Slow Motion

I have adjusted to the idea of my new role, having attended a few meetings and speaking about the change to several people in the office. I overcame my initial feeling of fear and shame. My therapist said that I should not use the word 'fear' but more of 'discomfort'. So my feeling are not really fear and anxiety but discomfort. It makes sense I should NOT fear getting fired since that should have happened already; instead of announcing the department change, as compared to our contractors were several people were let go. My new boss said the employees will be protected but the contractor will be adversely impacted.

There is another emotion that I feel which is losing out on an opportunity to work in another department (though one is not really sure if one will get the position). I guess it is having no options left if I do not apply; getting stuck with nowhere to go. I guess the overriding 'fear' is that my management does not really need me and are just waiting to let me go, despite all the things that I have done. This is when the doubts creep in the early morning, as I lie in bed staring out into the dark room. Where did I make the wrong turn? What point in time was I heading in the wrong direction, or when did I miss the signs? Did my career really mean nothing.?

Of course, this is useless rumination as my therapist said in our session last week. To keep regurgitating the same thoughts over and over again like a broken record. But it is hard waiting for the transition to happen, seeing the signs that tell my mind to look for other work as I head down into a place where there is nothing left for me to do. Obviously, this is the intended course: to offload your present duties so you can work on your new ones. The fear is realizing that you do not have the skills to function adequately in your new role.

I bought cheap online courses to start learning: JAVA programming and SQL. I have an image of myself being a student again; putting my notebooks into school bag where I can write notes as I learn from the internet.This is the best way forward, to dig in and get the skills that one needs. This was the original intention of this blog anyway, to learn new things as the new world gets underway. But things are moving at a glacial pace, like I am watching myself in slow motion as we hurl into the abyss of the new, where everyone is trying to get a sense of what to do next while the boss is just 'winging' it just like everyone else.

Writing is the Cure for the Restless Mind

I compared my blog to another made by a young lady who I met long ago, very briefly; a transplant from the mid-west to the Carolinas.  She worked in a book store that fronted for a creative writing organization, sponsoring writing seminars to build a community of creative people in an old city, missing the industrial growth of other counties in the upstate. She took creative writing courses in community and state college back in the mid-west, writing poetry, blogging and focusing on essays, offering her service as an editor. She is a free-lance writer and editor and I liked her friendly, easy attitude, her free spirit in the way she explores her surroundings in the Carolinas. Her blog is refreshing and down to earth as compared to mine which is more abstract, intellectual and full of pretension. Hers on the other hand, is homey and without affectation, expressing a simple outgoing spirit that is characteristic of the very best of young idealistic Americans.

Her experience may seem similar to mine, starting a blog close to when I did, writing to find oneself and to practice writing, expressing her travels and explorations of the things around her, especially her dog and nature, writing of her journey to the South. At nearly the same time, I moved from diary writing to blogging, hoping to learn about the new digital landscape, writing about travels in Asia for my work and recently transplanting my whole family into the American South, a few miles from her new home and meeting a year or so after my arrival in the New World, encountering her in my application to attend the writing seminars that her organization sponsored. Her response to my queries where direct and open via phone and email, and finally confirmed when I actually met her during the workshop and attending a lecture she conducted. I found her petite, charming, similar to my sister, without airs but with a deeper substance belied by her seemingly innocent and naive demeanor.

Much later, I discovered her blog which was very interesting, especially her hikes in the mountains with her dog, camping, discovering rivers and waterfalls, trails and beaches. I admired her sense of adventure, her opportunity and courage, something I envy and would have wanted to do myself; to hike and explore the outdoors if not for my work and family. Her writing was immediate, without the fancy ornamentation of my own, without my high posturing ideas, focusing instead on the immediate circumstances. I, on the other hand, write for therapy, to keep sane amidst the pressures of work and too much activity, dashing out sentences like reading while riding a horse, while she polished her sentences in deep calm and seeming serenity. On contrast to the unleashing of my demons, my fears, my ideas and the all-encompassing feeling of superiority that one gets living in major cities, spending money on silly adventures, getting drunk and having fun; instead of the unpretentious life in rural America.