“You can always come back.”
I’ve been blessed to hear that phrase pretty much everywhere I’ve worked, but the magnetic force of one particular organization seems to be greater than any other. The call came mid-August, and of course, they wanted me to start the next week. So I loaded up the car (the dog and multiple dog beds included) and headed north, back to where I’d started this crazy career path and first caught a glimpse of what I’m doing today.
Because God is funny, I was even given a spot in the building where I originally worked, starry-eyed and fresh out of grad school. I was even on the same floor, just a few cubes over, and swear my old chair was still there. A few familiar faces greeted me immediately -- old colleagues, all sincerely happy to see me. But that first morning of the very first meeting, once all the squeals of surprise and “Where are you now? What are doing?” conversations had subsided, I began to notice the changes. It was more than the new cast of characters around the table, it was the tone... the tactics... the focus.
Gone were the feature stories from disaster scenes that I used to canvass the country writing. Out were the unscripted comments, the unstaged photographs, and to some degree, the principle that always guided me while in response mode = serve people first. Twitter and facebook and pre-fab stories had replaced any semblance of real reporting. Quantity had replaced quality, and just about everything was about spin.
Then the emails started, filled with edicts and demands from people I had never even met before. There was no “Hello, Bonnie. My name is ... and my job here is ... my request relates to ....” Instead, it was more like, "I need you to do this in one hour. Thanks." To say I was astounded is an understatement, and I felt myself slipping back into a mindset I’d left behind more than a year before.
I essentially took an escape hatch out of my last job into a headlong quest to find my joy again. Amazingly, thankfully, I feel like I’ve pretty much done that and have settled into a lifestyle relatively free from stress and drama. After being catapulted back into an office soap opera, though, I had to admit that my own potential to fire off snarky emails was definitely still there, not so far from surface. Thoughts of the garden (literally stopping to smell the roses), prayers and nearly daily visits with old friends helped keep things in perspective, and I walked through those weeks with little attachment to a very temporary situation.
As much as the work part of the trip was exhausting, I left profoundly grateful for where I am now and the insane amount of freedom I’ve been blessed with. I can get up at 6 or 10 in the mornings. I can wear pajamas to work or my bathrobe. I can be a photographer or writer or advocate or trainer or gardener or beekeeper or dog walker or chef. I think one reason joy has exploded back into my life is that I finally have room to breathe, to think, to grow… and to just be. In those brief weeks experiencing again a life I left behind, I realized that there was little space for any of that, and I moved past the notion that I could “always go back again” to knowing that I didn’t really want to.
Ok, truthfully, there’s one gigantic reason I can think of to go back… friends. The joy of reconnecting with so many fabulous people made every moment of office drama 110% worthwhile. We wined and dined all over the District and Del Ray, just like the good old days. I hung out on porches, lingered over brunches, and relished in homemade Indian food. But most of all, the cumulative conversation of those weeks refilled the gas tank of heart in a way that only amazing friends can.
The familiar things of places I once called home nurtured my soul as well. I loved riding the Metro, walking on the Mall, and going to my old church. I looked over Charles Villlage’s unmistakable rooftops and strolled with Maz in Wyman Park Dell, just as we used to every afternoon. I even stopped to peer up toward my old balcony and saw remnants of my Tibetan prayer flags, still tangled around the cable and electric wires, a little reminder that I’d left a piece of myself behind... and did again.
