A cautious spring

The dead of winter is giving way to a cautious spring

Here are some things that have happened recently: The weather got warmer. I got my first COVID-19 vaccine. And I quit my job...and maybe my career...and maybe my entire field.  

All of these feel like spring. Renewal, rebirth, yada yada. And all feel...just a little...perilous. I’m reluctant to celebrate too loudly, because it’s like...can it be true? Is spring here? Really?

Fake Spring

All Midwesterners know that Fake Spring precedes Second Winter. Fake Spring is that little window, usually late February or early March, when the single-digit temps give way to days in the 40s, 50s, or 60s. Optimists and idiots think this means spring has sprung. But a week later, Second Winter and its cold fangs bite hard. 

Some years, it’s just another couple of weeks of cold weather again. Other years, it’s been a full-on resurgence of winter, and we get multiple snowstorms through March and April. 

Last year, the beginning of the pandemic made most of us forget that spring came early, and was beautiful, and there was no Second Winter. This year...by god, it sure seems as though we’ve dodged it again. 

We had a grueling stretch of bitter cold and near daily snowfall, but by the end of February, the daffodils were already poking their little green heads out of the dirt. And that was that—spring had sprung.

With every day that passes, that one last burst of wintery nastiness is less likely to hit. But even now, just after Easter time, I’m holding my breath.

The Prick of Life

The pandemic is still with us, of course, but...not...for long? 

A bunch of wizards and billionaires managed to whip out a COVID-19 vaccine in a fraction of the time it usually takes—months, instead of years—and governments and some other wizards have been aggressively distributing vaccine doses to everyone. The Prick of Life! 

The timeline for when most of us can get our Prick of Life has actually moved up, not back. For the general population, it was “end of May.” Then it was “mid-May.” And now...where I live, at least, it’s going to be open to genpop on April 9. That’s extraordinary. 

Though some new strains of the virus are causing problems worldwide, most of the news about the vaccines is good. The efficacy is high. Vaxxed people aren’t shedding the virus much, even if they do somehow end up carrying it. Vaxxed people who occasionally do get sick aren’t landing in the hospital. And early tests indicate that at least one of the vaccines (Pfizer) is safe and 100% effective (?!?!) in kids ages 12-15. The CDC now says that fully vaxxed people can pretty much live, laugh, and love with one another like they could in the Beforetimes. 

Meanwhile, the number of cases in our local schools has continuously dropped since they herded our little darlings back into their seats in January. 

So it’s...it’s going pretty well, innit? Much better than I thought it would be at this point. And for the first time in a year, I have a little hope that much of our lives can indeed get back to normal. There’s so much I miss. So much we all miss. And once we’re all vaxxed, we can have most of it back.

Unless...unless...we get a curveball. Those new strains are scary-looking. And there could be a resurgence in cases as people get a little too comfortable with one another. There is, after all, a year’s worth of partying and get-togethers and travel all pent up, and we still need to employ a dollop of caution. 

But...I hold my breath and hope.

Springtime for Sether

My own personal spring is here. And...well. There’s a lot to unpack. I’ll write a lot more about it by and by—the nature of work, mental health, trauma, personal transformation—but at the moment, here’s the thing:

I quit my job. It was a toxic, degrading, gaslighting, incredibly frustrating environment, within a dying industry, and I could not take it anymore. 

(Editor’s note: I feel something—shame, maybe—about walking away from a very, very well-paying job while so many people have been laid off and are struggling to scrape together rent. But that’s a thought trap. Forget the money, it was destroying me, and there is no dollar amount you can assign to your life.)

Also: There is currently a mass exodus from that employer. As in, a third to half of the company is leaving or has left, all within a few months. And as I’ve met with and consoled and commiserated with most of them, certain similarities emerged in our respective tales of woe, even from people across totally different departments: Burnt out. Tired of being constantly disrespected. Crippling anxiety. Made to feel like they were terrible at their jobs. 

I had to check on more than one colleague to be sure they were safe. SAFE! Not “if they were okay,” I mean SAFE. And some of them had to do the same for me at one point months ago. Looking back over the years, you’ll find a similar trail of casualties from that company, mainly because of the incompetent and cruel CEO. 

(Note to self: The past several paragraphs are just me justifying my decision to leave. Hm. Must explore that later.)

People keep asking me what I’m going to do next. The answer is I don’t know. Also, I don’t care. I am currently unemployed and plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future. (I am, though, doing some minimal freelance work to bring in some cash flow. We are very, VERY, VERY fortunate that we can comfortably financially afford for me to do this.)  

But this is about more than just ditching a bad job. Work hasn’t felt good to me in many years. And I realized that I haven’t taken a break since I was a child; I got a paper route when I was 11, and since then I’ve been keeping pretty much full-time hours (or more!), between school and work. I’ve never not had at least some kind of job. Even when I stayed home with our eldest child for a few years, I freelanced and was still working way too much, including on weekends, evenings, and holidays.  

But this isn’t even about me and how tired I am deep in my bones and brains and soul. It’s about realizing what drove me to work like that for so long and to push myself so hard. And...not doing that anymore.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve finally started doing therapy. Multiple modalities. (I highly recommend doing this.) Through that, I’ve learned a lot about who I am, what parts comprise me, and what drives me. 

And it’s, uh, pretty alarming. Like...you know how some people are “high-functioning” addicts? They’re reasonably successful in school, work, and life, but they’re living on the edge and barely hanging on, dangerously juggling substance abuse and life. That’s how I, and I think many others, live life with poor mental health. You get by, you get by, you get by. You have a big breakdown every few years or so. You pick yourself up and find a way to keep going each time. Then eventually you die, exhausted.

That is not any kind of way to exist. And we don’t have to exist that way! I have finally come around to this notion, and am Doing Things About It. It’s difficult and confusing—lots of twists and turns on the ‘ol mental health journey—but well worth the time and effort.

My hope is that the first half (maybe one-third) of my life was winter, and that I’m blooming into the spring of my time on this planet. Renewed, reborn, yada yada. Cautious hope.