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My "Orange you glad?" baby shower was featured on Style Notes today. That felt pretty good as Camille is someone in the biz I really respect. Also when I moved out of my duplex after graduating college, she moved in with my former roommates to beautiful 8A Clarkson. So she obviously has great taste in roommates and duplexes (duplexi?).

You Know You're Unemployed When...

You know you're unemployed when you're 28 years old and addicted to Barbie movies.

I'm hooked. I babysat last week and watched some animated Barbie movies on DVD. The first one I watched was about a girl (Barbie, but with a different name) who turned into a mermaid, well actually she just discovered her mermaid descent. The next day I babysat it was me suggesting the other Barbie movie in their collection to watch. We watched Diamond Castle. At times the little girl I was watching wanted to play real Barbies, but I was so into the movie that I asked if she wanted to bring the dolls into the living room so that we could keep watching the movie while we played.

You can only imagine my delight when I discovered that my very own niece owns some Barbie movies as well! I was at her house and was able to borrow another 2 to watch. I'm so glad we can share this. I completed Barbie Swan Lake, disappointing and odd. Tonight I will finish Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus.

Diamond Castle was by far my favorite. It had good music, fun characters, a good story, and cartoon dogs. Speaking of dogs...Daniel came upstairs to find me watching the Barbie movie and I told him I was only watching it because Penny wanted to. (I tend to view my dogs as little kids sometimes.) His response: "So you're justifying your watching of a Barbie movie by suggesting that our dog wanted to watch it?" I just try to counter the "crazy" with "crazy". It's all relative. And no matter which way you cut it, I am a little crazy. And bored. Really, really bored.

You Know You're Unemployed When...

You know you're unemployed when you have a really good tan.

Not having a job has afforded me a lot of spare time. In said spare time I've been enjoying my free time at the pool or just laying out on my back deck. As a result I have developed a nice bronzed color. This is the best tan I've had since my days in high school. There are not a lot of perks with being unemployed, you know as most days I'm battling identity issues and finding my purpose in the world, but developing a great tan is at least one nice benefit. This may be (hopefully) the last good tan of my life, at least until retirement that is. It seems to me that most retirees in Florida are all nicely bronzed George Hamilton style.

How Honest is Too Honest?

In my last post I wrote about how I chickened out of writing a submission for the Donald Miller contest. When I first read of the contest on his blog, I had just finished reading another blog entry from Donald about vulnerability in writing. I pride myself in my honesty and vulnerability and this entry had me feeling challenged to go even deeper into this idea by sharing even more in my writing. Having this blog in which I share pretty openly about what it feels like to struggle with anxiety forces me to be vulnerable. But if I said I didn't care about how many people read it or how people view me after reading a particularly revealing post, I'd be lying. I want to be an honest writer, but I also want to be liked. And I think popularity usually trumps honesty in my life. Here's an excerpt from Donald's post.

"It’s about coming to the typewriter completely vulnerable. And not fake vulnerability...but the real thing, the vulnerability that costs you, that can even shrink your readership. I had lunch with a friend last week that had quit drinking. He’s an artist, a writer, and I asked about his career. He’d just released a new project. He told me he was so busy trying not to drink that he really didn’t care whether or not his art succeeded...The art wasn’t what his life was about anymore, his life was about his life, and he wasn’t polling to see who was interested. He had more important battles to fight, and the writing was just an outlet. So as writers, that’s the place we have to find."

I read it and wanted it to be my battle cry, "Yea, you're right!" When I began this blog and wrote some especially dark posts about days when I didn't want to get out of bed, friends and family and acquaintances all quickly responded to me with support, praise, and appreciation for my honesty. There was no reason for me to fear. It was my honesty that made me worth reading.

However when I left my job I heard through the grapevine about a person or two (or more) who found me to be a very unhealthy person and commented on my job performance. I started panicking that I wouldn't be able to find a new job if a potential employer viewed me as incapable of doing a good job because of anxiety. I took my blog address off of my facebook profile page, stopped talking about the blog, and though I kept posting, basically didn't want any new readers at the risk that word would get out to people I was networking with that I am a sick person. I no longer felt safe to talk about my struggles. Whereas in the past, this earned me favor with others as I was able to comfort them by saying, "I know how you feel," now my discussion on anxiety made me a liability.

Daniel, in his much appreciated wisdom, shared with me that I shouldn't wear my struggle with anxiety as a badge of honor, but rather my triumph over it or victory in the midst of it. He's right. I shouldn't brag about the fact that I feel anxious and "woe is me", look how honest I am about feeling bad. But instead it's the entries where yes I may feel bad but look at the life I am living in spite of it. There's hope and comfort for others in my struggle only when I am actually living, not just complaining about it. One of the other things that my adversaries presumed about me was that I was not seeking help for it. I am indeed seeing a counselor. She tells me hard things that I often don't want to hear. But I believe I'm getting better because of it.

One morning after leaving my counselor's office I met up with a friend for coffee. She was having some difficulty in her relationship and it sounded like they would benefit from some couple's counseling. I shared with her about my struggles and about how me and Daniel go to counseling. She seemed to really benefit from hearing that she is not alone nor the first person to go through difficult relational issues. She asked for my counselor's info and I gave it to her. Afterward I got in my car and read an email on my phone from someone who stumbled across my blog. She was just a stranger wanting to encourage me in the midst of my job search and tell me that I'm not alone in my struggle with anxiety and depression. She told a story of how she had just gone to the doctor herself and was now seeking help. And I was glad that my honesty on a small, but public blog, helped someone feel like they weren't alone. Today I met with a Young Life girl who wanted to tell me that her doctor said she thought she was depressed. She wasn't looking for advice (I don't think). She just wanted to tell somebody who wouldn't call her crazy or think she was weird.

So here I am with conversations like this happening all the time with people who just want to be heard, understood, and told they're not alone. That's what I look for too. But I'm still afraid to go super public with my writing...at least until I have a new job secured that is. I am actively seeking treatment and I am getting better. But I am still terrified that I will be stigmatized because of my struggle. I am terrified that if people know of my struggle, anytime I make a mistake, or procrastinate, or under perform, that they will blame it on me being "sick" rather than just not being good at my job sometimes (just like normal people are viewed).

So I'm still a little stuck. What is the balance in being vulnerable and open, while still being discreet or wise in who I trust this information to? I want to be a safe place for people to turn to in their struggle, but I also want to be viewed as a healthy, responsible, capable, well-respected person as well. I don't have the answer yet or know exactly what this balance looks like. But as long as people continue reaching out to me, I will continue to speak.

Chickening Out

So if you follow Donald Miller you know that he is sponsoring a contest to win a trip to Portland and attend his conference on his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The contest consists of writing on your blog about how you are going to live a better story. It makes sense if you've read the book. It's a great contest for many reasons all of which I am too tired to write about now. The contest expires at midnight tonight and I am officially chickening out.

In my draft folder is the first two paragraphs of what my entry would be if I had decided to complete it and participate. I am a pretty open and honest person, but as I began talking about what all this last year has consisted of and how I would like to move forward both in spite of and because of these circumstances, I just couldn't continue. Some topics deserve an amount of discretion. Once I'm a little more removed from them after a year or two I may be ready to write on them, but I'm not there yet. And the hard part in writing the entry was describing what kind of story I do want to live in. That's a hard question. I know what I want to feel like, but I'm still not sure by what means to get there or what exactly I want to do.

After a job interview last night and today and another one in the books for the first week of September, my future is starting to take shape, but not quite. I do believe God has a plan; it just may not include a salaried job at this moment in time. I think he's going to provide work during this period, but he's also going to help me work through some identity issues and self discovery. I think I'm hoping to learn to gain my identity from who I am and my relationships as opposed to simply what I do, what job I have, and how well I can perform. He knows what he's doing. His time line is perfect. I'll get there soon enough.

So I'm a chicken. But I'll get there. And someday I'm sure I'll write about this period of life much differently than I am writing about it now.

An Open Window?

Yes I'm aware that my last post title had a question mark as well, but seeing as how these past few months could be summarized by a single punctuation mark, I think it's pretty apropos that my post titles reflect that sentiment. I am also aware that I missed a post last night. That was intentional. I never want blogging to interfere with my real life relationships and long story short, posting last night would have been in bad taste. Don't ask.

I have a few promising leads on some smaller scale jobs, but it's something! I'll update once everything shakes out and let you know if anything works out. The saying may really be true that, "When God closes a door he opens a window." I've hit about 35 closed doors, but he may be opening some smaller windows and at this point I'll take a window!

My mom cracks me up because she commented tonight that the longer I go without a job the more "religious" I get in my posts. She made the point that I can pray a lot, but sometimes the answer is going to be "no". She's right and I know this all too well. But I don't think I've been asking for specific jobs thereby giving him a chance to say yes or no. Rather I've been asking for what I am supposed to do. I don't think he's telling me "no" completely in the arena of event/wedding planning, but his timeline is certainly much slower than what I was expecting or hoping for. So I think my new prayer/line of questioning is when and what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

Just as in all adversity, life goes on. Though it may not feel like it, there are other elements to my life than just a career. Tonight my family celebrated my dad's birthday. We ate, laughed, and played. My niece and I had a semi-crash while riding my dad's electric scooter he uses because of his MS. My poor wedges carry scars from the event, but it was still pretty hilarious. We picked up my brother from the airport. He's in town from Chicago for the weekend for a wedding. A good night indeed.

Future?

I'm having to remind myself of Jeremiah 29:11 tonight:

"I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out--plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for." (The Message)

Does that give you any indication as to how the job search is going?