WOTY?

My husband got laid off about 2 years ago from a big ad agency.  When that happened, he started a blog called Please Feed the Animals. It helped him, and others in the ad community, work through the emotional maze of laid-offdom.  Awhile ago, I contributed some articles to the blog about being married to the person who got laid off.

It was a weird time.  What was happening?  What comes next?  Nothing was the same, nothing was certain.  The jobs just didn’t seem to be what they used to be, and certainly not as plentiful.  So we made a change.  We decided to exit the job (not-so-super) highway and go off-road…

What we discovered, was that there are a lot of other off-roaders out there.  All of us trying to make sense of it, and hopefully make a connection between working life and living life.   Erik was so compelled by some of the other off-roaders’ stories, that he made a documentary called Lemonade.

Thing was, at that point, the easy (sensible) thing for me to do would’ve been to say: “Stop blogging and get a job.  What?  Make a movie?  How?  With what?  Are you new here?  We have a mortgage and 2 kids!”  But for the life of me, I don’t know why I said, “Okay.”  And I just kept saying, “Okay.”  I’m not like that.  It was very very weird – but it just felt like the right thing to do.

It has been uncertain…But sometimes when I see things like the recent comment from PFTA below -  I just feel like this is the right direction:

“Erik: Lemonade and PFTA have had a huge impact on my life. The inspiration I found through both helped me to quit my ad agency in pursuit of something more fulfilling. There are several PFTA posts, The 2 AM Wake Up Call in particular, that forced me to evaluate my situation in a hard, realistic manner. Without reading it, I’m not sure where I’d be at.

My point is PFTA and Lemonade have changed lives. Yours included. And I’m very happy that you now identify as a Documentary Film Maker, evolving with your passion. I think in a way PFTA has always been a space “for all things reinvention”. Yes, of course it was focused on unemployed ad people, but PFTA provided a cathartic experience where many people realized the ad agency life was killing them. This realization generated reinvention and this reinvention changed perceptions and took down the walls that had previously deemed our passions unrealistic.

I would love to see PFTA carry on and continue to be a place of reinvention, because for me, PFTA has been more about inspiration than anything else.”

Fast forward to today, and we’re still off-roading, it’s a little bumpy, but kinda awesome.  We’re further away from advertising (I say we, ’cause if you’re in advertising, or married into advertising, it makes little difference.)  and Erik’s moving closer to other work.  Documentaries, story-telling, and maybe even a whole new career.  He’s working on Detroit Lemonade right now – and it looks awesome.

These last 2 years have been about figuring out what it means to love your work and take some risks.  Not easy.  This went against all of my previous methods of operation.  But now that we’re almost on the other side, people are telling me that I was very brave to take this risk with him.  There was even a tweet that referred to me as, Erik’s warrior wife.  Erik read it to me, and all I could think was:  Warrior?  Whoa, I dunno about warrior.  Worrier, definitely.

So, worrier or warrior?  I don’t know, maybe I’m a little of both…and I guess that’s not so bad.

The Yin and Yang of it

I just read an article in the Boston Globe Magazine by Kara Baskin about how nauseatingly happy everyone on Facebook is, or pretending to be. It’s one big “Look at how cute my puppy is! See how awesomely psyched we are!” The truth is, no one wants to put up the bad stuff. Who wants to put up a photo of yourself in the jeans that you can’t zip, a screaming child in a grocery cart, or a depressed face staring at the television?

Well, I’ll have a go. Yin and Yang or, in this case, Yang and Yin.

Yang: There is some amazing stuff happening for Erik and me. We are so close to something we can almost touch it. The blog is doing great, the movie is truly amazing, and the job site is coming together…The payoff for this will be a business that has been completely developed through self-financing, the generous time and work of friends, and the parents helping out twice. And I will never lose sight of those blessings.

Yin: This has been no all-day party in a bouncy castle. Erik is busting his ass. He works all day and night. The freelance to finance us means no breaks. None. But, did I mention no breaks? Weekends, holidays, 5 am, 2 am. And, if Erik has no breaks, then I have no breaks. I enjoy being a stay at home mom, but I am no Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins. I am neither a saint nor a work of fiction. I am real, I have bad days, I get upset.

Yang: We are lucky to have health insurance coverage.

Yin: Our health insurance cost is tragicomedy ridiculous. We get so little for what we pay. I filled an Rx the other day and the co-pay was $50.00, AND we already pay over a grand for our monthly premium. I almost cried at the pharmacy. I looked up at the check-out person and said “Really?” and he replied with a wince, “Yup.” And I mean really, If our society can’t figure out this healthcare thing…we are truly pathetic.

Yang: We are bootstrapping a business. There is a great deal of pride in knowing that we are actually doing this. When we look back, we will never have to say, “I wonder what would have happened if…”

Yin: There is the stress of no financial routine. I am a creature of habit and I love predictability. These days, it’s all sweating by the seat of our pants. No regular paycheck means the days tick off like a gruesome metronome until M-Day. Mortgage. Erik and I have this lip biting look we give each other – It’s a cross between I know we can do this, and holy shit.

Yang: There are actually humans out there who provide services and possess a soul. I believe Lenny our mechanic is the leading example. When we went to pay for our car brakes with plastic he said, “I don’t believe in credit cards, have run my business 30 years without ‘em. You can post date me a check if you need to.” And God Bless Lenny.

Yin: I had 3 credit cards that I had paid off years ago. They had a combined excellent available credit that I was saving for a rainy day. Now that it’s raining, the majority of our available credit limit has disappeared. After all of those years of responsible payment and good credit standing, and when I really needed it…poof.

I could keep going – But, I think that’s enough for now. Yin and Yang. Shadow and Light. We must have both – Neither can exist without the other. And, shadows and light are what truly make the picture interesting.