Tossed.

June 24, 2014August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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On a shelf high in my closet sits a box. This morning, I
took it down, dumped it over on my bed and picked through the pieces of
paper I’d written and thrown in since it was given to me as a one-year
sobriety present.

Someone mentioned recently the idea of dumping out their “God
box” every once in a while, to see what “god” may have already taken care of,
and to see what we’re still holding onto, even as it’s been “surrendered” to the box.

It’s sweet and astonishing to me, all the things that
tortured me so hard, I found them listed on multiple post-its, torn pieces of
paper, even a square of toilet paper.

The ones that I got to separate from “still actively seeking
hope/help” included a lot of men’s/boy’s names that haven’t gotten a rise out
of me for years. I had to wrack my memory at one of them, and then got to see
the number of times others’ names had been tossed in there in the hope for resolution
and divine intervention, and indeed, they’ve become completely old news. Today, those got
tossed to the resolved pile.

In that pile, I also tossed, Food issues and Smoking. Issues
that I haven’t had to box with for years, so much so that I am surprised to
remember them, and to notice they caused me such pain (well, smoking was a
bitch to quit – and I never doubt that one will always lead to more).

The ones that remain in the box, that I am throwing back
in there, are varied.

One reads:

Jesse Morris will live.

And he will find recovery.

And he will be beautiful.

Amen.

Jesse Morris did not live. But I believe him to still be
beautiful.

I also have the memorial service booklet from Aaron Brown’s
funeral following his heroin overdose.

I have the necklace my father gave me when I was sick with
cancer. A photo of my mom holding my brother, age 2. A photo of the ex whose
innocence we shared.

And the torn shreds of a fortune cookie I didn’t understand
why I’d ripped and torn in there until I pieced it back together: “As long as
your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.” – I can easily see why I
would bristle at such a fortune!

Finally, what will stay in the box, rethrown in, and
recommitted to allowing them to be “taken care of,” are those issues which have
remained “issues” to this very day.

The best illustration of these being an actual illustration:

Home, Love, Health, Security, Happiness.

(Or at least I think that’s happiness, and not Pirates.)

There are a bevy of papers with some amalgam of these on it. Some verbose pleas to a higher power, others simply a heart drawn on a
post-it.

It is cleansing and reaffirming to dump and sort this box,
this box that over the years I’ve begged over for things to change, hurled words
in there like grenades, or exhausted, dropped them in tear-stained.

There are ones that I don’t know if “resolution” is
possible, like those untimely deaths of beautiful people. And they will stay in the box.

There are ones where I still can’t see what resolution will
look like at all, as with my dad, my career, and “my life,” as I wrote it again and
again. They will stay there, too.

But, luckily, there must be hope from a sorting such as
this, because the pile of “resolved” issues is nearly half. Those torturous
achings that caused me to toss names and circumstances in that have simply
fallen out of mind, out of importance, into the fate and design of my past…

These ones that make me smile now for the girl who wrote
them, and for the wisdom of time that solved them: They give me hope for the
others.

action · career · despair · exhaustion · friendship · hope · hopeless · job · jobs · miracle · perseverance · persistence

"We Need Back-up!"

June 19, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I have no back-up, she said.

My friend with two kids, impending divorce, move, life,
told me a few weeks ago. Trying to figure out if she could go back east
for a family reunion and see her great-aunt probably for the last time. To
figure out if she should bring her kids, even though she couldn’t afford it.
Trying to figure out who would take care of them if she went, because “he”
wasn’t available.

She felt alone, lost, and hopeless.

When I was leaving, she picked up her phone to check a text.
The kids’ other grandmother would be happy to come up and stay with them, it read. No
problem.

Her eyes went wide. She laughed. I laughed. We laughed about
the energy we put into feeling terrible about things.

A few days ago, I saw her again. She was telling some of our
friends how she’d found a house in the town she wanted to be in because of its school system for her son. I hadn’t heard this part yet. Only how pained she’d been in the
looking, months and months of looking. Fearing, wondering.

She regaled us with how she went online on Wednesday, saw
the house on Thursday, and on Friday, signed the lease.

She told us how there was another house that she really wanted for $800 more a month. The kind of dream house she “really” saw herself living in.

But guess how much the tuition will be for her girl at the
school she wanted to be in? $800 a
month.

The litany of things that lined up were astonishing.
Each little piece of it having fallen firmly into miraculous and perfect place.
Each need met, better than anticipated. And “right on time.”

My friend was ecstatic and a bit winded with all the
resolutions that worked out in her favor. Eventually.

I said that it was like the “Universe” was tittering with a
present hidden behind its back. “Oooh… Look how upset she is that she has
nothing, that nothing’s coming out right – She’s gonna be SO BOMBED when I show
her what I have for her!! What I’ve had for her this whole time — Ha! It’s
gonna be AWESOME!”

And it’s true. It’s not that these things just came about
“miraculously.” It’s that she had been reaching out for help, grasping at any
straws, and finally, some of those straws bore fruit (to mix metaphors).

Desperate and despairing though she was, really distraught
at feeling abandoned by the Universe, lost in this HUGE transition in her life, she was asking for help. She
was taking action.

And that’s what
produced the miracles… to my mind, at least.

I report this whole story, I think, for obvious reasons.

I am currently grasping at so many straws, I could line the Augean stables.

I am reaching out to places I haven’t before, and listening
when people have things to say. (Even if I’ve heard their advice or platitudes
before and are silently telling them to shut it.)

I am feeling so lost and desperate and hopeless and
wondering and flailing and floundering. In short, I am feeling just as she was.

I know that we humans are meaning-making animals. We, or at
least I, want to make sense of
everything, even the things that don’t. So, I know that I want to make meaning
out of her story, make it into a tale of heroic action and divine
desperate patience.

I want to make this story Job. Because if it is, then in the
end I get a flock of sheep, too.

* Epilogue

Look. I know this sounds like a lot of self-obsessed, self-centered bullshit. I know this isn’t Rwanda, or even East Oakland. I know that no matter what happens, I’ll likely have clean water to drink.

I suppose, having always been a late bloomer, I just am getting an advanced jump on the whole mid-life crisis thing.

I think the argument with authenticity is an important one to have. I think the screamings of a soul that feels trapped is an important one to answer. I get that that looks like a lot of navel-gazing sometimes, and I get the pain all that staring causes in my neck.

But I just want to say that I see both sides, here. I see that I have it immensely “better” than a hundred million people around me. I get that my life is infinitely better than it was 10 years ago.

But, I also have the capacity to listen to myself at a level that I have never been keen enough to hear before.

Last night, someone recommended I read the chapter on Withdrawal in a 12-step book. I did. This “not quitting my job without having another one lined up” thing IS withdrawal for me. It’s causing me pain. It’s causing me to act out. It’s causing me to have conversations and intrigue with inappropriate people, and to eat enough cupcakes to stock a shop.

I’m in pain, and it comes out here. This is my place. I feel badly about putting it up so that you have to read daily about it. But, you don’t have to read. And I don’t have to feel.

And yet. Here we both are. Xo.m

authenticity · awareness · career · dating · deprivation · faith · fear · integrity · internet dating · jobs · perseverance · self-abandonment · self-esteem

Broken Algorithms

June 15, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Someone asks you out.
You’re pretty sure it’s not a match, but “you never know” and you have nothing better to do, so you
say sure. The date is uneventful, confirms that you’re not a match, and ends
with a nice awkward hug, and one of those vague promises to meet up again soon.

Perhaps there are follow-up texts, that you politely reply
to, but are vague and friendly. Perhaps there are then more follow-up texts
that you begin to ignore in an attempt to give a hint as to your lack of
interest and intention. And, finally, perhaps there’s the passive-aggressive
texts you begin to receive that a) reconfirm this wasn’t a match, and b) lead you
to hide them from your newsfeed!

What’s wrong with this picture? – as the back of the Highlights magazine asked you to spot.

Well, first and foremost is the fact that you abandoned your
own good judgment, values, and integrity by agreeing to go out in the first
place. “Pretty sure it’s not a match” is usually good enough. Enough of these
situations have proved that your gut is usually correct.

This self-abandonment is the seed of the whole problem.
It’s not the dude; it’s not his persistence; it’s not his disappointment masked
as passive-aggression. – It’s you.

I’ve finished reading the history of online dating/how-to
memoir entitled Data, A Love Story: How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to
Meet My Match. In it, the author describes
that the problem with online dating is not the sites; it’s us. It’s us answering questions as our aspirational
self, instead of as we are. It’s us, chatting with people we only have vague
interest in. It’s us, abandoning our integrity in order to have crappy
connections with people.

I’ve been thinking about this process in relation to my job
search. I’ve realized that I do the same thing in dating that I do in job
searching: I lie. I let jobs that hold little to no interest for me get a bulk
of my attention, and then when I get the interview, I find that,
indeed, I’m not interested, but in order to be “nice” or liked or wanted or
hired, I will feign that interest. I will more often than not land that job,
and then I will become resentful that I have it. This suitor that I didn’t
want, I’m now trying to delete from my Facebook, or in this case, my LinkedIn.

Again, what’s broken here is not these jobs – it’s my
willingness to abandon my values. It’s my willingness to say to myself,
Something is better than nothing; what else have you got to do? It’s my
willingness to waste my time and theirs, so that I can put off and deny what it
is I really want.

My willingness to waste my own time … my threshold for the pain that causes is astronomically high.

But because I have a belief that this is easier than the
pain of making truer statements, of sticking close to my integrity, my
intentions, my values, and my wants, I choose the rockier path every time.

Because the alternative is to stick with myself. To be the
friend I want to be to myself. To be my
own cheerleader and ally, and to let myself know that I’m here to support
myself on the unknown path of self-esteem.

I said on the phone to a friend two weeks ago: “I’m having
trouble mustering the low self-esteem required to apply for jobs I don’t want.” Ha!

I think we call that progress; insight; growth. (Although, I am still finding myself browsing those job descriptions.)

I have to muster a whole silo filled with negative beliefs
in order to go toward jobs I don’t want. These include: I don’t know what I
want, so I don’t deserve anything better. I will only abandon myself
eventually, so I may as well do it now. There’re no happy endings in this world,
so what makes you think you deserve one.

To name a few.

And I have to bombard and drown myself in these beliefs
(false beliefs) in order to “muster the low self-esteem” necessary to undersell
myself.

The same, I’m sure, is true for me in the dating world.

So, again, what is the solution, here?

I know that it’s to not abandon myself, to continue working
on my self-esteem, to wipe away the corroded mirror I use to judge myself so
that I can get a clearer view, one that reflects esteem, joy, confidence, and
courage. One that reflects someone fun, engaged, lively, warm, and worthy. I
know that the work is to trust that if I walk away from that silo of low
self-esteem, I will be led toward a healthier source of sustenance.

And that trust… That is the hard part. That tiny sapling of
faith that I will have to hold onto as the storm of negativity swirls around
me, raging only harder the longer I resist. I will have to hold on to that sapling,
until it becomes a redwood, until the storm recedes into memory. I will have to
have faith that if I hold on long enough to my self-worth and my self-esteem,
the clouds will give way to the sun.

Here’s hoping.

awareness · career · childhood · clarity · despair · faith · fear · healing · isolation · jobs · recovery · work

The Runaways

June 13, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I sent out a mass text on Wednesday to several women I know
who’d understand. I asked them to help me not quit my job that day; that for me
quitting without a safety net is equivalent to drinking; that I was at the end
of my rope.

I got several texts back, including from a woman I am only
acquainted with but who I admire, and she offered that if I called her, we
could pray together. Sure, what else have I got?

When I called, I imagined we’d just say some rote prayer that
is common around, but instead, she launched into a several-minute long prayer
personal to and about me. In it she said, to me and to the ether, that this job
is just a recreation of my childhood trauma and neglect, and to help me see
that and heal that. She said many other loving things, but this is the part that
has been sending shock-waves through me the last few days.

I’ve “gotten” that my relationships in the world tend to be
mirrors or recreations of older, historical relationships. It’s been clear that
my acceptance and pursuit of jobs that make me want to cry with frustration
over the hemorrhaging of my time is a pattern of low self-worth and despair.

However, there was and is a new level of understanding – an
“aha” moment if you will (not gag) – as I listened to my friend’s prayer. How
is my job a recreation of my home life
growing up?

Well, at home, I was a runaway.

When I was little, I only did it twice. I got as far as our
public library, with a small backpack filled with maybe an apple and a
sweatshirt. But at 7 or 8 years old, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a
place to go, there was no where to go. And so I defeatedly walked back home,
and slipped into my house, where no one noticed I’d been gone anyway, just like
the time before.

In my home, my gifts were not encouraged or noticed; there
was an unstable force that expected perfection, meekness, and to be obeyed; and
finally, all of my most basic needs were met. I was fed, clothed, and housed —
anything else was bonus, not to be asked for and not to be expected.

(It wasn’t prison life, I know; but this is the
interpretation and internalization of a small person with a brain that analyzes
and makes judgment.)

So. How have my work environments been a reflection, a
recreation of this initial home environment?

Perfectly. Perfectly parallel:

Basic needs met. Check.

Gifts not seen or utilized. Check.

Perfection and meekness expected. Check.

Unstable authoritarian. Check.

And finally,

Somewhere I run away from. Check. Check, the whole of my life, check.

I have held 6 jobs in the past 8 years.

Each year and a half or so, I become so frustrated with the
confines of my environment and the yearnings of my soul, that I quit. I quit
without a safety net. I quit with nowhere to go.

And so I do what I did when I was young: I go back home. I
find another underearning, underbeing, dissatisfying, deadening, useless position
that also meets my very basic needs and has a few coworkers to be my allies.

I keep this job until I end up crying in my car for an hour (See: this Tuesday). And then I quit again.

Rinse. Repeat.

So, today, I am attempting with every fucking fiber of my
being not to quit. Not to start the cycle again without a plan – without
someplace to go. Without someplace to go that is “right,” that is safe, that is
not running from the frying pan into the fire.

For me, to quit a job without a safety net – meaning,
another job or enough savings to carry me through to another job – is tantamount to drinking. And as a sober alcoholic,
that’s a pretty serious parallel. It is deadly for me to do this again: I eventually begin to think about driving into oncoming traffic. It is insane for me to do this again and expect that in any way
it would be different than before.

So, what is my solution?

I have tried every mode of visioning, job window-shopping,
informational interviewing, praying, meditating, and begging known to me to try to “conjure” or land on or decide or realize or discover
what the job, the career, for my life should be. And I have landed on nothing.
I am absolutely blocked in this area of dreaming.

A therapist once told me that I don’t let myself dream.

And this is true. Why dream, when it’ll be taken away or
I’ll fuck it up anyway, which amounts to the same thing?

I had a moment last night when I heard someone say that “we”
are the kind of people who try to get away with doing the least work.

I thought about that. Why is that? Because I completely identify with that.

I leaned to my friend on the left, who identifies with that
way of being, and asked, Well, what about workaholics?

I leaned to my friend on the right, who is a workaholic and would no more do the least amount
of work necessary than eat sand, and asked her about it.

Later, in talking with her, I’ve come to see that although
the routes are very opposite, the motivation and the fear is the same for both
“underearners/under-be-ers” and for workaholics: Things are not going to work
out; I’m not going to be okay.

For the set that does the minimum, the fear (for me at
least) is that whatever it is is not going to work out anyway, so why try? Why
give the world the satisfaction of seeing me put effort in, if it’s only going
to turn to shit?

For the workaholic set, the fear is that unless I have my hand in everything, it’s not going to work
out. I must make sure that I’m doing everything possible, or it will turn to
shit.

In both these scenarios, the fear is that the result will
not be favorable to us. On the one hand, why try to make it work – on the other hand, make
it.

In both cases, there is a lack of faith in the positive
outcome of things, or in an outcome that is unfavorable but doesn’t demoralize
and crush us into smitherines. Because,
for me, that’s the final stage of the fear – I will be so demoralized, I will be
annihilated.

But aren’t I there anyway?

So, again, what is the solution here?

It seems to me, that I needed a safe place to go when I was
running away. And although I cannot conjure or envision for myself a job or
career that I want, I do think that I
can try to envision for myself a safe home.

Though, even in my home life now, I’ve recreated what it was like when I was
a kid: My own small room that was safe, filled with things I’ve made and pretty
things, a place I could hide, be myself, and a place where I was mostly alone.

What is a real safe
place, not like this isolation? Where would I want to run away to?

I believe that as I try to answer this question, to envision
what an ideal safe home looks like, I will begin to have movement on the job
front. I will begin to create that environment I crave in the external world. And though that might not mean a lightning bolt in terms of a career
choice, it may help to make whatever my next transition is one that I don’t
have to run away from.

career · compassion · fear · friendship · health · old ideas · recovery · self-love

Smalls tasks. One thing. Little pieces. Eventual mountains.

May 28, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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The thing about “eventual mountains” is that we actually
have to have the presence of mind to turn around and acknowledge we’ve reached
the top of a mountain. Otherwise, small tasks never seem to add up to anything significant, because
we’re always striving without appreciating our own efforts.

I’ve noticed this week that my patience with people I come
into daily contact with is … thin. That I envelop the small irks with a
candy-coating of relish. (Not like real relish, that’d be gross.) From the
first work email I replied to yesterday morning, back from the long weekend, to the
impatience I had toward someone else, I knew that I was taking on more emotional attachment to these interactions than I truly had to.

None of this was personal. “I didn’t cause, can’t control and
can’t cure” you or your behavior. It is not my fault or responsibility that you,
woman, are a tight-ass, type-A, micro-managing, self-righteous, impervious,
judgmental bitch.

IN THIS inner maelstrom of judgment toward others, I remembered
something significant: We are only a percent as judgmental of others as we are toward ourselves. It’s something
I’ve heard again and again. If you hear someone being judgmental of others,
just know that they treat themselves with a spiked lash of self-derision
infinitely more rigid than they use on others.

And so, I’m brought back to myself. Where the only chance
for change, love, release, is ever possible.

If I’m so mean to others, so angry, and rigid, and
correcting, and impatient and punitive toward them… how on earth am I to
myself?

And, I’m reminded of something else: Every single person
who’s ever told me that I’m too hard on myself.

I never actually take this in. I brush this comment aside
like so much hippie, free-love nonsense. I don’t treat myself harshly. I’m fine to myself. Fuck you.

But. I’ve begun to see the veracity of this opinion. That
it’s not actually opinion, when I really listen to the thoughts I fling at
myself. I am very exacting and punitive
toward myself, though I’m very good enough to hide it, or to brush it under the
rug.

I’m coming to see that I have internalized a pattern of
self-deflation. Having experienced enough external feedback in response to
being authentic, I’ve become habitualized to doing it to myself. Better not to
show who you really are, what you really want to do, what talent you really
have, because it will be taken away from you. Trouble is, I’m the one doing the
taking these days.

Better to stop myself early from doing anything worth doing,
because I “know” I’ll just fuck it up, it will be taken away, it will be flawed
eventually.

It’s the reason I continue to hold on to second-rate things
(and ideas, and jobs): No use in having something really nice, because you,
Molly, will fuck it up anyway. OR, it will be taken from you, and you will be
heart-broken. Better to have or do something only half-assed, because then you
won’t be disappointed.

Nor will I actually be fulfilled.

And, by the way, did you happen to catch all that
self-derisive talk up there? It’s not actually that explicit when it’s
happening. Instead it’s a mercurial thread of poison in my water supply.

A friend told me last night that I haven’t caught a break in
a while. That no wonder I’m tired and frustrated and feverish with the “Divine
unrest.” The Universe owes me a break.

But as we spoke about self-flagellation, I replied to her, I haven’t given myself a break in a while. To which
she replied, Well, you are the
Universe.

Tis pity, tis true.

I believe we, in some ways, create our own reality. And if
there is a constant badgering of myself, a constant deflation, and a “cosmic”
interception of my touchdown passes, born of an (old) idea that I can’t have
nice things, do good things, have success, and ease and partnership and
fulfillment and joy … then of course that’s what will be reflected back to me.

Last night, I re-posted a 2012 blog of “What ifs” in the style of
Shel Silverstein. As I read it, I began to rephrase the questions in terms of
affirmations. Instead of “What if I believed I were safe,” I read to myself, “I
am safe.” “What if I allowed myself to
laugh,” becomes, “I allow myself to laugh.”

I see that how I am behaving toward others is a reflection
of how I behave toward myself. And that awareness is one of those tiny steps I
need to be conscious — and appreciative — of as I climb this mountain toward health.

abundance · action · career · courage · doubt · fear · fulfillment · hope · scarcity

Gold, or Coal?

May 14, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There’s a story in the bible that tells us Pharoah tested
little baby Moses to see if he was interested in money, like all good Jews
(kidding!), or if he was just attracted to shiny things, like all good
raccoons.

Pharoah puts a lump of hot, glowing coal and a rock of gold
in front of the baby, and waits to see which he’ll reach for. Moses goes for
the gold.

So, G-d sends down an angel to move his hand toward the
coal, and when baby Moses touches the coal, it burns his hand, he stuffs his
hurt fingers in his mouth, and thus develops a speech impediment.

Thus Pharoah is satisfied that the little tyke is just
precocious and not going to usurp him.

I’m looking at this job description right now. I’m perfect
for it, have the experience, though certainly would learn and do more on this
job than I had previously. It’s in the community I would like to stay in. And
it pays up to double what I’m making right now (“commensurate with experience,”
of course).

But. I have near to zero interest in it. It doesn’t put me
closer or further on the path that I’ve seen I want. It won’t, in several
years, be a stepping stone, really. It’s over in X land, and I want to be in Y
land. They have the wall of Jerusalem between them.

So, Gold? Or Coal?

I can apply, see what happens. May not even get called in
for an interview. I could land the job, and gain a bargaining chip with my
current employer. Or, I could land the job, take the income increase, finally
put money into savings and retirement, come what may. So what, clock in
clock out, so what.

Perhaps this job option is both the gold and the coal, then.

It’s good to keep looking. It’s good to see that the same realm of what I’m currently doing is getting paid a much different wage
than I am, even if my current employer is really not set or able to offer me
anything more.

It’s also good to see what values have formed from being at the job I currently have: Did you know
that I can walk 5 minutes to an organic co-op café for lunch? Or to a Peets? Or
to a park with large swaths of grass where I can lie down in the sunshine when I need a break from people and computer screens?

Did you know that I can drive 30 minutes to and from work,
and can actually work out in the morning and meet up with people or cook dinner or audition in the
evenings because I stay on this side of the Bay?

Tell me then, about BART rides to a Muni bus and back? About adding
an hour to both sides of my commute? About the urban detritus?

And then tell me about a realistic and abundant retirement plan….

I will probably apply. I will certainly keep looking. And I
will have faith — that sordid word (look what “He” did to Moses’ hand!) — that I can
have the ease, expansion, and fulfillment I want with a salary that supports a life
of ease, expansion, and fulfillment.

Right?

allies · career · community · debt · fear · friendship · hope · Jewish · love · perseverance · scarcity · self-care · support

Bossypants

May 10, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“You look like you’re leading something,” she said.

We met for an info interview. My former boss and I. I wanted
to run past her my career ideas, my flailing, my desires, my questions. And what can
happen in an hour (I should know by now), is phenomenal.

We caught up briefly, I heard about the cross-Bay move, the
house hunt that fell magically into place after a year of city-looking, about
the semi-adult kids, and about the current work.

I met her in 2008. I had a fever of 103 that weekend and
had to cancel our initial interview, so we had to meet on a Sunday, fever or no
fever — I had a drastically depleting bank account, no safety net, and did what
it took. What it took was meeting her in a Starbucks, rabid coffee addiction
being the first thing we aligned on. We sat talking for over an hour, about the
job, sure, but about lots of other things, too.

I didn’t even apply for that job. I’d applied for a
different position in the organization, and having been passed up for that one,
they handed my soon-to-be new boss my resume, and said, Here, she might work
well for you.

I was blonde at the moment. I’d quit my job at the property
management company with no net and no prospects. No plan and no direction. I’d
simply had enough of crying in my car at lunch because I felt so stuck and lost
over my “career.” I’d been there almost 2 years. They were great. But it wasn’t
“me,” and I didn’t know what “me” was anyway, so I stayed.

Until I didn’t. Until my coworker there went out to lunch
with me, and I can’t even remember exactly what she must have asked me, or
exactly what I must have said. But it triggered action, for better or worse.

I called a friend of mine after that lunch, and he asked me two important questions: Why would you stay? “Financial security.” Why would you
leave? “Love. Self-love.”

I’d never said those words before. I never knew I’d had such
an impulse or a drive such as that. “love” or “self-love.”

What I didn’t have was a plan, a back-up, a safety net. And
for all that people say about “leap and the net will appear”… well, I should do a leeetle bit of my part in assuring a safe landing, too.

So, that weekend, I gave my notice, hosted a my now-annual “Pre-Val Hearts & Stars” party, dyed my hair blonde. And then scoured the
interwebs for hope. Which, FYI, is not where hope lives.

With a fever, a toilet paper shortage, and lots of “I
want to do something ‘creative,’ but I don’t know what that is” spinning, one
morning I woke up, and asked myself, What do I like to do?

Strangely, the answer was, “Well, I like being Jewish.” Ha.

So, onto the interwebs I went, and typed into google: Jewish, San Francisco.

I applied to everything there was. And I got called in for
the first job at that organization. And then I got called in by my soon-to-be
boss.

I was tired, desperate, and blond. I was feverish, scared,
and brain-addled.

I got the job.

(Here, I could insert the same style story that got me the
job at the property management company, under very similar circumstances including toilet-paper and food
shortage, but I’ll leave that for now – except to say, perhaps you now can
understand why it is that “Stability First” is my current motto and touchstone.
– No, It’s not “fun,” it’s not zany, or “creative,” but – guess what, to paraphrase
a friend I heard last week, It gives me the table upon which to build the
puzzle of my life. Stability first gives me the freedom and the ease and the
breathing room to … buy toilet paper.)

And here my now-former boss and I sat yesterday, at another
coffee shop, so full circle it makes me smile, and here were are again, talking
of Jewish, talking of organizations, of helping, of building, of changing. It’s
6 years later, now, almost to the date, that she and I have sat
across tables sipping our addictions and exchanging our personal and professional lives.

She showed up for me during cancer. She brought me gift
cards to Trader Joe’s so I wouldn’t go hungry or worry about doing so. She
brought me a travel Shabbat kit with candles and a prayer that my mom and I
would use once when she was here. She brought with her to Israel a prayer, a plea, I’d written during cancer that I’d asked her to take with her there, and she did, under a lemon tree in her parents’ backyard, dug, burned and buried my prayer with her small niece and nephew. She told me how incredible I was and how inspiring
I am.

And yesterday, she told me the same. She gave me hard
answers, great ideas, helped me think through my own. This woman is a mentor
and a friend, and lost or not lost, I have allies like her, unique as she is,
all over this planet.

career · courage · self-pity · self-support · uncertainty · work

worker bee.

May 7, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I’ve been funky and introspective lately. A little unmoored.
After all that excitement in April of the trip and offering my own job proposal/promotion, and getting flat
results from it, the job at least, it’s felt like I’m back at square one again.
Back at the crossroads where it’s my turn to figure out what I’m doing with my
life. What I should do, what I want to do, what I can do.

And it feels disheartening—I guess that’s pretty entirely
how I feel. A little flat, a little steam-less. My friend told me yesterday
this too shall pass; even though that makes small comfort when you’re “in it,”
she is of course right. But once again, folks are suggesting ideas for what I
should do next, and nothing seems right.

Do I stay at the job I have with a salary and
responsibilities that don’t reflect what I can offer? Do I stay here because
it’s stable, because my boss said he’s willing to offset some of the costs for
a non-profit management certificate course? Do I stay because it’s “easy”?

Though, is it? Is it easy to feel so small in the work you
do? Is it easy to know you can do more but stay put? Is it easy to accept the
minutae and banality of office clerkness? NO. Of fucking course not.

This is not the
easier road, but it is currently the one I’m standing on, and the one that is providing
me a livelihood. And when I come to consider it, it’s a decent, if on the
meager side, livelihood. Do I stay because other people have it worse off, and struggle harder?
Haven’t I learned the foolishness of martyrdom?

It’s not like I’m not trying. I’ve sent out two resumes, one
rejected. And assume I’ll send out more. But my heart is not in this. I guess
I’m just disappointed at the moment – having put a lot of energy into offering
my job some ways to increase their success and my own, and was told, “Not now,
and probably not for at least a year, if then.” Do I hang on for that??

I need more clarity from my job about what that really
means. I want more clarity around if this is just going to be me languishing
for another year—and also, if I am owed that annual cost of living increase
that my coworkers receive. And if that bit is worth it anyway?

I pulled the 4 of Cups this morning, the card of
self-absorption, apathy. They really nail me sometimes.

Introspection can be a healthy habit, when it’s accompanied
with outward action. But when it’s just mental masturbating, or emotional, then
it’s not really effective.

It’s hard to pull yourself out of the mire though. But, as
my friend said, this too shall pass. More will be revealed, the cloud will shift
from in front of the sun, and I will know what to do next.

Much of it starts with asking the real and hard questions to
my boss. If this is really worth my while to stay, to build toward what I
offered them, then I really need to know that in more than
empty promises of someday. That doesn’t work for me.

Is that too much to ask? I don’t know, because I haven’t
yet.

I was brave enough to ask for what I want; having been told,
“Not now, maybe someday,” am I brave enough to ask for what I need? It’s not like I have other offers rolling in.

But, the answers to my own questions and to my boss’s will help
determine whether it’s time to seek those offers or not, and I can stop feeling quagmired again.

Life is way too short to languish in “maybes” that you can
get a clearer answer to.

acting · career · connection · fun · isolation · laughter · loneliness · love · perseverance

“Just about the time you’re rotting with seriousness or serious boredom, something happens or else you’d die.” ~ Lorine Niedecker, poet

May 5, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“The thing about grief,” she told me, “is that something is
broken, but you’re not – and you’ve got to keep going.”

Years ago she told me this, and I reflect on it in so many
situations.

Yesterday, after writing that blog that tore me up a bit, I
had to go assist at a work event, and then head to an audition for a play. I
really wasn’t feeling it.

It’s been two months now since I’ve auditioned, as I’d been cast in a play (yay!), and then turned down for other parts that allowed me the
time to go on vacation. In the meantime, I did go on vacation, and had
elaborate experience and processing about relationships, values, love. I also
got clearer about my career goals, and implemented some action around them at work,
which not surprisingly, I was told last week were great ideas but probably
aren’t going to happen “within the next year,” if at all. So, there’s been
processing around that, too.

In all, it’s been kinda heavy around here. Making
check-points of where I am, where I want to be personally and professionally.
And so I showed up to that audition, late and lost in the hills of Berkeley, with
little more than the feet I was standing on.

But, most times, that’s enough.

God, it was fun. I
really had forgotten that I love this stuff. I’d forgotten the titillation and
excitement, and the nervous sizing-up from the other auditioners, and the
frantic reading of sides before your name is called, wondering if you’re
supposed to do an accent or not.

It was great. It’s less than 20 minutes of life, but it
pulled me back to center, away from the future-gazing, away from the
grief-feeling. I still feel off today, and that’s alright, but for a few
minutes yesterday, I got to do something I love doing, simply for the effort of
trying it. I got to meet other women trying it too, and have a coffee date to
pick one’s brain on the whole “Bay Area Theater Biz.”

It’s strange to get back to this again, this thing that I
just want to do because it’s fun and not because my life or income or goals
depend on it. It’s strange to just have the fun thing simply because it’s
fun. There’s no stepping stone here, no ladder, no life plan founded on it.
It’s an extraneous, avocational, extra-curricular dalliance, and isn’t that so needed right now?

I told you I’ve been thinking about getting back into
band-ing again, playing bass again. Simply for the same reason. I forgot what
it’s like to have fun. To do the things I find fun.

In this time that I’ve been “figuring out” my life and my
strategies and my goals, it’s been satisfying and reinforcing and relieving,
but it hasn’t been fun. In fact, it’s been hella lonely in some ways I don’t
get.

All work and no play, and all that.

But, without really intending to, every single day this past week, I spent time with women friends, mostly
long-established, report-having friends. It, too, reinforced something – that
combination of history and laughter and understanding and ease. It, too, brought me back to a sense of myself, a
little lost in the myopia of “life planning.”

I saw a friend’s post this morning that read, “There’s got
to be more to life than this.”

I replied aloud, “There is.”