Dropping Out of Your Life

Recently, I find myself evaluating how some significant changes might play out in my semi near future. I’m approaching my nine-year anniversary with my current employer (wait, what, how?), I’m getting married next year, I’d like to start a family, I’m hoping to jump into a master’s program and I’m trying to design what I’d really like to see my 30s look like.

I have some lofty goals; I’ve always had lofty goals. My intensity and ambition have been a part of my sense of self since as long as I’ve been aware of my sense of self. For every no I hear, I white knuckle through as close to my initial plan as I possibly can. I’m often that way, hardheaded, typically unwilling to change tracks based on the feedback of others. It’s part of what makes me really good, I’m a really good achiever. Always have been, I like parameters, I like measuring, I like understanding where I’m tracking against a goal. And that makes me really good at a one-track focus.

I feel a shift as I walk into my 30s. I found my partner, I realized I really really do want to be a mom, I’d love to be a business owner, and I finally realized you have to decide.

I concentrate on work. As I walked out of graduation, I stared petrified up at a seemingly insurmountable pile of student loan debt and so I got to work. I discovered my career in recruiting early, I initially planned to become a psychologist. However, I finished my psych BA at the ripe age of 19, at that point I thought it might be reasonable to add a business degree and get some life experience before I started charging for the advice I wanted to dole out. So, I did just that, I added a Marketing major and graduated 2 years later at 21.

And then I discovered commission.

So, I’ve been building a recruiting firm alongside the founders for the last nearly ten years. I’ve designed my own job descriptions, been included in meetings I had no business being in, seen the darker side of being a woman in corporate environments, learned difficult lessons about client and professional relationships and whole heartedly sought a place at the table.

But then I realized I wanted to build my own table.

If you’re reading this, you’re seeing my initial attempt to test the waters. I found my drive tied in with my embracing who I really am. I’m anxious, I’m intense, I’m solely focused, I struggle to keep a lot of plates in the air. It’s tough to admit, but it’s been a real learning experience for me to realize you have to choose. We get sold this whole story that we can have it all. And we can’t, I call bullshit. I am a finite being. I wish I wasn’t – I know there are so many of us who are having this same challenge to reconcile that truth.

I’m in no way resigning myself to mediocrity. I’m prepared to be excellent. I just need help. And I am bad at asking for help, but I think it’s the secret. You have to staff your weaknesses. You have to know yourself well enough to understand where you need that help. If you want to make changes, if you want to elevate you, have to be able to drop out of your life.

Find ways to productively drop out of your life. Retreats, rest (hate her too) and time to think, or in my case whiteboard like a maniac. You need to be able to create enough space to stop and work on the state of things rather than constantly be in the state of things to progress and allow room for change.

It also goes back to why I want to build my own table to be honest. I recognized, I have always been someone with a certain amount of productive paranoia, ensuring my bases are covered at all times; but what does it mean when your paranoia produces more for others than for you? That’s where I’ve gotten to and it’s pushed me to examine where I can pull back and where I can expand my capacity. I want to allow room for creative ventures, side hustles, examining new opportunities and if I’m rooted in my one-dimensional identity: recruiting executive rather than future wife, dog mom, future human mom, creative writer, future therapist, author and recruiting executive; I’m cutting out a lot of options.

And, on a teary phone call with my mom discussing the pressure I feel to do it all – I realized you can’t. You have to choose. You have to select your priority and then your focuses. Then you can create an intentional plan on how you grow with them – you can be less one track minded than I once was, but you have to ask for help in the other categories. You are a finite being (in the best way), you can only handle so much all the time. Work demands ebb and flow, things are dynamic but when your goal is always more, you’re going to fall short if you don’t make space for help and time to drop out of your life and re-evaluate and install different processes and operational focus. Think of a company, when there’s a need for expansion – you hire.  

I’d encourage you to evaluate how much support really exists in your collective, in your family, in your work environment. Challenge the perceptions you hold of your relationships, are they really as reciprocal as you envision, they are? Are your needs being met when you do ask for help or advice or even discussion? Is it time to expand your network? I absolutely love the group I work alongside but I quickly realized, they’ve been my main professional interactions for about a decade! It’s okay to seek out other people to learn from and develop alongside!  

I’d also encourage you to give yourself grace in times of altered circumstances. I still grapple with the idea that there are going to be years that feel like growth and expansion and ones that might feel more like a return to your internal, cerebral life. 2019 is the example for me, my dad had cancer and I was terrified. I turned internal, my work suffered, my emotional state suffered, but my ability to show up for my dad flourished.

You have to realize that there are so many ways to measure success and if you consistently measure it using income, achievement or other external factors, you might not consider a year like that success. I didn’t then but I can now. As we all navigate the collective experience that a year like 2020 brought us, I hope it shows you your own resilience.

Don’t stay so stuck in who you think you are just because you’ve done it a certain way for a long time. Drop out and look with open eyes and see if you’re moving in the direction you’d like to be. Challenge your own assumptions about yourself, you might end up really liking who you find.