Getting Out of My Funk

I have been a little down in the dumps recently, to the extent that when I mentioned to some friends that I thought I might be depressed, one of them said "You are!" with the conviction of someone who was watching things fall apart in front of her. I went home and asked Mountain Man if he thought I was depressed, and he asked if I felt depressed...and when I thought about it honestly, my response was that I did.

I'm not a sad person, and I generally have an optimistic attitude. But all that has been happening at PubCo has made me sad. What made me really sad is that a friend of mine put in her resignation last week. She doesn't have anything lined up, but she is so unhappy here that she just had to get out. Another friend put in her resignation yesterday for similar reasons. Both already seem much happier - even with all the worry and stress that not having a job in two weeks brings.

My sadness has been evident to a lot of people, most notably, my boss. I think I've mentioned before that I think my boss is great. She sincerely cares about her employees - and not just about how they're doing at PubCo, but also how they're doing in life. And last week she let me know that she could tell I haven't been happy and asked me what I've been thinking about PubCo and about my job. And I had to let it all out.

I don't need to go into things too much, but I did let her know that I have been researching culinary schools and that my goal would be to start classes in January, thereby ending my time at PubCo. And her first response wasn't to try to convince me to stay or to throw money at me or anything like that. Her first response was to say that it made sense that I would want to do something that I was passionate about, that I loved, that I was good at, and that matched with my values. And then she went on to ask which programs I was looking at and even suggested a program one of her friends went through.

After 15 minutes of that, we looped back to things here - why I wanted to leave, what wasn't working, and what I wanted to do in the next few months, before I find out about culinary school. My answer was easy - in the meantime, I'm going to continue doing my job. That's the only thing I can do - and if I can do anything to help things for my colleagues and friends, then I would do that too. She let me know that there was no need for the higher-ups to know all of this until everything was certain, which makes me feel a little safer than I might otherwise.

After this very intense conversation, I left to have lunch with a new friend who knows what's been happening, and after I told her about my talk with my boss, she said "you seem so much happier than the last time we had lunch." Another friend suggested that her picking up on that should be a sign that this is the right decision.

Over the weekend, Mountain Man and I took a little road trip, and the whole time, all I could think about was the bakery and new ideas for baked goods. But when I came home, and Mountain Man had to leave for a few days for an interview, I got sad again. But it was a different kind of sad.

This was the kind that isn't only sad, but is also questioning and doubting and putting me down, and thoughts of "you can't do this" and "what makes you think you'll succeed" and "you're crazy for leaving a steady job" started running through my head. I got up to try out a pie idea I had with all of those thoughts tainting everything, and I blame those thoughts on the fact that I forgot to add sugar to the pie and that I didn't add enough liquid to make it a true, gooey pie. When I took it out of the oven, there were no bubbling juices and the fruit was still a little crunchy. The nasty thoughts came rushing back and I spent the rest of the afternoon moping about how I'm not a pie genius like the girl from The Waitress, and things like this happen to me all the time when I bake. I don't have enough basic knowledge yet to know exactly what needs to go into a recipe to make it work perfectly the first time. So I moped, and I sighed, and I even cried a little.

And then I got sick of myself and had to force those nasty thoughts out of my head. No one is automatically great at anything, unless they are a genius or a child prodigy. People have to work at things to be good at them. Culinary school will teach me the basic skills, and in the meantime, I get to try and maybe fail but always try again at making something truly delicious. And anyway, it's not worth it to be sad about things you can't change - the only thing you can change is how you react to those things and what you can do for yourself.

I do think Dolly Parton helped me out of this funk a bit - on our road trip, I visited a Cracker Barrel for the first time and bought a Dolly Parton CD from the gift shop, which included a song called "Better Get to Livin'". All the lyrics can be read here, but I'll leave you with this verse:

I said you'd better get to livin', givin'
Be willing and forgivin'
Cause all healing has to start with you
You better stop whining, pining
Get your dreams in line
And then just shine, design, refine
Until they come true
And you better get to livin'