Saturday, January 28, 2012

Jettisoning Some Ballast


The 1978 Sony Trinitron TV is now on its way to a new home, along with a half-dozen other electronic gadgets whose main function was collecting dust. The television was a college graduation present from my parents, and it still works just fine (with the proper converter gadgets). That's why I held onto it for so long. It was one of the last TVs to be built without remote control, so I had a VCR that doubled as a channel changer. (The VCR is gone now too.)

During the big switch to digital TV, I stubbornly held onto my old relic. I was seriously annoyed that the electronics industry was forcing me to buy new stuff by making my old stuff useless. The cable company acted as my enabler, helpfully providing an analog signal along with the digital signal. As long as I had the cable hooked up, everything was fine. One day, the cable company sent me a notice that said "no more." I ignored it. One day, I turned on the TV, and all the channels showed a plain white slide with a message that told me that my choices were: buy a new TV, get the darned converter box, or pay the cable company every month for nothing more than a screen full of static.

About the same time, my condo association arranged to have the building wired for FIOS. All right, then, I decided to buy the bundle, including TV services. I also decided that it was time to stop being silly and move into the 21st century. I went to Sears and got a smallish flat-screen TV (which was still larger than my old faithful set). The old set was relegated to a spot on the floor until I could figure out what to do with it. The landfill was not an option -- it would have been a sacrilege to discard an item that was still working.

Somehow during all of this, my emotional connection to my college graduation gift evaporated into wherever it is that emotional connections to inanimate objects go. The new TV and the FIOS cable brought me access to hundreds of shows, including one on hoarders. I watched this show a few times out of idle curiosity. What could cause a person to turn her home into a garbage dump rather than part with the least little item? Could a milder version of this condition cause me to leave unused items in my closets and tucked into corners of my small apartment?

I thought back to a time several years ago, when my mother moved to assisted living and I helped my sister empty out Mom's house. We hoped that we would never put another human being through that experience when our turn came. Mom was orders of magnitude short of being a true hoarder, but my sister spent a year going through piles of things, finding good homes for what she could and tossing the rest. These things had meant something to Mom at one time, but who needs fistfuls of brittle rubber bands and shelves full of paper and plastic bags?

Meanwhile, the old TV sat on the floor and collected dust, because I wasn't sure who would want it. Yesterday, I got an announcement for today's big Goodwill electronics collection event a few miles from where I live. Only functioning items would be accepted, which means that someone would be buying these things and taking them home to use. The time had come. The old TV, the VCR, and several unused electronic gadgets fit very nicely into my little car, and away we went. I felt no twinges as I watched the volunteers load these things onto their truck. I felt almost giddy as I returned home and saw the open floor space where all this stuff had been.

My old TV won't miss me. It's a thing. I probably have some photographs of it somewhere, but I'm not going to go looking for them. Instead, I am writing this blog post because I know that my friends and family are reading this. Things don't miss you when you part company, but people do. Things can be replaced, but people can't. Emotional ties to things can come from the memories they evoke of the people associated with them, but this is a poor substitute for direct ties to people themselves. Learning to fly will require me to loosen my attachments to excess ballast, and strengthen my connections with people who love and support me.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Rum Tum Tugger and the Egyptian Cat


T.S. Eliot's disobliging cat, The Rum Tum Tugger, "only likes what he finds for himself." I can relate to that. If you don't want me to see a particular movie or read a particular book, just make it into a blockbuster hit. Line people up around the block, and I will go looking for something else. Tell me that it changed your whole life, and I might get around to investigating it in another ten to fifteen years. Fill my workplace with the popular kids from high school, all dressed in conservatively-colored suits, all chatting about cupcakes and groupons, who has the newest smart phone, and where do you get your beemer detailed, and I will polish up my resume and plot my escape.

On the other hand, if I stumble onto some quirky topic that few people have noticed, I will dive in and find out everything I can. I can take a tiny topic, put it into a bigger framework, and make a story out of it. My stories haven't achieved cult status yet, but people have mentioned to me now and then how some magazine article or web posting I wrote two or three years ago really got them thinking.

Having said that, the things that go beyond merely piquing my interest, the things that resonate deeply with me and stay in my mind for decades, tend to find me rather than the other way around. I may be looking one way for inspiration, and the "big buzz" comes at me from the other direction. Sometimes, I'm not looking for anything at all, and a big idea hits me like a wet mop in the face. If another human is involved, it's almost never intentional on their part. More likely, it's something they say or do that connects with something else in my mind and starts the electrical current flowing. It's something I see or something I read about that fascinates me and engages my imagination.

One such "big buzz" hit me on a trip to Paris a few years ago. My friend and I had parted company for the afternoon. She wanted to see the exhibits at the Musée d'Orsay, and I wanted to find an old Roman amphitheater that I had read about in my guide book (Arènes de Lutèce in the Latin Quarter). This was before handheld GPS devices were common, so I set off on foot with my paper map in hand. Every few blocks, I would check the map at the nearest bus shelter, looking for that comforting phrase, "vous êtes ici", to reassure myself that I was headed in the right direction. I almost missed the amphitheater, which is cleverly disguised as a public park and a playground in a residential neighborhood. I spent some time drinking in the ancient vibes and trying to imagine crowds of toga-clad spectators, but it wasn't the kind of place that would hold my interest very long. I had a few hours to myself before I needed to head back to the museum, so I started walking west, looking for anything that might be worth checking out.

I hadn't gone very far before I saw an imposing building with a large dome. The guide book said that this was Le Panthéon, and listed it as a place worth seeing if you had the time, but definitely not on a par with the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. Since I was there, I decided to stop in and see what this building was all about. I had not heard of this place before, and the admission fee seemed reasonable.

In the main hall, an Egyptian cat stood watch over Foucault's giant pendulum, which traced its endless track in a bed of sand. Murals on the wall told the stories of Ste. Geneviève, and Jeanne d'Arc. The real find, however, was down below, in the crypt. The names on the plaques were familiar from my college days: Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Braille, Curie, Langevin, Dumas. More than plaques: the lower level was filled with tombs, marking the final resting place of the people who shaped French history, literature, and science. I wandered the passageways until closing time, filled with fascination and awe.

This place, which I had found so unexpectedly, moved me much more deeply than the Notre Dame cathedral, which I had heard so much about and was listed as a "must-see" in the guide book. I can't claim to have found Le Panthéon for myself, à la Rum Tum Tugger, but I claim the experience as uniquely mine, and it is all the more precious to me for that.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Back Story

I keep a little collection of stories as my own personal mythology -- a collection of metaphors that helps me explain how I see the world. My collection includes old folk tales, things that other people have told me, and my personal memories. The name of this blog, Flying Lessons, is inspired by a talk given by a scientist who specialized in studying large birds. This person described how eagles teach their young to fly, but it serves as an analogy for many aspects of human life. What follows is my memory of this talk. I hope any bird experts out there will forgive any inaccuracies and recognize that the myth-making process concerns itself more with relevance and meaning than with technical accuracy.

Eagles build large nests, called aeries, out of sticks and twigs. They line the aerie with bits of fur from their prey. I don't imagine that the aerie smells very good to humans, but it is a soft place for eggs, and later, eaglets. When the eaglets are big enough to start moving around, the mother eagle strips the fur out of about half of the aerie, exposing the hard, scratchy sticks. There isn't enough room for all the eaglets to sit on the remaining fur lining, so they constantly jostle each other around, looking for a comfortable place. This movement helps them strengthen their leg and wing muscles. The mother eagle stands over her eaglets, flapping her wings so that the eaglets will imitate her. Eventually, the eaglets discover that they can crawl onto their mother's back, and this is a nice soft place for them. The mother allows this, and she lets her eaglets get accustomed to sitting on her back.

When she decides that the eaglets are ready, the mother flies out of the aerie with an eaglet on her back. She carries each eaglet aloft in turn, letting them experience the freedom of flight, while keeping them safe on her back. After they become accustomed to these rides, the mother eagle steps up her game. She carries an eaglet out of the nest on her back, as usual, but then she tilts her wings, allowing the eaglet to slip off her back and go into free fall. The eaglet begins to flap its wings, like it did in the nest, but the flapping is frantic and uncoordinated. The mother lets her eaglet fall a short distance, flapping madly but not very effectively, then she swoops underneath and catches the eaglet. She brings it back to the nest and takes the next eaglet out for its first solo "flight". Something in the instinct of eagles tells them that, even though they just saw what their mother did to their terrified siblings, they should trust their mother not to let them come to any harm.

After a few of these free falls, the eaglets begin to learn to use their wings, and they stay aloft a little while before the mother catches them. They learn to maneuver and to find the updrafts that carry them aloft. Eventually, they can control their flight well enough swoop down and capture small animals and carry them back to the nest.

The day comes when each young eagle flies away from the nest, never to return. The day has come for the young eagles to build their own aeries, and the cycle begins again. Each of these eagles has reached a point where they say (in their own way) "Thanks, Mom. I think I can handle this on my own now."

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Looking for Landmarks

I was told to expect a period of down time while my body and mind made the adjustment from the daily commute to keeping my own schedule. I just didn't realize how adrift I would be with most of the daily structure removed. I took a week and a half of vacation in late November, so I thought I had a head start on the relaxing bit. I was visiting my sister, and I had just wrapped up a very stressful couple of weeks at work, so I kept up a regular schedule of meals and sleeping, along with a schedule of activities. Not as jam-packed as my normal schedule, but an orderly flow nevertheless.

Now, my days are mostly free. Waking and sleeping hours are fairly arbitrary, although I do sleep at night and wake during the day. Meals tend to be a mid-morning breakfast, and mid-afternoon lunch, and a light snack at night. I have completed a couple of small items on my mammoth do-list, just to give myself a sense of accomplishment. I still have various appointments, the occasional lunch meeting. On those days, I have to be at a specific place, at a specific time. The structure doesn't seem to carry over into the rest of the week. That bothers me, a little. I have things to do, things to mull over, plans I made when I was setting this whole thing up. On the other hand, people who have been here before me say that the drifting doesn't last forever. Eventually, the days fall into a pattern and a sense of direction takes hold.

I remind myself that the major reason for being here, doing what I'm doing, is to break apart the old structures and make room for new ideas and opportunities. So for now, I will go with the flow (or lack of it).

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Gathering Feathers

I suppose if I knew more about what I was doing, I would have gotten all my feathers in place before I sailed off the edge. If I had been better about balancing my job and the rest of my life, I would have made the time to get all the preparations done in advance. But then, if I had that kind of balance, I probably would not have needed to set out on this solo flight in the first place. Mixing my metaphors, I'm like an explorer who has half a dozen errands to run on my way to the wilderness, walking into the REI with my pack already on my back and my walking stick in my hand.

It's been a week since I sat in the conference room with the HR person and turned in my ID badge. I've been sleeping in, eating healthy (mostly), and getting a start on this grand adventure of mine. I expected those things. What surprises me is how many little tasks have demanded my attention -- ordinary tasks that would have dropped themselves into my previous routine with barely a ripple. Dental checkup, car emissions inspection, investment review session, finding that esoteric little fluorescent tube for the hallway light. The little must-be-dones.

There are some big must-be-dones as well. Medical insurance is the biggest of them -- big because of the importance and the deadline looming less than a month away. After pricing several individual policies, I decided to see what COBRA would cost and go with that if it was at all reasonable. It wasn't reasonable. I had been on COBRA about 15 years ago, after I got swept up in a mass layoff. It wasn't the cheapest thing out there, but the price was reasonable enough. Not anymore. The monthly premium is now more than double what I can fit into my new budget. I have been asking around to see what my self-employed friends do, and I think I can make a go of a policy that pays the big-ticket, unexpected bills, and pay for the routine things out of pocket. How many of my fellow would-be flyers never leave the nest because of the profit-driven mess that is medical care in the US?

Other must-be-dones include getting my office equipment into shape and taming the chaos that is my desk. One software update demands another, some things go wireless more seamlessly than others. And always, there are the stacks of paper that must be beaten into submission. The sooner I can convince this little corner that it's a real workplace, the easier it will be to put it to real use.

So as not to spend all my time on mundane tasks, I am also doing little fun things. Easy things, minimal planning, quickly completed. Impromptu lunches and matinee movies. A small mosaic table-top for the plant stand that I am adapting into a coffee-cup table to set next to my reading chair.

The mammoth to-do list awaits, along with the concentrated periods of listening and observing. For now, I am replacing my missing feathers, smoothing them into place, and finding the little updrafts that will let me test these new wings of mine.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Road Maps and Directions

Up until now, I have been somewhat intentionally nebulous in describing this grand adventure to acquaintances and co-workers, and I wonder if I come off sounding a little vague and new-agey. Dare I say "flighty"? I have used terms like "getting my head together", "decluttering my life", and "figuring out what my bliss is so I can follow it".

People who know me well have seen this transition coming for quite some time, and they are cheering me on (and wondering why it took me so long). They have seen what I can do when I have had free rein to indulge my creative self. They have seen how happy I am when I honor my creative side, but they also know the importance I attach to organization and planning.

Right now, my mind and my home are full of new projects I want to tackle, old projects that weren't worth finishing, and things that I promised myself that I would deal with "later". Middle age has left me with less energy at the end of the day than I used to have. A demanding job, coupled with a lengthy daily commute, left me too tired on weekday evenings to pursue my creative endeavors, and weekends were devoted to domestic chores and recovering from the stresses of the week. My "still, small voice" was having a tough time being heard through all the noise.

The organized side of me realized that things were not going to get any better until I could clear out some physical and mental space so that the still, small voice could make itself heard. I needed to "put away that which does not serve", as my yoga teacher puts it, in order to make room for "that which will serve". A few vacation days here and there would not suffice to do the job. It was becoming apparent that trying to shoehorn an endeavor of this size into my existing schedule was utterly hopeless. No, a big change was in order.

I have been pretty good about living well within my means, so I took stock of what I was spending each month and how much of this was discretionary. I have been saving money for my retirement, but also for things like a kitchen remodel and a new car. I discovered that I had enough saved up (not counting my retirement funds) to cover my expenses for a year. I read a book called "Reboot Your Life" that talked about a growing number of people who had taken six months to a year (or more) off of work to recover and chart their courses.

Once the organized side of me was satisfied that I could actually do this, and having a rough idea of how others had done it, the decision was actually very easy. Here, briefly, is the road map that I have laid out. Right now, it looks like one of those maps that show the entire U.S., with just the interstate highways charted out. Over time, I am hoping to focus in more and start filling in the details.

1) I am not retired. Unless I get hit by a bus sometime in the next 5 or so years (and I hope I don't!), I will very quickly outlive my savings if I try to retire right now. Frankly, I am hoping that I will never have to retire. I want to be like Andy Rooney and work at what I love until shortly before they haul me off feet first.

2) I am not on vacation. I sometimes refer to this as a sabbatical, even though my (former) employer is not funding me to do this. I have goals and a rough plan for this time. This means that I am not free to serve on 73 different committees, and I am not just sitting at home moping about.

3) I am not ready to hear anyone's advice on how to land a new job. One theme that comes through loud and clear in my reading and in listening to my friends is that taking sufficient time to clear my head is absolutely vital to making this thing succeed. I need to turn down the volume on all the input coming into my mind and sort through what is already there. I need to spend more time listening to my own voice and heeding my own counsel.

4) There will come a time, probably a couple of months from now, when I will move to the next stage of this process. This will be a time of discovery and exploration. My intention is to go out and explore my local environment -- the Washington DC Metro Area has plenty to offer. This exploration will come with no strings attached. Maybe it will help me plan the next phase of my career, or maybe it will just be a lot of fun. The best creative ideas come when they are not saddled with expectations of productivity. The emphasis during this stage is not what is "good for me" but rather what gives me joy.

5) I have been told, and I hope it's true, that this type of free-form exploration leads naturally to ideas that can be nurtured, developed, and brought to fruition in the form of concrete actions. The previous months will have been spent erasing my mental ruts and broadening my perspective. When I move into this phase, I'm going to be scheduling informational interviews, making career contacts, and exploring opportunities to start acting on my intentions -- and bring in a good income as well. Maybe I will create an entirely new niche for myself, or I may discover my niche in a place that I hadn't thought to look before. I have a pretty good idea of what I'm good at and what makes me happy. Putting that to work for me, making a good living at it, and making a positive difference in the world -- that's what I'm going for. It's less a destination than a sense that I am headed in the right direction.

In the meantime, I am sincerely grateful for the friends who ask if I want to join them for lunch or a movie. I am thrilled at the little spell of warm weather we are having, which allows me to go outdoors and saw boards for my next craft project or take a walk around the neighborhood. I love being able to read the entire newspaper and do the puzzles every day. And yes, darn it all, I'm going to tackle those two boxes of clippings. Tomorrow.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Getting my bearings

Just a few days into this adventure, and I am not exactly a ball of fire. A friend of mine who knows about these things reassures me that this is normal. After all, I have made a sudden change in my lifestyle. I'm getting up in the morning when my body and the sun tell me to, instead of NPR's Morning Edition and my sunrise lamp. I'm starting to realize that I can buy groceries in the middle of a weekday rather than nights and weekends with the crowds. My do-list reflects my timeline, my priorities. After all these years of running on adrenaline and stress hormones, I'm getting back to treating myself with some semblance of respect. No more choosing the least bad of several bad food choices for lunch. Yoga class twice a week, writers' group once a month, discussion group twice a month. Actually tackling the projects that I have been meaning to get to since... well, a very long time. This is a major shock to the system, and it will take the body and mind a little while to adjust. As the Washington DC Metro Area slowly eases into the depth of winter, it seems like a good time to be quiet and take care of myself. I have faith that I will emerge in the springtime, ready to conquer new worlds. In the meantime, I will just take care of the things that need my attention and settle into this new rhythm.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Launch

January 3, 2012. Today, after taking great pride in 15 years of continuous employment -- a sure sign that my 1996 career change was a good choice -- and in the middle of one of the worst job markets in a very long time, I voluntarily left a job with a six-figure salary and full benefits. I left a company that grew and was profitable all during the 2008-2009 crash, a company that gave me a promotion and a raise just last August. This is the craziest thing I've ever done -- or the sanest.

I gave up an hour-and-fifteen-minute (each way, on a good day) daily commute to a cubicle farm where I would sit in my little box and look at a computer screen all day. I gave up a government client who routinely created crises for others (including me). I gave up stretches of boredom alternating with bursts of frantic activity. I also gave up the casual chats in the office kitchen, impromptu lunches with co-workers, and the inter-cubicle gabfests with my co-workers. I will see many of them on FaceBook, and I hope that we will make the opportunities to get together in the real world, because I genuinely like these folks.

Over the next several months, I'm going to be living off my savings and figuring out where the heck I go from here. I'm going to be clearing the junk out of my physical space as well as my mental space. I'm going to listen to more to myself and less to the thousand voices of people giving me advice and telling me what I ought to do. I'm going to go out into this big city where I live and actually see what it has to offer. I'm going to write up all the great ideas on the slips of paper cluttering my desk, and I'm going to see if anyone will publish them -- and perhaps pay me.

Like an eagle learning to fly, I'm going to learn how to find the updrafts and let them carry me where I need to go. I have put a lot of thought and preparation into this. I've been testing my wings from the safety of the nest. Now it's time I learned to fly.