making a big leap

This is a late night phone blog. Thank you for joining me, and I hope it’ll be worth your time, wherever you are. I want you to know that I’m listening to rainforests sounds,  which is much better than just listening to nothing.

Tonight, not thinking about it, I messaged the biggest cheese I could find at my job and asked if there’s some role out there I can play that would take me away from coding for awhile. I really, truly want to keep making a positive impact at my org, but I just can’t do it in this capacity right now.

Hasn’t everyone, ever, just needed a break?

The concept of a sabbatical feels almost mythical to me. Who would be so lucky as to deserve a year without work, a year of self-discovery? Wow. Interesting that you mention that concept with that exact wording.

I read My Year of Rest & Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh several years ago and at the time, it really resonated with me. I was astounded by the level I connected with the text, in all the worst ways. When I reached out to others to share how good I thought the text was.. they didn’t agree. Some had already read it and had independently decided against it. Some read it, at or indifferent of my encouragement, and then decided it was mid. Still more people listened to the premise and decided it had no potential of being relatable.

The book describes a year’s worth of time, from the perspective of a woman who has recently lost her parents and, suddenly finding herself without the need to work, never leaves her house and seeks increasingly strong sleeping medications to let the year pass and let her brain “repair itself”, if I recall correctly. She obviously comes from wealth and comes across kind of spoiled in the book. It is obvious she’s a little pretentious. That’s all I’ll really share, and I’ll share two more derivative truths (the reason why I gave this context!)

The first truth is that in her shoes, it is not impossible for any of us to react and respond the way the main character does. Even if she is wealthy and has the unique privilege to lay around, the emotions she still endures reek the same as ours (who don’t have that privilege) do. She is a main character who makes US, the readers, the deuteragonist. Do you agree?

The second truth is that I no longer find the urge to escape for a year alluring anymore. I confess, I participated in a long year of escapism. It felt like the right thing to do, and almost destroyed me. The thought of sleeping away a year sounds impossibly destructive. There is a man to be made; a sentience to celebrate!

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The list of my sins is ridiculous, and there will be many apologies I will beg for. I wanted to escape because I knew the truth of who I was finally, and didn’t want it to be true at all. Today, I sat on the deck and talked to my neighbors. Normality is good, Normality is within arm’s reach.