follow my bliss

My life post-desk-job is still going really well. I’m starting to feel a bit more settled, like things are falling into place and everything isn’t so new and strange. I’m growing more accustomed to having vast expanses of daylight to fill however I choose. And I’m learning more and more about how to best fill them so that I feel like I did more than watch murder mystery shows all day long. (That was only one day, to be fair, but I think I watched – oh – 12 hours worth? I’m obsessed with the stories of true crimes. I also, no joke, check the closet at night for a killer who’s potentially hiding out until I go to bed. He probably slipped in sometime in the afternoon, and has decided to wait patiently until I least suspect him. Well THE JOKE’S ON HIM. I always suspect him.)

We’ve been getting more Fanny & Jane orders in than ever before (thank you to anyone who has placed an order!!!) and it’s wonderful. Our online shop is up and running and I’m incredibly proud of how far we’ve come. I’m having a great time learning how to operate this small business – and I’m reminded that I’m good at this! There’s still so much to learn and so many things I want to do for the business, and I want to do them all yesterday, but all in good time, grasshopper.

It seems this bakery will provide me the bulk of my “work” until after the holidays, which is so fantastic. I’m excited to put energy toward other aspects of my life too, but I definitely don’t mind focusing on this right now. The holidays are my favorite time of year.

Faryn’s neck-deep in her own full time desk job right now, one that she enjoys (yay!), so I’m taking the reins and handling most of the orders we get over the season. I enjoy the work a lot and I feel really productive running our little operation. Plus, the baking, the emailing, the deliveries, the trips to the post office – they’re all completely pleasant ways to spend my time, and I have to remind myself that this is part of my job now. Not just something I’m doing in my free time so that I can return to my desk job after my lunch break is over. HALLELUJAH. Can’t believe I’m here.

In December, I got a tattoo while Kevin and I were vacationing in Florida with my mom, stepdad and aunt. It simply says, “Be.” with a period after it, and it’s in my handwriting, which I love. The reason I got this particular tattoo, aside from the fact that we were at the tattoo parlor and I just had to get something, is because I had been standing on the beach a few days earlier, staring out at the ocean, and suddenly the word “Be” flew into my mind when I found myself worrying about time. I guess I was battling some low level anxiety at the time, my brain working constantly, whirring and racing to obsess about time and how I was spending my time and how I was filling that vacation, and how I would fill the time when I got back to New York, and what I would do today and what time is it.

It’s a pattern of mine, mild really, but still something I could do without. And I’ve noticed that this particular challenge is something I face a lot. I mildly obsess over time. If I wake up at 10am, putter around on the computer, and it’s suddenly 12noon, I will sit and stare off into space for a couple minutes thinking about how I spent these last two hours, and if that was good enough. Then, I will go for a run, wishing I’d gone earlier in the day, and thinking a lot during my workout about whether or not this is the best time of day to be exercising, and if I will have enough time when I get home to cross more items off my To Do list. This goes on and on until it’s time for bed and I spend a few minutes thinking about obsessing over how I’m going to spend my time tomorrow.

TIME. It’s so not worth my energy to be giving it so much attention.

It’s obsessive thinking, is what it is. I’ve always done it, since childhood, sometimes more, sometimes less. And so I got the word Be. tattooed in the crook of my right arm, right where I can see it and use it, hopefully, as a reminder to relax when I feel myself starting to fixate. It’s a reminder to let time pass as it will, and Be here in the present moment, rather than worrying if I have spent or will spend the time before and after this moment in the “right” way.

There is no right way.

We should all get that tattooed all over our bodies. There is no right way.

Because I, and many people I know, have to work constantly to shrug off the feeling that there’s a right and wrong way to do things. There just isn’t, you guys. There is not.

I got a voicemail from my grandmother yesterday morning. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about it on the blog or not, but here we are. Let me preface this by saying that I love my grandmother very much. I talk about her frequently on follow my bliss and that’s because she is and always has been a huge part of my life. My mom was 19 when I was born and was finishing college when I was a little kid, so we lived with my grandparents. As I was the first grandchild of our family, my grandma and I became very close and spent a ton of time together when I was little. She’s funny, smart, sometimes a little mean in a way that makes you respect her immensely, and she loves her family more than anything. She is and always will be an enormous influence on me.

I sent her a note last week, thanking her and my grandfather for some financial help they’d given me toward my massive student loans. And in the note, I also explained why I quit my job. I wasn’t sure what she’d heard or hadn’t heard from other family members and I wanted her to hear it directly from me.

So her subsequent voicemail began, “Hello. It’s your grandmother. So, of course, I’m really concerned.”

Ugh.

She went on to explain what she’s worried about, listing things as though I haven’t considered them at all yet, as though I clearly must have no real plan in place. Cuz, you know, good thing she’s around to tell me what’s what otherwise I, an almost-29 year old woman, wouldn’t know the floor from the ceiling.

Now, I have been absolutely blessed during this entire quitting-my-job experience to have avoided even a single naysayer, for the most part. Sure, every once in a blue moon someone will make a cynical comment, but that’s fine, that’s life. People have their own opinions and their own limitations and I respect that those opinions and limitations aren’t always identical to mine. Largely, though, everyone has been so supportive of this decision, and even inspired by it. Even my own otherwise often practical mother has surprised me with how open-minded she’s been, and how courageously she’s trusted me and my choices.

So it’s certainly not the end of the world to receive a less than glowing response from my grandmother. I know, I know, it’s her job to call me up and gripe at me. If not her, than who? Plus, she’s from a different era, her mind works differently than mine does. And of course it does. Her life hasn’t been affected greatly by the internet age, she doesn’t know the stories we hear all day long about people who are regularly making careers for themselves in unlikely places. When she married my grandfather, they were broke. And they spent much of their lives pinching their pennies and make safe choices so that they could give their children certain opportunities. I know this, I understand it, I can sympathize with her mindset.

But for me, personally, who was not born into this world during the era she was, and who does live in an age in which what I’m doing is becoming more the norm than it is the exception, I just had to roll my eyes at that voicemail.

What else can I do? I’m not going to get angry with her. She’s 78 years old. She loves me and her fear comes from that place of love. I just wish she’d have finally learned, in 78 years, that being critical doesn’t make people feel loved, it makes them feel criticized. When I weighed 265 pounds, her criticisms didn’t help me lose weight, they helped me get fatter. But I’m not sure she knows (or is willing to trust in) another way.

Still, besides my mom, I care more about what this old lady thinks than probably anyone else in my life. Which is silly, really, because I’m sure she thinks 90% of my choices aren’t smart ones. I guess part of growing up, for me anyway, is deciding not to care so much about what your grandmother thinks of you. I love her and I want to make her happy, but more than that, I want to make myself happy. So I can only hope that my happiness will eventually make her happy.

So I will call her back, and I will try as best as I can to explain why I’ve done this, and where the money to pay my bills is going to come from, and why it’s okay and why she should just trust me. And it will be an unpleasant conversation and then it will be over. And when I see her in two months at Christmas, she will make comment after comment about my choices, and offer suggestion after suggestion about how I can still save myself from this mess. (I imagine going to graduate school will be focused upon.) And I will fall asleep each night over the holiday shaking my head and rolling my eyes and looking forward to the next time I can sit down and have a beer with whomever else is home for Christmas and isn’t an old lady.

This is the long way of reiterating – there’s no right or wrong way to do anything. There’s only the way that makes the most sense to you. Period.

There’s no right or wrong way for me to have quit my job. And there’s no right or wrong way for me to spend my time now that I’m on the other side.

So I’m working, still, to remind myself of that, to glance down at the “Be.” on my arm and remember to let time pass and not obsess over whether or not I’ve lived each day perfectly. It’s a challenge for me, but I will get there. It’s a lesson I didn’t even know I needed to learn until I was here.

Today, I’m going to let the day take me where it may. I have some baking to get done, I’d like to exercise, and I have an improv show tonight with The Baldwins. It will all get done whenever it gets done. And I will feel so much more peaceful if I can let go of the need to control time.