We talked about it on Friday night.  I offered up everything that had come my way in just one week .. I am so, so blessed to have options at this point .. and we weighed and tossed and wondered.

He slept and I continued all of the above.

It’s gone that way for several days now.  I suppose now is not the best time to admit that I have gone off my meds (for financial reasons, really, and it was almost a month ago now) but I’m coping okay.  I just can’t sleep.  When I’m tired, I just don’t have the opportunity to sleep and when it’s time to sleep, I might nap for 15 minutes before anxiety shakes me from whatever fucked up dream I’m having and then I just lay and worry.

Cause THAT’S productive.

But it’s been decided.

An opportunity came to me by way of fortune and luck, and there is no other way to credit it.  A friend of a friend of a blog reader suddenly .. I don’t know, believed in me enough to trust that I could assist his business.  Not only assist it, but grow his business.  We sat over coffee last week and I expected merely a meeting to discuss business goals and objectives, like every other “let’s meet for coffee” meeting, but I left and had a solid offer in my inbox that afternoon.

I confided in Bryan that I was terrified, because what I misled myself in the meeting?  What if he thinks I’m more than I claimed to be?  I tried mercilessly hard to be frank and honest about my LACK of education, my LACK of training, my LACK of knowledge.. and yet..

So.  There’s that.  Which is terrifying because I’ve never been solely responsible for my success or my failure, and that’s a terrifying prospect.  It’s all on me.  Which I can do.

.. right?

Shut up, Sarah.  You CAN do this.  You will.  It will be fine.

Also, I’ve started taking appointments for estimates to open Obsessively Clean, my own cleaning service.  The response to that first cull was MIND BLOWING, and until I can get off the ground in this other arena, this will keep our lights on.  So ecstatic about both of these.  Because?  These are BOTH things that I love.

Because karma tends to send us these little affirmations, we watched the Tony Awards last night and a winner, Katie Finneran, spoke to “the kids watching” the award show.  She told them to always, always keep doing what they love, what they have passion for, because everything will fall into place when they do.  They WILL meet the right people, and they WILL land the right part, and they WILL find success if they just stick to their dreams.

Point. Set. Match.

I’ve been in the corporate world since I was 19.

Well, that’s mostly true.  I’m not sure if the general consensus includes radio/media in the corporate world, but the areas I lived within definitely were.  We had set pay structures, we had investors, we had stock holders, we had levels of people that required us to please them on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis.  It’s always been about the bottom line.

I don’t know many among my peers that stayed with the same company as long as I did.  My father was a big believer in “dancing with the one that brought you”, and he had worked at that same company for as long as my memory served.  The company was good to me, a great place to get tons of experience as well as apply the experience I came with.  It was a great growth opportunity, but in truth, I never got to do what I really loved there.  Sure, I found avenues in which to try my hand .. I was the editor of a program-wide monthly news publication, for instance, and I also coordinated TONS of high-level events .. but that wasn’t what I was paid to do.

As you probably gathered from my last post, I am standing on a precipice right now, looking over a darkened edge and wondering where to go from here.

(Aside: my favorite quote, EVER .. “When you stand at the end of the light and there is only darkness before you, faith is knowing one of two things about the next step you take: you will either be supported, or you will be anointed to fly.“  I think the original quote is a much less descriptive one, but I’ve bastardized it through the years to say more of what I need it to mean.)

I’ve never survived outside of a set pay structure.  Ever.  I’ve never been forced to.  I’ve always gotten a paycheck at the end of every two weeks, that paycheck being the same amount, for years and years on end.  I’ve been able to budget to a stable expectation of income.  I’ve always lived that way.

But, with the exception of the past two months, I’ve never loved the job I was being paid to do.

I am standing at the edge of a cliff.  There is nothing but darkness before me.  I need faith.  Grant me faith.

Bryan is urging me to follow what I’m feeling.  Which is odd; I’ve always, always been the stable breadwinner.  The idea that I couldn’t provide is a terrifying one.  But Bryan is nudging me toward it, and his support and belief that I can make this happen, that I can do this is so compelling.  He may just force my hand.

Every day is incredibly overwhelming, with resumes flying and phone calls and interviews and prayers and hoping and just having to force myself to live unafraid of tomorrow and that dark, dark edge.  Balancing the good and the bad of accepting another steady 40 hour gig or .. or ..

Even writing this, suggesting that I might take a leap into that obscurity, is making my heart race.

Especially now, when I feel that I did all of this just two months ago.

But .. maybe .. I can do this.  Maybe the only convincing I need to do anymore is .. me.

Hey now -
I see you got your bags all packed
And your ticket’s in your hand.

At least once a week, I make the trek a few minutes past my office and grab a large iced drink of some sort from the Starbucks down the street.  It’s always the same guy at the window.  He’s often had to deal with my mood swings, God love him, and this morning, I was doing everything within my power to keep it all together.  I had barely been able to rouse from bed, managed to pull my curls back into a chignon (thank you, Spin Pins!), dust my face with powder and put on some fire red lipstick that would suffice for makeup.  I threw a dress over my head and a wrap around my shoulders.  I adorned my collar with a giant necklace and hoped I looked somewhat like I had slept.

“Good morning!” he said as I pulled up.  “I thought that was you!  Look, no one behind you this morning.. you’ve saved some money!”  He remembers that I typically pick up the order of whomever’s behind me.  It’s one of those little things I hope sit in my karma bank.  For what payout, I dunno.

“Morning,” I said.  Forced.  Rough.  I know.

“Okay,” he said.  He ducked inside to get my drink.  “You know, I’ve always meant to ask you.. you always just look so damn good.  What do you do for a living?  Cause you look so polished..”

Ear-to-ear, my practiced smile spread before I could catch it.  Not a bit of that smile is sincere.  It’s well-rehearsed, but not used often.  And usually, it’s to piss someone off.  But not this time, really.

I batted my eyelashes.  “Actually, I’m about to be unemployed.  So who the hell knows?”

Hey now -
Look who kept her hope intact
Waitin’ in the wings for her trip to the Promised Land.

Miss Alice has taken care of Tony since he was a baby, and she’s become a family friend.  She was packing up to leave when I stopped to get Tony yesterday, and since I rarely see her anymore, I set my bag down and we chatted for a bit.  I heard about her grandkids, and how she’s gotten so tan since her eldest grandson started playing ball again on the weekends.  We chatted about Tony, about how she misses him since he’s now in the preschool side of things (GASP, MAH BABEH IS SO BIG NOW), and how his newfound attitude has disturbed me so much.  Mostly because he fights like I do.  He just falls silent and won’t even discuss what’s going on.  Just bites his lip and looks away.  Totally my child.

She laughed, “Yeah, he’s definitely got his momma in him.”  Beat.  “So.. when are you having any more?”

I forced a smile.  Bryan and I had just finished this conversation on Thursday.  Within a year, we had decided.  We just needed to get finances in order by then.

But now?

Big smile.  Big smile, Sarah.  No tears.  “Well, we’re plenty happy with just the one.”

And oh, I guess you and I
Know all about new worlds,
And how you’re never quite prepared

“It’s no one’s fault.  Investors decided to eliminate the position.”  I said this a million times last night.

“You did good work,” Bryan would say.  And we’d both look away.

“I’m just so goddamned embarrassed,” I finally cracked.  “I was excited, I was hopeful, I did something that everyone said I shouldn’t or couldn’t do.  And here I am.”  Finally, tears.

He didn’t know what to say.  Neither did I.  So I sobbed.

“We’ll be okay,” he said.  But we both knew.  It was about to be a really rough summer.

But you – well, you got a long, long road you’re travellin’ –
Gonna take you far far far away.

Monster.  LinkedIn.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Update, repeat.  Update, repeat.  Phone call, email, pray.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Hoping that karma bank is near full.  Time to request a withdrawal.

So just follow that track

Tickle the baby.  Make him laugh.  Big, belly laughs.  Have entire conversations with him and wonder how he got so articulate so quickly.  Laugh when he mimics one of us.  Enjoy food.  Sleep.  Try to sleep.  Sleep deeply.  Stretch big.  Inhale.  Exhale on the exertion.  Smile.

Send a postcard back

Have lunch with long-lost friends.  Scale down budgets.  Ramp up freelance work.  Prepare to begin working non-stop for endless people.  Remember, others have it worse.  We are so, so lucky.

And you’ll be okay.

Yes, I will.

Long Long Road, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown