This is Forty
One year ago today, I spent my 39th birthday in bed. I turned off my phone, crept under the covers, and slept all day. I was incredibly hungover and being awake only led to desperate hateful thoughts followed by bouts of uncontrollable crying, so sleep seemed a logical alternative to dealing with my conscious self. The day before I had been let go--fuck that--FIRED--from my job...a job I had taken a $25K pay cut and professional risk to take. I had driven immediately to a girlfriend's house that evening, where I drowned my sorrows, then alone to a bar to wash away even more and was paying for the actions of the night before. I wish I could say that once the hangover wore off that this incident immediately led to a Eureka! moment where I suddenly recognized my potential to scrap the city and my career for the mountains and a slower, happier way of life, but that's not how things unfolded. Instead, I reached a new low over the ensuing months, and things got far worse before they got better.
I felt an intense amount of shame over being fired--and although it eventually led to my move and the mental freedom that was required for me to finally begin writing this blog and tackling some of my tougher issues--remnants of that shame still linger. I was at the job for six weeks; it took until the end of week two to realize that it was an ill fit and an additional four for things to become so contentious that I was let go. I had jumped into the position with optimism and enthusiasm, hopeful that I might finally feel creatively satisfied after leaving an industry that, while based in design, was far more applied than I found fulfilling. In hindsight, I realize that I was perhaps a bit too willing to concede the professional standards I'd grown used to in order to get a foothold in an industry in which I held a degree but had never officially practiced. I expected the trust and respect I'd enjoyed at my previous places of employment were a given as a working adult in a professional setting--except I'd made a miscalculation. Professional boundaries were blurred with the personal, and a previous employee had left my boss with major trust issues, which trickled down to me almost immediately. Over the ensuing weeks, I bore the brunt of several miscommunications resulting from the general disorganization of the firm and its owner. But it was my big mouth that got me fired.
Things had been building with my boss' lack of professionalism and double standards for weeks, and on week six, she unexpectedly brought in the man who did her bookkeeping to review her employee handbook with me. I'd raised questions about a few items because they were different than what she'd promised in the interview process, but she was unable to clarify her own policies. Instead, she outsourced a meeting with the individual who had provided this boilerplate handbook, was not privy to my interviews, and was an outside consultant, not a company employee. This show of passivity--her disinterest in showing up to discuss a professional agreement between employer and employee--was all it took for me to lose my head. To me, it was symbolic of the lack of respect and subhuman treatment she'd been doling out, and her consultant took the brunt of my frustration and wounded ego as I boldly pointed out inconsistencies in the verbiage and policies of his precious creation. I was arrogant; I was insubordinate; and I was exceedingly effective in making this man look completely inept. It was ugly, and although everything I said was absolutely, one hundred percent true, it was unskillfully executed and served no purpose other than to get me fired and send me spiraling into shame. Shame that I couldn't control myself--shame that my righteousness got the better of me--shame that my ego was alive and well--shame that I was unsuccessful at taming one of the more unsavory parts of my personality.
Shame makes you hide. Given that I've not been a huge fan of birthdays in recent years because they tend to remind me of all the benchmarks that I should have achieved according to societal standards, but haven't, it's really no wonder that I simply decided to skip August 17th of 2018. Unfortunately for me, the sun still rose on August 18, and I had an even bigger shame shitpile to deal with. As I am apt to do, I quickly pushed down the feelings, rebounded and began applying to other design jobs. I received a reasonable offer from a well respected residential architecture firm with principals who valued my parallel experience in the lighting design field. It was on Cape Cod, and although I knew this when I applied, the reality of living in a place that was beautiful but overrun with tourists in the summer and sleepy at best and bleak at worst during the long winter was too much when it became a real possibility given the job offer. So I turned it down. My slow slide into depression coincided with the shortening of the days, and as opportunities and interviews dried up as the holidays neared, I second-guessed my decision, and the shameful fallout from the toxic interaction I experienced slowly ate away at me.
A couple I know saved me from myself that fall, inviting me over to their home, feeding me, letting me stay overnight in their guest bedroom nearly every weekend. We did projects around their house together, watched British TV shows, spent time at their camp up north. I'm not certain if they realized how bad off I was--maybe they sensed it. All I know is that I am forever grateful for the inclusiveness and support they offered. I was driving up to Maine to meet them for a ski day in early December when I finally made peace with my decision to turn down the job on Cape Cod. It happened because I realized that days like the one I was about to have--in which I decided last minute to head to New Hampshire or Maine to meet friends to play in the outdoors would be difficult, if not impossible, should I decide to move another ninety-plus minutes south of Boston. That night after skiing, my brain began turning over the idea of taking a seasonal position somewhere up north. I'm not certain where it came from, and at first it seemed like another escapist whim, a typical thought-path for me when my life becomes unmanageable. The next day, I took a solo hike in terrible, rainy weather to stay at the Lonesome Lake Hut in the White Mountains. That evening at the hut, I spoke with a young woman caretaker who had previously held seasonal positions at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club's front country lodges, and a workable plan took shape in my head. Within a few days, I had reached out to her contact at the AMC in Pinkham Notch, inquiring about winter positions.
Despite that I felt incredibly discouraged when I found out all suitable AMC positions for the winter season had been filled, it was that moment, that mental leap--entertaining the notion of setting out in a bit of an unorthodox direction--that opened the flood gates. Everything that has happened since then--everything that seemed like it would only ever be purely escapist 'run-away-to-the-wilderness' fantasy, can be traced back to a handful of moments--moments that held decisions in which I knew that walking through door number one was the prescribed life route--the choice I should make--but instead, I chose to find an open window and shimmy on through. It happened incrementally. I needed things to unfold slowly, as my confidence and decision-making capacity had taken a major hit during the previous months of depression. I ended up taking a seasonal position at a ski mountain, fully intending to return to Boston after the winter was over. The day I left the city in January, I was in tears, questioning everything I was doing, regretting what had yet to even happen, certain that I could not swing the brief three months of employment I'd committed to.
Family friends stepped up and gave me a cheap rate in their old roadside motel, and that was where I took up residence for the first month of my grand experiment. Even though I was living the lifestyle of a college student--complete with mini-fridge and doing dishes in the bathroom sink--it only took a couple of days before I felt more settled than I had in years. I fell into the routine of driving from the valley through the notch to my job--a 45 minute commute--and I loved every second of it. Despite that my new position could be physically taxing, mundane work, I enjoyed that as well. It was an incredible relief not to feel like I was failing at fulfilling a role, clamoring and competing to succeed at something that really didn't align with what I value most in life. For many years I made a point to keep life and work separate. My passion was the outdoors--but I was incredibly fearful that if I pursued work in that area, I would get resentful of it, the way so many do of their jobs. Being in nature and using that time to make sense of what was going on in my head was so essential to my existence that I didn't want to taint it with the pressures of a paycheck or--god forbid--develop aversion by association.
It has taken me two decades to determine how incredibly wrong I was. Looking back, I feel as if I was acting the part of living my life, rather than actually living it. I held things at arms length, made decisions from the perspective of someone observing me from the outside. I was a victim of the stories I told myself, fearful of trying to build a life around my passions and values, because if I fell short, if I found unsatisfying what I held dearest or didn't succeed at it, then what? The possibility was terrifying, and it would have gutted me. I believed that my discontent, depression, and eventual cynicism were simply because the right things hadn't happened to me. I fell into victim mode, grappling for control of something that I felt could be achieved if only I made more money, called the shots at work, and had a partner who loved me (largely to distract me and soften the blow of disliking my job and my life). I grew resentful of anything that encroached on my personal downtime, because that downtime--that time escaping the city to get into the outdoors in order to re-balance and feel like myself again--felt more and more vital to my existence, and as time went on, I seemed to have less and less of it.
I realize now what everything I thought would fulfill me has in common; it is something external to me, something imposed, something to try and make up for the fact that I was too chicken shit to chase down the type of life that resonated with my values. I'm talking about a crippling fear of risk and vulnerability. I ended my last post speaking about how embracing vulnerability sets free a feeling of living authentically. When I began making the decisions that would shape my adult life, I was doing so based on the type of life I thought I was expected to live--one that included a professional job, husband, and 2.2 children. (I somehow doubt 2.2 children is still the national average for number of children per household. I'm so out of touch.) I truly thought this is what fulfillment looked like, and frankly, I was way too scared to risk failure in deviating from what the world around me seemed to be so hell-bent on cramming down our first-world throats as the ideal form of existence. Making decisions based on this false framework, rather than what was in my heart, I spent years crafting a careful facade of competence and confidence; perfection is what I strove for. In my mind, risk equaled failure and vulnerability equaled weakness, and I had no tolerance for that when it came to diabetes, rejection in relationships, or career path decisions. So as time went on, I went farther and farther down the rabbit hole of the inauthentic, became marooned from my sense of self, and despised the roles I played at the office and industry events--because they felt completely fake.
If you had spoken to me a year ago, I would have had a very different outlook than I do now. I was at a new level of rock bottom. I had taken a significant career risk to attempt being a happier, more fulfilled person, and the entire exercise had blown up in my face. It launched me into a full-on existential crisis, and I could not see a way out. But the brain's muscle memory is as profound as the body's. I didn't realize it, but I had been slowly conditioning myself to take the next step, the step that profoundly changed the entire landscape of my life, for years. Although I felt like I had failed professionally and regressed psychologically after losing my job, the "vulnerability training" I'd been doing since my early twenties was quietly working in the background. All those hikes I'd taken, at first alone, where the risk was largely physical, then the slow transition to hiking with others, which required me to show vulnerability and risk rejection, had prepared me to take risk in the rest of my life, in effect, saving me.
I decided two months ago that finishing my 48 New Hampshire 4000-foot peaks would be a fitting way to spend my fortieth birthday. I am thrilled to spend August 17, 2019 above the clouds, at work on Mt. Washington, the east coast's highest peak. Friends are coming up to the summit and together we will hike over to Mt. Monroe. It is incredibly symbolic of my journey over the last two decades, as the White Mountains have been far more than an outdoor playground for me. The trails through these mountains have acted as teacher, therapist, and friend. They've helped me learn about myself and enriched my capacity to connect with others. The 48 peaks I've climbed trace a road map of psychological struggle, relationships gained and lost, and lessons in self-love. They remind me that life is a process. Like the slog up to a high peak during late spring, the journey is slow, messy, and absolutely imperfect. But unless you put yourself out there, risk slipping off that icy, narrow monorail to fall hip-deep into undermined snow, you never get the opportunity to see the view from the summit.
I felt an intense amount of shame over being fired--and although it eventually led to my move and the mental freedom that was required for me to finally begin writing this blog and tackling some of my tougher issues--remnants of that shame still linger. I was at the job for six weeks; it took until the end of week two to realize that it was an ill fit and an additional four for things to become so contentious that I was let go. I had jumped into the position with optimism and enthusiasm, hopeful that I might finally feel creatively satisfied after leaving an industry that, while based in design, was far more applied than I found fulfilling. In hindsight, I realize that I was perhaps a bit too willing to concede the professional standards I'd grown used to in order to get a foothold in an industry in which I held a degree but had never officially practiced. I expected the trust and respect I'd enjoyed at my previous places of employment were a given as a working adult in a professional setting--except I'd made a miscalculation. Professional boundaries were blurred with the personal, and a previous employee had left my boss with major trust issues, which trickled down to me almost immediately. Over the ensuing weeks, I bore the brunt of several miscommunications resulting from the general disorganization of the firm and its owner. But it was my big mouth that got me fired.
Things had been building with my boss' lack of professionalism and double standards for weeks, and on week six, she unexpectedly brought in the man who did her bookkeeping to review her employee handbook with me. I'd raised questions about a few items because they were different than what she'd promised in the interview process, but she was unable to clarify her own policies. Instead, she outsourced a meeting with the individual who had provided this boilerplate handbook, was not privy to my interviews, and was an outside consultant, not a company employee. This show of passivity--her disinterest in showing up to discuss a professional agreement between employer and employee--was all it took for me to lose my head. To me, it was symbolic of the lack of respect and subhuman treatment she'd been doling out, and her consultant took the brunt of my frustration and wounded ego as I boldly pointed out inconsistencies in the verbiage and policies of his precious creation. I was arrogant; I was insubordinate; and I was exceedingly effective in making this man look completely inept. It was ugly, and although everything I said was absolutely, one hundred percent true, it was unskillfully executed and served no purpose other than to get me fired and send me spiraling into shame. Shame that I couldn't control myself--shame that my righteousness got the better of me--shame that my ego was alive and well--shame that I was unsuccessful at taming one of the more unsavory parts of my personality.
Shame makes you hide. Given that I've not been a huge fan of birthdays in recent years because they tend to remind me of all the benchmarks that I should have achieved according to societal standards, but haven't, it's really no wonder that I simply decided to skip August 17th of 2018. Unfortunately for me, the sun still rose on August 18, and I had an even bigger shame shitpile to deal with. As I am apt to do, I quickly pushed down the feelings, rebounded and began applying to other design jobs. I received a reasonable offer from a well respected residential architecture firm with principals who valued my parallel experience in the lighting design field. It was on Cape Cod, and although I knew this when I applied, the reality of living in a place that was beautiful but overrun with tourists in the summer and sleepy at best and bleak at worst during the long winter was too much when it became a real possibility given the job offer. So I turned it down. My slow slide into depression coincided with the shortening of the days, and as opportunities and interviews dried up as the holidays neared, I second-guessed my decision, and the shameful fallout from the toxic interaction I experienced slowly ate away at me.
A couple I know saved me from myself that fall, inviting me over to their home, feeding me, letting me stay overnight in their guest bedroom nearly every weekend. We did projects around their house together, watched British TV shows, spent time at their camp up north. I'm not certain if they realized how bad off I was--maybe they sensed it. All I know is that I am forever grateful for the inclusiveness and support they offered. I was driving up to Maine to meet them for a ski day in early December when I finally made peace with my decision to turn down the job on Cape Cod. It happened because I realized that days like the one I was about to have--in which I decided last minute to head to New Hampshire or Maine to meet friends to play in the outdoors would be difficult, if not impossible, should I decide to move another ninety-plus minutes south of Boston. That night after skiing, my brain began turning over the idea of taking a seasonal position somewhere up north. I'm not certain where it came from, and at first it seemed like another escapist whim, a typical thought-path for me when my life becomes unmanageable. The next day, I took a solo hike in terrible, rainy weather to stay at the Lonesome Lake Hut in the White Mountains. That evening at the hut, I spoke with a young woman caretaker who had previously held seasonal positions at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club's front country lodges, and a workable plan took shape in my head. Within a few days, I had reached out to her contact at the AMC in Pinkham Notch, inquiring about winter positions.
Despite that I felt incredibly discouraged when I found out all suitable AMC positions for the winter season had been filled, it was that moment, that mental leap--entertaining the notion of setting out in a bit of an unorthodox direction--that opened the flood gates. Everything that has happened since then--everything that seemed like it would only ever be purely escapist 'run-away-to-the-wilderness' fantasy, can be traced back to a handful of moments--moments that held decisions in which I knew that walking through door number one was the prescribed life route--the choice I should make--but instead, I chose to find an open window and shimmy on through. It happened incrementally. I needed things to unfold slowly, as my confidence and decision-making capacity had taken a major hit during the previous months of depression. I ended up taking a seasonal position at a ski mountain, fully intending to return to Boston after the winter was over. The day I left the city in January, I was in tears, questioning everything I was doing, regretting what had yet to even happen, certain that I could not swing the brief three months of employment I'd committed to.
Family friends stepped up and gave me a cheap rate in their old roadside motel, and that was where I took up residence for the first month of my grand experiment. Even though I was living the lifestyle of a college student--complete with mini-fridge and doing dishes in the bathroom sink--it only took a couple of days before I felt more settled than I had in years. I fell into the routine of driving from the valley through the notch to my job--a 45 minute commute--and I loved every second of it. Despite that my new position could be physically taxing, mundane work, I enjoyed that as well. It was an incredible relief not to feel like I was failing at fulfilling a role, clamoring and competing to succeed at something that really didn't align with what I value most in life. For many years I made a point to keep life and work separate. My passion was the outdoors--but I was incredibly fearful that if I pursued work in that area, I would get resentful of it, the way so many do of their jobs. Being in nature and using that time to make sense of what was going on in my head was so essential to my existence that I didn't want to taint it with the pressures of a paycheck or--god forbid--develop aversion by association.
It has taken me two decades to determine how incredibly wrong I was. Looking back, I feel as if I was acting the part of living my life, rather than actually living it. I held things at arms length, made decisions from the perspective of someone observing me from the outside. I was a victim of the stories I told myself, fearful of trying to build a life around my passions and values, because if I fell short, if I found unsatisfying what I held dearest or didn't succeed at it, then what? The possibility was terrifying, and it would have gutted me. I believed that my discontent, depression, and eventual cynicism were simply because the right things hadn't happened to me. I fell into victim mode, grappling for control of something that I felt could be achieved if only I made more money, called the shots at work, and had a partner who loved me (largely to distract me and soften the blow of disliking my job and my life). I grew resentful of anything that encroached on my personal downtime, because that downtime--that time escaping the city to get into the outdoors in order to re-balance and feel like myself again--felt more and more vital to my existence, and as time went on, I seemed to have less and less of it.
I realize now what everything I thought would fulfill me has in common; it is something external to me, something imposed, something to try and make up for the fact that I was too chicken shit to chase down the type of life that resonated with my values. I'm talking about a crippling fear of risk and vulnerability. I ended my last post speaking about how embracing vulnerability sets free a feeling of living authentically. When I began making the decisions that would shape my adult life, I was doing so based on the type of life I thought I was expected to live--one that included a professional job, husband, and 2.2 children. (I somehow doubt 2.2 children is still the national average for number of children per household. I'm so out of touch.) I truly thought this is what fulfillment looked like, and frankly, I was way too scared to risk failure in deviating from what the world around me seemed to be so hell-bent on cramming down our first-world throats as the ideal form of existence. Making decisions based on this false framework, rather than what was in my heart, I spent years crafting a careful facade of competence and confidence; perfection is what I strove for. In my mind, risk equaled failure and vulnerability equaled weakness, and I had no tolerance for that when it came to diabetes, rejection in relationships, or career path decisions. So as time went on, I went farther and farther down the rabbit hole of the inauthentic, became marooned from my sense of self, and despised the roles I played at the office and industry events--because they felt completely fake.
If you had spoken to me a year ago, I would have had a very different outlook than I do now. I was at a new level of rock bottom. I had taken a significant career risk to attempt being a happier, more fulfilled person, and the entire exercise had blown up in my face. It launched me into a full-on existential crisis, and I could not see a way out. But the brain's muscle memory is as profound as the body's. I didn't realize it, but I had been slowly conditioning myself to take the next step, the step that profoundly changed the entire landscape of my life, for years. Although I felt like I had failed professionally and regressed psychologically after losing my job, the "vulnerability training" I'd been doing since my early twenties was quietly working in the background. All those hikes I'd taken, at first alone, where the risk was largely physical, then the slow transition to hiking with others, which required me to show vulnerability and risk rejection, had prepared me to take risk in the rest of my life, in effect, saving me.
I decided two months ago that finishing my 48 New Hampshire 4000-foot peaks would be a fitting way to spend my fortieth birthday. I am thrilled to spend August 17, 2019 above the clouds, at work on Mt. Washington, the east coast's highest peak. Friends are coming up to the summit and together we will hike over to Mt. Monroe. It is incredibly symbolic of my journey over the last two decades, as the White Mountains have been far more than an outdoor playground for me. The trails through these mountains have acted as teacher, therapist, and friend. They've helped me learn about myself and enriched my capacity to connect with others. The 48 peaks I've climbed trace a road map of psychological struggle, relationships gained and lost, and lessons in self-love. They remind me that life is a process. Like the slog up to a high peak during late spring, the journey is slow, messy, and absolutely imperfect. But unless you put yourself out there, risk slipping off that icy, narrow monorail to fall hip-deep into undermined snow, you never get the opportunity to see the view from the summit.
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| Standing atop Mt. Isolation, my 47th 4000 foot summit; August 12, 2019 |
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