Will Work for Whatever

I hesitate to bring this up, but we're friends, so...well...I'll share. A little while back I lost my job. Now, don't go there. Don't get all flustered on my behalf, and don't let that revelation throw accelerant onto your own anxieties. We have enough flames to put out as it is without adding more emotional fuel to a fire that we can contain if we keep our heads.

Unlike a lot of the formerly employed, I wasn't laid off due to a negative economic spiral. The micro-firm I worked for had all of the work we could handle, and some to spare. But my boss's husband took a position on the east coast, and she relocated to join him, taking my work with her. She and I had a groovy thing going, and saying good bye was hard. Still, we both knew we weren't going to grow old together and bring our rocking chairs into the office, or anything. We had a good run and, then, life changed.

As it will.

I am certainly not the first person to observe that when the macramé of your life starts to unravel, you have a god-given opportunity to make yourself into a completely new plant hanger. You get to reboot, remodel, repurpose, rewrite. The trick is, however, to view this new state of freedom as an intriguing gift, rather than a dismal catastrophe.

So far, I seem to staying on the sunny side of that street. I was reading along in a book from the "inspirational aisle" and the author was making a pitch for maintaining a positive outlook when the poopey hits the propeller. "After all," she wrote, "unless you're an unemployed single mother, things aren't likely as bad as they seem."

Because I qualify, the irony was not lost on me. And, yet, I still found that hilarious.

On the material side of things, I have unemployment benefits dribbling in, no loans and few bills. I'm cutting costs and finally using up those hotel travel shampoos and a decade's worth of gifted handmade soaps. I'm relying on the kindness of friends for my lattes, and I may have to give up my enhanced cable package and my audio book membership until a regular paycheck inflates my account again. But on balance, I'm alright. Wildly cheerful, even.

You'd think I'd be feeling despondent and worthless, and maybe I don't have the sense to know that if there were still poorhouses in America, I'd be on my way to reserving an unheated, unlighted room there. But, I have plenty. That's not the case for a lot of people right now, so I know to be grateful. It's stressful, but it's very manageable stress.

What's driving my joy despite the 70% drop in net income is that I'm free. Arguably, too free, but my time and my thoughts are my own. Obviously, I have to spend some part of every day sending out resumes, sniffing around for opportunities and making contacts, but each day is all about me, and it is impoverished, no-frills bliss.

The first notable change is that I do not park my body into an ergonomically designed chair every morning at 8:00, rising only once or twice until noon when I hunt and gather for take-out mid-day nutrition. Nor do I ease back down into those same leathery contours and repeat my sitting yoga for the next four hours.

These mornings, I roll out from under the covers and pull on some version of sweat pants and sneakers. After the youngster is off to school, I walk the neighborhood park ... I might break into a jog any day now. There are dogs. There are other people out. I pet the dogs and have time for conversation. I'm making many new friends and, for some reason, they all seem to think my name is "Bridget." I do not correct them. I am Bridget the Unemployed Walker.

The weather is almost warm enough, and in a couple of weeks I'll start swimming again. If I get my laps in before 9:00, that's free, too. Because we've had to eliminate prepared foods and restaurants, expensive bottled drinks and desserts, I'm cooking simple things and eating closer to the garden - oatmeal, carrots and apples, organic beans. More time and less money are forcing me to make changes because simplicity is my only option. I'm exercising instead of mourning and, you guessed it, I'm losing weight. I'm so bouncy and exuberant, I'm irritating.

Then there's the whole diminishment thing. If you work for anyone or with anyone, you collude in a common cause. You make an implied agreement with whoever signs your paycheck that you will not roll your eyes, no matter what they say or do; you will maintain a reasonably neutral emotional demeanor and contain your personality until you are as bland as possible. For the same reason that we do not use purple glitter ink to sign contracts, or wear our belly dancing costume to work unless we actually work as a belly dancer, we blur the edges of our personas until they are indistinct. We are acceptable to almost everyone, like white sugar. We agree to be colorless and odorless…it's just easier.

The degree to which either your profession or your work environment will demand this of you varies, but if you are required to extinguish your little light to fit in, it sucks the vibrancy right out of your day. It's exhausting.

To illustrate, I recently interviewed for a position with the state bar association in the department that sanctions attorneys for unbecoming behavior and investigates complaints of inadequate counsel. When lawyers go bad, this is where they end up for either a smack-down, or, in the extreme, to have their law license suspended or revoked.

The interview was conducted by six people, all dressed beautifully from the career rack at Nordstroms. The atmosphere of the office was set on high-professional, and although it was not exactly light-hearted, it was friendly. I was being evaluated by smart, busy people who were not interested in loving me, and were only evaluating if I would be of use to them.

Fair enough. I've got a solid education and adequate experience, so if you ask me a subjective question, I'm good on my feet. Ask me about my previous experience in document management and I can rhapsodize, at length, about electronic filing. Ask me about a previous project that gave me professional satisfaction and I can do a decent job of describing my role in litigation support. I'm a quick learner. I have excellent communication and written skills. I'm a team player. I'm an organizational genius. I'm a peach.

But then, out of nowhere, one female attorney queried, "Can you tell us why you want to work for the Disciplinary Council?" and my thin varnish of professional coating began to crack. I did a quick glance around the table to see if anyone had a smirk tugging at the corner of their mouths.

"Seriously?" I wanted to say, just before I delivered the funniest line of my life to an appreciative audience. Something along the lines of "I've been interested in discipline since that fetish cruise I took back in the 80s" or "Since I was a girl, I have dreamed of working for the Disciplinary Council. My whole life, in fact, has been leading up to this very moment."

I pulled it together enough to babble something about the importance of advocating for the public good, but I never got my footing back. It seemed impossible to me that six educated people who can take apart a word like "is" and debate its contextual meaning seemed insensible that they had given me the best opening line ever.

What a wasted moment.

But now, unless I need to fake a life-long dream to work in a particular capacity, I'm just me all day, every day. There is no squeezing into someone else's container; no requirement to meet anyone's expectation; no need to pretend agreement with anything someone else believes is important. All this self-expression is making me giddy. Like a smoker who starts tasting the subtle flavors of food again after quitting, or the cataract patient who regains clear sight after the surgery, the world is sharp and distinct again for me. I'm reconnected with my own rhythm.

In her very excellent book on the subject, Steering by Starlight, Martha Beck recommends what she calls a "shackles on/shackles off" approach to seeking what the Buddhists would call your "right work." The notion of "right work" is that in each of us is a divine spark that is perfectly expressed when we are in alignment with ethical work that simultaneously benefits the individual as well as other life forms. The path to right work is confusing for most of us, because we get blown off course by incorrect assumptions, our fears, other people's expectations and a limited view of what's possible.

For example, I got legal training because about twelve years ago, I was dating a lawyer. He was very persuasive, as lawyers often are, and I began to believe that I should be a lawyer, too. Then we could open up a practice together and be both professionally successful and wildly passionate at the same time – kind of a "Boston Legal" scenario. I entered graduate school as a prerequisite to law school, and did well, but I haven't found my "right work" niche within it yet. Some areas of law fascinate me, and some put me into an immediate stupor.

Beck would say that work that is not in line with your destiny has a "shackles on" feel to it almost immediately. That is, if someone offers me a job working in a wet, windowless sub-basement handling corrosive, carcinogenic chemicals and giant leeches, I am likely to feel a "shackles on" instinctive aversion tightening in my gut. My entire system might scream "NOOOOOoooo!", but I may take the job anyway because a) I need a job and b) I don't know what other options are available to me.

If I have an opportunity to serve wine in the gondola of a hot air balloon as we float over the Tuscan countryside while the sunflowers are blooming, I may have a "shackles off" response. If I feel that this work liberates instead of diminishes me, I have likely stumbled onto my right work, or, at least, one expression of it.

To facilitate the "shackles off" approach, I'm doing some heavy inner lifting. I'm networking over coffee, reading books on charting a new course, practicing Yoga Nidra meditation, taking a class and studying proposal writing and filling out a journal to help me identify what I want…what I truly, truly want from my life and from my career. I'm assured by life-coaches, fulfillment experts and positive thought gurus that my bliss is waiting for me if I just work out my longitude and latitude. My star chart, my destiny, has always been waiting for me and when I'm finally ready to lean into it, we will meet.

As all job seekers intuit, though, this is a race against time and dwindling finances. Magic and miracles need to appear slightly ahead of that tipping point where the very un-magical need to pay the orthodontist begins to snuff out the dream. Then, we acquiesce to "shackles on" if carcinogens and leeches get the bills paid. But sitting right here, in this moment, I have a grace period, and this is an excellent time to see what sort of dynamic job opportunities are available in fields that I have never, heretofore, considered.

In my research, I've discovered that I may have a future in celebration/ritual, cats, faux travel writing and virtual hospitality services. If my cable network is to be believed, there also seems to be employment in a profession that involves chatting on the phone with hot, local singles (which might be a good temp job if I could stop laughing long enough to provide customer service).

I can't do any better than Celebrant U.S.A. does in describing the work of a Certified Celebrant, so I'll just copy if here for your edification:

Celebrants officiate at and co-create personalized ceremonies such as weddings, marriages, commitments, renewal of vows, baby welcomings and adoptions, coming of age, step-family tributes, new dwellings, birthdays, graduations, survivor tributes, job transitions, memorials, funerals/end of life tributes, divorce, special achievements and civic and corporate events.

The Celebrant USA Foundation's Institute is dedicated to educating people about the importance of ceremony and rituals marking the important transitions in life. The Institute offers certificate programs in Ceremonies for Couples, Ceremonies for Healing and Transition, Ceremonies for Families and Children and Ceremonies for Organizations. Our invigorating and educational programs are held in New Jersey at our national headquarters and via correspondence and Web-based classes. To train to become a Celebrant and to learn more about our course offerings please visit the "Celebrant Institute" page, download our brochures or read through the sample ceremonies that Celebrants have conducted for people from all walks of life.

From what I can tell, Celebrants tell you what your particular life-experience means when you haven't a clue yourself. This work appeals to me because I can see myself wearing a variety of interesting costumes and concocting the weirdest quasi-rituals this world has ever known. I could carry a staff topped by a badger skull (I already have one of those) and tie a chalice to my waist with a braided cord (I do that anyway). But I don't know that I need to go through the time and expense to become "certified"... if you prime me with a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir right before your ritual and you're not too fussy, I should be able to wing it.

Since I'm allergic to felines, I don't think my career path lies in that direction, but it may hold promise for you. So, I did see an ad for a "cat placement specialist"”, meaning, I think, that you find homes for cats. Likewise, one intriguing ad offered the services of a "cat touch therapist", which, I'm guessing, involves some sort of petting or stroking of cats. There's probably a certification for that, too, if you want to look into it.

Several friends have sent me ads for "travel writing", thinking this would be a perfect marriage of my interests. The problem with this line of work is that it involves no travel and very little writing. You may be under the very false impression that the word “travel” implies that the writer will be going somewhere. Not so, or, not usually so unless you have one of the two employers in the United States that actually have a budget to send writers around the world.

Most travel writers sit in a cubicle some where, or in their jammies at home (while taking a break from their other work as a "hot, local single") and for a few dollars a page, they craft a travel experience out of brochures sent to them by their employer, a tourism promotions agency. These advertising-type agencies make their money promoting lodging, dining and recreation for private business owners or government tourism entities who hope to see more tourist dollars come their way. They are not in the business of sending writers out for fabulous travel experiences to exotic locations.

My friend, Arturo, worked as a travel writer for a couple of years after he graduated from college and taught me what I know about this line of work. Travel writers often faux specialize in certain regions of the world. The Caribbean writer develops a palette of descriptive adjectives for the azure sea and the blood orange sunset, while the African safari writer embroiders her fiction with explosions of magenta flamingos and exotic tribal customs.

While I haven't become so completely discouraged with Real Life that I have sought to make a living in Virtual Life, my young acquaintance, Ashley, gave up on this economy a couple of years ago. A young, talented artist without much education or work experience, she was banned from participating in a Greenspan - Bernanke - Madoff economy and is spending her work week in Second Life. She works from home. And since she's a self-starter, she makes quite a bit better than minimum wage (and not much less than unemployment benefits) in virtual reality running a bar and designing skins for other avatars.

Since the IRS hasn't figured out a way to tax "lindens" (Second Life currency that is converted into dollars via a PayPal account) as far as I know, Ashley has managed to save enough that she's thinking of buying some virtual property and establishing her own virtual food service and beverage venue. I suspect that before long, Ashley will become a pillar of the Second Life community and will tell the rest or us to go take our bad real-real estate deals and college degrees and stuff it. She doesn't need us; we've never offered her much anyway.

Even though none of the above feel like an ideal fit, I am far from standing on the closest median with a cardboard placard that reads "Will Work for Whatever". I am solidly in that space of "unpathed waters" where all dreams are viable, and the shackles are always off.

All is well. I'll write when I get work.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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