Relaunch: Baby Steps

The other day in the bookstore, I saw a book called “Women Who Do Too Much.” Ha. I’d like to write my own book on the subject. Its title would go something like: “Women Who Try To Do More Than Any Human Being Could Realistically Accomplish In One Lifetime, and Because of This Fact, Become Anxious, Overwhelmed and Mired in Self-Loathing.” I wonder if anyone would buy it. Probably not. I wouldn’t even buy it, and it’s my life story.

Wanting to do too much is my curse and my downfall. Of course, on the silver-lining side of things, this surely indicates that I have a lot of hobbies and interests and ideas and aspirations. Right? But the tarnish on that silver is the fact that having too many goals and interests makes it difficult to be productive. If I’m not doing everything, for some reason, I find it difficult to accomplish anything. I’m staring at a self-imposed mountain of tasks, and I’m so overwhelmed, I freeze up and do nothing. It makes for a very scattered, unfocused and frustrating life.

“So why don’t you just do one thing?” a friend asked me recently. Of course that sounds perfectly logical. Unless you’re me. If I’m doing just one thing, what happens to the other things? What if I never get to them? How can I abandon them like that? It’s like telling me I can only have one friend. Or that I’m only allowed to eat chocolate ice cream. Sure, I like chocolate ice cream. I like it a lot. But what about black raspberry and mocha almond fudge? And butterscotch ripple and mint chocolate chip? I want it all. For example, if I’m focused on my writing, I feel guilty about not doing my music. If I’m doing my music, I’m not creating artwork. If I’m creating artwork, I’m not focused on my writing. And if I’m doing any of these things, obviously I’m not cleaning the house, organizing the basement, or paying the bills. Yes, this can be a torturous internal monologue. Yes, I drive myself absolutely crazy. No doubt I drive Hubby crazy, too. If there’s one thing harder than being me, it might be being married to me.

And so, I have come up with a potential solution. To sum up: Baby Steps. It’s like that old adage about every journey beginning with a single step, instead of trying to run a marathon in twelve directions all at once and finding out that the finish line is getting further away with every flail. Or something like that.

Taking baby steps means setting aside an hour to write, and allowing myself to enjoy the process, instead of being upset that I haven’t completed an entire draft of a novel, and its sequel, too. It means focusing on trying to learn one song on the guitar and find some joy in it, instead of being impatient with myself for not being ready to perform solo. It means cleaning out one box in one corner of the basement instead of reprimanding myself for not reorganizing the entire downstairs.

Baby steps means slowing down and focusing on one thing at a time, trying to enjoy the present, and reveling in the fact that at least I‘m further along than I was before. Even baby steps feel like progress.

Now, if I can only remember this…

-Callie

Launch: What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?

So it's about time for me to find a new job. A real job. With a salary. Hopefully a career. The trouble is that I have no idea where to begin. A lot of my classmates in college seemed to know exactly where they wanted to go with their lives, they had their career path picked out, and were applying to grad schools while I was realizing that I needed an extra semester to finish up my bachelor's degree. I'm about a year out of college now, and I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. It's extremely difficult to make a living doing the things I'm most passionate about, namely music-especially singing- and writing. But I need to find something that I can be happy doing, because this hourly wage business is just not enough. I love my job, but I'm barely keeping myself afloat.

The song "What Do You Do With A B.A. In English" from the musical Avenue Q pretty much sums up my feelings on the whole subject. I've been searching for jobs on all those job searching websites, from monster.com to Yahoo! Jobs, to the new marketplace feature on Facebook. It's difficult to put in what I want and get something back that fits my needs. I entered that I need something at an entry-level position, because as the song says, "I have no skills yet", and although I've specified that I don't have any experience in...pretty much anything, nearly all the job postings that come up in my searches require at least three years of experience in the field. I still have a few months before I absolutely NEED a real job, my lease is up in September, but there is a time limit on it, and as it is I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I'd like to be able to buy new clothes or go out to eat with my friends without worrying that I won't have enough money to pay next month's rent. I was thinking that I'd try to make this entry inspiring and...helpful or something, but the truth is that this is supposed to be a chronicle of my journey into adulthood or whatever, and right now I'm struggling a little. I have the utmost confidence that I'll figure it out, but I haven't, yet. Stay tuned.

~Fae