I like to prepare for everything. While my black hole of a purse has gone down in size, there’s always a bandaid, hand sanitizer, a Shout wipe or two, maybe a couple of Pepto tablets and three different shades of lipstick. This is progress, considering I used to also carry a sewing kit, sharpies, pens, sticky notes, boob tape, a whole mini pharmacy, multiple sticks of chapstick and a bottle opener. The fixer in me likes to be ready with a solution and I’ve been known to leap across a room to offer a detergent wipe for a stranger’s red wine spill on a white shirt. Us fixers don’t do well with the unfixable. My last few weeks have been a whack-a-mole game of controlling what I can and having a 20-30 second cry over what I can’t. This is my productive brand of anxiety and it mostly serves me well, until I’ve emptied my tank completely and need to rely on candied sedatives to help me settle into a necessary lazy day.

The other night, after a full day of laundry, dog walks, meal prep and a financial planning session, my brain wouldn’t hush the overwhelming what-ifs and an Instagram ad for a career change program broke me. While I’m rabidly trying to “fix” my career limbo, for every few minutes of doom scrolling on social media, I get an ad for career change programs, seemingly-promising side hustles, get-skinny-fast supplements, and material impulse buys I won’t let myself indulge in until I’m bringing in a paycheck again. I’ve bookmarked ads for Parson’s executive leadership development, Cornell’s women in leadership certificate, Columbia’s career acceleration workshop and a few others that might look like a nice line item on the side margin of my resume. I know very well that none of these official pieces of paper are “the fix” and the longer I stare at the pot of water I’m trying to boil into my next professional venture, the more likely I am to act on the wrong thing out of this desperation to solve for X. 

Last time I wrote, I promised myself and proclaimed very proudly that I’d take everything a little more slowly. Well, I lied. Okay, I didn’t lie, I just suck at this slow mindfulness stuff. I pep-talked myself into adding some structure to this quiet time. “Okay, Marina, you like structure so let’s make a list.” I made a bucket list of what I’d like to achieve during this free time that everyone keeps telling me I’ll never have again. This week’s theme for to-dos was admin.

Since our first flight together, David has been begging me to apply for Global Entry. He loves me but will absolutely ditch me to go to his elite Global Entry security line while I wait with the peasants. I waltz through my CLEAR member line with the air of someone flying private, but with three global trips coming up this year, it was time I hunkered down and filled out the Global Entry application so I could join the elites who have also suffered through this lengthy paperwork. They don’t make it easy but I suppose that’s the whole point, since it’s a matter of national security.

In case you haven’t had the joy of navigating this process, they ask you to create a mini phone book of every employer you’ve had and every home you’ve resided in for the last six years. For most, this is probably not tremendously time consuming. I sat Googling phone numbers and addresses for a solid hour. I haven’t deleted an email in nearly a decade and I haven’t memorized a past phone number or address since childhood. I’m also too lazy to unsubscribe from old neighborhood newsletters and, luckily, some more organized version of me thought to upload old important documents to my cloud folder. I didn’t realize I was sitting down to put together a puzzle of life phases I hardly remember- mostly because I’ve subconsciously thanked those older chapters and buried them to make space for new ones.

I finally landed on the confirmation page- the kind where they scare you into thinking you’ll be imprisoned for decades for any typos. Four employers and five homes in six years. It took me a minute to hit the “submit” button while I let that sink in and within that minute, I started to mentally narrate a panicked monologue:

• Who are you? Six homes and four employers?? In six years?? How could there be so many??

• Am I a fuck up? Is this how fuck-ups live?

• How can one person endure so much change? This must be why I’m so tired

• It all happens in March. Every year. Is March my cursed month for giant life change?

• This looks so shitty on paper - go ahead and reject this mess, Global Entry

Batman’s Riddler always wore that green suit covered in question marks - While I sank deeper into the couch, cocooning myself in a moderate dose of self-loathing, every question mark started to feel like I was wearing my own suit of visible question marks. So many of them.

The fixer side of my brain self-activated and I talked myself down with what I know to be true. Between me, myself and I, when we get scared, we recite what we know to be true. I know that while on paper, it’s easy to wonder how one person can handle so much change in so little time, it’s all been a recipe for transformation (I hate that word). Every home was a level-up, every job gave me more money and more responsibility and a sexier title. Every new apartment was fully decorated and nested within 48 hours or less. Every professional move was an ambitious challenge until it wasn’t. Based on that anecdotal evidence, March is my month for renewal and here we are. Hello, March. 

This year, I won’t be uprooting myself to a new home- the one David and I have built feels more like home than any of the last five. The next career move will come and until then, I’ll write and use my favorite side of my brain. Next order of business on the funemployment list is tuning up my film camera and working on what doesn’t feel like work at all. So I’ve decided to part ways with any shame I might be feeling during this limbo. 

The ego takes a beating in these times of great unknowns and scary question marks and we have the choice to stink with self-loathing or sprinkle a little extra sourdough starter over any hovering resilience. Thanks to lessons from a Global Entry application, I give myself permission to prepare a little less and wait for the next life-altering thing because as proof shows- it only gets better.