Man, I’m tired.
I’m a little bit concerned that 2009 will wind up labeled as The Year of Burnout, because I keep feeling very precariously on the edge of it, and it’s really uncomfortable. Running more than one program has been seriously, seriously tough in a whole lot of ways. It’s not just a matter of working more than one job, since I am having a hard time thinking of a time when I didn’t work more than one job. It’s working more than one very demanding job, having more than one position of leadership, and working with a whole bunch of people in a lot of different ways. When I’m in the trenches with any of my work, working with my users and my clients, those feelings of burnout tend to fall away and I’m in the zone that I so, so love, effortlessly, but everything surrounding all of that is what’s getting to me.
It’s about having — or feeling a lack of — the resiliency to work in the fields that I do and weather the fallout that lands in my lap ably. There have also been a lot of changes at the clinic lately, and some rough tensions. It doesn’t help that none of my jobs still offer me any benefits at all and the health insurance conundrum remains, as ever, unresolved.
I had a mini-meltdown at home on Saturday night about a bunch of things, one of which being that as I approach three years of living here, Seattle still just doesn’t even remotely feel like home to me, and I’m guessing it’s just not going to. I love my neighborhood, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to make this place home. There are a whole bunch of reasons why, and I’m not going to go on and on about all the ways Seattle blows chunks for me. It’s a tricky spot to be in, though, in part because Mark very much loves it here, and also because I’m just not sure where I’d go right now if I were to move again anyway. I’m feeling like I don’t want to even think about relocating until I know, for sure, a place that I step in and feel very much at home in. having visited back home in Chicago lately, I don’t think that’s it, and while there was so much I loved about Minneapolis, I didn’t like some of the changes happening, and frankly, it’s too freaking cold. There are other cities I like, but I just don’t know how I could afford to live in, and there are pipe dreams I have about living rurally, but I see no way to even come close to manifesting those any time soon. I am off to Austin this week, a town I always love, so I suppose I can give some thought to there as a future-maybe, but it’s missing a large body of water, which has always been a must-have for me to feel at home. Bleh.
I think per the impending burnout, when I get back home from Texas, I need to just spend some time with a pen and a blank notebook and try and map out all of my stuff: what all I am doing, what areas are seeming to cause me the most stress, what places I can possibly pull back a bit. I also, still, need to get a lot, lot better about expressing my limits to people as well as to myself, as well as find some extra patience and compassion for myself about the limits of nothing more than my mere humanity. I often balk at being presented as a Superwoman, but that’s a bit silly of me to balk at since it’s not like I don’t try and effectively live like one.
I also very much need to find some time in the next few months where I can literally take a complete week or two off, full-stop. Given the amount of work I do in a year, it probably would be totally appropriate for me to have a full month of vacation, and lord knows I could use it, but that’s not exactly doable.
I don’t like feeling like this. Just this weekend, at the NARAL youth activist summit, I was talking about how in my mind, the job of an activist, in so many ways, isn’t somehow singlehandedly fixing a problem or getting an issue the attention it needs, but inspiring others to be activists, too, not necessarily full-time, but enough to mobilize enough people in ways from small to great to make the good stuff happen. At times like this, I can’t help but feel like I am not even remotely inspiring, and that totally bums me out. (That’s not me, for the record, asking for anyone to say, “You do inspire me, Heather!” I’m just talking out loud and voicing how I feel about myself at the moment, which I don’t imagine would be altered by anyone else’s feedback.)
When I’m out of town next week, I’m going to be talking to a bunch of future and potential sexuality educators about how to be innovative in sex ed. Effectively, what I have so far per what I’m going to say about that is talking about how it is I think, since that seems a lot more valuable than saying what I have done without talking about how I have done it and what has led me to do things the way I have. I’m hoping that goes well for a whole lot of reasons, but I also think I could use a reminder in how I think and how I innovate. Applying that to some of the places I find myself in right now would be a mighty fine thing to do.
In all honesty, I sometimes wish of late that I could take a long sabbatical to do nothing but have a personal and creative life right now. The last few months have been so intense, mostly in incredible, expansive, big-growy ways. Even the rough spots have brought a lot of enlightenment and growth. I have been feeling so loved and so able to love so fully, getting so much clarity about a million things, and having a strong feeling of renewal all around that I just didn’t even see coming or knew I even needed.One interesting side effect, too, about reconnecting with Blue has been that areas of my memory which were murky or just gone (gee thanks, abuse) have been coming back to the surface. I’m not sure if that’s because it was first with him that my most repressed memories were able to surface, because we have such a long history together, or lord knows why else, but it’s actually quite a gift.
I feel inspired as hell creatively, personally, in my heart, in my guts, in a part of my brain that doesn’t get enough airtime these days, nor do they seem to have found the right places to express themselves outside of my love relationships and my closest circle of friends. My two romantic relationships are both incredibly rich and complex, and the intersection of them all the more so, but it all feels very right and like…well, it makes a whole lot of sense out of a lot of things which hadn’t made sense before. I feel very much in my right place in both of them, even though neither is perfect or without its challenges. I suppose wishing I could do nothing but love and make art is incredibly self-indulgent — and it also would take away from the benefits these feelings have been having on the work I do, which have not been small by any stretch — but I wish I could all the same.
This came out really whiny, alas. But it’s what I’ve got at the moment, and where I’m at right now, a strange mix of tired and invigorated, inspired and burnt, expanded and limited, old and new.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I may comment on other stuff later but I have to comment now on your location problems.
I so get where you are coming from. I have lived in Champaign/ Urbana for over ten years now and in Illinois for almost twenty. I still don’t feel at home here. I have lived in over ten different areas of Illinois and I still do not feel at home here. I have tried and tried but never gotten to the point where I do not have at least one wave of homesickness per day. I gave up long ago, I am a New Englander at heart and I will never be anything else. I miss everything about New England from the food to the smell to the truly godawful weather.
I can never move back home though. I have established myself out here and I could never leave my career, my family, or the community I have built for myself. We won’t even get into the fact that I am now me and not my father’s daughter. Or the eastern seaboard’s horrid economy.
This whole thing would depress me out of my head if it were not for the Family I have here. When I come home at night and my two year old nephew crashes hard into my leg (on good days, I won’t say what he hits on bad days other than to comment that he is now too tall to run between my legs) my tea is steeping and it smells so much like home, I somehow forget that Illinois will never look like Rhode Island. I love my job, I love my coven, and most of all I love my family. I cannot take all of these things with me. I guess for me at least, they are enough.
You need to go where there is enough of whatever is important to you. I have found my enough and can live with the rest but I have my priorities, yours are likely very different. What is it that makes the rest okay for you? That is the important part.
Anyway the more minor suggestion I had is simply that if you do not have to stay near population centers for a job you might want to look at ruralizing in Virginia (western side) or West Virginia. It really is possible to find cheap rural rental properties in those areas.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Damn, that sucks about not feeling at home in Seattle. Personally I don’t think I’d ever feel at home there either and I grew up only a few towns away from there. The only place that DID feel like home to me in a very certain way was Tacoma, specifically the Stadium district. Where we live now IS home (and a great one/perfect fit), but not in the same way Tacoma was for me (like I recognized myself there), even though I’d rather keep living here.
Good luck finding/making home. If another visit to PT would ever do you guys good, we have a spare room you’re welcome to.
When I was a teenager I totally fantasized about living in Austin. I hear you on the water, though.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Oh, am I understanding that sense of homelessness right now. Tahoe isn’t home and while I miss Michigan, it never provided me with that atmosphere of growth that I need.
I do feel at home on one of the summits here and I’m fortunate enough to work up there, but that’s such a tiny place that it’s not enough to anchor me. I can and will live here for the next year or two, but I’m pretty sure this will never be HOME.
That was something I paid a lot of attention to on the way out here — where did I feel I belonged. There was a place in Wyoming that felt so much like home that I almost stayed; I think that’s where I’ll go when it’s time to leave here. We’ll see — I’m learning that the people I love are a huge part of home for me and they may take me somewhere else entirely.
If you ever want to give the Tahoe area a try, you’re more than welcome to visit. It may not be home for me, but it does have a lot to recommend it.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:28 am
It strikes me - and I could be way off base here - that your current lifestyle really isn’t allowing you room for creative output. From a complete outsider point of view, it seems that your writing and poetry and self-portraiture have had to take a backseat to everything else and although that may not be avoidable at the moment, it may be increasing your stress levels as that one part of you becomes unfulfilled.
But then again, what do I know. I’m just always happy for what you give for those of us watching from afar.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:53 am
You do have that superwoman vibe sometimes:-). I’m often in awe of what you’ve accomplished, and also what you’ve inspired others to do beyond your own direct reach.
Then there’s your art/writing skills, which are a whole ‘nother level of wonderful.
Having said that, I understand how it can be hard to find a place that feels like home. Even when I’m where I live now (and have for many years, at this point), I wonder about “coulda, wouldda, shoulda” moments, as far as place having it’s own effects. Nothing like being a tourist in one’s own head, some days.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Have you tried the nourishing/depleting exercise? You write down all the things you typically (I know, few of us have a “typical” day) do and then rate each according to whether they nourish you or deplete you. Of course, many things we do that deplete us we deeply love, but the exercise here is to see what activities energize you and which take away your energy, however you feel about the activity itself. It might tell you what you need to add or subtract from your life.