly so.

The future you're conjuring doesn't come with a safety net. There is no steady income, or health insurance, or incentive plan for doing the thing you're meant to do. But you're leaving. You. Are. Leaving.

Now, repeat after me: I could be good at this job, but I don't want this career anymore. Let someone else catch the egg.

Future-me was actually making sense! I had been overthinking the road ahead, wanting every highway icy spot sanded and moose spotted.

I was overly sensitive to criticism because I was caught for the moment between seeking gold stars and chasing my dreams.

Rangeley and Kitty are dream chasers too.

Is it history repeating?

I stopped to pee in Plymouth, New Hampshire—the tiny college town where I'd spent 1980-82 before dropping out to get married and have children.

What would college me think, black-out wasted on cheap Riunite wine (a.k.a. ruin-your-nighty)? Could she have imagined herself wearing high-heeled leather boots, accelerating a luxury SUV on her way to strategy meetings while counting her stock options?

Doubtful. But then again, she asked the same question I was—nearly 40 years later. Who do I want to be? How can I be sure?

I had no vision for my future self. Metaphorically drowning in self-doubt, I enabled myself to be rescued by a handsome man in uniform—the best friend of my sister's boyfriend, a recent graduate of the Coast Guard Academy. He was off to Alaska, and I clung to him as though he was one of those life rings that pull drowning people up into the belly of a helicopter. Who cares where it was going, as long as I was safe?

I held my hands under the gas station restroom's air dryer and did the math in my head. Ten months, three weeks until I jumped overboard. I might not be sure where I'd land, but this time, I would rescue myself.

What I wish I’d known.

Future-me said I was "fine," but I didn't buy it. My internal playlist continued for the rest of my working days.

It's me. I'm failing. I need to try harder. I should want this job and the next one. I can't just quit. I'm not a quitter.

Maybe I was burned out. Maybe it was a menopausal midlife crisis. Just six years ago, there wasn't a public conversation about mental health or menopause or midlife women making waves. I believed the messages I grew up with—that surrounded me still in 2018.

It’s like what

Anne Helen Petersen

writes in her essay, How I've Changed My Thinking About Burnout:

"I had been blaming myself for my own struggles within the system for so long, thinking it was a failure of spirit, of work, ethic, of tenacity, whatever—every day I came with a new way I wasn't doing enough and could do more."

I wish I'd known not to blame myself. I wish I'd had the confidence to realize I didn't need to be rescued—by myself or anyone else. I wish I'd known what my future self would learn. I am the hero in my story.

Catherine

This week's prompt is inspired by this quote from Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way.

"You do not need to become something you’re not."

This week, begin with these words, I do not need to become—

• Against all odds….

• I beat myself up ….

• Years before …

Take a deep breath. And write your story.