What's Going On When Nothing's Going Up

I briefly update followers on Twitter that I had some truly abnormal experiences in my day job that has been consuming my mind and time. Then last Friday I missed posting. I wanted to take time to acknowledge what’s going on, work it out in a post, and maybe get the chance to help my readers out through my experience.

I won’t go into the gritty details and I’m certainly not planning on calling anyone out on this, but there’s been some shifty, less-than-transparent actions come to light at my primary job. This was not necessarily blind-siding but it wasn’t expected either.

It came at a time I was under the pressure of completing an application for the final level of licensure—basically, I’m almost through the starting license requirements and am moving forward to the last one I’ll get—which should have been an exciting time, but was marred by worry about my professional and financial futures. In the midst of gathering materials for that and getting it ready to send off, I was also starting a job search. Job searches are never fun or easy, and I feel like, with the advent of internet-based applications, it’s so much more time-consuming and demanding.

As you know, I’m also on my writing journey and have made a good connection with a local paper. Early this month, I signed on to write a few stories which required interviews. I’m so grateful and excited to have made this connection and have these stories to write consistently, so I’m especially disappointed in myself that I was behind my usual pace this month—although I did complete my work.

What am I leading up to? Well, I don’t say this to complain, make excuses, or manipulate. I want you to have the context for the point I’d like to focus on: I’m not doing great. I almost made myself re-write that; “I’m not doing great.” I suppose I wanted to make it sound better than it is or, maybe, I wanted to deny to myself that this is the case.

While I have a history of depression, I don’t think I’m at that point yet. This is very much a situational not-doing-great. It’s that this fiasco has created an upheaval of my expectations for going the future. There are little things like wanting to take a big vacation but knowing I won’t have time for that if I start at a new job. And bigger things like having to adjust, once again, to a new workplace and all that comes with it—coworkers, electronic health record, dress code, schedule, drive to work…the list goes one. There are still yet the biggest things like potentially not being able to have an extra day (or more, as I’ve been trying to make happen) totally devoted to writing—this blog, social media, books, short stories, articles...

Those are the worries if I get a new position elsewhere. There’s still the looming fear of what if I don’t? I’m not sure what road this goes down because it’s all been a rather unpredictable two weeks.

The long and short of it; even though I’m a therapist and I have all the tools, I’m not doing great, and that’s okay. Yes, it’s okay.

Life gets tough sometimes. Life is tough for me right now. It doesn’t mean I’m ungrateful for what I have, which is a lot, it doesn’t mean I’m not doing all the self-care activities that are good for me, and it doesn’t mean I can’t laugh and smile even when I’m feeling bad. It’s just tough and I’m allowed to feel not great.

While not feeling great, I haven’t lost sight of the positives and I won’t begrudge others for trying to point them out. I’ll get through this like I’ve gotten through many other tough times. It won’t last forever. It could actually be a new, wonderful opportunity—the old, one door closes, another door opens. I recognize these, I believe them, I also feel sad and my motivation is low, my sleep is off, and I’m more focused on what’s right in front of me than trying to move myself forward. And that’s okay.

It’s complicated, few things in life are. I think it’s important to share that we can be both in a not-so-great place mentally and still love our lives, feel positive, and take care of ourselves. Sometimes, we just have to keep up doing the best we can to keep it rolling until we pass through the not-so-great space. Even when we’re in these times, life is still going on.

Even in these times, I want to keep experiencing life so I refuse to stop being in it. I’m not wishing this was over, although I want so much to be back to baseline. This is where I am now, though, and it won’t be my forever.