Fun fact about me: I spend a lot of time thinking about The Point.
Like, an abnormal amount.
Definitely an above average amount.
I can’t help it. It is a remnant of childhood (and adolescent…and young adult…) anxiety. I always consider something’s purpose, always trace everything forwards and backwards to make sure there are reasons for everything I do, buy, try, and want. I’ve known this about myself for a while—I think it’s a little bit just who I am and a little bit from some smatterings of trauma and family deaths and near-deaths that ignited in me a keen awareness of the time we are given and what we are meant to do with it.
But let’s back up.
A bit after I turned 23, I got my first “big kid” job—the kind with a salary and health insurance. I had moved home after college but was ready to leave and that job was my ticket out. I found a place to rent and negotiated my start and I moved away from home to my new city. It was exciting—I was ready for the jump, ready for the new chapter, and excited for everything I was going to get to learn.
One week into being in this new city with this new job, my car died.
Like, died.
My lovely girl Trixie, tried and true, red and beautiful, had been my grandma’s car for over a decade and was in my hands for another half of that before she hit the point where the cost of her fixes far outweighed her worth.
This was an unexpected twist on my new chapter, but not entirely unexpected. I had known for a while Trixie was on her way out and knew that once she did finally kick the bucket, I would need to buy another car.
So, a week into this new life I had stepped into, I had to figure out how to get to and from work, and I had to figure out how to buy and sell cars. Buying and selling cars was new (and terrifying) to me and I did not have anyone who could help me navigate it.
Needless to say, it was a stressful time.
An added layer of excitement to the new chapter, certainly. A chance for me to test my limits, see how the way I handle stress might have changed, lean on my support network.
Maybe The Point of moving was to face new challenges. Maybe it was to learn how to do adult things like buying and selling cars.
I did find a car to buy (hi Lucy!) and did manage to sell mine (bye Trixie) and though it was a bit of trail by fire, I was proud of the knowledge I acquired during the process. It was a huge relief to have it over and done with. I felt capable and I felt proud of the challenge I’d overcome. I felt strong.
Unbeknownst to me, more twists were on the horizon.
A week or so after buying the car, it truly sunk in that the job I moved for was…shall we say…horrible. A series of subtle and not-so-subtle red flags had accumulated and one day they gathered into a bunch and slapped me across the face and I realized I needed to get out and I needed to get out now.
Maybe the point of moving was to learn how to quit a job? I’d never done that before, putting in two-week’s notice was new. I was terrified, but it was a relief, too. Maybe The Point of the job was to learn what I hated in a job?
I was so, so lucky that, even after buying the car, I had a small emergency fund saved and I was able to quit the job without another one directly lined up. I had a plan for some emergency work while I sorted out a new job, but that road was rocky, too, and a few months of being employed meant I watched those funds dwindle precariously low.
I had begun to build my life—go to work, go the gym, try to find activities to make friends, get myself prepared for the next day, and repeat. I was just starting to make friends, just starting to get a feel for what it meant to be an adult and work full time. I was glad to leave that job, but it did not feel good to not work. Work is an inevitability of life, but I think people need work of some kind in order to feel right. There is a satisfaction that comes with getting things done. It feels good to use your brain and your hands and your body and to accomplish something. Having nothing to do grows weary surprisingly quickly.
Also growing was my uncertainty. I had felt so ready for each trial—they were new, sure, but I felt ready to face new challenges. But as they began to stack up, each one with an indeterminate timeline for resolution, I worried. My overwhelm was mounting. The plan I’d made when I moved was falling apart. My reasons for moving felt distant.
After I had officially left the job, and for long after my last paycheck came through, I job hunted. I hunted for hours every day, but once every other week or so, I would take my computer to a coffee shop and buy a cookie or a hot chocolate and fill out applications there. Still new to the area, I tried out different shops, still trying to acquaint myself with the city. Spending even those few dollars was hard given I was not bringing in much money. But those cafes were bright spots and I needed them. A trip to the local bakery was sometimes the only reason I got out of bed those days. I labored through a couple hundred job applications and sometimes planning to go to a coffee shop tomorrow to buy a cozy little drink was the only way I could get myself to labor through the next batch.
The unknown timeline of when I would find a job again weighed on me constantly. I might get that clandestine interview tomorrow or I might not get it for another half a year. It could be anywhere in-between or beyond, too. Checking my email inbox was the first thing I did most mornings. The job I’d moved for was gone, I had yet to make friends up here, and I had not yet found another job. There was nothing keeping me up here, no Point to it.
I had other big questions swirling around my head.
I moved to this specific city because of this job. Both the job and the city were mere ideas of my list of possibilities that just so happened to be the ones that worked out. If I didn’t have that job, I didn’t need to be in this city. If I don’t have that job anymore, why stay? Should I move? If I do, where should I go? Do I stay and just find another job around here or do I go somewhere completely different? What is the point of being here?
Should I move home?
That thought was a hard one. Had I moved up here for nothing? Should I move home? I’d needed to get out of home and I did, but everything I left for had crumbled at my feet. What was the point of being here? But if I moved home, what would be the purpose of being there, given that I had just left? Could I handle returning? What would returning mean?
I had mere months before my savings would be gone and I would have no choice but to move home. A privilege, to be able to have all these options, to be sure, but would going back be a safe and healthy thing for me? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to have to find out.
Going to the coffee shops and the bakeries infused just enough life into me that I was able to block out the ever-present worries of time and job searching for a while. Sometimes it was just for a few minutes, but those minutes were precious. Those minutes gave me just a moment to dream. They were a boon and an opening to pause just long enough to take a breath. In those coffee shops, I could apply for jobs and try to sort out what to do next, but I could also just notice where I was in that moment. I could eat a pastry and remember I was alive.
Around that time, I wrote this in my journal:
“I am thinking so much lately about what I want. Ending the job I moved up here for threw me right into a loop I’d known I was in, but didn’t yet feel at the mercy of. I knew I didn’t know what I wanted to do next and that I was simply picking a thing to do for a while and would see where it took me. I didn’t expect the duration of that thing would be so short and that, I think, is a large art of the spiral I feel I am fighting now. Living in a job that didn’t suit me threw into sharp relief what a life full of that would look like. Starting anew, too, has shown me with precise clarity what I value and exactly how much control I have in keeping that in my life: some, but only so much.
As I am looking for the next thing to do that will bring me the money I use to live my life, I must remember that nothing has changed. Every day is a gift and an opportunity to learn. I am no further off the path than I was the day I moved. In fact, that day was right on the path and so is this one. I am discovering who I am and the things I will do; there is no way to fail unless I stop seeking.
Take a nanny job, do it for a month, get another job, it is all fine. Trust your heart and do what she calls you to do. The acquisition of a job does not mean you have to stop looking for other ones. The plan has not changed, I am still seeking that which will engage me for however long it will. I will do each thing until I am not, just like with [The Company I Left]. That is life. That is what you are supposed to do. It is okay to not know the plan, to figure it out along the way. That is how this life works. Don’t fight it. Trust yourself that you will figure it out, because you will.”
This line of thinking, over the course of a few weeks, began to take deeper hold. I could trust myself that I would figure everything out; I didn’t need to understand everything before it took place. I could focus on only a next thing, then, after that, the next one, and so on.
Constant, frantic search for The Point of everything takes away from the delight of discovery. There need not be a perfect Point to everything and a perfect culminated from one thing to the next; it is okay to let things happen how they will and make decisions as I go. I put so much pressure on myself to understand each piece of my life and to figure it all out before I did anything. That places unnecessary stress and pressure on myself, of course, but it also precludes surprises. To be so focused on a specific course means I might ignore life’s unexpected adventures in favor of my known plan. How boring that would be.
There is less certainty in allowing things to happen without a grand Point, to make a choice because it feels right given all the facts before me and to not ascribe some great reason to it all that rationalizes it into “okay”. It is scary to trust that, when it is time, I will figure out what to do next. It is scary, too, to allow life and its turns to be random. Discerning lessons and learning from the things that happen to me is one thing, obsessively needing to know The Singular Point of everything that happens is another thing. Every day is a gift and an opportunity to learn; I can learn without pulling one great cosmic point from an experience. My experiences can contain multitudes and they can be messy and confusing and scary and wonderful and enchanting and that can all happen at the same time. I can take things as they come and trust myself to sort it out as I go.