Page 8 - Goals

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Oh hi! I’m MJ Bailey, and I write things. Sometimes. It doesn’t mean I always know what to write, but hey, we’ll get there. I guess.

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I have mentioned in a past episode that my professional career path has taken a bit of a turn. A nondescript turn. A “I don’t want to dox myself so I’m going to keep it vague” turn. As time goes on, this change has proven to be for the better, or it is theoretical. 

To be blunt about it, this whole transition is calling a lot into question. I spent nearly 7 years of my life at a place that didn’t always treat me right or appreciate me entirely because it worked until I could get my writing career off the ground. After all, once you have a stock pile of paid time off or PTO, you can be… Well, not a king of your own life, but maybe an Earl or a Viscount at the very least. There’s some power, some ability to adapt. And I’m in the US, so there’s also health insurance.

But there was also a sense of community. Or at least there was in theory. That concept is one I’ve always struggled with. I’m not alarmed when my community makes unreasonable demands of me or but I knew I should have been alarmed with what they were willing to tolerate or be unbothered by when it came to me and some of the things happening around me. And yes, deliberately vague statements are deliberately vague. I had friends there, sure, but would I ever consider that place a truly functioning community? No. And I think the push to try to make it one was currently misguided and ignored all the actual problems. But literally no one cared about my opinion. Not when I left, and frankly I don’t think they ever did. 

Regardless, I think I mentally coupled this inevitable transition with being able to make it on my own two feet as a writer, which is not where I am at but it’s also horrifying to think about. Like I am not ready for that big shift either in terms of confidence or waiting catalog, and luckily I landed right on my feet at a different job, but mentally, I was ready for all of this to feel different. I wasn’t ready to grieve or to regret, which is kind of where I am now. 

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As it stands for numerous years of my life I didn’t have the life I wanted, and that normally was not a big deal because you spend that time working towards something or out of a mess, but here I am, in my thirties, feeling like I was just digging a hole.

But hey, it happens, right? This is my first run at this thing called life. The problem is that you only get one of those runs. So make the most of it. All mistakes are final. 

So what did I do in my twenties? Rationally, I know I podcasted and wrote a bunch of first drafts of books. I started streaming on Twitch, and I met amazing people both on Twitch and in podcasting. Not in person, mind you, which was a detail that didn’t bother me until recently. 

I mean, should I have been dating more? Should I have been on the apps because that would have been my best way to meet potential partners? Or should I have been building a more traditional career path than the one I had in my head? 

The latter doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. It can be hard for me to connect with people. And I can count on both hands the number of times I felt anything vaguely like a romantic passion or noticed that someone was what I would consider attractive. I also bruise easily in a figurative sense, not so much literally. So at the very least, I might have saved myself some heartache or some headaches. Either way, it would be nice if I had a partner to shoulder some of my living responsibilities. Or if I could have been on a spouse’s insurance so I would have access to medical professionals without feeling trapped at a job. Or just know that someone who has completely and totally opted in to dealing with my mental energy and all the quirks, someone I know I can lean on in a way two people who have agreed to walk through life together can lean on each other. 

In terms of the professional stuff, even though I had employment, it wasn’t until recently that I stopped looking for jobs. I wonder if the feeling of physical isolation wouldn’t be at least mitigated by taking a part time job on the weekends or evenings, just to give me more people in the real world to talk to. My current work place is small and everyone there–as great as they are–are at very different stages of their life than I am. Largely with kids or anticipating kids in the next couple of years and doing related home renovations.

I get it. I support it. I am more than happy to inconvenience myself to be a support to new parents, but it’s not something I can relate to. And as I navigate this specific life transition, it’s not something they can relate to either. Some of them are on the tail end of a twenty year career path at this very place. Others chose to work there specifically because they could never fully commit to anything that wasn’t their families. And they certainly haven’t dealt with the same dysfunctions and stressors that I knew at my last job, so there’s no way they can understand why I stayed when it was objectively the wrong decision in so many ways. And even though I’m a writer, I don’t really have the words to bridge the gap. 

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But the point is that as I looked at these job boards, I only saw jobs that I couldn't do. Partially because of the way the past 7 years have gone: which was devoid of any support or the chance to learn the skills that someone at my career point should have. So either I don’t have the skills or the wherewithal. I don’t think I was properly trained at my old job, not enough to match the title I had. And even still, working in fundraising, I find a thousand things I don’t enjoy. Maybe one or two that I do. But the field is very sales-y. And I don’t like lying in any degree. I don’t like selling people on something that isn’t what it appears to be, which is so much of what the nonprofit sector as a whole is.

Because I need you to understand that an organization isn’t better or worse depending on its tax status. That just influences how complicated their financial filings are with the IRS. 

So maybe I can’t stay in this sector, but at the same time, I don’t want to move into the for profit sector nor am I really professionally trained to do so. And look, it’s not like I’m averse to starting over if I find something worth leaving my current place for, but that’s a hell of a thing to try to communicate in a resume. The general consensus (when you think about submitting a resume as someone who is overqualified for an entry level position) is that a recruiter or HR person who is looking over your resume will see it and assume that you are desperate and that you will jump ship the first time a more career-appropriate opportunity comes your way. And I wouldn’t be in this hypothetical scenario, but I’m sure they hear that all the time. 

Ultimately, I don’t know what a career looks like for me if I want to have a somewhat normal progression, which I would only want if I had to want it. Like if that was the only script that could land me a job, I would try to recite it, but I wouldn’t know what the blocking was. 

So what am I left with besides a looming sense of dread that being a writer with my own publishing house is really the only road left for me. The other doors are slowly closing, and it feels like there is no other way. All roads lead to this including the most important one, that I might only be happy doing that. 

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Because that’s really the sort of thing I’m learning about myself. There are rules to the workplace, unspoken expectations that everyone has seemingly agreed we’re going to uphold. One of these is that it’s okay to sacrifice someone to keep an illusion that everything is okay. That’s extreme. But I also have to explain some of my quirks and tendencies. I don’t always know what to do socially, partially because I am also trying to juggle an anxiety disorder that I’ve always had but has noticeably gotten worse the past couple of years. I don’t necessarily want to be friends with my coworkers, especially if I can sense that I’m going to end up being the mom friend of whatever group is resulting. I don’t want to always talk about weekends because I know I didn’t do anything, and I can’t always explain my thought process as to why I’m okay with that. And yeah, I’m not good at or with lying to people, selling them a vision of myself that I know is misleading. 

So where do I go but a world I create entirely on my own?

I don’t think I’m special for having these reservations, mind you. I get that we all hate our jobs, and the corporate structure (which has bled over into the nonprofit sector) is kind of shitty. It’s just that I am struggling to adapt or to play pretend. It’s not a choice. It’s I see something and assume everyone sees it. I can’t fathom not thinking the thoughts I think. Or acting the way I do. I worry there is a deeper incompatibility that I cannot adapt or mask my way around. 

And this has become a regular topic in therapy. How do I know if a workplace is willing to tolerate me or how can I ensure I can get myself to a point where they have to tolerate me because I am the one person holding everything together. Which is not the best way to frame it, and given the way my therapist approaches my anxiety, we’ve spent a lot of time reframing that thought, which is hard because it feels like I have a lot of evidence, a lot of missteps, and a lot of me seeing and calling attention to things I allegedly  wasn’t supposed to notice. Like how many times I dissect an interaction and pull out details that everyone takes for granted before I actually lose my mind. Or what’s left of it. 

And look, preempting a comment,  if I turn out to be autistic, which is something that has come up as a possibility, I’m not going to be upset but vindicated, really. It’s another piece of evidence to this thesis, even if this thesis is going to crush me. 

But at the same time, I can’t get too caught up in what I can’t do because there are follow up questions to that. What comes easily to me and what do I want to do? Well, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Hell, one of the reasons I got my master’s degree was because it gave me time to submit to literary agents instead of working a normal job after college. I had more motivation then partially because I didn’t understand all the ways I didn’t fit into a limited publishing world. I didn’t even know the publishing world had limits. I was still actively unsheltering myself. And learning about myself. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Honestly, my entire life has seemingly been derailed from whatever one might call a normal timeline. So I shouldn’t be surprised it’s happening now or may happen in the future if I ever try to change jobs. And things have been working out. But at some point I’m going to have to commit. If this is really what I want, I’m going to have to actively move in that direction and I can’t be afraid of this course of action. And yet, I am. It feels inevitable. And yet, that’s something a lot of people say. But I don’t know if I even want to be able to say it. I’m afraid of it. Frankly, I’m afraid of everything right now. 

Because I don’t really know what that life is going to look like, which makes it feel so much more unobtainable and the odds worse than they already one. And yeah, it is hard to make it as a writer, especially an independent one. But what if I really don’t have a choice? And what if I do? I want to be brave and say bring it on, but you should know by now. I am not brave. And if you don’t know, I will prove it to you. 

With that, I’m MJ Bailey, and I’m a writer, I guess. Whatever that means.

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The Writer’s Open Book is a podcast from Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, and produced by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. And guest appearances by the podcats Minx and Midnight. The logo was made by Keldor777 on Twitch. And to the Queen of Cups in my life, you know who you are, thank you for helping me process so much of this writing journey and for all the support. I couldn’t have done it without you.