We Gotta Get Out of this Place
In mid July, amid the Corona Virus Shutdown, (after testing to make sure I wasn’t a carrier of the virus) I drove to Texas to spend a few weeks with my family. As much as I LOVED being with my family, I think the drive itself impacted me the most. On the way to Texas, I drove hours off course to stop by the Grand Canyon. On the way back I drove off course to visit the Antelope Canyon (which turned out to be closed!), but I was awestruck by the beauty Arizona and Utah and of the distant Lake Powell. There was such freedom in having no schedule, no place to be, and no one to answer to that something flipped inside me. I was I really living life to the fullest?
For the last 20 years, I had tied myself to someone else’s dream for 40+ hours a week, and it had finally caught up with me. Don’t get me wrong: I love gymnastics, I love children, and I love sharing my experiences and incorporating life lessons into my coaching, but I’d always viewed it as a means to an end. In Texas, coaching was how I paid my college tuition and paid for my first laptop. I felt obligated to my beloved coworkers, students, and the gym’s owner (who convinced me to stay longer by always portraying the gym as one step away from closing without me). Leaving was hard, but I knew I had to do it. In Los Angeles, coaching was how I paid my rent and my car note, and I felt those same obligations. I told myself I could be happy doing it as long as I was still working towards my life goals in my spare time, but now 10 years later, I wasn’t any closer to seeing my work produced than when I was writing in my bedroom at my parents house. Then corona virus hit, and I knew my world was shifting again. Then I was fed the same line: my involvement was critical to the gym’s survival. Even though I know there was no ill-intent, they were playing my heart against my instincts by using a prior obligation to conform me to their expectations. Luckily, while camping in the desert outside Lake Powell, I looked behind curtain (Wizard of Oz reference) and I saw a way out. I could make an internet series that taught gymnastics thus helping the gym AND meeting the artistic drive within me. I returned from Texas and pitched my idea.
The gym basically loved my idea, but (seeing as they couldn’t be fully open since March but were still paying that astronomical rent) they said they didn’t have the funds to pay me to produce a web series. They knew I had to pursue my dreams, and wished me well as they laid me off.
Now, I’m unemployed and fully in charge of my time for the first time in my adult life. I know quarantine has been hard for many, but with no shortage of ideas and projects, I’ve been thriving. I’m trying to pay rent by making costumes and building projects for friends. I’ve put my faith in the Universe that it will take care of me as it always has. In fact, my partner Mike has been working a job that he HATES for a year, and despite my unemployment, I’m encouraging him to follow the stage directions from the Universe as well. I’d rather us be in charge of our lifes while living out of a van than give half our lives trying to make someone else’s dream our priority. Of course, I will always be ready and willing to help my fellow man, but to thrive we must make ourselves a priority. As RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell can you love somebody else?”
I don’t know exactly where I’m going or how I’ll get there, but I know that as long as I check in with myself every step and put my faith in the Universe, I’m going to be okay.
