Striking a balance
Posted on | April 15, 2006 |
Hunger lurches through me and my fingers peck haplessly at the keys; my heart lurks at the edges of the room, where the lamplight doesn’t fall, licking the wound of worry like a dog.
It’s been decided—at least in part, that I’ll be going back to work next year, and it makes sense. But I’ve been balking a bit, since those words tumbled out into the room conspicuously like a pocketfull of marbles onto the floor in the middle of a sermon at church. It’s taking me a while to adjust to this idea.
Like always, my mind gallops off—the eager, sunny pony that it is, says: this will be wonderful, just what I need, I have been lonely and longing for the connections and meaning that work brings to my days. But my heart, like a donkey, is lurching about. I’ve grown deeply content with the span of my days, with the ampleness of creative time, with the simplicity of exhaustion after a day spent with only one little boy: mine.
So it’s been like this: cays of internal impasse (have you noticed the paucity of posts?) As though a permafrost has spread up from my heart to my head. Days of creative emptiness revealing the strange limbo of now.
I’m putting together my resume, cover letters, applications and I hate it. Like teasing out the burrs from wool; the inevitable process of preparation, before action. And also I hate how Murphy was right: things always converge like ths in piles, awkwardly, anxiety heaped upon stress, on top of exhaustion.
But even with all this (the creative freeze, the endless house renovations, the worry about next year,) it there is a part of my mind that keeps coming back to this phrase: what is meant be will be. What can go right, will go right. Perky and annoying , like dandelions in a lawn, but welcome just the same.
In the car driving back and forth from the house to here, there is a field, and behind it a mountain, blue and dark, like a slumbering dromedary of rock and pines. I love how it makes my eye follow it’s jagged line, up from the edge of the woods and into the sky.
In the foreground, along the roadside, the pasture is turning green and old hay bales, round and taller in diameter than I am, sit heavily in a long row and wait.
Something will happen to them, eventually. A tractor might come, load them, lift them, toss them; or they might just stay at there at the edge of the field, as new grass grows tall, and slowly decompose. But right now there is no telling, they are just there, and beside them the fuzzy yellow heads of dandelions by the hundreds, heaping, golden, bustling, turn their faces up to the sun.
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12 Responses to “Striking a balance”
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April 15th, 2006 @ 12:47 am
I’m struck by the “[i]t’s been decided.” I assume that *you* decided and *you* can change your mind. Setting up the decision as final and then working through your ambivalence toward acceptance of it is an interesting strategy. It is, indeed, a “way of operating.” To take a significant action, I have to think of myself as more of an agent. I’ve taught myself to think that I always have choices, and that when I make a decision, I’m doing it because I’m making the choice that I want to make. I get the sense that you operate this way, too, sometimes — in your decision to move, for instance. I suppose you will know that going back to work is the right thing for you when you can say, “I’ve decided to go back to work.”
April 15th, 2006 @ 1:51 am
I trust your navigation in the terrain of opportunity. I swear that came out naturally, no pun intended
Christina, I know you will put your talents to best use, acknowledging your inner voice.
April 15th, 2006 @ 7:49 am
What I sense most in this post if the willingness to go with the flow and see what happens, even if you’re not sure which way the flow is going or whether it’s the right way…yet. I think that you will be able to swim just fine through the coming days. I love your descriptions.
April 15th, 2006 @ 8:21 am
This is why I love writing here–the insights into the layers of nuance I’m not always aware I’m saying. Such interesting observations, Lisa. I guess for this particular situation I do feel a certain passivity–it’s the best choice for my family, and so rationally it’s the best choice I can make… and yet, it isn’t the first choice I would make if I were on my own–though I don’t want to be on my own either right now. I’m deeply greatful for the fabric of family I have–and I’m excited about the possibility of what working will bring. Right now it’s the total lack of knowing what’s just beyond the treeline, so to speak, that has me jumpy. You know? There is a certain amount of doubt that always rides in my back pocket when I’m job hunting. And yet there’s also that spark of optimism that burns a hole in that pocket.
Steph–the terrain of opportunity–what a well turned phrase, perfect for right now. And Liz, you know me well.
April 15th, 2006 @ 11:07 am
Sometimes I feel as though I am intruding on your life by leaving comments to your posts. But sometimes I feel like I am going through so many of the same things that you are at just around the same time … and I am genuinely surprised because sometimes I feel so isolated being a mom to a 1 year old on leave from work/school. My husband and I are at a road in our life where we have a couple of choices, each with doubt, but also excitement and it is sometimes scary that we won’t choose correctly. But I like the way you put it “What can go right, will go right.” I appreciate that. By the way - one of our choices is Lyndonville, VT and all of your pictures have me voting for that one.
April 15th, 2006 @ 11:18 am
Transitions can be so hard. Even when they make sense and are as they should be, they are still change and that unsettles the soul just a little bit. I don’t know what to offer you other than understanding and support. It will go as it should…
April 15th, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
As much as I’m a nomad in my heart, I have a hard time with change, even when it’s welcome.
April 15th, 2006 @ 6:15 pm
ahhhh…
the constant dilemma…
if only we could be paid
to stay home with our own children…
sigh.
April 15th, 2006 @ 10:28 pm
Christina, how lucky the people that will get to know you next year (if the decided thing stays decided) are! I’ve been evaluating the job market myself so I’m feeling a bit of the same anxiety…
April 16th, 2006 @ 3:39 am
i resonate with the tug between being at home and having that ample time of creativity and then nurturing the loneliness with a job, where you can connect with people every day.
you wrote about your emotions with it all so eloquently…
April 16th, 2006 @ 10:17 am
Your writing is so descriptively lovely. Holding a good thought for you on the job hunt that you’ll find something that feels positively right.
April 16th, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
You need to keep writing, no matter what. You are a beautiful writer. REALLY.