Saturday morning I opened a "compose new post" window at TypePad...and it sat open for at least a couple of hours. I'd stare at the blank compose box and then flip around to other tabs in Firefox and dink around for awhile. I'm not someone who spends much time writing posts. (Yeah, we've noticed, you're probably thinking.) Let me rephrase that--when I do write real posts (and look, I finally did, just below this one!) I don't spend a lot of time on them. I don't formulate them in my head ahead of time. I do very little, if any, editing. (I might catch a typo or change a word here or there.) I pretty much just sit down and start writing. Like now. So it's not like me to open a "compose" window and end up sitting here feeling stuck. I finally realized, after that open "compose" window had taunted me for a couple of hours, that I simply wasn't ready to try to start writing about...why I quit my job.
I returned to work on Friday morning after my summer break with a letter of resignation in hand. It was a fundamentally easy decision to make and I'd pretty much made it by the time I walked out the door for break in late June. But then my life got turned upside down in a hurry, with H's quickly planned arrival and as a result, I spent the last three weeks of my month off feeling rather tortured. Was I being irresponsible in quitting a job right when we most needed the money? Would there be any benefit to him if I stayed employed by the school district while he's a student here? (He'll be with us for his senior year.) Would this place undue stress on Jeffrey (who's already stressing himself out trying to make things as 'perfect' as he can.) ;) But I kept coming back to H--what kind of message would I be instilling in him if he saw me heading off to a job every day that I'd grown to hate? How present could I be for him as his stepmother if I'm constantly distracted by the resentment buzzing around in my head?
Speaking of buzzing, if you'd been a fly on the wall in our home during July, you probably would have a seen what appeared to be a relaxed version of me. I spent a lot of time with H, because J's working three jobs (playing music, three days a week at the golf course and some small landscaping jobs on the side) and he was gone a lot. And for two of those weeks, our little pickup wasn't running. (It is now, thank god.) So H and I didn't even have a car at our disposal. (We did have bikes though.) And I wanted him to feel comfortable, even though we were going from zero to sixty in an instant. (Thankfully we laid a solid foundation with him years ago, and we just picked up where we left off.) So I did my best to just roll with the punches and stay in a present place. But I spent hours lying awake at night turning things over and over...and over...in my mind.
And then my favorite morning radio show, NPR's Bryant Park Project, was suddenly canceled. (And talk about crappy job experiences, BPP staffers learned of its demise via an article in the New York Times.) Now you might think, girl, get a grip--what the hell does a radio show have to do with your life? But that's only because you might not understand what kind of community BPP had created with its listeners. How many other radio shows was I going to be able to listen to in the pre-dawn hours (thanks to my old friend, insomnia) while sitting here in my pajamas and Twittering back and forth with BPP staff while the show was happening. That's why we loved it so. I was crushed at the thought of losing something I'd grown to love so much, not to mention the fact that the BPP really helped me stay sane through a very hard Spring.
Another BPP listener (someone I'd gotten to know via Twitter and our BPP connection), Rob Paterson on Prince Edward Island, suggested we start a Ning network, The BPP Diner, to keep the BPP community alive. And that's what we've done--as of this writing, 313 of us from all over the world. (I was member #2, right behind Rob.)
By now you're probably thinking, but what about your job, Marilyn? Enough about the BPP--finish telling us about your job. Ah, but there's a connection...
The BPP Diner took off like a shot...members joining, people friending each other, comments being left, videos being posted,* blog posts being written, photos being shared, groups being formed. (*For many of us, our fave videos are those done by BPP's former editor, Tricia McKinney, who's been posting a daily "The Most" video before heading off to her new job at CNBC.) It's a community doing what a community does, and I loved watching it happen and being a part of it. And then it hit me...just how much I've missed my own blogging community. My circle of blog-sisters (and a few brothers) who are always there for me, to lift me when my spirits are down, to offer unconditional support and love to a degree that never ceases to amaze me. I missed my community...I missed all of you. I suspect you're probably saying, but we didn't go anywhere. I know, but I did. I'd begun to dread the mere thought of blogging. I'd allowed a bad job situation to break my spirit, so I felt compelled to drift farther and farther away. It's hard to be around so much positivity when you're not feelin' it yourself. ;)
I could share juicy details about what went down at my job to compel me to give notice. (And because I'm the conscientious gal I am, I gave a month's notice. August is the busiest month in my job and I wasn't going to leave them in the lurch, and it will give them time to find a replacement who I can train at least a bit. How many people do you know who on the day they give notice, work late and bring work home to do over the weekend? Doormat much?) But it really serves no point to rehash all the drama. The simplest answer is this: right before summer break, I was informed that as part of the reorganization, they wanted to give half of my colleague's job to me. So I would have basically been doing 1.5 jobs to her .5...for the same pay. I pushed back hard at that notion and wondered aloud why they thought this was a good idea given that morale is already low since some of us have to pick up the slack for the minimally-skilled .5 person already. The only answer I got was that it would be so much better for the school. That was sort of the final straw. When a situation has crossed over from humbling into humiliating, it's time to move on.
It was my little noble experiment (to leave private industry behind and take a big pay cut and go and sit and do a mindless job at a school...you know, to be noble. Yeah.) I managed to last three years (but, boy, that third year was rough). Those of you who are long-time readers know that I had some truly wonderful experiences in prior years when I was able (allowed) to do some really cool activities work with the kids. Those were very gratifying experiences and I will remember them always. The bottom line is this: there's nothing noble about making yourself small (or in this case, teensy).
I hadn't been to The BPP Diner in a couple of days. Between returning to work and a busy schedule at home, I just needed to kind of regroup a bit after giving notice. But I swung by there to pick up some links for this post...and saw this video. As one commenter said, "I'll bet All Things Considered never has these kinds of fan videos!" :)
Peeps, "thrill yourself." That's what I'm gonna start doing.
Even if you weren't a listener of the Bryant Park Project show, you're still welcome to join The BPP Diner. It's a wonderful community. We have no idea what, if anything, will come of it in terms of a podcast or a new show, but we're sure having fun over there. :)
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