Clay left a very perceptive comment on my last post: “Wow, man, watching that episode the same week or so you leave New Orleans. Heavy. How are you keeping it together?” Barely, Clay, barely.
My childhood journal-keeping and this blog started to sort my rushing thoughts by writing about them and then making lists. So, it’s no surprise that my mantra for this already-busy 2009 is “Breathe, make a plan, execute.” Here goes.
I am leaving my friends, life and job in New Orleans for my family, new job and new friends (?) in Ohio. This wasn’t real, it was all happening to someone else whom I answered for … until the anxiety dream set in last night after a long, strenuous evening of packing boxes. You know, the one in which you wake up, show up to your new workplace on the first day, everyone stares at you because you aren’t wearing a stitch of clothing but for the navel fuzz and you’re two hours late? Yeah, that one. Great, I can’t shake off this type of dream for days.
The anxiety is a very low-frequency, high-amplitude wave. It comes rarely, but when it’s here, watch out! Only understandable given how much is going on all at once, right? Leaving here means saying goodbye to friends, wrapping up work projects and handing them over to the right people at the right time, wrapping up Krewe du Vieux work and handing that over to the right people at the right time, going to forward mail and realizing we don’t yet have a mailing address up there, PACKING like mad people and setting stuff aside for Bridge House (parting with things lovingly stored is such sweet sorrow, even if you didn’t look at one of them sideways once in the last five years) and the paperwork and apprehension a new job, in R&D management, entails.
No, no, don’t cry me a river. I have been swimming in nothing but responsibility galore over the last few years, this is only the next adult step. Yet, step back a little and consider how much material, paperwork and duress modern living entails. Take one more step back and see what a strange bookend this move is to six lovely, frightening, strange years in the city of New Orleans, as mythical and fraught with peril as Atlantis to the rest of this country. We’re moving back to America, folks, and my dueling senses of culture and civilization quiver in equal parts terror and joy.
There is a profound physical toll, too, and the person I feel for the most in that regard is D. While I start work anew on Monday, he flies back to New Orleans, drives a truck full of work stuff to Florida, unpacks, hunts for an apartment, returns to New Orleans in a week, packs some more and then drives his car to Florida. Following that, whenever we manage to close on a house up in Ohio (and don’t get me started on banks’ mortgage lending practises in this economy, the wankers!), he comes back to New Orleans, coordinates the loading of all of our stuff into a moving truck, flies up to Ohio to oversee the unloading of the same truck (hoping that everything has made it up there in one piece) and then flies back to Florida for work. Meanwhile, I shuttle my stuff and an overnight bag between the homes of my parents and various relatives, hoping that one day I will have a place to call my own which isn’t located in Mom & Dad’s basement. Fifteen years after leaving the homestead for FREEDOM!, the prodigal daughter returns. With fifteen years worth of crap in a truck to show for it.
Alternating between the front and back burner of this hot moving stove is work, my career, what I provide to earn a paycheck. Leaving a relatively safe job in the oil industry – one that I trained for and have made great strides in, at a company that rewards its employees handsomely for performance and where I have made a ton of friends, on a team with colleagues a corporate cog can only dream of – is hard. Starting over at the base of another learning curve, despite that I went to school for this as well, is daunting. At work or at play, I’ve never needed a book to tell me how to win friends and influence people, but I will be the new kid on the block once again. Makes you wonder where your roots are.
With all of this, I have to remember to have no expectations. To go in with an open mind and give everyone and everything a chance, just as I ask them to do for me. Already, folks up there are asking after my costumes and D’s New Orleans cooking, so we’re going to have to host a “gumbo party” (still can’t keep myself from laughing out loud every time I say that phrase) real soon. And, through it all, my friends who gently propel me forward with “I hope those Yankees appreciate what they’re gaining,” “No one I know who left the oil industry regrets it,” “Enjoy your move back north … happy quality of life,” “Deep breath” and “Want me to come give you a real hug?” The world tells me that this, too, will pass. Maybe.
I feel a little better now. Thanks for letting me talk about it.
A’course there will be friends for you up there. Don’t sweat that. Deal with those nuts and bolts of moving first, and when you are 75% unpacked, that’s when you can get going on other tsuris. ;-)
((((((hugs))))))
This Yankee appreciates what we are gaining. Cursory research suggests that The College of Wooster’s Geology department could use a lecture or ten on digital methods – in your spare time, of course.
Showing up two hours late for work without a stitch of clothing? What better way to announce someone from New Orleans has moved to Ohio? You just woke up too fast – before your dream self dispelled any anxiety by yelling “Ain’t no coffee n’ chicory up in here? What kind of low-rent place is this??”
:)
Woo hoo, gumbo party.
Yeah. You right. Just puttin’ it out there always helps. And what Pat said. Y’all take care through all of this. We’re thinkin’ of you.
You’re such an adult! You’re so brave, and as hard as it is to pack up your life and memories for new horizons, you’re keeping it all in balance and perspective. Good luck to the start of life’s next new journey! I hope the transition period goes smoothly.
Thanks, everyone! And yay, scorps1027, for finding and commenting on this blog!
Maitri,
All the best to your move, and career change.
Career changes is part of life, and no one escapes even academics, who have to pick new techniques, etc as funding focus changes.
*** Leaving a relatively safe job in the oil industry ***
However,
I must say oil and gas industry is one of the most fickle, “boom” and “bust” industry there is. That is the nature of a commodity industry, and no one parallels energy industry in its vagaries, maybe, film industry.
That is true you were lucky to have worked in oil and gas in one of its most stable periods (boom period where price of oil steadily picked up from $10 a barrel in 1998 to $147 a barrel in 2008) between busts. Feel thankful for that run of luck.
1998 was incredibly ruthless (companies of the size of Mobil, Amoco, Arco completely disappeared), and so were 1980s-90s, and 1860s too. Spindletop in English language stands for boom and bust.
Houston has in past become a ghost town during these down turns. Just look at the price of oil in last six months.
Well, all the best, and wishing you happiness.
I change my career/ focus every few years.
Oh, Maitri,
I’ll miss you.