what a difference a year can make

I rang in 2013 as a government employee with nearly twenty-seven months of faithful service. I assimilated myself into the lifestyle with ease. My job became my life. Things external to my job were only allowed to be my life between the post-work hours of five and nine.

At my desk, I was a progress-making machine. I hated to be interrupted in the middle of something, and I was almost always in the middle of something. Normally, I was in the middle of several somethings simultaneously.  My fingers rattled continuously across the keyboard as I pounded out my tasks with speed and precision. Lots of tasks. More tasks than anyone anticipated the 23-year-old blonde with a penchant for wearing too much makeup could possibly accomplish.

People noticed the product of all that hard work. They issued mounds of praise, in which I basked momentarily before retreating to the grey confines of my cubicle. As I progressed through my career, word-of-mouth about my work product spread to larger groups of more senior personnel, who gave out their own accolades and tchotchkes. After the excitement of receiving good feedback wore off, all I was left with was the immense pressure to keep up with the ridiculous pace I had set for myself.

In time, the compliments and praise came with some other interesting suggestions. Namely, a number of senior personnel told me I ought to apply for higher positions. I nodded and smiled and told them I appreciated their confidence in me. But I knew something they didn't: I could never keep up my current level of effort if I had a more senior job. Senior executive service employees didn't do the grunt work I loved so dearly. They networked and entertained visitors and made big decisions. They came in to work at all hours to put out the ever-raging proverbial fires that came with running a large organization. The things I was effective at doing were not those things. My work involved minimal human contact and maximal time interacting with the Microsoft Office suite and my computer screen. The people who told me to apply for a more senior position never asked me what my strengths were, or whether I wanted a different job description. They thrust their opinions of my competencies on me, just as they'd thrust their assumptions of my probable incompetence upon me when I'd first started my job. 

I thought the unsolicited advice interesting early on in my career, but it became even more so after I made it public to a few select individuals that I was leaving my job to get married. Word spread quickly about my departure. Soon, people I hardly knew were taking the opportunity to explain my worth to me and convince me that I shouldn't leave my job. Normally, these do-gooders approached me at the office. Most would find me in my cubicle and some would manage to corner me in the hallway and force me to listen as they explained I was ruining all my hard work and leaving the organization in the lurch by retreating to another state. 

"You're not really excited about moving to Michigan," one creep informed me from the seat in my cubicle where he'd made himself quite cozy without invitation. "I can see it in your face. You don't want to go. I was an interrogator, you know. I can tell when people are lying." My skin crawled. I had never wanted to go to Michigan more than at that exact moment. Somehow I restrained myself from wheeling around in my swivel chair and punching him. Through clenched teeth, I told him I was amazed that he knew me so well. The sarcasm didn't make it past the thick folds of his caveman brain. He stuck around a few minutes longer, making other ill-considered statements with the bizarre intention of wooing me. I was already back at my computer, typing away. Eventually he left and I could seethe in private.

Another time, I was letting off some steam with one of my bridesmaids at a trendy Charlottesville bar when we ran into a whole slew of men with whom I worked. One of those men was an acquaintance who must have heard through the grapevine that I was leaving my job, because I certainly did not tell him. He came down on me in the darkened bar like a whiskey-soaked sack of bricks. In terms too vulgar to directly quote, he informed me that the leadership at our organization would do anything in their power to keep me in Charlottesville, and that I was making a huge mistake by leaving my job. He got even bolder after he made his first assertion. "You really should be looking for a job somewhere in D.C.," he said. "You're meant for bigger things than Charlottesville." I smiled sweetly (I hope) and said thank you, but I was looking forward to married life. I could tell from his earnestness that he meant these things as a compliment. But his comments were a smack in the face to me, to my future husband. First of all, I was startled that this acquaintance thought he had any right to comment on what I chose to do with my life or that his words would in some way make me decide to remain in my post. Secondly, I was frustrated that he chose to intrude on my private time to talk to me about my work life (which was also private, or at least not public for him). Third, I was mad because I know very well what I'm meant for. I know what skills I have and what makes me happy and what I wish to do with my own life. I know I can be good at whatever I please. This self-important man didn't know because he didn't ask, but I'd already spent two years interning in D.C., and I had done well there. I could have applied for jobs there, but I hadn't. I'd chosen Charlottesville to get away from the bustle of the District and try to find something to build a life around. And while I'd been good at my job in Charlottesville, it had led me far astray of my original intentions. I had to get away from Charlottesville and from my job if I wanted to be good at something that wouldn't require me to barter my life in exchange for my career.

The thing is, all these people knew that I was great at what I did from the spread of workplace gossip. Maybe some of them even browsed through something I'd worked on and came to the conclusion themselves. While they thought I was competent, they never asked me how I felt about being that way. So what they didn't understand was what their idea of "greatness" required from me.

Some people have an energy dispenser that works on a vast incremental scale ranging from 0 to 10. Those people can pick and choose what level of effort to put into their work (maybe a 6.7) and their home life (let's say an 8.2) so that they can afford to do a little bit of everything. My energy dispenser doesn't work that way. It has two switches: 0 and 10. When I'm on, I'm going at full-throttle. All my engines are roaring ahead, my brain is racing at warp speed, and my body pulsates with energy. When I sit, or when I merely stop the perpetual motion, I shift into the "off" position because my body is desperately trying to recuperate from the exhaustion of running at 100% capacity. No matter how hard I've tried to find some kind of middle ground, a threshold that let me get things done but didn't take away my external life, I can't escape my limitations.

To get through my work days, I filled myself with at least two travel mugs of high-test coffee before 8 AM, and kept chock full of green tea, Monster energy drinks, diet sodas, or even caffeine pills until I left for the gym. If I stopped caffeinating at any point, I was liable to pass out cold at my desk or in a meeting. For my entire federal career, it was the only way I could get through the day. My most desperate wish for those two and a half years was that someone would come up with a patent for a discrete caffeine drip so I'd be able to save my tongue from burns and eliminate the time it took to get to the break room to refill my mug.

Most horribly, I was suffering outside the office for what I put myself through inside. When I came home, I was so tired that I barely had the energy to make dinner, do dishes, or clean. I was passed out by nine o'clock , and the hours between my arrival at the house and my eventual sleep were punctuated with complaints about the office. I gained weight because my demanding schedule and sedentary lifestyle took away the energy I used to reserve for intense daily workouts. On the weekends, I had to catch up on all the household activities I hadn't completed because of my exhaustion. Staying up late to go out to parties or bars or the movies required an amazing amount of effort, so I didn't do it often. (People think you're strange when you are in your early twenties and you have to go home by ten for no reason besides the fact that you are utterly worn out.)

It frustrated me that while I had become good at work, I had also become terribly bad at living. Mine was a half-existence. Days and weeks passed me by before I even had time to register their presence. Often, they were blurs of excitement, but they were still blurs. I never got to experience time normally because it was always rushing past.

People asked me why I would give up a job that could rocket me to the upper echelons of government service. Especially to trade it in for the lesser-paying options of marriage and a life of rural solitude. But they didn't understand that the job had a number of negative effects. It wasn't sustainable for my happiness and the health of my real life - outside of work.

In the course of the last eight months, I've left the job and that lifestyle of stress and achievement. I no longer receive praise from my colleagues since my new colleagues are two dogs and they don't talk. I don't pull in a decent paycheck every two weeks because I still haven't written a full novel or found a new job. I don't get to fill my closet with new fancy dresses and flatly-proper suits because I have no more presentations to give.

And I feel absolutely amazing.

I don't have to use the crutch of caffeine to make it through the day.  I have fewer complaints about the workplace because the only people inside it are myself, my husband, our dogs, and our family and friends.  I get to work on things I care about - sharing time and love with my family, friends and pets, my novel, getting in the best shape of my life, cooking, caretaking, and my blog - at my own pace (admittedly, I still push myself too hard). There are no performance reviews looming in the distance. And, best of all, in the last eight months, no one has told me that I should aspire to anything greater than what I've achieved; there is no senior-level position for the stay-at-home writer/housewife.

I am blessed to say that I rang in 2014 knowing where I belong:  sitting in my yellow room at the top of the stairs in our quaint and quiet colonial with my single cup of coffee, a sheaf of fresh notebook paper, a stack of black Bic pens and .7 mm lead pencils, and a tall glass of water. From my cushioned seat, I am procrastinating the writing and revising of the sixteenth chapter of my growing novel by writing this blog entry while watching out the window as the seventh inch of snow gracefully falls atop the six inches already standing in the yard. It is a good existence, solid and contained. It is something I love, and it is something I'm working hard to be good at doing.

I had the option of having it all, but I much prefer this subtle and humble life whose rewards are the time to learn new trades, grow as a person, and breathe in deeply. I can't begin to explain what a comfort that time has been.