Dedicated Time to Nothing

I’ve been laid off (from the tech job that made me miserable). I’m practicing saying these words without this pain on my face like I’m delivering actually bad news. The lay-off is very likely a miracle, it’s the feeling behind it that stings like failure-acupuncture- little needles in the skin. One- failure, two-failure. One-fish, two-fish. 

It’s on brand for me to respond to any sort of failure with such grief and drama. My decade-long career in tech has given me a joy-less paycheck and a level of anxiety that feels like being chased by a lion. I don’t care to dedicate this blog post to my relationship with money or the inadequacy I feel by not bringing in a paycheck. This morning alone, I applied to ten jobs before 9 AM, none of which I’m excited about but all possibilities for giving me the peace of mind to say I contribute and add value. This writing thing used to bring me value in a different way so after a year and some change of paying for a website and brushing off my passions with a line like, “oh, I used to be a writer and photographer but I just work in tech” - here we go again. Any recovering or struggling perfectionist can empathize with the agony of starting something (or re-starting) before all lights go green but here I sit and say, “Marina, just start.”

Let’s catch up, shall we - what’s happened in the last year:
In October of 2021, I subtly introduced you to someone important to me after my last solo vacation to Paris- a trip I booked with the intent of eat-pray-loving my way around France and instead, I came home to the realization I didn’t want to travel alone anymore because I didn’t have to. David and I moved in together last July after I refused to keep paying rent for what started to feel like a very expensive storage unit I called an apartment. 

I gave up my floor-to-ceiling windows and sunset-views of Manhattan and although I felt some grief leaving the apartment I built a home in, I no longer needed the comfort and reminder of the success I climbed to. In partnership, we find new definitions of success and happiness. We don’t un-marry from what we used to want and how we previously defined success or happiness, all of that just becomes the icing or garnish for the next version of ourselves we morph into.

David and I just got back from our first ever vacation, after eighteen months of destination weddings, family visits and holiday social functions. For the last four days, in barely-70 degree weather, we drank margaritas before noon, planned the day around meals and didn’t plan much of anything else. For four days, I even stopped relying on my new favorite weed gummies. I also wasn’t allowed to pack said gummies because someone didn’t feel like getting arrested in a foreign country for drug possession. Nothing was the most productive thing we’ve done in a very long time-  just dedicated time to nothing. 

We came home from our four amazing days of nothing to discover neither one of us remembered to grab apartment keys on our way out. Sitting in the hallway, tired, hungry and preparing to lose my shit over something that was entirely our fault, David stood there calm and collected, ready to abandon our bags and find an easy solution at the bar across the street. 

As the saying goes- you can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas lights. Well, on rainy days, David makes mimosas, and for everything else, he says we make money to make problems go away. As for detangling Christmas lights, David wouldn’t bother and he’d just buy new ones because why lose energy on easy things that can just be easy. This is the human I’m building a home with and during this professional purgatory, I get to take a page from his instruction manual and let easy be easy. 

I keep calling unemployment my failure-acupuncture- I actually used to get acupuncture regularly for all of the aches and pains I earned as a dancer. I remember being swaddled in a soft blanket and put under a big warm sunny light. My practitioner would stick the needles into my skin one by one and explain the job and purpose of each pressure point. I’d fall asleep under the warm light for what felt like days, but in reality was maybe ten or fifteen minutes. I’d get up, get dressed and glide out of there like a kid on training wheels in the wind. The acupuncture was a good thing, much like this cute kind I made up.

There’s a terrifying shame we attribute to our own success or seeming lack thereof. Separaretely, it’s a lie that we can’t create success in the quiet slowness. Now, there is privilege in the quiet, this is not lost on me. Not everyone in my shoes has this glorious opportunity to rest and recover from any burnout and reexamine passion projects. 

With this privilege of quiet slowness, I hope to use it responsibly- I’ve been meaning to go wander the Guggenheim. I’ll walk a little slower. Eat and drink a little slower. Start my days a little slower. I mean, I can truly do whatever-the-fuck I want right now and that freedom can be pretty spectacular if I let it be. I’ll get back to this thing I love- this practice of sharing words that I hope serve as a reminder for someone else who might feel the little prickly needles of failure-acupuncture. These prickly feelings are life rafts to the better part. Weed gummies don’t hinder the process either. Just as long as you move slowly- there is no lion.