I am thankful for being in my write mind. I haven’t written a complete body of work in at least a year. But, I’m a writer. There are so many stories that need telling. Mine. Others. Truth. Fiction. Hybrid. But, I’ve been blocked. Not for lack of inspiration but lack of focus.
I started a new job three months before the first of this year. I had high hopes for myself in this new position and organization, but within those three months, I decided that I was not going to be in this position long and by March I was planning my exit strategy.
It’s kind of crazy because it took me a year to find this job. Almost. I interviewed for a different position within this organization but I didn’t get it. When the recruiter called to tell me that they were moving on with other candidates, she told me there was a different position open that she wanted me to consider. A position that was, now that i think of it, lateral from the one I was leaving but paying more than I was making at the time.
I misunderstood my value.
This was in parallel with the job I had at the time. They too were offering me a position.
After spending 6 years with my previous employer, I somehow felt like my value was tied to my salary. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is. Employers pay for what they want. But, I’d moved up in that company twice and while that movement made me attractive to other employers it wasn’t enough where I was. From the outside looking in, employers wanted to know how went from answering phones as an office assistant to raising almost half a million dollars per year.
But within the company, they were convinced things could be better. After working in a position for 3 years, having been thrown into the sink or swim situation with minimal training and even less support, there was some restructuring under new leadership. I was to be moved into a different, new position so they could hire someone more qualified to do the job I’d been keeping afloat. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity for growth, I was insulted. Hurt. I wanted them to train me. Pay me. Don’t move me. Don’t… take this away from me.
I felt like what they were offering me was beneath me. I wanted to do more of what I had been doing. Learn more of what I already knew. I wanted more respect. More power. More money. So I sought out all those things in a new position with a new company and ended up only getting more money. For some, that’s enough but for me...
So here I am. A year later in the “new” position. What I’ve learned here are things I probably would have or could have learned right where I was and been in a better headspace. And, it hasn’t been bad, I just haven’t been my best. I haven’t been my best in a while.
I had a conversation with an… old friend… He asked me if I’d been writing lately. My first thought was, “do text messages count?” Because, I’ve been writing books on my iPhone lately, going on and on to my friends about a relationship that ended.
It got me thinking. His question. I’ve been talking a lot. I’ve been thinking a lot. Feeling disconnected. Not feeling like I’m at home or at peace. Feeling like my voice is dwindling. Not feeling like… me. I look like me. My exterior
I’m thirty five years old. Black. Female. I wear my hair in it’s naturally curly state most of the time and get the most compliments when it needs to be washed or trimmed. I was born in New Orleans at Charity Hospital which is no longer running thanks to Hurricane Katrina. I am an evacuee. My family left the day before the storm hit. I moved to Atlanta six months later and still haven’t quite shaken that displaced feeling although I’ve lived in Atlanta for almost 11 years now.
I have been writing for work--making the case for support to donors and prospective donors for my organization. But I have not been writing for me. I haven’t been writing for those like me who need me to write for them.
The more time I spend, not using this gift that haunts me, these feelings I can’t quite articulate to people around me, these tears that always break through at the most inconvenient times, this endless cycle of me looking for answers in other people, jobs, hair styles, ice cream and cities…
It’ll take me out and I’ll leave this earth full of the words, feelings, and ideas that were meant to be expressed.
However, I don’t regret the choices I made. I see the growth but I went about it the hard way, I think.
The definition of “here” is relative. Here at the moment is the mind frame. Here back then meant the company and city.
Something about this place I was in was not right for me.
