Leaving Inspector Baby

Friday, February 24, 2012

Last day here. Inspector Baby’s favorite book of the week is a lift-the-flaps about opposites. Open, closed, open, closed, open…. I am excited about the changes ahead for me but too exhausted to really feel that excitement. This week has felt a little like Inspector Baby’s birthday balloons: past their prime, helium dissipating, suspended in a space between.

Over the past few months, I’ve felt more and more like my job as a nanny didn’t fit me anymore. I love Inspector Baby and value the time I’ve spent taking care of her, but I felt like my life was on pause. I moved to Milwaukee almost a year ago (almost a year already?), so I want(ed) to be out exploring, meeting people, learning this city. I’ve got the basic neighborhoods and directions down, but I am still waiting for that elusive click that will make it feel like my city in that same way Chicago did. Yes, it takes time, but the kind of time it takes is best spent out in the unfamiliar city, trying every coffee shop that catches the eye, learning the little pockets of community. A slow afternoon walking home instead of taking the bus, talking to strangers, visiting every bookstore in town.

Yet when you have a job as important as taking care of someone’s child, it makes it a little hard to say, “I feel trapped.” I felt like I was failing if I admitted, even to myself, that this was not right for me, not now. So even though I had no doubt the new job ahead of me is the right move, I felt so much guilt about leaving — even after the big moment of giving notice, during these awkward last two weeks. I just couldn’t shake that awful feeling that I had really let someone down.

Every once in a while, a blogger I admire but don’t know personally posts something that shocks me by how much it feels written “just for me.” And that was certainly the case with a recent post by Michele Martin on her lovely Bamboo Project Blog. I have long been a fan of Michele’s blog, and several posts over the past couple years have really resonated with me. But this recent post really took the cake in terms of its timing and relevance for me personally.

Michele goes straight to the heart of the matter, asking, “How much of how we are living our lives is in support of someone else’s goals, rather than a healthy expression of our own?” Yes! This has been me, for the majority of the past year. At first, it was the right thing at the right time, and I am so grateful that this job came along when it did, ten months ago, when I moved to Milwaukee with not much advance notice and no job lined up. I don’t want to dismiss that. I’ve spent much of the past year feeling like a very lucky girl.

But when I look out the window into today’s surprise winter wonderland, knowing this is the last day I will sit on this green couch writing as Inspector Baby naps in the other room, I feel like just beyond the horizon I can see my goals finally coming into focus.

So thanks, Michele, for reminding me that it’s ok (dare I say important, even?) to prioritize my goals when it comes to my career.

And thank you, Inspector Baby, for teaching me about patience, and for the long walks together exploring Milwaukee’s east side. We gave each other a good start, here.

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Sometimes the story changes before it’s begun.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Another blog post by the end of the week, I promised myself. It felt good to hit that publish button, to call something complete. In the midst of several long projects, it felt so good to put something out there and force myself to let go. Lately my life has been a patchwork of transitions, processes, a never-ending balancing act between day job and dreams, tying up loose ends and making plans for the future. But that blog post was finished. Final, published, carved into the stone tablet of the Internet like those drunken college pictures they warn will come back to embarrass us all.

I even thought to myself, I’ve found some direction. At least one recurring theme for my blog would be my identity as a writer vs. my nanny job: more than the classic day job struggle, I wanted to explore the challenges presented when a day job is more than paper-pushing and answering phones. I wanted to explore the complications (both practical and emotional) that arise when I’m trying so hard to nurture my freelance business, trying to act like an entrepreneur that sees the business as “my baby” — but busy with the needs of an actual human baby.

And then the phone rang and everything changed. I’ll be moving on, to a day job that involved books, writing, teaching. To a day job so related to my studies and passions that it doesn’t feel right to call it a “day job.” I am stunned, excited, and amazed at this giant change that swept in, a final dramatic flourish on a year more full of change than I’d ever had. So the story of this blog will change, too. I am sure I’ll still struggle with balance and with my unfortunate habit of getting in my own way. It’ll just show up in different disguises. Maybe the blog becomes a place for me to come back to my writing practice when I’m all wrapped up in the new job. Notes on how it feels to engage the work world in a less divided way. How it feels to bring more of myself to the hours between 9:00 and 5:00.

Maybe a space of grounding, a collection of reminders to myself, this is how to be present when everything seems to be shifting around you: put one foot in front of another. Take your brother-in-law to a fish fry. Drink coffee with a hint of cinnamon. Write letters. Watch the sunlight glittering on Lake Michigan, grateful for the mild winter, and excited at the promise of spring.

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Breaking all the Rules: in which I publish a blog-post-in-progress.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

I began this post in my head, at my day job as a nanny, letting the words slowly fall into place as I watched Inspector Baby, as I frequently think of her. She’s currently fascinated by how things work and she was repeatedly shoving a small plastic orange slice into a toy where it didn’t belong. It would get stuck in the tube, blocking the balls that were supposed to pop up, and she would get frustrated. Each time I pulled it out and fixed the toy, she’d shove it right back in, stare at it for a second, and start to cry. Back to step one.

The 5th or 6th time I fixed this situation, I pocketed the plastic orange slice while she wasn’t looking. I braced myself for a confused look and an angry cry, but she was already distracted by the colorful balls bouncing to the top of the popper and the joy of pressing the button all by herself. I watched her trot off, no trace of tears, and realized that she and I both are working on getting out of our own damn way.

Inspector Baby is just shy of one year old. It’s her job to play with things, to get in her own way, to experiment, and to do these things over and over and over again. As for me, I constantly feel I should have learned by now how to avoid getting myself stuck.

For years I have been voraciously consuming a massive amount of entrepreneur-flavored self-improvement info, small business marketing advice, and blog posts on how to blog. I have edited blog posts for others and helped clients begin to learn their way around the blogosphere. I have several lists of blogging ideas and half-written posts scattered across various software & apps. (And I mention the software and apps part as full disclosure about how long I’ve been dragging my feet on this.)

Since I was too young to understand the sentence, my mother has been warning me, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” I’ve taken so much other good maternal advice to heart, but somehow this one never stuck. I have always let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s one of my biggest struggles.

My latest excuse for why I couldn’t possibly start blogging yet was that I hadn’t decided whether or not I feel comfortable writing about my day job as a nanny. I try to keep it quiet often because I worry it will make me sound less professional to clients — I want so badly for my writing and editing business to be my full-time endeavor, it’s hard sometimes to admit out loud that I’m not there yet.

But the truth is, my day job as a nanny is part of it all. A big part of the way I spend my time, yes, but also part of what I want to write about. The relationship between day job and passion is a tough one for any artist, but this is the most complicated it has ever been for me. I also believe it’s important for writers, actors, and other artists to talk candidly about how they make their way in the world — day jobs, working for free, working for pennies, the business side of art, the compromises that come from trying to do art in a way that will make you a living… It’s tricky stuff to negotiate and it’s become more complicated for me now that my current day job is so different from the coffee-slinging, paper-pushing, mindless paycheck sources of my past. And now, after a massively transitional year, I find myself setting down roots in a new city, trying to build my on-again-off-again freelance work into a real live tiny business, trying to learn how to move forward in a new way. And despite my current struggle with time management and my desire to move my life out of the day job / real job split, I’ve got to admit that an 11-month-old can teach you a lot about how to move forward. (She won’t stop moving!)

So, no. I won’t wait until I’ve got 5 edited back-up posts and an editorial calendar before I publish this.

No. I won’t worry about my blog being too “in-between,” not strictly business or personal.

No. I won’t wait until I find an image to add to the post before I publish.

No. I won’t re-read and re-write, thinking I’ll find a good link to work into the post.

And no. I certainly won’t wait until my blog is all cleaned up with social media plug-ins installed before I post.

On the bright side, this is my second post and I have no readers yet. So my goal is that by posting this I’ll get myself moving and by the time I hit my stride and risk having actual people out there reading these words, the posts will be well-planned and articulate, lovely bits of language surrounding by eye-catching images and social media sharing buttons and links to the brilliant Internet spots I frequent. But for now, I choose to not care. I’ve got a “publish” button to hurry up and click before the baby wakes up and the day job requires my full attention.

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Art/work: Notes toward an balanced creative life.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

When I was a teenager I studied acting with Byrne Piven, an intense, charismatic teacher who always talked about “The Work.”  As in: “What matters is The Work.”  The discoveries during the rehearsal process, the moments on this stage.  As a passionate (and maybe a little obsessive) 16-year-old, I stood under the stage lights and immersed myself in Shakespeare, e.e. cummings, Grace Paley, Viola Spolin, and thought, Yes!  This is what matters.  I felt like a part of something bigger than myself.  I was part of The Work.

Then I went to college, graduated with a BA in Creative Writing, and suddenly what mattered was paying my bills.  I began walking the tightrope familiar to so many actors and other artists… How can I keep my day job and make it to auditions?  Can I have a meaningful job and make a living in nonprofits and the arts?  Can I give up acting if I care about my day job enough?  Is grad school the answer?  Can a girl live by financial aid alone?

At one point, I forgot that what really matters is The Work.  I thought it was health insurance.  That’s when I learned to make a really good cappuccino.  But then at almost every party I went to I had this conversation:

Party Guest:  And what do you do?
Me: I’m a writer, an actor, a puppeteer… and to pay the bills I work at [large corporate coffee company].
Party Guest: That’s fascinating – are there really 600 calories in those frozen mocha things?

A few of those conversations and I was pretty depressed, feeling like all that matters is the work.  Not the creative kind, just the regular old everyday work.  Problem is that’s not enough for me.  (I’m a Gemini.  I want it all).  So when I hung up the green coffee apron and finished my MFA, I began searching for a way to make it all fit together — a way to pay my bills and make my art.  There are a lot of blogs, women’s magazines, and productivity systems out there with suggestions about how to reach work-life balance nirvana, but I want to figure out how to balance — and blend — work with The Work.  I want to explore how artists can find fulfillment in their careers and day jobs and make a living from their art.  And perhaps most importantly, in my precarious time management puzzle between my editing/teaching work and my day job, this blog is a space for me to come back to the writing.  To put it all aside and get back to what I fell for in the first place: the simple act of placing one word after another.  The transformative power of a story well told.

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