What Happened - Part 1

Because it's been a year of incredible change, and because there has to be a time when I stop, and look back, and put some form on the story, make it a narrative and have, not closure but a vantage point, I've been feeling the need to write this post.  For friends and family and people who might learn something from it that they want to learn, but mostly for me.

I decided the story should really begin about two and a half years ago in the spring of 2013 when two things happened - I became set to be the "last man standing" of a three person team that had run my workplace for a decade, and that same week I got the opportunity to receive free coaching from someone who was training to be a coach.  My coaching goal was to put myself in the best possible position to succeed with the changes that were happening at my work.

A few things stand out from the coaching, which was on the whole enjoyable and inspiring.  One was that my coach had me make a list of what I loved about my job.  It filled a page, and when I read it to him, he said there were probably few people on earth who loved their jobs as much.  The other was that he had me track my time from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed on two full days.  In this, I discovered that I spent almost no time speaking to my partner or doing anything with her.  Like less than 10 minutes of each day was being devoted to the person I love and have committed my life to.

I asked my coach about work/life balance and he admitted he had yet to figure that one out.  He was a workaholic who stayed up late a lot trying to find more hours in the day.  I figured that probably wouldn't work for me, but took his advice to work harder.  I forgot that a 50 something man and a 50 something woman don't live in the same physiological universe.

That was May 2013 and in the months that followed I tried to internalize what I had learned, while coping with external circumstances.  I tried to force myself out of the office at 3 pm two days a week (it worked for about 8 weeks maybe) to make my partner happy, and at the same time to deal with a ridiculous level of turnover in support staff.  I had some wonderful student interns that year and I continued to work hard and be hopeful of success.

In the summer of 2014 we had a war, my father in law Vlad became ill, and I took only a short vacation.  After the vacation, Alen went to see her father, I came home with the kids, and our boss put us on a new project management system, Asana.  With this, I was going to organize my entire world.  I made lists of home projects and work projects, assigned tasks to my colleagues and was sure I had things under control.  I also had a lingering infection and over Sukkot developed sudden shoulder and chest pain, high blood pressure, intense headaches, and the anxiety that one would have in such a situation.

After going back and forth to the emergency room a few times and a short hospital stay, my heart checked out and they said, "stress."  I said, "What do you mean, stress is my middle name, I have lived like this for years."  Right up until menopause, that is.

My mother told me that regular exercise was the key to stopping the menopause related heart irregularities that run in our family (my sister got them just a bit after me).  While I was in hospital we adopted a dog and from the day I got out I have walked every day.  This walking slowly changed my life completely.

When I got out of the hospital I stayed home for a week like they told me, and when I got back to work my boss asked me if I needed to take some time off and I was like, "I just did."  But by then Vlad was in hospital in Trinidad and  after I was back at work for a week, Alen called me at work and said she had to fly out.  She got on a plane with Gabi, who insisted on seeing her grandfather, and they were at Vlad's bedside the day he died, which was one year ago.  I was here with Sasha and the dog, not sleeping, and with a headache that lasted 6-8 weeks (finally turning out to be an atypical migraine brought on by, you guessed it, menopause).

I stayed out of work for a month and thought a lot about my father in law.  The best years of his life were the last ones, when he lived with his son and his family, saw his grandchildren every day, went sailing with his sons, cooked meals and listened to his favorite music.  I thought about what could be learned from his life and about what it really means to put family first.  I doubted whether I could continue to be the person I had been at work.  One of the scariest parts of my illness was losing my ability for complex thinking and handling complex tasks.  I could not teach and if someone wanted to talk about something complicated I had to ask them to write it down.

Over the course of these week of trying to provide emotional support to my family, grieving, medical appointments, receiving tons of support from the community, and learning to take care of myself, I lost my desire to help other people with their problems.  It just disappeared.  For years I had been the go-to person, priding myself that I would try to help every single person who walked into my office with whatever they needed, and suddenly I just didn't want to do it any more.  It was startling, and it was real.

And now I have to go grocery shopping, so stay tuned for part two of the story!