I’m taking advantage of a chance to work with a new acquaintance who’s training to be a coach. I’ve never had a coach before! The idea of having someone—ANYONE—to look out for me is really appealing right now!!
But also: I’m suspicious of why I’m doing this.
Some things I know:
- The way I was working pre-Pandemic brought me a degree of financial stability, novelty, recognition, and stimulation that was deeply pleasing to me
- The way I was working pre-Pandemic spread me thin, encouraged me to keep playing the hits, caught me in a web of social media addiction that didn’t make me happy, took me away from developing deeper and more intimate relationships with the people closest to me
- I have a big fat A+ Student complex and a Perfectionist streak a mile wide
- I have at least five personal projects that all feel like they’re languishing at 89% completion and if I could just get them finished everything would change
- I have a knack for translating complex internal experiences into stories that speak to people
- I feel pressure to translate every complex internal experience I have into stories that speak to people
- Making work that connects me with other people nourishes my soul
- I used to believe that by pulling off impossible deadlines I was somehow training to cheat death
- My life as a caregiver (and co-parent-habitator) is so different from any other life I’ve lived before
- I live in a society that systematically devalues the kind of labor I’m spending the majority of my time doing right now
- I live in a society that systematically valorizes the kind of career I was building before I transitioned to this season
- Doing more will not ultimately protect me from the grief of slowly and inevitably losing my dad
I’m sniffing around the idea that I might be using a coach as a taskmaster who will “get me back on track” and help me recapture the cadence of my pre-caregiving life. Do I really want that? Or is it just my best guess at what will give me the good brain drugs, and I’m so hungry for something that feels better than the inevitable decline I live with every day that I’m scrabbling for it with everything I’ve got?
