Between a Laugh and a Tear

When the Heartache is Over

Across the Universe

Feel a little like this....




When I want to feel more like this...

Not Married

Jessica Ravitz

So I have to say sometimes the thing you need to make you smile after a break up (<- blog posting on that once the tears subside) isn't your many wonderful friends and family telling you they love you, telling you they know it's hard to believe but the pain will go away, not them telling you they're sorry. Sometimes what you need is an older (and slightly more vocal) person telling you (via internet CNN article) that it's okay to not be married and that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

Thank you Jessica Ravitz for "Why I'm not married (and it's not because I'm an angry slut)" (I do want to acknowledge that as of right now, no, I haven't read the article she's referring too. I didn't think it proper timing to find out "why [I'm] not married" a few hours after my heart was broken by the man I thought I was going to spend my life with)

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Why I'm not married (and it's not because I'm an angry slut)

(CNN) -- Jessica Ravitz

Tracy McMillan has gotten under my single-status skin.

Tracy McMillan

I'm not sure how it took nearly a week for her Huffington Post column, "Why You're Not Married," to land in front of me, but it finally did. And now I'm fired up -- not in an angry way but in the sort of way that made me skip to my desk, excited to type.

To hear it from the thrice-divorced McMillan, I'm 41 and not married because of one (or more?) of six reasons: I'm a bitch, a slut, a liar, shallow, selfish or not good enough.

Wow. Is that all? Maybe I smell, too.

I'll be the first to admit I've got issues (c'mon, who doesn't?), but I'm not owning these. Perhaps she was talking about why her own marriages failed or was simply setting out to get a rise, which she did brilliantly. And while I've been guilty of occasional transgressions that might fit in some of those unflattering boxes, McMillan doesn't touch why I'm not married.

Based on the buzz surrounding her conversation-starting piece, I'm laying down and lining up behind reason number seven: Life happens.

Before reading on, know that I am not and refuse to be woe-is-me. Like Jennifer Aniston, minus the killer body and bank account, I'm happy. Really, I am. I skipped to my desk, dammit.

Of course I'd love to meet and marry that one and only, but in the meantime I'm living my life, and I'm taking everything that's been given me on the journey.

Maybe, like me, that's where you are, too.

Maybe you spent your adolescence clashing with a stepfather who didn't get you emotionally. And maybe the father who did get you had been relegated by the courts, when you were 2 and your parents divorced, to every-other-weekend access. Maybe your first love cheated on you, just around the time a second divorce rolled through your family. So maybe your faith in men and marriage was a little shaken before you teased your hair for the prom.

But that's nothing some therapy and better hair sense can't fix, right?

Maybe you're a searcher with a healthy dose of wanderlust, someone who needed time to commit to furniture, let alone a man, because there was so much you needed to see, do and become.

Maybe you were and still are a hopeful (I refuse to say hopeless) romantic who for years held a candle for the one you thought was The One. He'd changed your life, after all, when he lured you to Israel (though it could have been Thailand, for all you cared) -- allowing you to claim that Jewish side of yourself you'd never embraced before.

And maybe he slipped and called you his soul mate at one point, a statement you caught and remembered. So even after you read the diary he'd left out, oops, learned about the Brazilian woman with amazing eyes, broke up and dated others, you still held out hope for him. You stupidly took the crumbs he tossed you from time to time and thought they had meaning. Finally, you got through your thick noggin that the guy just wasn't that into you. Hell, he wasn't even all that nice to you. You learned he wasn't the one who got away. He was the one who got in the way.

Then, maybe you met the one who was that into you. He loved and respected you like no man had before. And the dog -- how could you not fall for the man and his dog? One day, while taking a break from kayaking, when you least expected it, maybe he pulled out a ring and asked you to marry him.

Maybe you said yes but then freaked out. You couldn't eat dinner, and you love dinner. Maybe you snuck out of the B&B in the middle of the night. You found a pay phone and called your father, with whom you'd grown profoundly close, sobbing. Maybe you were seized by fear. But everyone around you, including your therapist, said they expected nothing less, given your family history. They even said it would be weird if you didn't freak out. So you were engaged to be married.

But maybe after you moved to a new state and settled into engaged life, you still worried. That fear, that inkling that something was missing or wrong, grew stronger. Maybe you became a genius at dodging wedding questions. Maybe you lost countless hours of sleep, watching him and the dog as they slept peacefully, struggling with what you felt. You didn't want to quit the race, but at some point you knew with painful clarity there was a hurdle you two couldn't clear. So maybe, out of your love for him and yourself, you handed back the ring and left. Maybe you wished you could share custody of the dog.

Maybe, even as you licked those wounds in your pathetic little apartment, you began to appreciate your courage. You learned to trust yourself more. You realized your past didn't define your future; you did. And then, maybe when you were finally prepared to date again, you woke up a single Jew living in Utah.

But being a single Jew in Utah wouldn't matter, because then life tossed you a doozy that put the pain of a called-off engagement to shame.

Maybe you suddenly lost your father. Being emotionally available for someone else wasn't something you could even entertain. Now you had an excuse not to date.

But maybe you knew that your dad -- not to mention your amazing mom and stepmom, and your now-gentler ex-stepdad -- wanted nothing more than for you to love and be loved. So when you were ready, with a fresh start in a new city, you were excited to put yourself out there again.

Maybe you were approaching 40 when you arrived in the South. Maybe you were slapped across the face with the reminder that most people your age are married with children. Maybe you went to a singles event and became convinced you were the oldest one there, so you ducked out early.

But maybe you held onto hope and optimism. You sucked up your pride and whipped up an online dating profile. You found out that men in Belgium, as well as men with odd fetishes and offensively bad grammar and spelling, have a thing for you. You received horrifying -- yet hysterical -- notes from suitors that made for great Facebook status updates.

Maybe you agreed to go on dates you dreaded because you were determined to have an open mind. Maybe you learned you had good reasons to dread those dates. You wolfed down a nice piece of salmon as one man told you, within the first hour of meeting, that he cheated on his wife, still loves his ex-girlfriend and didn't go to his own father's funeral. Maybe you thought you should charge him for therapy.

But maybe you still believe there's someone great out there for you. You're ready, you know you have so much to give, and you look forward to meeting him -- wherever and whenever that might be.

And in the meantime, you know you have a lot to be grateful for. Maybe you have a career you love, and through the stories of suffering you hear, you know that if still being single is your biggest problem, you are damn lucky.

Sure, you might be a bitch, a slut, a liar, shallow, selfish or not good enough. Maybe, though, you happen to be 41 and single because life, real life with all its complications, has just worked out that way. So far.

But, hey, what do I know? Maybe that's just me.

Confessions of a Multiple-Career Personality

My friend Jenny posted this article today. While it doesn't necessarily resonate with me (the majority of my adult life has been spent working in higher education) I know that there are many who will connect with the article. So here it is:

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Confessions of a multiple-career personality
by Rob Baedeker
Tuesday, March 22, 2011

What do you do? What's your story? Can you explain it in a word or two?

If you're in one of the traditional professions, or have worked for several years for the same company, or within the same industry, perhaps your career traces a neat trajectory, with one job building logically to the next.

But even then, things might not be so simple -- and if you're among the growing number of freelancers in the labor force, constructing a career on your own, piece by piece, or if you're someone who's made an abrupt career shift or who juggles a number of different career identities simultaneously, it can often be difficult to compose the bigger picture of your work life.

For example: I'm writing at the moment in my role as "Money Tales" columnist. But that's not the whole story. For the past decade I've written and produced comedy projects with the group Kasper Hauser, its position in my career and income ebbing and flowing over the years. I've also taught college English classes, edited books on Chinese business and neuropsychology, written for education and luxury-travel publications and, before that, served up cheeseburgers while wearing roller skates.

One could argue (as I have, at times, to myself, in the anxious hours before sleep) that my collection of jobs lacks a through-line -- a logical progression. You could say I have multiple career personalities.

But is this a disorder, or simply a different kind of "order"?

The fact that I'm searching for order at all points to a deeper, universal impulse. "Narrative and storytelling are at the core of human life," says Toni Littleston, a career counselor and coach in Alameda. "People want to make sense of their life story."

We're also encouraged to market ourselves all the time with short, simple stories. Think of the succinct "objective" on a resume or the "elevator pitch" to investors.

But stitching together a career narrative from disparate parts and pieces can be particularly challenging, Littleston says: "The model of moving up the company ladder used to be a common pattern. But now it's almost completely gone. People who long for that don't find it to be available."

That longing is also "a bit of an illusion," Littleston says. The era of single, stable, long-term jobs was an historical anomaly. "That hasn't been the way of career life throughout history at all," Littleston explains. "It was just the blink of an eye."

And even if that standard career narrative were still widely available, many of us might opt for a less unified tale -- even if it's harder to tell, both to others and to ourselves.

Jennifer Hewett, 36, describes herself as a "print maker and business consultant." Monday through Thursday she works on-site at several small-business clients, managing their human-resources operations. Friday through Sunday she creates art from her home studio in San Francisco's Sunset District. She sells her work online through her Etsy shop.

Hewett says she sometimes has a hard time telling the story of her career to others -- like her mom, who retired after 30 years in the same job as a receptionist at Kaiser Permanente.

"My mom keeps asking, 'When is one of your clients going to bring you on full time and give you benefits?'" she says. "And I tell her, 'That's not the point. The point is that I only work four days a week. And I get to pick and choose clients I want to work with. And I can take a month off to travel if I want.'"

"In my mom's eyes, I'm not investing time in a career, so what's going to happen when I hit 65?" she adds. "Am I ever going to be able to make a ton of money or buy a house, or retire?"

To Hewett, the benefits of her freelance, hybrid career outweigh the greater stability that might come from a more straightforward work-trajectory. She says she's found concurrent careers that are both "interesting and satisfying, and not soul-crushing" like some full-time jobs she's had in the past.

But she also admits she's faced dilemmas when deciding how to present her dual career identities to co-workers.

Recently, when a financial consultant she was working with in her human-resources role asked her why she didn't work on Fridays, Hewett revealed that she was also a printmaker.

"He was stunned," she recalls. "He asked if I had a website, and I was reluctant to share it. It was this weird boundary I wasn't sure I wanted to cross."

Toni Littleston says this kind of persona-management challenge is common among those, like artists, who follow parallel but unrelated careers.

"I have lots of clients who have two lives -- where they have their bread-and-butter life, and then their artistic life," she says. "And they often find it requires more skill than they thought it would to present themselves in way that's authentic, and not apologetic or condescending."

As Hewett discovered, the proliferation of digital identities can complicate the stories we tell about our career. When her curious co-worker asked for her art website, Hewett's first thought was, "I just need you to think of me as the HR person. I don't want you on my blog or Twitter or Facebook. You can contact me on [the professional networking site] LinkedIn." (In the end, Hewett shared her printmaking website with him).

Social media have forced me to grapple with career-identity boundaries, too. From my Twitter persona, I write absurd jokes (warning: not for everyone, and occasionally NSFW!), which are connected to my alter-ego as a comedy writer, but which have nothing to do with, say, real-world money tales, and might seem irrelevant (or confusing) to some of my other freelance clients.

And while I may feel anxious about trying to tie together all of the aspects of my career into a neat story, perhaps I should just get over it. When I e-mailed the entrepreneur and blogger Penelope Trunk to ask about the role of narrative unity in career, she asked me to tell her my two-sentence career story.

I went on and on for two paragraphs about my different experiences, excusing my wordiness as a gesture of transparency about the lack of coherence of my career.

"I don't think it's transparent, I think it's b.s.," she replied. "We all feel that we are good at some things; we each have had some odd, successful experiences; but we don't need to list them all. Framing yourself in a way that has focus and leaves out the majority of your life is a way to make things easier for the listener. Including all the random stuff you have done is a way for you to feel like you're special and great and every little thing matters, but that doesn't let people get close to you or understand you." Littleston echoed this sentiment: "Instead of just saying, 'Let me tell you all about me,' (people with complicated career stories) need to find ways of including their listener in their story -- of being inviting and intelligible."

Still, though, you've got to tell a satisfying story to yourself.

And beyond the steady progression of money and security implied by a standard and singular career story, a purposeful narrative also connotes meaning.

"At the end of my career, I want to have created a significant body of work," says a colleague of mine who has also struggled with finding the unified narrative in his career. "I want to create something great."

And this is why the sense of jumping from job to job, or cobbling together loosely related fragments of work life (rather than following an intentional career trajectory) can be distressing. It gets at an existential reality: that life (and work) might be arbitrary -- they might not fit into a neat narrative.

Despite our hard-wired need to make sense of our lives through stories, says Littleton, "throughout the ages there have been philosophers who say it's all pretty random. That's fine, but that doesn't really help people."