get-well-soonish-blog

[get-well-soonish-blog]

Not Goodbye

A quick note to my work-wife on your last day here-- Go get ‘em in your next adventure, pal. You’ll always be my first friend in the North Country. Thanks for carrying me through some rough times. Much love, always. 

[get-well-soonish-blog]

Balancing out the Scales

I know, I told you last week that I’d share really embarrassing photos of myself this week, but I’ve got some word vomit to let out first. The pictures aren’t going anywhere, don’t worry. But they can wait so I can get this out of my system.

So, recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about work-life vs. personal life and how to balance the two. When I first started my job up here in the North Country, I didn’t really have any friends. I also didn’t have much to do outside of work because it was fucking cold and snowy every damn day, so work became my life a little bit; the scales tipped only to that side. My days began to revolve around how much time I’d have after work to get things done (which was none. I’d go home and eat and shower and sleep. Not fun), eight+ (closer to 9-10) hours of my day being locked in to a computer at a desk, and answering work emails even after I’d gotten home. I wanted to be the best. I was DETERMINED to prove that I was overqualified for this position and that I deserved a raise and a promotion by my 90-day review.

L O L.

While I am good at my job, nobody is perfect and I’m no exception to that rule. There was so much I didn’t know and needed to learn. I was arguably out of my league and unarguably in over my head. And so, I struggled. Not only with the tasks I was given at work but leaving those tasks at work and coming home to a life outside of them. I felt like my day wasn’t over once I left because I was struggling and I needed more time to jam in new concepts, learn client branding, and keep up with social calendars. I was literally dreaming about training modules and certification exams, client work and meetings with my supervisor. You can imagine that after a few months of this, I was beginning to lose my mind and it showed.

I’d love to tell you that my 90-day review was full of praise. And on one end, it was. My supervisor stated that my coworkers love my positive attitude, my willingness to take initiative and self-motivation. She said that she could tell my wiliness to understand every aspect of my job proved my strong work ethic and curiosity. But she also mentioned that I had trouble PRIORITIZING MY TIME and that I was taking longer to learn and complete tasks that she’d hoped. Shocker. I knew this was coming. I’ve struggled with attention problems my whole life and being in a completely new setting with tasks I’d never performed before proved to challenge my attention in a way it had never been challenged before. Spelling and grammar were brought up as weaknesses because, to be fair, they were the least of my concerns with all of the work and learning I was doing. It may seem small to you, getting a user handle wrong, but for me in my position, it’s a ding. It’s a sign that I’m not being as meticulous as I should be. It also means credit isn’t being given where it is due and it’s a huge no-no, to say the least. I was super embarrassed by this critique. I know I make mistakes, but so does everyone else I work with. The difference is those types of mistakes for someone in my position matter more. They signify laziness and carelessness but I felt I was being anything but lazy and careless. I just didn’t have time for tight proofreading when everything else was taking me so long to get through. After I was done with what felt like a true beating, my supervisor went on to ask how my work/life balance was panning out; was I adjusting to life in the North Country?

I had no idea that that question would seep its way into my review. I thought we’d just be talking about work. Not my personal life. I wanted to say that I’d found a good balance. But I hadn’t. Not after those first 90-days. I tried not to well up, but she could see I was struggling. So, she pried a little and got it out of me that I wasn’t so good at leaving work behind at the end of the day. I told her I’d been going to therapy because I felt off and part of that was because I felt that work was consuming me. I told her about the way I learn; I’m a hands-on learner and I tend to know I’m proficient in something once I can teach it to someone else. I hadn’t felt like my learning style was nurtured or at least even accepted and there were frustrations on both ends due to this.

I nervously waited for her reply. Would she suggest the field wasn’t for me? Or would she say that agency life isn’t for everyone and maybe I should look into other options? Or worst of all, was she going to tell me that the North Country wasn’t my home? I’d heard so many employees say this upon me moving here. I felt tested; only the strong survive.  

Her response was warm and sympathetic. She really listened to what I had to say and actually made a note to ask people how they learn in future interviews. I felt heard and comforted. She told me that she wished she’d known I was struggling earlier. She told me that meetings with her are a safe space; that I can express to her any doubts or questions about ANYTHING, work or personal. This made me really almost lose it. I felt such a sense of relief like all of these months of frustration were being washed from me. My ass didn’t feel so much like it was on the line anymore. I felt valued and appreciated.

After having my review, I immediately began to loosen up. Not with my work or my work ethic, but with my overall life in general. I’ve deeeefinitely stopped dreaming about work. And I’ve become more patient with myself in learning. I’ve been slowing down which has actually sped things up.

Though my review didn’t go as I’d hoped (I did not get a raise or a promotion. But after 90-days, who does???), I got much more out of it than I thought I would. Some sanity. I took my supervisor’s time prioritization notes to heart, and began to prioritize projects at work as well as at home. I don’t always adhere to my plan, but when I do it looks something like this: wake up slowly *important for a cranky monster like myself*, prep breakfast *I usually, bring it to work with me and eat it later because my tummy isn’t ready at 7:30 am*, get ready for the day, go to work, werk werk werk, leave work and all of my tasks with it, go home. And then from there, I choose between dinner with friends, working out and meal prepping, being lazy and sitting on my couch to read a book or watch shitty reality TV, showering, and going to sleep (I’m a nightmare without enough sleep so it’s not something I’m willing to sacrifice during the week. I’m in bed by latest 10 and hopefully asleep before 11 every. Single. Night). My weekends are for me. I do not bring my laptop home anymore and I do not answer work emails on those glorious days off.

To say the least, I’ve learned not to strive for perfection. Striving for perfection means you don’t need to grow; you don’t need correcting or improvement. I’ll always need to grow. I’ll ALWAYS need correcting in order to improve. Remember, my name is, Katie I-do-everything-the-hard-way Pasternak. It’d be a shame if I stopped living up to that now. Ordering my day may seem small or like *duh, Katie, everyone needs to do this to stay sane, we all survive off of routine, it’s human nature* but for me, balancing didn’t come naturally; it’s not in my nature… I’m more of a lets-just-go-with-the-flow kinda gal. So, I’ve had to trick myself into making a flow into a routine. This flow, so to speak, is necessary in putting some weight on the other side of the scale. Sure, sometimes it’s likely to lean more one way than the other, but never will it ever again fully drop to one side. I can promise you that.

[get-well-soonish-blog]

Ernest Hemingway said something, at some point, about writing being simple, “all you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” I may be sitting in front of a Mac and not a typewriter, but I still feel like I’m about to bleed all over it. 

I told you in my last blog that you’d hear about a recent ex. Let’s call him Max.

I once heard someone on a podcast talk about how she doesn’t get over an ex until she and her next boyfriend breakup. The hurt of the more recent breakup takes over the hurt of the more distant one, allowing her to finally, really let him go. I wasn’t exactly excited about my last breakup, but I did think that it might give me some clarity on the one before it. 

It’s been almost three years since my most formative relationship ended. Let’s call him Adam. To this day, I can’t really put my finger on exactly why Adam and I broke up and I’m not sure he can either. We just poofed. He just poofed. I felt stranded and abandoned and this was the first little piece of baggage I’d learn to always carry with me on every relationship vacation from there on out. Our breakup caused me to truly reflect on who I was at the most basic human levels and it’s when I finally saw all of myself. It felt like I’d just woken up from a 24-year nap. I was very groggy, to say the least. And I wish I could say I didn’t take anything else of him with me. But I inherited his way of hanging up clothes, uncommon vernacular, and music taste to name a few things; the music taste being the most important. 

Before Adam and I met, I was a ride or die, Indie/ Rock girl. I didn’t understand Electronic music. It was just a bunch of noise. As I fell in love with him I fell in love with Deep House and Tropical House and Dub Step. And when we broke up, I eventually fell out of love with him but never the music. In some ways, I feel it still ties me to him. Does his new girlfriend like G Jones? Matoma? Duke Dumont? GRiZ? After our breakup, I only continued to fall down the electronic music rabbit hole and it led me to many concerts and new friends and even a new boyfriend. 

My most current ex, Max, and I met through a mutual friend, who we can call Brianna, months before we looked at each other in any kind of romantic way. He was dating a piece of shit and I was still reeling and trying to recover from my breakup with Adam over a year later. We talked about Electric Forest, which we’d both been to (shout out to Adam for introducing me to it) and the music we’d seen and the music we loved for hours. Our mutual friend even left at one point and he and I decided to continue the conversation at another bar. He left at the end of that night and I didn’t see him again for another seven months. Fast forward to April of 2018 and Brianna shows up at my apartment to see my roommate. The three of us decide to go out to the bars for a campus event when Brianna asks if we mind if her friend Max joins us. I play it cool, “yeah I think I remember him. He was pretty nice.” LOL OK KATIE. You think you remember him. I had already added him on Facebook and stalked enough to know that his relationship status had gone missing sometime in the last five months. I asked Brianna if he was single now and she explained that he was. 

In walks Max. We lock eyes. Match point. Game over. He’s mine.

I sometimes wish it hadn’t gone that way. We could’ve made really amazing friends. We loved the same music extremely passionately. We had so much fun together; his weird was my weird. We were aliens, outsiders together. Seemingly us against the world. And when you find someone you mesh with, that you’re attracted to, you hardly ever say, “wait a minute, let me not fuck him. He could turn out to be a really cool friend.” It’s funny though because we didn’t fuck that night. We stayed up on my balcony smoking blunt after bowls and talking about our passions. I pointed out the moon and he loved that I noticed things like that. Brianna was asleep on my small, broken Target futon, I was in my robe and ready for bed but he wouldn’t leave and I didn’t want him to. We made vague plans for sometime in the coming weeks before he left. And then the next day he asked me to come over for dinner. And that’s when the magic happened. I should’ve known by how quickly it was moving that it wasn’t sustainable. But I ignored every red flag and allowed him to be free, me to be free. We had a wonderful few months. Until we didn't anymore. 

Taste in music and mutual weirdness can only take you so far. Remember how I said I couldn’t really put my finger on why Adam and I broke up? Well, I have a never-ending list of why Max and I did. I won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty. Truly, it comes down to timing, as so many things do, and Max needing some serious counseling from his piece of shit ex and a few other things he had going on. He wasn’t ready to be anyone’s partner. He needed to sit with himself. I thought the hurt from that relationship ending would finally dull the hurt of the one before it. But then I was just left hurting over two loves lost. I really still don’t even understand how that’s possible. But trust me, it is. It took a while and time with only myself again to finally let both of them go. It’s hard sitting with yourself sometimes. But when you find it hardest is usually when you need it the most. Maybe moving across the country + being forced to have time with myself wasn’t the best combo, but it’s what was dealt to me. I always do things the hard way in life. It was fitting. *Katie I-do-everything-the-hard-way- Pasternak*

Adam and Max were/ are both sweet, sweet guys. It pains me that I can’t be with Adam and that I can’t help Max. But sometimes there’s just nothing you can do. You’re either going to smile or you’re going to cry. And I’ve done enough crying for someone who’s not a crier. I’ve finally come to a point where I accept that Adam and I just aren’t meant to be. He seems happy in the life he has today. And for me, that’s a win. I’ve also accepted that Max was a complete learning experience. My friends say I’ve become picky but I know they’re wrong. I’m just not willing to settle. I’ve seen too much shit go down in my own life and relationships to let red flags go again. I’m trying to move on and live my life without fear while still being cautious enough to not get hurt (is that even possible? I’m trying anyway). Max hurt me more than I thought such a short-lived relationship ever could. Our relationship was relentless in its torture; always finding new ways to break me. With that being said, Max and I have actually managed to reconnect and become the friends I wish we’d been all along. It’s still weird and I find myself needing to take breaks here and there because, to be honest, I’ll always be attracted to him. And though we never said it, and he may never have felt it, I did love him. I’ll always love him. Now we have weekly phone calls (usually while one of us is driving for a few hours *cough Max cough*) and the lines of communication are open. When we want to share a new song or something that reminds one of the other, we do it, without hesitation. Hearing from him makes me smile and I love that. 

I never thought I’d get to a point like this with an ex. But here we are. And it doesn’t suck. And I’ve let go of things I didn’t think I was capable of ever leaving behind. And that all helps me take care of myself. When you’re harboring feelings of regret, or longing, it’s really hard not to beat yourself up. It’s hard to look in the mirror and like who you see. But at the end of the day, that’s the one person you’ll always see. As Papa AP (my father) says, “relationships are hard, maaaan”. And he’s not wrong. And the most challenging of them all might just be the ones that we have with ourselves.

Now that that’s out of my system, stay tuned for next week when I share really embarrassing photos of me circa 2002 and talk about my weird-ass family. Gotta go stitch myself up after that bleed ;)

[get-well-soonish-blog]

[get-well-soonish-blog]

[get-well-soonish-blog]

Where it all Began

OK, so I’ve created an Instagram account dedicated to showing the world what it’s like to be me. Might as well link a blog to it, amirite?

Why does that matter?

Now what?

What are you even going to be talking about, Katie?

Some questions that might be buzzing around your head, I know. 

We all kind of walk through this world doing what we do every day. And maybe some of us find that significant, but maybe some of us don’t. If you see yourself as “just a student”, or “just a person in an entry-level, coordinator position, or “just trying to get by”, I promise you that means something. 

About four months ago I made a move that changed my life so profoundly it has quite literally shaken me down to my core and showed me who I am, what I’m made of. But let’s rewind to just before that all happened.

I’m sitting on the couch of a family I nanny for in what felt like the middle-of-nowhere-Indiana. It’s just about 1:00 pm, the baby is asleep and I’m watching The Walking Dead. My tortured relationship has just come to a complete end (you’ll hear about him later, I promise), my roommate hates me (you’ll hear about her too, don’t worry), all of my college friends have moved to places like Seattle, and Chicago and I’m so sad I can’t even cry. I’m stuck in the cement that I’ve let set around me blankly staring at my MacBook Air as character after character dies and I. Feel. Nothing. I was supposed to have a skype interview with a company in New York but I consciously decide to skip it. “I forgot, I’m sorry, can we reschedule? No? Ok, thank you for the opportunity.” I can hear the script I’m writing for the email scene I’m about to direct. And that’s when my phone rings...

“Hi, is this, Katie?”

“Yes, this is she.”

“Hi Katie, this is Alex. I’m calling on the behalf of Agency. We were supposed to have a Skype call at 1:00.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry my internet isn’t working properly. I’m so glad you called...”

A little bit different than the original script I was writing, but I went with it.

Fast forward four months, and here I am; writing to you from my desk at that job in New York *shhhh* to tell you about why I need to talk to you; why I feel my story is important to tell, as is yours. I left that couch, bad relationship, horrible roommate situation, town one month later and I can quite literally say that I never once looked in my rearview mirror as I drove far, far away from that place in the midwest to a new one in Upstate New York.

And that’s when my life became perfect! The End...

I wish that was how it went. But everyone knows that putting distance between yourself and the problem(s) isn’t always the answer. Things follow you and more often than not, it’s time that we need. I really, truly, vigorously believed that leaving all of those people and memories and that place behind was the cure-all to this disease that, I thought, was my anxiety and depression (queue post for later about what I actually had going on in my cute little brain). I also thought I loved change! I was ready for it because change is always a 100% guaranteed breath of fresh air. 

Wrong. 

Not only was distance not a cure-all, it was isolating and the change was so vast and challenging, I wasn’t sure I could handle it. 

My mother and I aren’t close. I remember smelling her nightshirt when I was little, trying to absorb something from her. Looking back I’m not sure what that was, really. Maybe it was whatever kindness she had left in her after my dad left or a smile. Her smell was always floral but sweet and I needed it to put me to sleep. There was a time when I found her, her scent, comforting. But as I got older I began to appreciate that less and eventually not want it at all. Our lack of a relationship isn’t entirely her fault. I recognize that I’m my own, closed off person, afraid to get to know the woman who brought me into this world. But after the transition to the North Country, I called her almost every day like I was five and I needed to smell her nightshirt to be able to rest. I cried that I’d never make friends here (shout-out to the wonderful humans who have taken me in and now call me their friend). I thought the midwest was desolate, but really I didn’t even know what desolate was until moving here. The midwest was a friend I’d become too familiar with and bored of. It was a place I took for granted and only saw the times I’d had my heart broken or falling outs with close friends or dropping out of college after four years of half-hearted-hard-work. But the North Country was an alien from a galaxy I’d never even heard of and couldn’t communicate with or relate to. I’d forcefully thrown myself at it only to realize it looked nothing like what I’d loved and known for so long. 

For the first several months, I found no comfort here. The job was harder than anticipated and most of my coworkers, for lack of a better word, sucked. The agency was at the forefront of a rebrand and I’d come in at the worst, most disjointed time in their 41-year history as a company. So, not only was the job not panning out but like I said, I truly had no friends. It was sub-zero, constantly snowing, dark by 4:30 pm and I was beginning to resent the reason I’d come here in the first place; to get away from things that pained me. I drove to and from work in pitch black, every day. I love being outdoors, but I’d never been winter hiking and had no proper gear to get out there and no money to buy said gear. Everything was a mess of pure and hopeful expectations collapsing in on me and whether I created it or not, I felt I had no control over the clean-up. 

But somehow, dirty clothes found their way into my hamper and friends were made, gear was purchased, work settled down. And now, today, I feel like I’ve finally gotten a grasp on my new life. It feels weird to write that down... “my new life”. But how I’m living now looks nothing like what it used to so I guess it really is “new”.

I’m taking canoe trips and becoming more active and going to therapy once a week. I had such a rough go for those few months, and so many things to sort out. Through therapy and some much-needed soul-searching, the only conclusion I’ve come to is that I need to take care of myself and SLOW DOWN (As my girl, Kacey Musgraves says, “I’m all right with a slow burn.” That’s kind of been my theme song for the last few months). Take that job, be patient with myself in adjusting, say yes to more experiences, but learn to say no when it’s just too much, do what benefits me. Sounds selfish, I know, but I’ve always given so much of myself to others and left none for myself. And I’m tired of feeling empty with nothing left to give to the most important person in my life; me. You might be thinking, “damn, she’s really taking this selfish thing seriously”. And that’s because I am. Going out with coworkers on a Tuesday might be fun, and I might be missing out on a few laughs, BUT going home to work out, and cook dinner and relax before another day of work is mindful and soothing and it’s what I need to feel like my best self. Learning to say no to things I feel I’m missing out on has been quite the process, but I’ve never felt empty or depleted doing it. 

So to answer the questions I think might be buzzing around in your head... 

1. This matters because I feel all stories are important and deserve to be told. It’s also part of my emotional wellness and healing. I went to school for writing and though I’m in a position in my professional life where I write content, I’m not writing anything I truly feel could change anything. Even if this doesn’t change your life, it will change mine (there I go learning to be all selfish again). 

2. And now, I tell you how I try to stay sane, try being the keyword. There are days I still am so sad I can’t cry. And there are still days in which I miss that toxic relationship, distressed couch, and abusive roommate. But there are more days now than there ever were of fun mistakes and happy adventures. I guess when they say the only direction there is to go from rock-bottom is up, they’re not lying. 

3. I’m talking about emotional wellness! A combination of therapy, guided meditation, exercise and *mostly* clean eating does it for me, and I’m curious to know what does it for you. I’m talking about being raw and open and honest with oneself, admitting to your mistakes, and honoring your flaws. I’m talking about obtaining contentment. People strive for happiness but really feeling happy isn’t something we’re meant to feel in our normal state. Happy, elated, excited are all things that take us higher, far above the level of contentment. Contentment is where I strive to be. Contentment is where I feel warm and secure and like I’m ready to take on whatever life throws at me because I can; because I’m standing on a solid foundation of neutrality that I’ve built with my own, small, chubby baby hands. 

So... if any of this interests you, stick around and read a while. Also, check out get.well.soonish on Instagram to put a face to the name cause it’s a pretty good one ;).