How To Restart Your Life
Move across the country, start a new career, or both.
In 2009, the life I thought was solidifying into a long-term trajectory suddenly crashed into the ground: I was laid off from my well-paying, perfectly-houred job at a law firm, my relationship of 6+ years dissolved, and my beloved 8 year old dog Sophie died, all in the course of 5 months. A perfect life-scorching hat trick.
The first year was actually not the hardest — the hard part was re-entering the world, once it came time to actually rebuild a sustainable new life that didn’t consist solely of movies, bike rides, and medical marijuana. I’d collected all 99 weeks of my unemployment while applying to hundreds and hundreds of positions and only got one in-person interview the entire two years (which came solely as a favor from a friend of a friend, I never really had a chance at the job). The grief and shock dissipated, the reality of creating a life arrived, and I was freaked out.
Job-wise I’ve always bounced from opportunity to opportunity, not all of them wonderful, but few terrible. The universe wasn’t letting me coast anymore, I couldn’t find any doors randomly left open for me to stumble into, it was time to figure out what I really wanted and start building it.
Research Yourself.
Sit down to figure out what color your parachute is, whether that means doing a cheesy workbook, reading a backlog of your journal entries, interviewing your friends and family about yourself, or some combination of it all. I’ve always been interested in how bodies work and heal, but didn’t want to go to med school; I’ve been curious to how Traditional Chinese Medicine works and where it intersects with Western medicine; I like having direct, intimate interactions with individuals and helping empower people; I wanted something that wasn’t sitting at a desk in front of a computer or working 9-5 hours — all these things led me to shiatsu school, where I could train to be a bodyworker and start my own business without giving up my freelance writing. In fact, they complement each other perfectly.
I also realized that I was done with the city. I wanted trees, landscapes, green, as well as a new cultural landscape. The mass of people I previously found exhilerating and inspiring now contributed to my anxiety. I wanted a smaller, quieter life in tune to the cycles of seasons, closer to nature. I wanted my daily rhythms to be more like the retreats I attended.
Embrace All of Your Experiences.
I realized that my life as a dilettante was not a detriment or sign of my inability to commit: it was a treasure chest of experiences I could weave together to create something new. Every volunteer gig, every community theater production, every performance I DJed, every article I proofread, every personal ad I wrote for a friend — these were tangible skills in fields such as marketing, research, and development, I just didn’t notice because I was having fun while doing them. I’d been taught that fun was for hobbies and work was for work, when the reality is that doing the work and enjoying yourself can go together in every action we take, whether it’s building a website, producing a drag show, or folding laundry.
Learn From People Living Your Dream.
I never begrudged anyone for doing things I wish I could do, but I was always quick to think I couldn’t be like them. My inner voice was filled with “I could never….” or “I’m not that way…” or other general “I can’t” sentiments. Then I started to actually pay attention to the details of how people got to their dreams and realized, oh, I could totally do that. I started working part-time for entrepreneurs and small businesses. I paid attention to the process of my friends moving cross country. I made lists of steps and every item was something I was either already familiar with or could learn easily. I realized that plenty of people were running businesses who had less education or fewer skills than me, maybe even started off with less experience, and they were actually doing just fine.
Having lived in one city for so long, I also said goodbye to many good friends who left to pursue their dreams. When it was my turn to have a farewell party, it was very odd to be on the other side, and when I was massively depressed in the winter time alone in the house in my new city, I would remember all those friends who had walked this exact path and my heart would swell with understanding, love, and respect for the experience they’d had which I was completely shielded from. I’d text or poke them online and tell them as such, and in turn they’d frequently reassure all my feelings were valid, normal…and that they’d pass. Friends make you smarter. They also keep you from wandering too close to the ledge.
Make an Outline.
A grad school mentor once forced me to outline my entire novel and I hated it every second of it, because I didn’t yet know how it was going to end. “I don’t care, make something up and do it…you can always revise it later.” Turned out it’s not that I didn’t know the ending, it’s that I’d never sat down to really think the story through to the end, which is what outlining forced me to do. Once the outline was on paper, the task of writing a novel was broken down into chapters, which I broke down further into scenes, and writing a scene is a lot less daunting than writing a novel. I did more writing in 4 months than I had in 2 years and suddenly had a full (rough) draft.
When I decided to change careers and leave the city I’d known for 17+ years to start a whole new life, I made a timeline, which is basically an outline of the novel of my life. I picked dates for things to happen. Things got revised as needed, but to be honest, once I initially committed, it was easy to lock in and go along with the plan. Then suddenly it was December and I was graduating from shiatsu school and making reservations for movers. I often thought I was poor at following through on commitments, but turns out I wasn’t so good at literally making them. Once the steps were decided, dates were named based on the amount time for each step, and I got started, it was remarkably easy to keep the ball rolling and finish.
You’re Always Going To Fail, But You Don’t Have To Be A Failure.
By which I mean, you either make the leap and totally screw up bad or you sit at home paralyzed by life and just keep hitting play-next-episode. Might as well fail while doing something exhilerating. Might as well fail while doing something you love, something that intrigues and excites you. This last part was hard for me to learn: I was afraid to do what I loved, to try something unexpected, to wander from the path of sensible careers and expectations. I had to fail at being sensible to get over being a failure. The first big fail is always the hardest. If I could take my old self out for a drink, I would encourage myself to run faster, harder, and sooner towards my first big failure so that I could get on with the business of doing what I love.
Then again, I don’t want to get stuck in a cycle of failing at failing. Sure, I waited this long, but I could also have waited longer. I’m notorious for being hard on myself, including criticizing my inability to stop being so hard on myself. Like the Hulk who realized he must always stay angry to manage the rage, I stopped trying to fight my tendencies and instead turn them onto different topics, working in the direction of my strengths. I’m hard on parsing out ideas, on managing to-do lists, on finding the best research, on problem-solving projects, on getting up again and again and again — I guide myself away from being hard on people, including myself. I maybe can’t quit being hard on things, but I can change what that something is.
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I don’t have any regular shiatsu clients yet, my license only came in the mail a couple weeks ago. I am behind on bills but still need to shell out cash for insurance and register my business name, so that I can start my practice and bring in more money. I’m only 2/3 done with my new business website. I also injured my ankle this summer and I’ll need to apply all those healing practitioner skills to myself to make it through physical therapy. But one year ago, I was in Chicago and still studying for exams and living in my friends’ basement. Today I woke up in a house with my own office on a North Carolina mountain with a great view. I’m only at the beginning of this new life and it’s still frequently hard, but it’s mine and it’s going somewhere I’ve never been. Hitting the restart button means I’m not stuck in the epilogue of the last story.
A. Raymond Johnson likes to putter around at I Fry Mine In Butter, on Twitter (@raymondj), and araymondjohnson.com. He will soon be helping folks via MountainZenShiatsu.com.
