this one is a biggie, too.
i had a hard time leaving my graduate program. i am still pretty angry about it, really, and i know (seriously) i need to let it go, i just want to yell for a minute and feel justified in my hatred, like we all do. sadly, i can't do that for real...i can in my car, in my head, in my living room by myself or in the bathroom yelling at the mirror…and i sound like SUCH a bad ass, too…but i can't really go there. it was like a bad marriage; i was just as responsible for this.
i digress. i decided i just didn't want it. i just didn't want it enough to go through the trouble of making my family miserable; and trust me, they were miserable because I was miserable.
Everyone is happy when Mama is happy around here (why I should be more happy). I just had so much emotion around the whole thing…the bowing to ego trips and the setting myself up to work too hard and fucking up every work relationship i had by questioning myself and being subservient. i do it every time. and I did it this time, too. I feel like I am coming out of it, which is good, since I have been at Defcon 4 level financially for quite some time and I was hesitant to move backwards. But…I set this up. I know this is me doing this to myself, and I don't want to do it any longer.
It's like I keep putting my faith in other people to rescue me, to make things secure. There really isn't an out there, I am realizing now….but i am historically programmed to make myself small for paychecks. It's a belief. I think I have to 'be somebody' to get them to like me. And, when they begin to criticize, I accept it….and then, the slippery slope. Anger, blaming, keeping quiet, and not knowing my limits. I am typically terrible at this. I am a good person, but this is nuts. I am addicted to that drama; I am afraid to be myself, I love to be angry and blame and be the victim, not love my job and my life and my bank account. I am literally self imposing my own limits and tossing blame around to people that took the power i gave them and used it to make them feel better about themselves.
so, the graduate school thing was a lesson in this very thing. i headed this issue straight on and decided it wasn't worth my time to even fight for it. I want to be doing something else completely with my time and resources, and wouldn't even be here if i wasn't tap dancing for some paycheck and the hope of greater paychecks in the future…and, as i realized this past winter, i was spending a load of debt money to do something I was, let's face it, kinda just not into anymore. maybe 10 years ago, but now? with a partner and baby? nope.
This is me reclaiming my power. I choose to spend my time making a difference in this world. To raise a good kid. To be asserting myself for myself and doing it with love. And I love my family for showing me this….cause seriously, I was working for an enterprise that totally struck me as being kid stuff…and doing A LOT of work for it.
The biggest disappointment in doing design was that I loved it, but I wanted the design to reach people (a tall order). I got two shots, and one hit and one miss. The hit was just because I was open to it, too... and it was absolutely no fun to do. i had no idea what the fuck i was doing and totally getting crap for it on all sides…tap-dancing, tap-dancing. I had somebody tell me that maybe being harped on all of the time was a compliment; that this lump of clay called me could be worked with to achieve perfection - and i was thinking hell, this lump of clay was doing all of the damn work- and griping is just a cheap way to assert one's power over another; especially when it is not justified.
and then, the hours. the hours of work, which, when I was doing this crap for decent money ten years ago and no social life meant little, but now it meant something completely different. overwork and bitterness about overwork. for public art…my absolute favorite cause to champion, but one that wasn't championing me as of late. it was just another obligation. and one i was pissed i had to show up for. and no legality on my side to keep it kosher…just an advisor telling me that grad school was hard and I should have expected this….really? you don't say…i totally gave birth and came back two weeks after doing so to keep my grades up. i really needed you to tell me how goddamn HARD it was, after showing up every night and still going to class all day and getting up at 6 am to feed my child….but yeah, sure, thanks for the warning.
to note, I am NOT afraid of the work, or the mental challenge, I just don't want my time wasted since I have two other people depending on me. I had a 4.0 and worked 20 hours per week before and a year after the birth of my child…challenge totally accepted. But to sit around and push buttons and build things that are only getting to see a usage of approximately 5 performances, work 60 hours of overtime and tell me you can't do anything for me or my family because this is always the way you have done it?
sure, sign me up.
another time i was also told that, and I quote, 'it was time to let my daughter go'; note that she was still being breastfed and was 8 months old at that time. Let her go? So I could show up for college theatre?
sheesh. the blinder leading the blind.
the only reprieve I had was sharing my story with a grad school lady in a well thought out letter that said the obvious, and a counselor; both came to totally support me leaving. and that was enough for me. I think my favorite part was when i was in deciding mode i was a MESS…a hot, holy mess….I couldn't think without getting blame-y and wanting to punch people and yell back. Then, after two weeks of figuring out what the next step was, Jude just said, 'i think you know what you want, you just are mad that it isn't what you think it should be.' he was totally right. I knew, deep down, this wasn't for me, and this was the last straw enough for me to figure out the next step. sigh. not the easiest decision ever.
The passions changed courses, that's all. it has been a week and my relationship with my partner is back on track, my daughter is walking and talking more, and i caught up on my tv. (just getting to watch tv was a sheer delight) I cook a great dinner every night, and to top it all off, I lost 5 pounds. Just because I wasn't stressed to the max. Egads.
and to clarify, it really wasn't anybody's fault…at all. I just tripped over serious growth I wasn't expecting and decided to make some terrifyingly hard choices in support of a happier me.
so now i have the chance to hold space and do the things i want. and know, indeed, on the page and in my heart, that i know exactly what's up. all of this suffering is not for nothing. it is to remind myself i can make it better. and not by continuously running away, but by laying the groundwork of what i want. and that may sound SO EASY for some, but I have had the pleasure in my life in indulging in what I want to do most of the time, and I get bored pretty quickly with success or my failures. Hell, my parents never got to do what they wanted to do, but I get to. And I have had some pretty sweet adventures…so now, only the best stuff remains. And the discipline in this case is not to suffer through it being 'hard'; but to suffer through it being 'sweet'; more yoga, more music, more spending time in my body, more love, more nature. MORE GOOD. and i have to really be disciplined about it….remember that anger blaming thing. i tend to find comfort in that way more than the good stuff, which is tough. so if you are reading this, think some good thoughts for me to get some clarity. :)
hari om tat sat
औ
an update for those that kept reading...
this is a Facebook update i never sent. I figured i needed to not share my negatons with the internets, but it addresses an incident that happened quite a lot in the last academic year. this was just the icing on the cake.
so i decided to leave my graduate program.
and this was a tough decision. i had a baby within the program and the time demands of producing college theatre became too overwhelming on all other (healthy) facets of my life, and frankly i felt out of touch with a lot of things I wanted to do over the things I was doing. so this was a decision that took time, weighing options, and a lot of tears.
yet, my advisor had to make a crack at my design skills on my last day as I was on my way out of the building. literally. bag full of office crap and car keys in my hand. while i was talking about something completely different (giving birth, actually…and i wasn't talking to him). awkward.
?
Fine. Ok. maybe I was shitty, i'll buy that. but...wasn't it your job to teach me? maybe your failures as a teacher pushed me out of the door? since art is subjective, maybe your designs may need some work and i'm the genius here?
...on the flip side, if i needed proof of any sort that I was making the right decision, that was the ace in the hole…
word! moving on, lovelies….and everyday has been fabulous!
i had a hard time leaving my graduate program. i am still pretty angry about it, really, and i know (seriously) i need to let it go, i just want to yell for a minute and feel justified in my hatred, like we all do. sadly, i can't do that for real...i can in my car, in my head, in my living room by myself or in the bathroom yelling at the mirror…and i sound like SUCH a bad ass, too…but i can't really go there. it was like a bad marriage; i was just as responsible for this.
i digress. i decided i just didn't want it. i just didn't want it enough to go through the trouble of making my family miserable; and trust me, they were miserable because I was miserable.
Everyone is happy when Mama is happy around here (why I should be more happy). I just had so much emotion around the whole thing…the bowing to ego trips and the setting myself up to work too hard and fucking up every work relationship i had by questioning myself and being subservient. i do it every time. and I did it this time, too. I feel like I am coming out of it, which is good, since I have been at Defcon 4 level financially for quite some time and I was hesitant to move backwards. But…I set this up. I know this is me doing this to myself, and I don't want to do it any longer.
It's like I keep putting my faith in other people to rescue me, to make things secure. There really isn't an out there, I am realizing now….but i am historically programmed to make myself small for paychecks. It's a belief. I think I have to 'be somebody' to get them to like me. And, when they begin to criticize, I accept it….and then, the slippery slope. Anger, blaming, keeping quiet, and not knowing my limits. I am typically terrible at this. I am a good person, but this is nuts. I am addicted to that drama; I am afraid to be myself, I love to be angry and blame and be the victim, not love my job and my life and my bank account. I am literally self imposing my own limits and tossing blame around to people that took the power i gave them and used it to make them feel better about themselves.
so, the graduate school thing was a lesson in this very thing. i headed this issue straight on and decided it wasn't worth my time to even fight for it. I want to be doing something else completely with my time and resources, and wouldn't even be here if i wasn't tap dancing for some paycheck and the hope of greater paychecks in the future…and, as i realized this past winter, i was spending a load of debt money to do something I was, let's face it, kinda just not into anymore. maybe 10 years ago, but now? with a partner and baby? nope.
This is me reclaiming my power. I choose to spend my time making a difference in this world. To raise a good kid. To be asserting myself for myself and doing it with love. And I love my family for showing me this….cause seriously, I was working for an enterprise that totally struck me as being kid stuff…and doing A LOT of work for it.
The biggest disappointment in doing design was that I loved it, but I wanted the design to reach people (a tall order). I got two shots, and one hit and one miss. The hit was just because I was open to it, too... and it was absolutely no fun to do. i had no idea what the fuck i was doing and totally getting crap for it on all sides…tap-dancing, tap-dancing. I had somebody tell me that maybe being harped on all of the time was a compliment; that this lump of clay called me could be worked with to achieve perfection - and i was thinking hell, this lump of clay was doing all of the damn work- and griping is just a cheap way to assert one's power over another; especially when it is not justified.
and then, the hours. the hours of work, which, when I was doing this crap for decent money ten years ago and no social life meant little, but now it meant something completely different. overwork and bitterness about overwork. for public art…my absolute favorite cause to champion, but one that wasn't championing me as of late. it was just another obligation. and one i was pissed i had to show up for. and no legality on my side to keep it kosher…just an advisor telling me that grad school was hard and I should have expected this….really? you don't say…i totally gave birth and came back two weeks after doing so to keep my grades up. i really needed you to tell me how goddamn HARD it was, after showing up every night and still going to class all day and getting up at 6 am to feed my child….but yeah, sure, thanks for the warning.
to note, I am NOT afraid of the work, or the mental challenge, I just don't want my time wasted since I have two other people depending on me. I had a 4.0 and worked 20 hours per week before and a year after the birth of my child…challenge totally accepted. But to sit around and push buttons and build things that are only getting to see a usage of approximately 5 performances, work 60 hours of overtime and tell me you can't do anything for me or my family because this is always the way you have done it?
sure, sign me up.
another time i was also told that, and I quote, 'it was time to let my daughter go'; note that she was still being breastfed and was 8 months old at that time. Let her go? So I could show up for college theatre?
sheesh. the blinder leading the blind.
the only reprieve I had was sharing my story with a grad school lady in a well thought out letter that said the obvious, and a counselor; both came to totally support me leaving. and that was enough for me. I think my favorite part was when i was in deciding mode i was a MESS…a hot, holy mess….I couldn't think without getting blame-y and wanting to punch people and yell back. Then, after two weeks of figuring out what the next step was, Jude just said, 'i think you know what you want, you just are mad that it isn't what you think it should be.' he was totally right. I knew, deep down, this wasn't for me, and this was the last straw enough for me to figure out the next step. sigh. not the easiest decision ever.
The passions changed courses, that's all. it has been a week and my relationship with my partner is back on track, my daughter is walking and talking more, and i caught up on my tv. (just getting to watch tv was a sheer delight) I cook a great dinner every night, and to top it all off, I lost 5 pounds. Just because I wasn't stressed to the max. Egads.
and to clarify, it really wasn't anybody's fault…at all. I just tripped over serious growth I wasn't expecting and decided to make some terrifyingly hard choices in support of a happier me.
so now i have the chance to hold space and do the things i want. and know, indeed, on the page and in my heart, that i know exactly what's up. all of this suffering is not for nothing. it is to remind myself i can make it better. and not by continuously running away, but by laying the groundwork of what i want. and that may sound SO EASY for some, but I have had the pleasure in my life in indulging in what I want to do most of the time, and I get bored pretty quickly with success or my failures. Hell, my parents never got to do what they wanted to do, but I get to. And I have had some pretty sweet adventures…so now, only the best stuff remains. And the discipline in this case is not to suffer through it being 'hard'; but to suffer through it being 'sweet'; more yoga, more music, more spending time in my body, more love, more nature. MORE GOOD. and i have to really be disciplined about it….remember that anger blaming thing. i tend to find comfort in that way more than the good stuff, which is tough. so if you are reading this, think some good thoughts for me to get some clarity. :)
hari om tat sat
औ
an update for those that kept reading...
this is a Facebook update i never sent. I figured i needed to not share my negatons with the internets, but it addresses an incident that happened quite a lot in the last academic year. this was just the icing on the cake.
so i decided to leave my graduate program.
and this was a tough decision. i had a baby within the program and the time demands of producing college theatre became too overwhelming on all other (healthy) facets of my life, and frankly i felt out of touch with a lot of things I wanted to do over the things I was doing. so this was a decision that took time, weighing options, and a lot of tears.
yet, my advisor had to make a crack at my design skills on my last day as I was on my way out of the building. literally. bag full of office crap and car keys in my hand. while i was talking about something completely different (giving birth, actually…and i wasn't talking to him). awkward.
?
Fine. Ok. maybe I was shitty, i'll buy that. but...wasn't it your job to teach me? maybe your failures as a teacher pushed me out of the door? since art is subjective, maybe your designs may need some work and i'm the genius here?
...on the flip side, if i needed proof of any sort that I was making the right decision, that was the ace in the hole…
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