At A Loss For Thoughts

It’s May in Los Angeles which puts us at the beginning of a transitional season we experience in between our mild, damp winter and the desert hot summer. This season is categorized by two themes: clouds, and the fact that everyone, every year, forgets that this happens.

June Gloom.

I grew up in the Midwest and I know how pretentious it sounds that we define a season solely by the fact that it’s mostly cloudy most of the time. Other than the lack of sun, the weather is nice. It fluctuates between a wet cool and a sticky hot and the rare days the sun does emerge are picture perfect. It rarely rains but sometimes in the mornings a refreshing drizzle will mist the boulevards.

If this weather was transferred to the suburbs of Minneapolis where I grew up, everyone would be thrilled that it’s time to wear shorts again.

But these clouds are different than any clouds from my past. They’re not big, fluffy, cute clouds that come out with beautiful spring days. They’re mostly flat; as a matter of fact, their lack of depth is unsettling. They have no character but are instead low hanging, sticky, and ambiguously emotional. They emit a profound sadness which does not translate as a shallow this too shall pass sadness, but rather a sadness that feels permanent.

There’s no peeking a pale azure sky,

and no promise that the light at the end of the tunnel is sunshine.

———————

I’ve been trying to trust my gut more recently. This is a drastic shift for me in terms of decision making. I have always considered my ability to logically reach a conclusion my greatest asset; observe, analyze, execute is a phrase I have lived and died by for most of my life. However, especially recently, my anxiety has gotten the best of my thinking. I find myself making decisions deeply rooted by fear which, as anyone who suffers from generalized anxiety will understand, is triggered by almost everything.

A month ago I started a new job.

The offer was the culmination of six or maybe more months of searching, interviewing, wading through pools of rejection, and then refining and starting again. And it sounds like a cliche to admit this, but it feels like everything worked out exactly the way it was meant to. I was rejected by a handful of companies I honestly imagined myself retiring from in thirty or fourty years, but none of them compare to where I ended up. Everything about my new company felt completely different from the beginning and it’s also a cliche to admit but, I knew it was the right chance from the moment I read the job description. I had the indescribable feeling in my gut, and I listened.

By all accounts, this job is the closest to my “dream job” I could feasibly be at this point in my career. But if I’m being honest I’m still not entirely sure what my “dream job” is.

And it’s a lot. I forgot how hard being the new kid is, how hard it is to ask for help, how hard it is to feel Pretty Useless.

But the most flustering part of this whole new job experience is how quickly and easily my routine has shifted. For the first time in my adult life, I’m starting a job without moving, and although this was the desired outcome of the overall job search, I imagined the transition would be much harder. I had visions of myself getting out of bed too late, thinking about my old commute and start time, only to be catapulted back into reality after the first coffee hits.

My life is different now and I have a train to catch in fourteen minutes.

But none of that happened; from the first morning when I set a new alarm, started a new morning routine, it seems the shift has been seamless and most irritatingly, permanent.

I had no rest between jobs.

Actually, I had no rest from the morning I saw the job listing until my first day.

It started on a Tuesday in March, after an especially irritating day. Going home, I had a complete mental breakdown over my job hunting status, it felt like I had been searching for so long without any forward progress, and it felt like I would be stuck in my current situation forever. I texted a few friends about some concert tickets I had won for a little show at The Echo and we convened there, in front of the stage, drunk and dancing.

It was all I could think of to do. Escape.

I went to work the next morning with a mild hangover. Around ten AM I got a phone call with a subsequent voicemail. I listened to the voicemail, expecting it to be another telemarketer but instead it was a human, and the human said she was a recruiter with a potential job for me. I stepped outside and immediately called her back. She told me more, sent over the job description, and the job sounded perfect.

One week later I interviewed for the position, one day after that I got an offer which I accepted the next day, and then I put in my two weeks notice.

I ended on a Friday and started new on a Monday and it left me little to no time to think through exactly what I wanted out of a new routine. I was being presented with a fresh start and those strings attached dangle the desire to recreate, but in this case no time or energy to think.

And now, five weeks later, it already seems that without another seismic lifestyle shift, there is no refining the process I have hastily created. I think about my last job, which I held for three years, and the periods when I would set an early alarm to jump start whatever new whim I was considering fitting into my daily routine, and how each of them failed, either burning out slowly or getting snuffed immediately by the snooze button.
———————

This week, as I made my now-routine pilgrimage to the train station on my way to the office, I started a new Notes document on my phone. The first thing I wrote down was a smashed rubber hulk head on the ground next to the bus stop. A few minutes later, I added running to the red line going to union station with some other well dressed young professionals. My little chirps into this document would continue throughout the week.

It’s only been five weeks and already I’m seeking out the ways this routine is different every day. Ways this routine is not really routine.

The truth is that I’ve been feeling off lately and I can’t shake the feeling that all of this, everything that I’ve achieved recently, was pure luck. Maybe even a mistake. It makes everything around me, everything I’ve built underneath me, feel fragile. I don’t belong here and pretty soon everything will come crashing down.

Ever since I can remember, I have physically manifested my anxiety by picking at my nails and recently this habit has been worse than ever before. I’m going to have to stop getting gel manicures (which normally prevents the picking of the nails) because I’ve been unconsciously peeling the gel off, taking layers of nail with it. The hangnails and ripped skin takes days to heal and all I’ve learned is which Band-Aids are the best, (the least disruptive) for each finger.

Here I am, living the life I have always dreamed about living, but suddenly so anxious.

From the time I was a lumpy high schooler, I would lay in bed, listen to Yellowcard and stare at the fan blades spin against the popcorn ceiling. I wore Hollister that never fit right and dreamt of California. I dreamt of being a strong, beautiful, woman working a rewarding day job and dancing and partying by night.

Well, I made it. Here I am.

On paper, I am unequivocally happy. When my friends complain about their jobs I no longer have anything to contribute. But something underneath it all still feels off.

This vulnerability is new to me. I am scared and uncertain, despite having just accomplished the greatest feat of my career.

Maybe this is all part of the transition of really growing up. And while it never feels like it, the clouds do always lift. There will be blue sky again and it will be worth the long wait but the catch is you have to wait. It’s the June Gloom of growing up.