Burnout, grief, and healing…

Below I started writing in August of this year. I shall continue. Kind of a doozy going back to read one’s feelings from just a few months ago. The frustration and anger is palpable, and I can’t say that I’ve stopped watching the terrible news.

Not a fun combination, but one I have been dealing with in spades lately. Like many, I burnt out on 20+ years of bartending and the restaurant industry. It’s not that I don’t have a love for or knack for it anymore, but the backlash from patrons and their behavior has caused many of us to run. Hailed at the beginning of the pandemic as “heroes” for the mad switch to to-go food and drinks, sanitized grocery handling, and deliveries, now we’re considered selfish for still expecting a tip. We’ve always made tips, when did that become a new thing for people to rail against?

My grief in losing my wonderful friend and former partner to cancer was all-consuming at times. A year ago, I had a moment that broke me and I knew I needed help to get through the despair. I’ve never shunned therapy but was afraid of medication for depression after stories from friends about the ups and downs of dosage havoc. I took the chance and gave Lexapro a try, and it was a perfect fit at the time. Serotonin and I had been perfect strangers for some time. I took it regularly for months until I realized it was making me complacent, too much so. I was perfectly “happy” in my job I was actually miserable because all that yummy serotonin flooding my brain made me not have a care in the world.

I don’t advocate just going off an SSRI without your doctor’s go-ahead! I did gradually taper off myself until I was all in my feelings. I needed to know how I was actually feeling to dissect what needed to stay, and what needed trimming. I ended up leaving my last bartending/serving job. I was in a lot of physical pain, and I couldn’t take the entitled parents who let their children run amok with no-regards for our feelings or our business. I left behind wonderful coworkers and lovely regulars. I don’t remember guests being this bad before.

So, how does one wade through the muck that is now? AI is creating a lot of unhappiness in addition to being helpful. More and more people, myself included, are applying to jobs in several professions in hopes SOMEONE gives us a chance. According to a TIME magazine article “You’re Not Imagining It– Job Hunting Is Getting Worse“, by Alana Semuels, a perfect storm of layoffs (many in Human Resources), less jobs, and AI sorting through and immediately rejecting applications are to blame.

“Part of the difficulty stems from a tightening labor market, especially in fields like tech that have had hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the last nine months. There is now, on average, one job opening for every two applicants on LinkedIn, a big change from early 2022, when there was one job opening per applicant on average.”

And that statistic is made worse when you know that it’s often the same people over and over again applying for the same jobs. I have had it, but how do I survive? How does anyone? I currently sport two busted knees and a pinched nerve in one foot. Not exactly bartender material anymore, especially in my mid-40’s. So, using several job sites, a rewritten resume (yes, I used AI to freshen it up), and a healthy expectation for rejection- I apply to several jobs a day. By the end of July, I had applied to 171 positions, predominantly in writing (copywriting and content creation). Am I dumb? No, I’m wildly overeducated with a Master’s degree I don’t use. Am I going completely insane and questioning my worth as a person? Yes.

So, where’s the healing? Burnout and grief from a long career, grief from losing a loved one, and my financial stability. Yes, there has been healing. Healing is not waking up one day and feeling all your problems leave your body and mind forever. *Today, October 26, 2023* – That my readers, is completely impossible. It takes a long time for many problems to happen, they aren’t going to disappear overnight. As much as I bristle at telling myself I need -patience-, that’s exactly what one needs. I’ve found writing down, yes journaling, my daily or weekly feelings to help. I get a lock on them, make note they’re there, and see if I can work around them if they’re big, through if they’re small. Eventually working through a big problem is helpful, but again, time heals, and if you don’t have a ready-made solution for things getting in the way of your everyday life, you need to manage the space it’s taking up.

Just don’t give up. Ever.

Pain, toilets on the fritz, broken beds…

#apple #handpie #flatwhite

Good afternoon. I’m ensconced (I love that word) at my local coffee shop, wincing from nerve pain, and <praying> my laptop works quickly enough. Having gently devoured my apple hand pie and sipped my gorgeous flatwhite, I’m here despite my no-going-out rule of late. It’s too expensive to leave the house. But, when you’re terrified of a possible toilet breaking, then add the mortification of the bedframe finally giving, you leave. It was the smart thing to do. Right?

And how did your morning start off?

I’m not even mad; everyone has one of these days. Since I have a tendency to overdo it on my rest days, why not have the Powers That Be dain this be the day for me? Perhaps I had it coming. Things have been going so well <please insert your heaviest sarcasm>.

My body has decided it’s returning to a previous setting labeled “Extreme Burnout” and I am displeased by this decision. I thought we were past this, body. While a factory reset wasn’t possible, I thought removing the bartender_run.exe.2021 program would please you. No more 40-60 hour work weeks. No more coming home at 3AM. No more annoying or lecherous men. Do you need new parts? That’s a bit out of my price range, and I’ve yet to see my Bionic Woman dreams fulfilled. Allegedly, when your body has decided it has had enough enough, it will just whole hog break down without considering your feelings. Rude.

So, making the most of my time in a fairly distraction-free zone. Plenty of writing opportunities exist if I can wrap my brain around them. I’ve signed up for at least a dozen newsletters from hardworking individuals who do the legwork of finding gigs such as article writing, paid writing contests, and more. Ignoring the searing pain, <seriously, now?!> has muscled out my creative abilities. It’s a bitch.

That’s all I have to contribute. A bit of reflection and complaining. Take care of your bodies, folks. It’s the only one you have.

#writer #writing #pain #nervepain #concentration #coffee #coffeeshop

Time isn’t our friend and friends who don’t give us time…

*Originally written whenever eggs were $10 a dozen, however long ago that was.

Cheerful, I know.

Time is moving at a baffling pace- at once too quickly, and stuck floating inside a hovering bubble. Stay-at-home, WFH, no come back to the office, get out and spend money. What money? Eggs are $10 a dozen. Travel? Flights are cancelled. Quiet quitting! No, quiet firing, quiet hiring (I think they’ve run out of rhyming the job markets’s despair). Job change regret! Oh despair, my previously morbid and unhappy cubicle, my Slack gone quiet, my steady drone of Zoom meetings, where have you gone?

I’m suffering from expectational whiplash and numb to another shooting.

I should be panicking- my bank account is dry, I have a part-time job in retail, and too often a case of imposter’s syndrome as I pitch clients for my copywriting business. I’m not actively panicking though, to be quite honest, I’m done with it. Three years of panicking has led me to too many unhappy jobs in the restaurant industry, a prescription for Lexapro, and heartburn. That feeling of dread, of “oh fuck, what do I do now?” has been replaced with a mixture of “it is what it is”, “I did my best”, and “fuck this nonsense”. I lost my well-paying job as a bartender, my entire savings, and my former partner to cancer these past several years. I am well and truly, over it.

Another feeling has moved in, it’s softer, mildly urgent, but somehow very powerful. Quiet panicking.

Why would this be powerful? Perhaps I’m making an excuse for still feeling anxious, worrying, losing my hair, what’s left that’s graying faster. It’s really just giving something old a new name. Giving a name to what has hindered me for years less of a hold. Quiet panicking is downgrading my imposter syndrome, my depression, and anxiety, to something manageable I can look at and go “Okay, enough with you.” I actually haven’t taken my medication in a week. No knot of worry or heartburn has taken over. I’m having productive days of taking care of myself, eating well, and occasionally overindulging but in no way feeling bad. I’m writing, creating, reaching out in professional circles, and creating small ripples. I’m okay with small ripples, not waves. Waves are overwhelming, but ripples are baby steps.

I’m taking my sadness of losing my former partner, my wonderful friend he became, and putting it into writing. Catharsis comes in many forms.

I’m taking my anxiety in having imposter syndrome by writing someone every day that they should hire me! Ha, ha, well, sort of. I’m much more professional than that. I swear, I think.

I’m taking my depression of losing my financial security in knowing that money is just money. It can be earned again and I am not my credit score.

I’m taking my hesitancy and considering the feelings of my characters again in a novel I’m writing. They want to be heard!

I’m taking my own damaged and compartmentalized heart and giving it a break. It needs love from me, not toxicity from those around that haven’t considered my feelings. It needs care, sometimes in the form of ice cream, sometimes in the form of not answering a text.

I’ve lost many people and cats I’ve loved in the past 7 years. That’s not a lot of time. Many of the people I’ve lost haven’t been to death, but have just disappeared. Lost to Covid fear and anguish, agoraphobia, physical ailments that keep them from socializing, failed relationships/marriages, and just plain old mental and emotional exhaustion. People don’t put the effort into friendships they once did. Maybe it’s for the best in some cases; I certainly don’t put any more effort into those I’ve come to realize are more acquaintances, or some former coworkers. I’m not saying that everyone you care about has to reach back out every day or even every week. Physical separation can be a huge hindrance, as is having children. Not having children myself, I give my parent-friends a big break. But not everyone. It helps to recognize that people who want you in their life will make the effort.

On that note of what friendships to keep, it helps to take inventory of those around you. Who is making you feel good? Who is making you feel like shit? If someone rarely to never reaches out, checks in, and has any point been a dick to you- they are not your friend. If you get those random check-ins, those “Hey! How’s it going? How your job/kids/pets/life”? and genuinely mean it, those are keepers. If I, if we all, have learned anything in the past few years is that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and your time and emotional effort are precious- don’t waste your time on those that give nothing to you.

I have 19 tabs open…

Hello all. You’re probably nodding along to the above, looking at your dozens of open browsers. On the computer, they’re *usually* important. Mine are several online courses, lists of book publishers and agents, Indeed (we ALL have that one open), Google Docs, companies I’m researching, and many tabs for my newest website. I realized that an issue I’m having is easy enough to get solved, but no matter how “user-friendly” plug-n-play web hosts are, they failed to revamp their ease of use for pandemic-weary, short-attention spanned adults in their 40s. Hi, that’s me.

#ThorBaby #GiantKitten

I spent my scorching day yesterday pushing through to make my website look nice. It looks nice. It is not wowing me. Now, before you say, “You can hire people for that,” I’ll just put my palm up, says “Thanks,” and explain that I am far too poorly in the deep pockets realm to afford brand cereal, much less a website designer. I also love to tinker- I’ll create 15 new website options, trash 14 of them, and still question the 15th. There’s also the pervasive website envy from looking at other lovely, modern sites with fading menus and easy-to-click options. I know I can do that, really. But the frustration of spending all day figuring it out when my time is limited is frustrating (in my best John Oliver accent).

So what’s a budding copywriter to do? Drink more coffee? Snuggle the cats? Pray I’ve saved my work before one prances across the keyboard, butthole on proud display?

I’m going to listen to my ADHD and go run errands.

Can we ever go back…

June 14, 2020. Ouch. Another unpublished draft of my rage is below. Reading these are therapeutic and a challenge for me to put some larger unhappiness to rest. As I’ve mentioned in my recent posts, I lost one of my best friends, and former partners, to cancer. I’m not feeling “Grab life by the horns” so much as “Pick yourself back up because no one else will.” It’s not a cry for pity, it’s a resolution.

“Not everything was a dumpster fire as 2020 slid into mid-winter. No really, there were some good moments, great moments… Personally speaking, it was supposed to be the year, when bad stuff stop happening long enough for me to get a decent grip on things and right the sinking ship that was my *cough *cough, early 40’s. That last part is still debatable, it may say that on my ID, but I mentally stopped maturing, aging, after 27. No one tells you this when you’re younger, that there’s a good chance you’ll fly through an entire decade and then some without realizing the numbers ticking by.

I realize I’m harping on this, but aren’t you? Taking whatever plans you had three months ago, the pieces of a life you may have been enjoying, and finding that square peg and round hole aren’t working. Right now my life looks like a 1,000 piece puzzle painted entiredly in black, and I’m only finding a few pieces a day that connect. Those connected pieces, however small, fill me with a purpose even if I can’t see the finished goal anymore. I understand many people are dealing with kids, wrecked plans for the year in addition to their own personal goals and I empathize. I am part of a secret society of people (mostly women), that are professionals at putting others first, ourselves last.

Now, in light of #BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19, all the destruction our President has enacted to destroy our relationships with other countries, our environment, our education, our bodies, I can go on- it certainly looks like a dumpster fire we can’t put out. I feel guilty wanting to put myself, my happiness, my goals, first. When you’re the only one that runs the business of your life, you have to. I want to know how to strike a balance. How to be more self aware, more sympathetic, to stand up for others, to enact change. I’ve spent a large part of my adult life doling out drinks at my bar, dealing with men’s lechery and idiocy when alcohol is added to the equation. Then the general ignorance of everyone who treats service-industry people as less than them- uneducated, someone to touch or speak to in any horrid manner.”

So let’s talk about anxiety…

Wow, October of 2020 I wrote the passage below but never hit submit. Like all those texts we rant hard on, then in a fit of passion hit ‘send’…or delete. Why do we do that? Is it anxiety boiling over and we finally pay attention to the mess and proceed to cleanup? Perhaps, or maybe it’s knowing our words will fall on deaf ears, or encourage a fight. For the record, I still feel as passionately about my “restaurant rage” (angry late young-aged woman shakes fist at sky). I won’t cop to middle-aged, no no, not yet.

I’m angry for more selfish reasons (but are they selfish?) Restaurant work still pays my bills, albeit poorly, and I’m seething to get out (that’s 100% on me). I’m craving support from friends I’m not getting (but we’re all suffering from the loss of our friend who was my former partner). An old friend posted to Facebook- “Do you hang on to connections that don’t serve you? Do you know why?” My shortened answer, for here, loyalty to the past. To a place we all worked in, to another friend who passed from cancer, and now for our friend we laid to rest last week. A lot of these friends moved away, and to be honest, I don’t keep in touch with because it’s tough to admit that we shared time and place and memories, but not a close friendship. Some moved and I do keep close. I’ve been questioning friendship and what that means to me, and what I actually need from people. Being in my 40’s is the hardest part, so many have kids and spouses that take up 95% of their time. I like kids, but they are adult-friendship killers. Unless, of course, you also have kids.

So, as a childless, unmarried woman of a certain age, I’m learning to seek out those who better serve my emotional and intellectual needs, as well as my interests. Regardless of your situation, I gently suggest you do too.

“It’s troubling to continue addressing this, but as I live in the DC metro area, besieged by election and Supreme Court atrocities, the feeling is climaxing. I’ve long dealt with anxiety and depression, and have managed to curtail the worst of its ugliness, until now. I’m seven months into being “unemployed” or as I’m starting to call it, again, under-employed. Working part-time delivering food and alcohol for my company, and also making drinks for the outside of our restaurant, the only spot to enjoy food and drinks anymore. It’s fine, it’s “fine”. It’s hourly, not tips, I doubt many know the tips they are leaving don’t go to us, but to pay salaries and keep the lights on. I shouldn’t even be mentioning that here, but I’m getting fed up when I see the generosity people are offering, thinking it’s helping us keep our lights on, our bank accounts full. It’s not. I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, as this payment in cash every week for my hours leaves me to collect unemployment. I don’t want to be on unemployment, I want to be a functioning member to society, to my life, my future. And I’m sorry, but I can’t do that on 30-40% less salary. Not in the DC area, where depending on where you live, rents have not eased up. I have never wanted to pack up and run screaming in the other direction more in my life. I live in a very-well-to-do neighborhood that up and ran away with being affordable long ago, but I kept hanging on because I made a good living, most of my friends are here, and it’s safe.

So back to that anxiety, see, it’s always been there, but kept hidden. Hidden by the “safety” and “comfort” of my job in a profession that has been decimated by this pandemic. Never did I think bartending would go out of style, but here we are folks. People are ordering cases of wine and beer to be dropped at their doors, learning how to make old fashions just like the bar down the street, and building bars in their basements.”

I actually did a thing today…

Watercolor and gel pen

So it’s been a while, yeah? Well, life has absolutely gutted me this past year. I just lost one of my closest friends to cancer, someone I also shared my life with for five years. Losing a “former lover” as a friend put it, is unfathomable. That we salvaged a great friendship is more unheard of (something many don’t understand). As he got sicker over the last year, I started collecting art supplies again, but hadn’t really put many to use. I’ve stared at my old sketchbooks, did a few small painting projects and felt my creative side waking up, very, very slowly. I think it’s called healing. Tiny bites of myself repairing its frayed edges I let get charred, mangled, and ignored. I’d like to do therapy again, but this feels more me- an outlet to pour my feelings into. Actual therapy *sigh*, I know is a necessary must, as unpacking my trauma past and present isn’t going to happen in a clearance watercolor set and graphite pencils. Painting and drawing won’t bring my friend back, just dreams and photos will. But, for now, tiny pieces of me can blend colors, and grab pens, and recreate something I see, or create something I’ve imagined. Emotional and psychological trauma are very real wounds we must attend to, and I hope to work through mine again in this creative, and safer, way. So enjoy my terrible first sketches of celebrities I saw on my phone!

I’m only happy when it’s gray…

The river’s fairly calm, I see cars but no one’s around. The clouds are silvery blue and the wind occasionally threatens something more sinister is coming my way.

Really mother nature? Bring it. Life has already shown just how injurious real people can be. One can be unknowingly malicious, inflict unimaginable harm, offering emotional cruelty of the highest order. Those people need to be more kind to themselves. If you can’t be kind to yourself, to pick up your pieces, how do you stop yourself from harming someone else?

Oh! There’s the sun, peaking through to protest with warmth on top of my head as I sit alone by the river. And then there’s the river, so soft, so placating, in it’s gentle march south. Why does no one come out on the best days like this? The rain will come, but I’ve stolen the best time and the best spot. My little sliver of peace near the mass of disappoint and pain.

#PotomacRiver

I imagine the days when people rode through here on horseback, how quiet life was, without the din of car traffic, incoming flights, the occasional military helicopter. One had to be more aware, senses more heightened. I’m under no illusion that life was easier, it wasn’t, but there was quiet.

Mad Girl’s Love Song

By Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”