Wake Up Call

Ever since I broke up with the Boy, I have been absorbed in my work.  Not because I enjoy it, and not because I want to do it, but simply because it has to get done.  We are in the middle of a huge system implementation and it is going live on July 1.  I am the Director over the entire project.

They schedule me in meetings all day long, so I started working evenings to answer e-mails and try to get some of my own work done.  When working in the evenings wasn't enough, I started working on the weekends.  It is my only opportunity to get several hours of uninterrupted time where I can actually feel productive.

At first, I didn't mind working the weekends.  It was like my secret weapon to get a head start on the week.  But now, it feels more like a necessity than a choice.  No matter how hard I try to get caught up, I immediately fall behind again.

These past few months, I have really been struggling to find meaning in my life.  Maybe it is a mid-life crisis, or maybe I am just ready for a change.  But the bottom line is that I hate my job and I hate my boss even more.  All I want is to be left alone.  But the pressure just keeps mounting.  It has gotten to the point where I can't fall asleep at night, no matter how tired I am. 

Last weekend, I was at the drug store picking up some Motrin when I noticed the sleep aids in the same aisle.  Normally, I try to avoid taking any medications unless I absolutely have to, but I ended up buying one of those natural sleep supplements, just in case. 

Later that night, I laid in bed restless.  As I watched the clock turn midnight, I couldn't stand the idea of another night spent tossing and turning.  So I reached into the bedside table and took one of the sleeping pills.  All I wanted was a good night's rest so I could face another day at the office.

I turned out the light and waited for my body to drift off to sleep.  Within about five minutes, my heart began racing.  I felt like I couldn't breathe.  I got out of bed and started pacing around my room.  Thoughts were flying around my head.  Whatever was wrong with me, it was completely my own fault for taking that pill.  I wondered if I had done any permanent damage to my body.

I called my mom and she took me to the urgent care.  The entire time, my heart continued racing and my body was quivering.  After some tests, they were able to determine that I had experienced a temporary adverse reaction to the sleeping pill.  The longer I sat in the exam room, my symptoms started to subside.  The doctor gave me some medicine to counteract the pill and I went home to bed.

The next morning I cancelled my meetings and slept in for a few hours before I turned on the computer and started working again.  As I sat in my robe, feeling shaky and weak, I realized that something in my life has gone seriously off track.  Here I was 12 hours after a major health scare and I was right back at the computer as if nothing had happened.

Most people are able to set some kind of boundaries when it comes to work/life balance.  Yet as my workload expands, I just keep adjusting my life to make more time for it.

It is hard to understand exactly what drives me to work so hard.  The best explanation I can come up with is that I have a strong sense of obligation to complete the task at hand.  And I am extremely tenacious.  I can't just walk away when there is work left to be done. 

But I have reached a point where working hard no longer gives me a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment.  In fact, it makes me feel empty and resentful.  This job has taken so much out of me that I barely recognize myself anymore.  It has obliterated my social life, robbed me of my sanity and now it is putting my health at risk.

Every day, I fantasize about walking into my boss's office and quitting.  But I am not sure that is the best way out.  If I leave this job, I will just go to work someplace else and eventually I will end up in the exact same position.  I have to find another way.

Tonight I left work on time so I could go to yoga class.  I started taking yoga a few months ago and it is one of the few things that has really helped me.  Yoga is about moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you really are.  And over time, practicing yoga should allow you to see the world more clearly. 

After my yoga class, I felt refreshed.  As I walked out of the gym, the warm breeze swept across my face.  I looked out ahead of me and noticed the rows of flowering trees that lined the path leading to the parking lot.  I stopped for a minute and grasped one of the branches so I could inhale the sweet fragrance of the delicate white blossoms.

There is no way those trees burst into flowers during the hour I had spent in class.  They were there when I passed by on my way in.  I just hadn't noticed them.  It is amazing what we are capable of seeing when the mind is unburdened.

Someday I will quit this job, but it will be on my own terms.  For now, I need to learn to care less and not try so hard.  Until I find something worth caring about.

Vacation Interrupted

Just after the new year, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine from college.  He got married and moved to Portland about 10 years ago.  Every year I think about going out there for a visit, but something always comes up.  This time, when he e-mailed me the timing was perfect.  I was on the verge of breaking up with the Boy and feeling the need to get in touch with my single self. 

As it turns out, my friend was also newly single.  He and his wife decided to file for divorce after ten years of marriage and seventeen years together as a couple.  He didn't go into details as to why.  He only said that it was mutual and they had grown apart.

For the last few months, I have had a feeling that something in my life is about to change.  I wondered if this trip to Portland would be a turning point for me.  After finally making a clean break with the Boy, I am certainly due for a fresh start.

I decided to schedule my trip to Portland for Memorial Day weekend.  I figured work would be slow due to the holiday and I could stretch my PTO since I already had that Monday off.  I started looking at options for tickets, but every time I went to book the flight it didn't quite feel right. 

There was no rush to purchase the ticket, so I tried to e-mail my friend to ask him about what flight times might work best and where I should stay.  Although I have not seen him in over 10 years, we were always extremely comfortable together.  I thought that he might invite me to stay at his place instead of a hotel.

After about two weeks, I finally heard back from my friend.  Although he seemed excited to talk to me, I could also sense a hesitation in his voice.  We chatted about flight plans and how they might fit around his work schedule.  Then he gave me some ideas about things we could do when I was there.  Finally, I asked him if I should get a hotel room or just crash at his place.

"Well, I was thinking you could just stay at my apartment," he began.  "I actually started dating someone a few months ago." 

I sort of tuned out so I didn't catch all of the details about her, but she definitely sounded blonde.  He went on to explain that after his divorce, he joined Match.com and went on a few dates.  Then he decided to search for people in his neighborhood and her profile came up.

"Anyway, she lives about 7 blocks away so I can just stay at her place while you're here," he explained.  "I am pretty much over there all the time anyway." 

I had two initial reactions to his news.  First, it is completely unfair that he could log into Match.com and meet someone special before the ink is even dry on his divorce papers.  And second, that chick stole my vacation!  Why couldn't the universe have waited just a few more months to bring the two of them together?

Although I wasn't going into the trip expecting romance, I certainly anticipated that there could be some harmless flirtation.  My friend admittedly had a crush on me in college, and while the physical attraction wasn't there, our intellectual chemistry was quite alluring.  Now, thanks to her I will be feeling like the third wheel the entire weekend.

After I hung up with my friend, I felt utterly disillusioned.  I could not believe that this trip, which I was so excited about, had turned into something completely different than I expected.  Then I remembered a dream I had a few weeks earlier.

I have been keeping a dream journal since the beginning of the year. I've always had very colorful and vivid dreams. And I read somewhere that dreams may be able to provide us with answers that we can't seem to recognize in our waking life.  So I started to write down the dreams I remember, along with an interpretation of what I think the dream is trying to tell me.

In the dream, I was visiting my friend in Portland. We were alone in a room and he kissed me.  Before I had a chance to talk to him about what the kiss meant, we had to leave to meet his friends for dinner.  When we got to the car, his friends were waiting for us.  I had to sit in the back seat with two perky blonde girls, while another one sat in the front seat with my friend.  When we got to the restaurant, I wanted to sit next to my friend but he told me that he was saving that seat for someone else.  Eventually I got frustrated and left. 

After I had that dream, I wrote in my journal:  Maybe this dream is telling me that my trip to Portland may not be what I am looking for.

When I was looking through my journal, I came across another dream I had about my friend from college, which I had completely forgotten about.  This dream took place in January, when I was just starting to contemplate taking the trip.

In the dream, my friend from college was getting married.  I was trying to find him because I needed to talk to him before the wedding.  There was a guy walking in the parking lot wearing a tuxedo.  He looked exactly like my friend from the back, but when he turned around it wasn't him.  Then I went into a building to try and find the wedding, but I woke up before I got to talk to my friend.

After that dream, I had written in my journal:  I think the divorce has opened up this ticking clock in my mind.  What if I go to Portland in the spring and by then he is dating someone else?  The wedding represents the need for me to resolve my feelings for him.

So now I am completely torn about whether to take this trip.  I have already promised my friend that I am coming, but it is less than a month away and I still haven't booked the ticket. 

I really wanted this trip to be a turning point for me.  But there is a difference between what you want to happen and what you actually believe is going to happen.

The power of my subconscious is clearly very strong.  And eventually it will lead me to whatever or whoever I am supposed to find.  I'm just not going to find it in Portland.