Cause’ it’s where you’re at – not where you’ve been

One of the most mind-blowing moments in the third trimester of pregnancy is when you see another real live newborn or infant and you realize that you are carrying something very similar inside of you at that very moment. Without that cooing visual in front of you - it’s difficult to grasp that the undulations and kicks inside your belly are coming from a human being the size of a large pineapple. It’s just too amazing to grasp most of the time – but when you see a little baby with its little hands and feet – it helps you understand that pregnancy is truly one of the most amazing aspects of the human condition.

Today I am 38 weeks pregnant and can’t help but be introspective about the past eight months carrying this child. Just two weeks after losing my job last November, I took a positive pregnancy test and so began this beautiful new chapter in my life. I am already so grateful to this child for bringing so many positive things into my life and I still have yet to hold the little Olive in my hands. 

I don’t know how or why – but pregnancy has turned me into an optimist and has made me feel more like myself than I have felt in years. I wouldn’t have described myself as a complete pessimist before this – more like a healthy skeptic with a penchant for worry and self doubt. But this pregnancy has shifted my thought patterns considerably. It makes me think about what the legendary skeptic and pessimist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said: Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy. 

He’s right. The restlessness and frustration that has plagued me over the last several years has been wiped away by pregnancy. I know there are lots of women out there who choose not to get pregnant and I respect that – but there is something to be said about obvious solutions. 

With the way I feel now, calmer - happier - and peaceful, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that my body desperately wanted to carry out this biological task and I just kept putting it off. I chased everything else, when I should have just gotten myself knocked up and let the pieces fall as they may. 

I never viewed getting pregnant as an answer to my problems. It just seemed like the most natural thing to do with the person I loved most in life. When I lost my job, I had no idea I was pregnant – frankly, we weren’t technically trying to get pregnant that month, but it happened anyway. But when I was canned, I told Jay that we should put off having a child until I reestablish myself in a new job not knowing that I was already with child. I’m so glad he flatly denied that level of reasoning (it was too late anyway). At that point, Jay was all in and ready to make it work under any set of circumstances. 

We were typical Gen Xers, waiting for just the right financial moment to have a child – but the bottom line just kept getting smaller and we finally both just threw up our hands and said – let’s have a baby and we will make it work. 

So here I am on the cusp of parenthood – 38 weeks strong and ready to push through to the next phase. I saw her little mug on an ultrasound today and am now home drinking a green monster (blended spinach and fruit) or what I am hoping provides the kick to get me into labor and the strength to push this hammer through. 

Sure I have made mistakes and I certainly have an uphill battle getting back to work postpartum -but as Amy sings in the video posted above, it's where you're at, not where you've been.

HaSa

So what - no F**kin Ziti?

Having the rug ripped from under your already modest financial reality is akin to getting punched in the face repeatedly – so please don’t mistake my current state of optimism for haughtiness. But I can sincerely say that living with less has forced me to put my priorities in check and has made me a happier person.

A Gallup study conducted last year found that the magic salary number for happiness is $75,000. The study determined that any amount after this does nothing to boost your level of day-to-day contentment. I am currently not making anywhere near that amount (would love to be though), but I can speak from my experience over the last several years about how having less and living through unemployment has positively impacted my well-being and my marriage.

Back in March, when I was trying to convince myself that I was over losing my job in November, my panic attacks returned after an almost two-year hiatus. There I was, pregnant with my first child and gasping for air like Tony Soprano after his ducks flew away. While I have experienced only two Tony-esque panic attacks in my lifetime, where you literally feel like you are having a heart attack, my panic attacks tend to just eliminate my ability to get enough air into my lungs and breathe comfortably.  

My panic episodes last for days instead of just a few minutes and my husband is very adept at spotting them even when I try to play the shortness of breath off as allergies. Most of the time, it looks as though I'm having an asthma attack. I attempted to ignore them in the hopes they would go away, but they didn’t. They got worse until it surfaced into a full blown attack and I wound up in the emergency room. 

A few hours before I went to the hospital that day, my father called me and sensed something was wrong. I told him I was worried about ever working again, going into foreclosure and being an utter failure. Unfortunately, my father and I both have a proclivity toward panic attacks. He told me that at his worst, he would be so fearful of suffering from a panic attack – which he said were triggered sometimes by stopping at a red light - that he started running red lights so he wouldn’t have one. I think this dangerous maneuver puts into perspective the sheer discomfort and fear one experiences when having a panic attack. 

One day, he said, he was almost hit by a Sears truck after he ran a red light. Sears is the company that laid him off a year before – so we had a good laugh at the irony tied to that scenario.

The bottom line about my panic attacks is that they're mild compared to what many experience. In the panic attacks entry in Wikipedia, it says: Experiencing a panic attack has been said to be one of the most intensely frightening, upsetting and uncomfortable experiences of a person's life and may take days to initially recover from. I probably have had one or two of these types of attacks in my life - and yes, I felt like I was going into cardiac arrest. 

My panic episodes also don’t stem from social anxiety – I get them when there is something deeply wrong in my life and I am not addressing it correctly. Panic attacks are a very visible and physical way of your body and brain telling you to make a change. In a way, they’re a blessing. They forced me to confront my fears back in March as they did two years ago.  

The bottom line is that I was trying to pretend that I was over losing my job and I wasn’t. I was consumed with the fear about the worst possible outcomes of my unemployment and it was tearing me up inside. I was also trying to put on a brave face and I wasn’t talking to anyone about how I felt. Time and time again, I have found that this to be a losing strategy. 

Unemployment is awful and anyone could have looked at my situation and said, well hell, I would be scared breathless too. I was (am) pregnant and paying out of pocket several hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance. The economy was (and still is) in a very precarious predicament and every other article I read was about how the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to get another job. My husband, a hard-working and extremely dedicated professional with a stellar resume and educational background has been unable to find steady work since the company he worked for folded in 2009. While I was trying to dig out of my own hole, I was watching my husband apply to several jobs a week and not getting any interviews. It’s really not that hard to diagnose why I was consumed with fear. 

After a good eight hours in the ER, my husband and I had a mini-date at McDonald's. I ordered a Quarter Pounder with cheese with the special sauce (mayo) that they put on Big Macs. This brought my husband tremendous joy as he loves to see his uptight dieting wife gorge on fast food for pleasure.

In the weeks after that trip to the hospital, I took several steps to rectify this situation. I joined a gym because fitness makes me happy, I scoured the library for self-help books and audio recordings, I looked for work, I opened up to some of my closest confidantes and spilled my guts about how much shit sucked, I poured myself into my religious studies and found solace in our greater purpose. But I think what really curbed the attacks and this may come as a surprise, is that I simply started visualizing and trying to come to terms with the “worst” case scenarios that could result from unemployment. 

Turns out, they weren’t that bad. One of those worst case scenarios is that we get foreclosed on (for the record we haven’t missed a single mortgage payment yet because my husband is an amazing money manager) and downsize. I pictured my husband, myself and our little girl Olive in a small apartment, with a lot less space and belongings, and it wasn’t bad at all. I pictured two people, still very much in love as we are now, laughing as we do every day and just making it work in a much smaller space. Just taking part in this visual exercise helped me out tremendously.

Several weeks later I stopped worrying and started enjoying life again. I know what the worst case financial scenario is and it’s not going to take away the most important thing in the world to me – my husband. 

A Million Reasons to be Thankful for Failure

Five years after he was exposed for fabricating and embellishing a large part of his life in the best-selling faux-memoir A Million Little Pieces, James Frey returned to the Oprah show last week. Filmed on a closed set far away from the critical glare of the public, many of whom still feel betrayed by the author for selling the entirety of his addiction story as truth – Oprah and James had the kind of intimate and far-reaching conversation many wish they could have with an adversary. The kind of conversation which brings closure to an event that set your life on fire.

Clearly Frey has climbed out of the rubble of his own personal earthquake and used his own destruction as the foundation for building the kind of life he had always wanted to live. Not a bad example for a person who has experienced personal, career, and financial hardships and wants nothing more than to make sure it doesn’t eliminate my chances at success.

As a James Frey fan, both before and after his fall from grace in 2006, this interview was must-see television. I found every inch of the interview fascinating. Turns out, my husband did as well. Given that we often view things very differently, I was surprised to learn we both gleaned the same insights from the interview.

My husband said, 'I think me, you and James have been on a similar journey. A lot of what was exchanged between the author and television host was entirely relevant to our own lives.'

What he was referring to is failure. All three of us has have experienced failure, allowed our ego to overcome our rational thoughts and ultimately events so ugly and costly to our well-being, became the catalyst for a significant conversion in our lives. When I use the term failure, I refer to my own failures over the last several years – most of which were caused by losing sight of what’s truly important, not following my passions and letting my ego destroy my value. 

As James said in the interview about the experience of being publicly hated and exposed, he would not be where he is today, a published and successful author who can profit off of his passion for writing and a happy husband and father of two had his life not come crashing down in 2006: 

"I think I'm a better person. I think I'm a better writer. I think I'm happier. I think I'm more at peace," James said. "In a way, as bad as it was, it was one of the best things that happened to me. Sometimes you need to go through bad things to arrive at a good place."

When it came out that large parts of his memoirs were literary fabrications, it didn’t really change the fact that I enjoyed reading his books, that they made me laugh and that they inspired me to want to write about my own experiences. In the wake of the Frey controversy, I emailed him notes of support and when his novel Bright Shiny Morning came out several years after his public stoning, I bought it full price in hardcover and devoured it during a few trips to the beach. 

For me, James Frey was someone I related to. I have always found people who have experienced massive failures more interesting than those who simply follow a straight and narrow path and don’t take risks. The beauty is always in seeing how people react to failure. James and I also share the same insights on life and people. Like me, James is fascinated by the obtuse, fringe characters he meets in life and profoundly influenced by big personalities.

So when I heard he would be back on Oprah, I had to tune in. Turns out, I still relate to him. Like myself over the past several years, Frey has returned from the brink knowing more than he did before his collapse and said he thinks about God, Jesus and the afterlife daily. I have been on my own renewal and spiritual path of late. I'm proud to say that I have managed to convert from a self-defeating nihilist (translation – I didn’t believe in a higher purpose) to a confirmed Catholic (more on that another time). 

But back to the interview where Oprah discussed the revealing epiphany that lead to her asking James to return to the show as one of her final guests. This was what was so great about the interview and why Oprah is in a master class of interviewers – she knows that you must reveal your own flaws and shortcomings in order to get your subject to divulge their own truth. This same rule can be applied to build and enhance friendships.

Oprah wrapped up the interview with a Gandhi-esque insight so typical of many of her shows (Full DISCLOSURE: I’m a new Oprah convert – I was never a fan until I lost my job back in November – but I get it now – the woman is a prophet): 

“That makes all the sense in the world to me because I think that all of us are on a path to really figure out what is the truth of who we are and to find out a way to honor that. I think otherwise your life is a lie, no matter who you are or what you are doing. And so to be freed, to be true to who you are, that was the gift.”

Failure is a gift.!? Well I guess it’s been Christmas in my life for some time. But luckily lately because of the failures that are in my wake, it has felt more like New Years day lately. And like James, failure is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

Oh No I've Said too Much

Once upon a time I fancied myself a writer. As a teenager, I wrote quirky short stories and read them aloud to friends. As a post college graduate, I got paid to write for newspapers, but it wasn’t really the kind of writing I wanted to do and I was broke all the time. I then went into public relations and other than the professional writing I did for work, I stopped working toward my true writing goals and became a cliche. I talked about writing a book, but I was so afraid of my own truth, I stopped writing anything, yet I still referred to myself as a writer. I thank my husband for mocking me for talking more about writing, than actually writing. There’s only so far a husband's level of support can go before it dilutes the other person’s ability to succeed. Thanks for calling me out on this repeatedly Jay.

Here’s my attempt to reclaim the working title of writer. I want to thank my cousin, Life Coach Paige, for encouraging me to write this blog. I also want to say right off the bat that the kind of writing I intend to include in this blog is inspired by my favorite pop cultural essayists – Tom Wolfe and Chuck Klosterman. And yes, 
the title of the blog is an homage to my favorite Black Crowes song.

My only criteria for starting a blog, is that it be as truthful and authentic as possible. I made a vow to myself that I would share warts and all experiences here in this space. While it would be less uncomfortable to write mostly about the pleasant things in my life, I would be doing myself a huge disservice if I didn’t write about everything. This is also an attempt to highlight my writing abilities so that I can eventually get the kind of writing job I have always wanted. 

I hope to share insight, write essays about pop culture, religion and the travails of life in this forum. For those of you saying, what the frig’ does Jill know? Well, I can only say that I will work diligently to make myself worthy of your interest.