I’m writing this on the afternoon of January 6, 2022. I am wearing a blue hoodie and fuzzy socks. The sky is dove gray and thick with the threat of snow—the first of this winter and this year.
I love snow. I love the smell of it and the cold of it and the coziness of it. I love how it blankets the earth and dims all those natural sounds I take for granted or block out with way too much TV. I love how it adds some extra crunch to boot steps and how it makes everything glow purple in the moonlight and how it takes an ordinary hoodie and an ordinary pair of sweatpants and some ordinary, nothing special fuzzy socks and makes them extra toasty warm.
It’s 2022. And I’m trying to be more present this year.
I struggled with being present in 2021. I spent most of the year in my head, looking toward the future or raging at the past, and never really being in the moment. And because of that, 2021, for me, is one of those strange gap years that doesn’t really seem to exist.
I mean, it’s there, on paper.
Like a planner that was used for a while, then forgotten about entirely, and then picked up again sometime later.
It’s a gap punctuated with blank pages and To Do lists that never got done, goals I never really remember wanting in the first place, and things I wish I wish I had accomplished but just, you know, didn’t.
Without admonishing myself too much, I want to be more mindful moving forward.
So what did I do last year?
Well, for starters:
I quit my toxic AF job in February.
It was a decision I made on a whim and for the life of me could not talk myself out of.
Around this time last year, after a Zoom Christmas/New Year’s get together with some of my favorite people, one such favorite person took me aside and slapped me with some very blunt but true words. He asked:
“Where did you go? Where did you go? When did you start believing [working your toxic job] was the most you could aspire to?”
Ouch.
His words stuck with me, so I took them to my therapist. And by the end of our session, I knew I had to go.
Because I knew my bully boss was always going to be a bully. The sexism and misogyny was never going to get better. The FMLA retaliation and refusal to comply with ADA accommodations was never going to go away. HR was never going to do anything but collude with those same managers whom they admitted were in the wrong.
And no one in my department was ever going to stand up for me or for themselves. They were too afraid of losing their jobs, their pensions, their next promotion.
They were afraid of ending up like me. Of ending up like all the women who came before me.
I choked on this for a while, I admit. It was a recurring theme in 2021—this intense frustration I feel when I have someone’s back but they don’t have mine. I get that it’s illogical, that not everyone is as comfortable as I am with what they call confrontation and what I call doing what’s right. But I waffled back and forth for a long time—between desperately wanting to help those who are now in the position I was then, and wanting to sit back and watch as the consequences of their own cowardice leeched every last drop of joy from their souls.
In the end, being free won out over being “right.” I turned in my notice (the best feeling ever), took a week’s vacation, laughed with my therapist over the fact that my bully boss tried to terminate me for resigning while I was on vacation, and napped. A lot.
It was a few weeks before it dawned on me that I would never receive another email from a superior calling me an idiot, or implying that I was somehow inferior because of my gender, my intelligence, my chronic illness, my rigid adherence to compliance standards, or be harassed because I wouldn't bully whomever they wanted bullied that day. When it did, I cried.
(And before you say it: yes, I know I could have sued. Some say I should have sued.
(The attorney I consulted with would be included in that “some.”)
But ultimately, as angry and hurt as I was, and as much as I still believe Something™ should have been done about how people, especially women and the disabled, were treated in that department, it would have compelled my co-workers to either lie and save their jobs or tell the truth and lose them (and possibly their retirement, their pension, their livelihood).
I didn’t want them to have to deal with that. So I backed out.
Yeah, I'm a softie.)
Anyway, onto happier things!
I started my own business!
Remember that friend who was like, “Hey, where are you?”
Well, that conversation ended with us collaborating on a consulting project.
That consulting project led to another consulting project.
And, well, you see where this is going.
Now we work with small businesses and boutique brands to create authentic, human-first front-end and back-end experiences through copy, marketing, social media engagement, and process management.
I won’t lie—this is not one of those stories where it became an instant seven-figure a year business. Far from it—I took a massive pay cut to be able to do something I love.
But you know what? No one is emailing 2 minutes after my sign-in time asking me why I’m an idiot, or telling the department trainer to tell everyone I was fired, so in my book, it’s a win.
I also get to work from home—or from Starbucks, or from bed, or from the hospital—when I need to.
Which is good, because:
My health is still something I need to take very seriously.
The good news:
- My bloodwork is looking really good one year after looking really scary.
- I took a month off between leaving the credit union and working with Nolan, which I really needed, since I had originally returned to work a month early, and I wasn’t yet up to sitting upright or wearing pants.
- I get a little bit stronger every day!
The bad news:
- Auto-immune diseases are nasty little jerks, and all these surgeries have aggravated mine to the point where it’s now eating my organs. So that’s fun.
- I found out this summer I have both Lyme and Celiac disease. I have been gluten-free now for almost seven months and I still miss pasta every day. Every. Single. Day.
- I’m. Still. So. Tired.
- The brain fog is like….what.
But believe it or not:
Yes, I’m still writing books!
OK, if you’re Melanie, my agent, and you haven’t seen anything from me in a year, you probably don’t believe this. But it’s true.
Only this year, I’m not really focused on publishing anything.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to. That would be great. Never going to turn that down. Ever. Please give me a moderate sum of money to write a whole lot of books.
But…after four years of workplace burnout, three years of health issues, two years of pandemic, and a year of just staggering around like a drunk bear, I would really like to hone in on and learn to enjoy the act of daily writing again. Because the joy isn’t in the publishing. It was never in the publishing. It’s in the doing, and I really need to get back to the daily act of doing.
Not just with writing, but across the board.
Last year’s Word of the Year was Imperfection. It was a hard word. A word I had to remind myself of daily (and still do).
But:
I stopped waiting for a nonexistent right time and imperfectly quit a job that was keeping me attached to very unhappy, purposefully damaging people.
I stopped waiting for a nonexistent right time and imperfectly started a business.
I stopped waiting for a nonexistent right time and imperfectly went back to school.
I stopped waiting for a nonexistent right time and imperfectly advocated for myself and my health.
I stopped waiting. And I imperfectly did.
2022 Word of the Year
I toyed with a bunch of words for 2022. Among them: Empower, Present, Mindfulness, Now.
And those are definitely energies I want to bring into 2022!
But the word I settled on was:
Fortitude: Courage in the face of adversity.
Not exactly an inspiring word, I guess, but it feels right. Like an extension last year’s “stop waiting and imperfectly do” message.
The world is never going to be a perfect place. I am probably never going to be in perfect health. There is never going to be a perfect day where everything fits perfectly.
So for me, Fortitude means: showing up for the daily do even when you feel like a hot mess or when the world is on fire or a cat is sick or the power is out or the blood work is questionable or your people have let you down.
Stop waiting. Show up. Have the courage to face the imperfect now. And just relax and enjoy the ride.
2021 Stats
Words Written: 166,512
Books finished: 0
Books published: 0
# of days written: 243
Longest writing streak: 72 days
Average words per day: 698
Average minutes per day: 63
Most productive days: Mondays and Saturdays
Least productive days: Thursdays and Sundays