Stained Glass Window Moments

Through the hardest times I've experienced,  in the midst of chaotic avalanches of financial and personal collapse,  there have been cracks in the cold stone wall of misery. Important cracks. Empty moments of light and pointless relief and happiness. Certainty about who I am and what I'm doing. Dazzlement at the ocean and gratitude that I work there.

One morning started particularly wretchedly. The weather on that dazzling ocean where I work on this day was cold, windy and rainy. Then the oil leak in the boat turned into a gusher, surrounding Close Enough with a giant oil slick. I envisioned calling the bank and telling them where the boat was and that the keys were in it. I envisioned being many thousands further into the hole at a time when I'm broke, inexperienced and desperate.

I limped into the harbor, had help locating the engine problem, called for a part and surrendered to several days of down time when I absolutely could not afford it.

Later, I sat in a meeting and was given a piece of paying work. I then took a torn in half piece of scrap paper and wrote down a list of these kinds of projects I'd had come in recently and very much by coincidence. The sun came in through the stained glass window in my soul as I realized that rotten weather and boat down time had suddenly transformed into several very productive days laid out before me.

It took a long couple of months to get used to living alone or as a single parent, to get the house back to something liveable instead of a cold, dirty bunch of sockets where belongings and family had been. Money troubles accelerated instead of abating as I had hoped. I was very lonely. I felt ashamed.

After spending this past week reeling from the latest financial body shocks, coming up with a plan and beginning to execute, after three strenuous days on the boat, after an early morning of finances and health care coverage bureaucracy, I stopped and listened and absorbed another stained glass window moment. My son and his friend were quietly playing on the back deck. We'd just gotten back from the harbor where they mucked about in the skiff and played in the water. My middle girl is off with a friend. Summer is here. I'm getting back into activities with the kids where they can enjoy and be enriched by this unique environment. I take my daughter's friend and her Dad on a ride aboard Close Enough and see the big grins that remind me why I'm here.

I haven't scored the big financial prize or fixed all the leaks in my personal ship of state. I have had a few moments where the light shines in and reassures and relieves.  To me that is just as much of a prize. Those moments aren't just here and gone. They stay with me.

Microwave Popcorn is Evil

I wrote these things as I was readying myself to leave a secure, decent paying job with benefits. I was not doing well in that situation either and needed to make a change. At the time, my wife and I were ready for a new adventure. For me it was then or probably never. The fence becomes invisible eventually, and that's where I was headed. 

March 1, 2006

Microwave popcorn represents the smell of cubicle culture. I will never eat it again. The fragrance is artificial, chemicalized, the perfect symbol of a working life disjointed from nature, joy and freedom. The smell of confinement, frustration and the dehumanizing infantilizing effects of too much job security. It is the smell of quiet, polite misery, of death marching forward while life is pushed aside. A factory-pressed trick of the nose, not eliciting the cornfield or the butter churn, but an imposter with a crooked acrylic mustache coming detached on one side.

I’m in my last hour of employment. Joyful, giddy, tired and flat as at a memorial service. Tired with no physical cause. I would not want to work somewhere a long time and leave. It’s actually very hard, even though I’ve been anxious to go. I signed my termination form yesterday. Not that comfortable with the choice of words. My ass wants to be kicked rather than coddled in this polyester chair. I say that now from the ass-coddling comfort of the chair. We’ll see.

It’s a fool proof scheme, and I’ll be the fool to prove it. The audacity of taking on something that is soul-felt, but otherwise unknown. It makes magic come up close enough to touch and smell. For this, I’m someone I would admire.

How that's changed, depending on when I ask myself. Overall, I'm glad I took a huge leap. Sometimes, I'm thoroughly convinced it was very much the wrong thing.

February 4, 2006.

5:36 in yellow green numbers, hanging in darkness. Not looking connected to anything. Kind of how I feel. I have no job on the island. We have no house on the island. We have no way of getting our stuff to the island. We have no money to pay for moving to the island. In the green number-hanging darkness, I’m certain we’re going to the island.
Messy life change and adventure when you’re not ready. When you’re in a phase of life that seems to be all about making sure your kids are safe and stable and fed.
Change for its own sake after all the justifications. After all the talk, it’s because I Want It. I tell myself risk is good, change is good, growth is good. We talk for hours about the benefits and challenges, the means, the obstacles. Fear comes arm-in-arm with excitement. Lots of important emotional and spiritual points get made. The kids will always remember it. We’ll never regret it. Actually, it’s really because I Want It.

***
“Job Security” means disempowerment, infantilization, donuts, too much screen time. Sitting. Hunching. Cowering. Dissipation. Pettiness raised to Martha Stewart-esque attention to detail. Pharmaceutical companies must absolutely love state government employees. Diet companies. Junk food producers. Magazine publishers. Our break room table featured three consecutive monthly editions of a women’s magazine. All three cover stories were about weight loss. Crumbs in the pages and a grease spot on the back.

And so it began on early 2006. Getting unstuck from a stagnating situation, out of one frying pan and into an eventually scorching hot fire. From too much safety and boredom to financial kamikazi-ism and one of the most dangerous, financially unpredictable jobs in the U.S.. From death by sitting to 24 x 7 financial and physical peril. 

Now what?

Just Pedal

This is the story of me getting unstuck. Getting on the bike and pedalling, but also laying in the grass and being. Not either giving up on life or pretending problems aren't real, not becoming the loser despite many invitations to see myself that way. Also not flogging myself or working constantly to the breaking point.

I am very, very stuck. I have great deluges of tears daily about money problems, relationships on the verge of annihilation or reincarnation, self loathing. I am nearly 50, in utter financial chaos for several years. I have a law license, a commercial lobstering license, an Ed Tech III certificate and many other reasons to succeed. I'm not a drug or gambling or shopping addict and yet I have failed financially and career-wise.

There is an enormous divide between my deep sense of self worth and my external circumstances. I am failing. At everything. And busting my ass in the process. If I'm going to suck this bad, don't I at least get to sit on the couch in sweatpants and really work that role? I am in very good physical and intellectual condition. I take good care of myself. I love myself. Why then, is everything going so terribly wrong? I need more money, yes. I need to pay my bills. That is in my character. I am unable to do so right now and it hurts every single minute of every day. My character and worth are reflected in the world as an absent, exhausted father and past due notices, deadbeat happy-grams.

As I had left my children on another island with their mother yesterday, I had an hour and a half boatride to think about and cry about my situation. I have responded to stress by making lists of tasks to get me out of whatever set of problems there was at the time. Strange thing is, as good as I am at the list organizing and the execution of the listed tasks, I am still frantic, depressed and feeling desperate. Seems like maybe such list making is not helping.

Then I get on the bicycle and for no reason at all, the overload, panic and desperation aren't any more. I'm a 10 year old boy. It's school vacation. I'm just riding. I head down South Road past the one room school, the former one room school and now town office, the fishing workshop with the stereo early-summer loud, the engine block that's been dragged to the road for recycling, to the harbor road, past Wanda working on her flower garden, up the crest and down the hill to shingled shops of the harbor. As bad as everything has become- money, marriage, separation from children, feeling like an idiot learning the lobster fishing business, disconnection notices, overdue mortgage payment- all of it eases when I jump on a bicycle and pedal down these twisting dirt roads surrounded by sea.

I ache terribly for my family. I am fearful for our desperate financial situation. I'm coping by deep cleaning the house, going through years of debris, selecting and saving the special things and sorting and disposing of all the clutter generated by years of being busy with three kids and nineteen jobs between Lisa and myself. It feels good to find special bits of art, writing, photos and know that now these things are not lost to the mounds of crap.

Since I'm alone, I'm also using the time to start to quantify and make financial discipline plans. The monster is smaller when I open the envelopes and write down the numbers and dates.

Still ache for family. For  this reason, the phone company bill is going to be a priority.

On today's list is to write the story of my comeback as a way on visualizing and writing my own good story.

Probably ought to start with how I got stuck. Funny thing is, I got stuck in this situation by getting unstuck from another.

Next: Microwave Popcorn is an Evil, Life Draining Thing.