Looking For Myself… and Maybe Finding Her… Maybe…

I seriously love books.  When I first met hubby, I joked to him that I had a book infestation in my apartment and when I turned on the light books would go scampering under the bed or in the closet like cockroaches.  To try to avoid books taking over every surface and stacks climbing the walls, I give away lots of books to people I know.  I donate them to small and poor libraries from where I come from.  I especially like to help people discover books that they love that they didn’t even know existed.  I’m not sure if I have any skill for it, but I try.  My oldest friend and her husband tell me that they really love the books I give them.  “Towing Jehovah” went over especially well. 

I have an education in Finance.  I like math, which is a big reason why I thought I’d like Finance.  But, Finance is really a bunch of superficial and political jockeying that I really hate.  If I had any idea of the political world I was preparing myself for, I wouldn’t have touched Finance with a 20 foot pole.  I would’ve just been a math major or become a social worker instead… something I could really enjoy and believe in.  I quit my job in big corporate/huge multinational finance in February.  I don’t miss it.  It paid well, but it wasn’t worth it.  It was soul crushing. 

I am lucky to have a husband that doesn’t need me to work.  I’ve been healing the wounds of burn-out all summer and I may be starting to discover some jobs that might actually let me be me, rather than pressuring me into some person that I’m not and that I don’t even like.  I wonder if I’d be happy in a bookstore…  The pay won’t be what it was in big corporate finance, but do I care?  I’m not sure yet.  It is a huge reduction in pay to start with, but it could lead somewhere better like my own store or managing a store or something.  Goodness knows I am passionate about books.  I like to be around books that I don’t even want to read, but mostly I like to read books.  I have no idea where this book-love of mine comes from, but it has strong and I can’t remember not being like this.  As a very young child, I would take stacks of my Golden Books outside to read and I would get lost for hours.  One of my favorite splurges has always been to go to a bookstore and buy a dozen books at a time.  It is just so exciting to me…

So, I applied at Borders.  I have an interview on Friday.  But, part of me is not sure if I even want to go through with this.  I fear getting burned out again.  I wonder if being around something I love will continue to feel more important to me than making a lot of money.  I remember workplace politics and don’t miss them… and I fear getting back into that ring again. 

On the other hand, the job would be part-time, which would limit my exposure.  If I don’t like this path, I can always get back on the finance path or something related.  My skills in finance are still considered very
“hot” and I don’t doubt that once there are job openings again that I could get a job in finance.  Apparently expertise in SAP, such as mine, is rare and desireable.  SAP is a big, complicated software used by 80% of the Fortune 100 (I believe… I may have this stat slightly wrong).  It’s nice to know I have other things to fall back on. 

Then… there’s ya know… my ego.  Will it cause me a lot of pain about the pay-cut and not working in a white-collar environment?  I hope not.  When I notice superficial thoughts like that, I like to challenge them.  Maybe this is just the sort of challenge that I need to put my ego further in check…  who knows.  Well, not that I NEED a white-collar environment.  I would give up white-collar jobs all together to get a good non-profit job.  I seriously love non-profits more than anything else.  But… Borders is no non-profit.  Maybe this job could just be something to do until something I like even more comes up?  Maybe I will fall in love with it and climb the ladder of the bookstore and end up making some decent money in time? 

I think that I think too much.  Maybe the best course is to just take one moment at a time, listen to myself, make the best decisions I can and then go from there…  Deep breaths… 

Yes, I definitely do let overthinking get the best of me – especially when it comes to work.  Now that is something to chew on…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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My fat self

“Losing weight won’t make you any prettier or more desirable.”

If someone said that to you, would you believe them?

I think I might.
At the moment, my weight has declined a bit, and it feels as though something essential about me is being lost.
I am hanging in there with this temporary disequilibrium of self.
If I continue in this direction, the clothes in my closet, the clothes I’ve had for many years and love, may not fit, and I do not have money for new clothes. I have no desire to buy a new wardrobe. I don’t long for clothes that are a smaller size.

My body looks and feels fleshier to me than it did when it was fuller — I’m feeling like I’m being emptied out, not my full self. I’m a short person, and a few pounds makes a substantial difference on me, to me. The change I’m experiencing might be temporary, it might not.
The idea that as we adapt to differences in our lives — could be a change in seasons, could be a new medication, a change in movement frequency or intensity, other things that can cause our bodies to change — is not hard to understand. And when this happens, when I’ve grown a bit larger or smaller, there’s this gap between acceptance and a longing for what was. To adapt, I’ve needed to alter my diabetes medications, but just a bit — and this has to do more with changes in eating than changes in weight, I think.

When I first started getting smaller, a crazy part of me kicked into gear and I started eating less and less. And the advice I received was this: “Put yourself first. Don’t lose your self.” That helped, and since then, I’ve been eating in a more intuitive way, bringing a big bag of food with me so I had plenty of things with me, all things I like. (It wasn’t that long ago I scoffed at the idea of a food bag.)

The mythology of weight loss holds that in losing weight, a person finds her true self. The slender sylph is uncovered under layers of the former fat self, and the slim butterfly emerges from the chrysalis that was entered by the fat caterpillar.

My true self feels fat. No matter what my size, my self is abundant, generous, expansive, large, whole. I have no desire to take up less space, to require less fabric, to be more pleasing to eyes that see losing weight as emerging from a cocoon. My myth does not need to be that I am only “matching” when my interior and exterior are both the same degree of fat. My self can remain fat. (Although I’m not aiming for anything other than a resolution — perhaps temporarily — of some health issues, and likely will still be quite fat by most people’s estimation.)

Writing this brings to mind Heather MacAllister‘s Keynote Address at nolose in 2006. I wasn’t there, I never met her or saw her peform, but when she was memorialized across the fatosphere upon her death in 2007 (I hadn’t realized that, like me, she was born in 1968), I read her address and learned so much from it. The legacy of fat burlesque and what it means for perceiving myself as sexy, and the ability I have to experience abandon on the dance floor, are directly related to her art. I don’t have any terminal illness I’m aware of (other than the terminal condition of human existence) and I’ve not had the “added blessings” that Heather refers to in her address, but reading and re-reading this text has left substantial marks on my psyche.

I want to publicly thank my own body, my body that has suffered so much hatred and pain from inside and out, even before the cancer. My body that is fat enough to withstand TWO YEARS of unremitting chemotherapy—that’s right folks, if I had started out this journey as a skinny girl I’d likely be dead by now. My body that has brought me at least my fair share of pleasure and joy and is still allowing me to have the fantastic experience of life in a carnal body.

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Open Threadiness 07.29.09

Happy Wednesday and Open Threadiness! 

If I could, I’d climb into my monitor and go through that door… I’m a total fantasy nerd.  I just know there’s some medievalish land with dragons and stuff on the other side…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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