What I'm doing post-layoff

This last month has been a whirlwind. Despite the fact that I haven't had a full-time job, I think I've been busier than ever because I've been saying yes to so much.

Cooking more. Cleaning my house more. Going weekly to the farmer's market for fresh produce and community. Reading. Finishing several herbalism classes. Committing to an extra choir concert which means learning and memorizing 3 additional pieces outside of the 8-9 pieces for our main concert. Creating marketing emails for said choir. Starting ballet classes. Grabbing my Tarot deck whenever I need to tune in more deeply to my intuition.

It's honestly felt wonderful to be free to jump into whatever feels right in that moment, to explore new things I wouldn't normally have time for, and to take care of myself. Talking to former coworkers has been a little awkward because they'll hesitantly ask me how I'm doing, assuming it has shattered my confidence, and my response has been something along the lines of, THANK GOD FOR THIS LAYOFF! I'M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE! Not the typical response you get in a society that believes your work is the center of your identity.

AND YET something is starting to feel like it's missing. That something is structure.

It used to be that I had far too much structure in my life. I planned my life by to do lists, filled every moment with productivity, carried the weight of responsibility for not just for my tasks but everyone else's too. I felt trapped by everything I had to do, rigid in my beliefs about myself and the world around me, and unable to escape the anxiety I still wasn't good enough. The last few years have been about developing more intuition, flow, and spaciousness because this is where creativity, clarity, empathy, flexibility, and fun tend to live.

I've felt like this last month has been the culmination of allowing myself to fully be in that space. It's probably been the most liberating month of my life because I haven't had the responsibility of a 9 to 5 and I've given myself permission to enjoy this time rather that worry what being jobless says about me and my future prospects. This period of time has clarified that so much of the heaviness I've felt a lot of my life has been because I have never felt like I would be smart enough, productive enough, hardworking enough, or strategic enough–all of which are critical for getting ahead in traditionally patriarchal spaces. When I dropped the need to be any of those things and simply focused on what felt good, so much of the heaviness disappeared.

AND I also haven't been writing as much as I assumed I would given the amount of time I have available right now. I've avoided developing this blog into a more specific offering rather than the loosey goosey exploration I needed to start out with to figure out what this might be. These are supposed to be the things I want more than anything.

The truth is that without structure, I'm kind of just flailing in the wind, never really going anywhere. That was necessary for a bit to see how free I could allow myself to be. Now that I've been in that space for long enough, that extreme is starting to lead to restlessness. Like I need to be going somewhere–not because capitalism demands my productivity to properly contribute to society, but because I know I have something more to offer the world and without structure, it's likely never going to materialize.

We're built to have a balance between productivity and rest, structure and flow, logic and intuition. Too much of one or the other doesn't feel good.

So this month's focus is on rebuilding some structure in my life. Which activities that I've been doing are critical to fuel my creativity, keep me feeling healthy, and bring me into community? Which were fun experiments that I now need to drop so I have the time to focus? What do I want to build with my writing and how to I work through the resistance to share more vulnerably and specifically? And, once I do have full time work again, how do those items adjust so that I don't neglect the things that are important to me (my health, my writing, and my community)?

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