After quitting my full-time job, I lost a lot of my angst. I
think it is in no little way correlated to the fact that I’ve spent less time
in the presence of one J-Bare, who can wax philosophical and theoretical and
analytical and psychological on any subject. I’ve gotten out of the habit of analyzing.
This is bad because, as I’m about to show, I need to regularly analyze not only
my external world (which I positively cannot stop doing) but also my internal
world (which I negatively ignore 99% of the time). It isn’t that my angst is
gone, necessarily, but that I’ve stopped maintenance on my internal state,
assuming that now that I’m in a better place, I’m hunky-dory emotionally too.
The past few months have been wonderful in so many ways: going
on a trip around the world, getting to see my little brother for the first time
in a year, quitting a job with too much work and too little reward, working for
myself, and having the freedom and time to explore my options for the future. And
those wonderful things are what I’ve been focusing on. I don’t think many
people would describe me as an optimist because I’m not smiley sunshiney
positive Sandra Dee all the time…or ever. My default mode, though, is to look
for possibilities and opportunities. To see what can be. That’s the definition
of optimism.
This past week, “what is” crashed in on my “what can be.”* Several
things happened in a seventy-two-hour period. 1) I paid my credit card bill,
and without giving away too much personal information, my bank account isn’t at
a level I feel comfortable with. 2) The coffee shop seems to be stalling and my
brother/part owner keeps changing things on me. 3) Jasper, my big, lovable, old
man dog, had a seizure. 4) I got next month’s credit card bill, and there isn’t
going to be a bank account left after I pay it. 5) My computer committed
suicide.
*Dear editors who are reading
this: I apologize for the scare quotes, but I felt the sentence was unclear
without them. I swear that it was an agonizing decision on whether to include
them or not, and I did not add them in cavalierly.
The morning of the laptop crash I woke up early (for me that
means before 9 a.m.) to finish a manuscript. I’d been working on it too long in
small increments while also doing research on the publishing industry and query
letters and working on the coffee shop (of course!). I was determined to finish
by noon because my brother had promised that we were going to work on our
business plan that afternoon. Since I’d recently paid my credit card bill I was
keen to a) get paid for the manuscript and b) get the coffee shop up and
running as quickly as possible so I would have a steady income.
Grant was supposed to be doing yard work while I was working
on editing—both of us securing our temporary incomes in the morning so we could
invest in our future incomes that afternoon. Just before noon, my brother walked
into my apartment with his miniature dachshund and informed me that a lawn crew
was about to show up, so he would be working outside after they left.
This made me angry. Why hadn’t he been outside working this entire
time? We could have been working on our business plan while the lawn crew
worked. But since I was crawling through what should have been a fast
manuscript and wouldn’t be done for the next couple hours, I decided I couldn’t
really talk. So I returned to my editing, more determined than ever to finish
it and get one thing off my plate since it looked like I would be the only one
working on the business plan that afternoon.
Shortly thereafter, several things happened all at once. I
paused in my editing to save my manuscript, as anyone who regularly works with
documents habitually does. The lawn crew showed up. All three hound dogs let
loose barking and baying at the top of their lungs.
The software froze, as it had been doing occasionally.
Barking.
I told the dogs to stop barking.
Barking.
My mouse and keyboard shorted out.
Barking.
I told the dogs to stop barking.
Barking.
The computer was five years old.
Barking.
I told the dogs to stop barking.
Barking.
I lashed out at the closest body to me hard enough to elicit
a yelp from Jasper, who cowered at my feet. “Shut. Up.” Ceasar Milan doesn’t
have anything on me. When I have energy, my dogs feel it. And I was radiating
red. Jasper curled up on the couch. Buckley hid underneath the bed. And that
stinking dachshund with her annoying yip ran to the kennel (a place she usually
eschews).
If this was a momentary flare of frustration or stress or
anger, it should have faded just as quickly, and I should have felt immediate
regret for hurting Big Boy. I didn’t. I had left rational, optimistic, analytical
Buttercup. I’d stepped out of my brain and fully into the locus of emotions. In
this instance, I don’t think the locus was my heart.
When I was younger and I got angry at my parents or my
brothers, I would throw my shoes and Barbies at the window in my bedroom. It
was a large target and covered by wooden blinds that made this beautiful,
satisfying cacophony when hit. The physical action coupled with the resulting racket
expressed my frustration and soothed my ruffled emotions. I suppose that
influences me still today.
When, only seconds after sending my dogs into hiding, my
laptop continued to flicker at me unresponsively, I pounded the keyboard with
my hands. Of course, nothing happened. It wasn’t worse or better—and neither
was I. The image that had been circling my head since the beginning of this
episode swam dizzyingly clear in my mind’s eye. The satisfying crash. The comfort
of exacting revenge on the cause of my anger and frustration. Expressing my
negative energy in more than just words.
I decided, consciously decided, to take my open laptop and
spike it into the ground.
It made a jittery plastic thud on the carpet. The screen swung
forward and then back, revealing the spidery effect violence has on sensitive
technology and the now 96% dark screen. The casing skewed slightly apart so
that the laptop had a pitiful hangdog appearance. What a hick laptop would look
like if Disney decided to make the computer version of cars with fancy Apples
and the more varied PCs populating the movie as characters.
It was satisfying for all of thirty seconds. And then I was
even angrier with myself. This is what happens when I don’t keep tabs on what’s
going on internally. I break things. So now I’ve got the laptop on life
support, hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
What have I learned from this other than emotionally I am
still a five-year-old? Optimism is all well and good, but you have to check it
with your present reality and adjust possibilities accordingly. And, most
importantly in my present circumstances, not mentioning external concerns as
they occur can build into an internal problem.
This is not usually any issue with me, but I have the
hardest time broaching certain subjects with family members. Because then it is
always personal, and I only really have seniority on my little brother, and he’s
in India.
So I’m low man on the totem pole.
I’ve got some serious conversations coming in the near
futures with family members, and I need to make some decisions. Do I continue
to help my brother with his dream, which I dearly want to see him achieve
because I think he’d be great at it? He could seriously be the OKC Monopoly
man. Or do I start building my future, volunteering with different populations
to give counseling to see whether or not I want to be a clinical psychologist
or an industrial/organizational psychologist?
Whatever happens, I’ll continue writing. Share with me what
emotional outbursts you’ve had in the not so distant past. Did you, too, feel
like you shouldn’t be acting that way now that you’re an adult? What caused the
outburst or what did you learn from it? How do you keep tabs on your emotional
health? (I’m asking because despite my resolve to do better, I’ve always been
woefully inept at understanding my own emotions.)
P.S. Jasper is fine. After initially ignoring a proffered
snack as a bribe (a first in Big Boy’s six years), he climbed into my lap and
got a full-body doggy massage followed by some chicken broth. I swear I do not
usually hit or yell at my dogs. They’re spoiled rotten.
