Freedom Now?

 

 

I have been thinking a lot lately about escape—is it a trail blazed by good instincts, or just the well-worn path of a quitter?

Every day, usually multiple times a day, I find myself wishing I was doing something else, someplace else. Sometimes, my yearning for escape seems pretty legitimate. Take, for instance, the Monday I arrived at work after a weekend of massive overtime, only to be approached by a supervisor chirping in cheerful oblivion, “You’re about to get a lot busier!” At that moment, I feel pretty validated in thinking, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

As self-righteous as I can be when I set my sights on escape, at times I am instead wracked with guilt. A torrent of pychobabble burbles through my brain, insisting that the most unbearable times are actually the richest of our lives. At a recent class with a master yoga teacher, a woman who can only be described as a modern-day priestess used her silken voice to coax us deep into each pose, then keep us there with the promise that “resistance is our greatest teacher.”

And so when the vexing creature known in our department as “T-Rex” stands above me with her icy, prehistoric halo of frosted hair, I stare dispassionately at the spot on the middle of her forehead and try to convince myself, T-Rex is your greatest teacher.

But often, I’m not sure if it’s the voice of enlightenment or strains of masochism pleading with me to Be here now. After all, why should I continue to be in a place that does not fulfill me?

The words of the aforementioned yoga goddess are, in a way, a variation on Nietzsche’s famous line, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I have always loved this quote, and it’s gotten me thorough some hard times. And while it may ring true enough for me to breathe through 5 minutes of Utthita Parsvakonasana, does it really apply to an unsatisfying job that I’m perfectly capable of changing?

In Man’s Search for Meaning, existential psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has a thing or two to say about the matter:

Let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is avoidable. If it were avoidable, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause …. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

Right now, it is necessary for me to hold a salaried job with health insurance. The only marketable skills are the ones I’m prostituting myself for in a cadet blue cubicle in South Park, so I may as well stick with what I have for the moment. But as long as I am yearning for more meaningful work, I should plan my escape.

For the better part of my life, I’ve literally kept escape plans on file. At fourteen, I carefully organized art school catalogs alongside study abroad brochures and summer camp staff applications. It would be years before any of it became relevant, but the ideas alone were enough to propel me through the inevitable disappointment and heartbreak of my latter teenage years. Today, my file includes information packets from various graduate schools, work-exchange applications to yoga centers, and writing opportunities. This week, I will tap them all, and report on progress in my next entry.

And to emphasize my respect for a good escape plan, I am changing the name of this blog. I knew I’d come up with something more fitting, and I did.

Freedom Now!

In retrospect, I see that I was destined to work in marketing at some point in my life. I was a little girl obsessed with the fat, glossy J.C. Penney catalog (or “wish book,” as my grandma called it). When the Sunday paper came, I didn’t just read the comics—I pored over the sales circulars tucked inside. At the 4th-grade talent show, my best friend and I saw fit to perform comic renditions of mock commercials. And for career day in middle school, I struck out to interview execs at a local ad agency.

But even then, I assumed that my life’s legacy would amount to more than snappy headlines and can’t-miss pitch letters. There was just more in me than that. I couldn’t tear myself away from my sketchbook, couldn’t stop scrawling down words and pictures, couldn’t stop lollygagging in the nether-regions of my own mind.

On a related note, I also had a weird penchant for … stretching. I was no athlete, and was too tall to be a very good gymnast. But time and again, my dad would come home after a long day of work and find me upside-down on the green shag carpeting: “Lord, girl, what are you doing with your ass in the air like that?”

Had I been raised in a yoga-savvy household, I might have answered, “Shoulderstand, daddy!” Instead I blushed and somersaulted away.

Clearly, I was a daydreamer. At nine, I co-authored a poem with my dad:

I cannot write worth a dern
Nor can I remember what I learn
But my heart warms deeply whenever I try
So I’ll keep up my efforts till the day I die.

I’ll keep up my efforts till the day I die. I could not have known in my pigtail wisdom that this was much easier said than done. Nor could I have known how many sidelined artistes—my father among them—get sucked into day jobs and spit out on the other side depleted of their creativity. I certainly would never have guessed that I was in danger of becoming one of these poor schmucks.

Back then, I wrote plenty, and wound up majoring in art. Since I’d never really known any real artists, though, becoming one seemed pretty far-fetched. After a brief stint as an art teacher, I landed an editorial job at a small craft book publishing company. It seemed a good enough fit—I worked with upbeat, innovative coworkers in an interesting setting. But somewhere along the way toward the creative life I’d always envisioned, I wandered off-course and became a publicist, then a marketing hack.

Over the past eight years, I’ve churned out miles of copy, scrolled through umpteen-thousand pages of data in search of perfect pitch lists, and wrestled endlessly with Excel to generate results analyses. The nether-regions of my mind—where the creative juices once flowed freely—are practically barren.

Change is definitely in order.

I don’t really know what color my parachute is, or whatever. I only know that I’m out to charter a drastically different professional course. Perhaps I’ll give it another whirl as a teacher—of art, writing, or yoga. Maybe I’ll apply to grad school this winter to get an MFA degree. Or if my children’s book manuscript would get published, maybe my writing career could gather some momentum ….

Only time will tell. And here in this space, you can read all about it.