The Adult Hangover

I woke up this morning with what I’ve decided is the new version of a hangover. My daily, obnoxious alarm rang out at 5:30 a.m. and was promptly snoozed…3 times. Somehow, the glue fairy must have snuck into our room during the night and securely fastened me to the bed. I could not peel myself off that mattress with all my might. And whatever mumbled, post-awakened conversation I had with Mr. Rathroy has been wiped from my memory. Did the dog get fed this morning? I’m still not sure. I feel fairly certain that I showered with my eyes closed and don’t think for a second that I bothered to wash my hair today. I was simultaneously starving and averse to food – coffee was the only thing I wanted – and putting on shoes was torture. Did heels seriously always hurt this bad?! I dragged my ass to an office that was completely empty and proceeded to march through my day. I’m an adult now – with a career and a house and a dog and a hangover. Only problem is, there was no alcohol involved.

As I creep toward 30, so does my social media feed. My entire network is making the transition into real adulthood. Not the adulthood that I panicked about when I turned 20 because my teens were officially over, and not the adulthood I stared at blankly when I graduated college (because really, does college prepare you for adulthood at all? Personally, I was at my most immature in college…). We all seem to be slowly absorbing and experiencing individual things that cumulatively make us grown ups – one wedding or baby’s first birthday at a time, and suddenly we’re slammed with the realization that we’re now the adults that some of us swore we’d never be.

Last night, rather than earning a hangover with booze and dancing and poor decisions about late night taco bell, I was at a work event. I mingled and scanned the silent auction and walked like 7 miles around the venue in heels. I even presented an award to someone on stage. It was a seriously grown up evening. But after a 13 hour day and not nearly enough sleep, I fear there’s not enough coffee in the world to pull me through this adult hangover.

Everyone talks about how much harder it is to deal with hangovers as you get older. I’ll admit that I’ve had some bad ones in my day. You know, the kind where you lay on the couch half dead all day trying to force down some ice water and pizza without gagging? And they have, admittedly, gotten worse as I get older. The open bar at the last wedding we attended almost killed me. But this…this exhausted, dehydration induced non-functioning adult hangover is maddening. Where are the funny stories or ridiculous pictures or confidence that you’re just enjoying life while you can? You know what picture I took last night? This one right after presenting an award to a wonderful colleague in my field.

And as lovely as that photo is and for how great the work event was, doesn’t it just make the 22 year-old inside cringe a little? I mean, if I’m going to be nonfunctional for an entire day, I’d at least like to have earned it with Jameson.

But, I guess I’ll eventually have to accept that I can’t stop adulthood from rushing toward me. And truthfully, I’ve been enjoying it more than I thought I would. There’s brunch and meaningful careers and silly spouse humor (mostly because Mr. Rathroy brings it to the table) and, if you’re lucky, disposable income so you can do things like go to Patagonia.

So while I’m not particularly overjoyed that working too hard gives me a hangover now, I can’t complain about working hard on something I love. Let’s be honest, I can’t complain about any of this at all.

Powers and Passions

Well, this was unexpected. In the span of 48 hours, I applied for, interviewed, and was offered a job. And even though I went into the interview thinking the job wouldn’t be for me, I was severely torn when I got the offer.

The process had been a whirlwind and they expressed such excitement over my application that the situation immediately escalated in my mind. I began to imagine my future with the company – full of pencil skirts, hand shakes and promotions in the heart of downtown. Truly, the opposite of my current path – full of muddy boots, low paychecks, and uncertainties. Wallowing on the floor of our living room, trying to decide between the two jobs, I watched my life divide into two possibilities in front of me.

After hours of conversations, pro-con lists, and even tears, I finally circled back around to the basics – the job that I was currently being offered was not what I wanted. Imagination and potential aside, the reality of the situation lent itself to a very easy decision. So when I got the call with an updated offer, I felt prepared. What I had not prepared for was a conference call with the position’s supervisor and the Executive Director of the organization selling me on the imagination and potential in this job. These two, successful, leading women called me to very earnestly persuade me to join them in a path filled with opportunity (and pencil skirts and promotions).

And I lost it.

Which direction should I choose? Where should I be steering my career? What if an opportunity like this never comes again? I circled through the exact same conversations, the same “what ifs” and the same wallowing. And then my mind exploded. I’ve spent my career educating and inspiring youth to become future environmental leaders. Was it time for me to realize that maybe I was one of them? Maybe this was my chance to kick “saving the world” up a notch and lead an organization into the next generation of environmental battlefields. But, instead of using my passion for education and direct interaction, I would be using my personality powers and morphing into a professional event organizer, fundraiser, and shmoozer. And holy hell would I be good at it. Almost everyone I talked to mentioned how perfectly suited I would be for that role – how naturally those things come to me. There was no question that I would excel at it, so was I just afraid to take the plunge?

I’m certainly no stranger to fear, and I have no problem calling it by name. I was very much afraid – of change, of failure, of making the wrong decision. But what I feared more than anything else on the list was turning away from my passion.

An amazing friend, who was also the first person to hire me out of college and catapulted me into the world of environmental education, talked through every step with me. We analyzed the nuances, the possibilities, the feelings and then we discovered it. It was the difference between my powers and my passions.

I possess certain personality traits – my boss qualities if you will – that make me really good at things this job was asking for. But those powers are innate and while I’ve chosen to own them, I didn’t really ask for them. What I have asked for, and what I strive every day for, is to make the world a better place by igniting a love of nature in others. My passions drive me to ignore salary ranges and promotion potential for the promise of watching a person realize for the first time that they are part of something so much bigger than themselves. My passions have caused me to chase ducks and hug trees and work weekends and suffer from farmer’s tans. They’re the entire reason that I work at all (I mean, aside from bills and stuff, but you get the idea). The path I’ve chosen is the only reason I have any faith left in humanity – if I can make them feel why it’s worth saving, maybe they’ll help me save it.

So, while I’m still young, while I have Mr. Rathroy to support me (in my decisions and our finances), and while I succumb to tears when I consider diverting from this path I’ve chosen, I’m going to push forward. I can always fall back on my personality powers, but not pursuing my passions for as long as possible is a choice I would forever regret. Maybe one day I’ll have the opportunity to combine them both and save the world single handedly. Until then, I’ll be out chasing ducks and hugging trees and watching other people light up when they do it too.

Sleepless Beauty

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been slowly smashed by a steam roller. And my face looked it – swollen, puffy and multi-colored. It had been a long night with frequent interruptions to my REM cycle, but there was more to it than that.

On top of the allergic reaction causing itchy welts all over my poor puppy, the week of backyard construction and TV filming, and a weekend full of friends (and booze), I was suffering from a severely punctured ego. An unfortunate interaction earlier in the day had shattered my carefully (and slowly) built confidence and I feared the worst – that I might forever retreat back to my cave of pacifism where I spent so many years simply doing as I was told.

After surviving the confrontation and sucking in any tears that threatened my big girl face for the rest of the day, I pushed forward. I worked out, I helped cook dinner, I even meditated and convinced myself that I had moved on. But, it only took about 15 minutes of relaxing on the couch with Mr. Rathroy for me to lose my shit.

At that moment, I needed an insane amount of positive reinforcement and affection, which of course I opted not to communicate (because sometimes I can be ridiculous). I sat on the couch, watching water levels rise in my eyes and anger levels rise in my brain because he wasn’t fixing it. And we hit meltdown Mach 3. By the time I realized it was going to externalize, it was too late to wrangle. I did my best to compose a sentence as my face squished into ugly cry and my voice disappeared into a squeak.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll decide you don’t like me anymore.”

Holy abandonment issues, Batman.

The wounding interaction that I thought I had survived was only burrowing deeper. Like a porcupine quill in my subconscious, it dug all the way down to the center of my insecurities and my only choice now was to pull it out the other side.

Like the superhero he is, Mr. Rathroy sprang into action – genuinely listening and intently comforting. He let all the contents of my bottled up fears spill out as I tugged, painfully at the barb that had punctured the facade of “fine” that I’d created without even realizing it. I traced my fears of imperfection all the way back to the 5th grade when I had lost my homework and received a pink slip warning that nearly killed me. Nearly my entire life, I’ve been convinced that any mis-step, any imperfection, any mistake would render me worthless. And despite intensive investment in healthy and healing practices, I realize now that I may never be rid of that fear.

But, while that evening devolved into sleepless hysterics, the lessons I’m choosing to learn are much more beautiful. I can feel my fear. I feel it ping my heart like a hot needle. Lately, I’ve been choosing to ignore the ping or even tell it to go away. I force it out of my mind and muddle through the task at hand. But, this sleepless night, this Mach 3 meltdown, this confidence crushing confrontation, has reminded me that only I can control how I feel. No one else made me feel bad or made me feel better, not even Mr. Rathroy. That’s my job. When I’m honest with myself and acknowledge my feelings, even my fears, I stand a far better chance of staying stable, even after a jolting experience.

Don’t get me wrong. It is terrifying to face your demons. Why do you think so many people are walking around with them? But, the better you know yourself, the better you can build a happy and healthy life.  And that sounds like a pretty sweet kind of life to me. So, tonight’s blissful sleep will be thanks to my fears being realized and my courage to face them. I always thought that being brave would manifest externally, but the bravest I’ve ever been was when I chose to look inward, and never turn back.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Entryway Bench

It has been a week, folks. A week that started with me reciting, “Kelly and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” on Monday morning and feels like it may never end.

I’m transitioning out of two of my jobs and back into just the one full time original job. Which, I guess in this awful land of grown ups, just means that I get more work to do. If someone could do the math on that and let me know how it makes any sense at all, that would be great.

We’re also in the throes of a monster furniture build. Good friends contributed pretty heavily to our electronics collection (i.e. Xbox) so when they mentioned they wanted an entry way bench, we were all like, “Tradesies?”

This project has raised the bar – for our tool collection, our skill set, our patience, and our tolerance for working after work. Between Mr. Rathroy’s creative vision (and extreme talent) and my organizational brainpower, we created a design, calendared our deliverables, delegated actions, and went full-bore into the business of building. And it has been no joke.

Our evenings are filled with sawdust and power tools. And with 8:30 p.m. dinners and bedtimes that are way too late for us. And since Mr. Rathroy’s techniques often lead to artisan joints and precision routing that can only be done by one person, I support however I can.

I man the shop-vac. I round corners with the hand-sander (and they are smooth corners, let me tell you). I pick up all the things that he throws down throughout the house after his office job because he needs to get to work in the garage as quickly as possible. And I cook. And oh sweet Jesus do I hate defaulting to that stereotype.

Because I’ve had a more flexible schedule, I usually take it upon myself to plan the menu and do the shopping. And I’m usually head chef when it comes time to cook, but I always know that Mr. Rathroy will help anytime (and has been known to kick me out of the kitchen completely for throwing a tantrum about how much I hate being stuck in the kitchen). But with my sub-par woodworking skills, and a quickly approaching deadline, it’s clear that my service to our marital partnership is needed elsewhere. And I made it up until tonight.

Tonight, I ordered pizza. And while it soothed my rage toward our stovetop, it did not remove the dark cloud brooding over my head. The dark cloud that made me snap at Mr. Rathroy and loose patience with Piper. The dark cloud that has been hovering over my optimism and makes me resent this bench, our tiny garage, and even my husband’s work-ethic because they’re all taking away the relaxation time with Mr. Rathroy that I so look forward to each day. They’re all the reason that I only get to see my husband through clouds of sawdust and the reason we can’t have a conversation because his mind is too pre-occupied with the details of his design. It’s the bench’s fault that the pizza was so expensive and that my dog barks at the mailman and that I’m still tired when I wake up in the morning. Right? RIGHT?!

I wish I could blame this project, but I know that’s not a real solution. We chose to take this on, just like we always choose the most challenging of all the options. We bought an old house. We got married in the forest during wildfire season. We honeymooned in one of the harshest places in the world. And it just is not always sunshine and butterflies. Sometimes it’s tense, scary, infuriating and unbelievably frustrating. Sometimes I have meltdowns and sometimes Mr. Rathroy gets tired of dealing with them. And sometimes, he finds me stress eating spoonfuls of Nutella before bed.

But after each adventure is over, we’re immediately looking for the next one, and I don’t think it’s because we’re gluttons for punishment. I think it’s because we love to learn, love to create, love to challenge ourselves, and love to strengthen our relationship through working together. Most of the time, we laugh at our stupid mistakes, we dance when a good song comes on, we find the fun in the work we’re doing together. The sunshine and butterflies might not always be obvious, but you can create them if you try.