54 steps
Rick had slept at his own house last night, another big surprise. We’d avoided a knock down drag out fight, no thanks to me. But after he left, I wondered if his careful politeness and my whatever-it-was had been even worse. At least with a fight, you get to kiss and make up at the end.
I tossed and turned most of the night, lost in the tangle of my sheets, the jumble of this crazy complicated world.
By the light of the nightlight that kept me from banging a shin on the way to the bathroom, I stared up at the crack in my ceiling. I could still taste the garlic from last night’s shot. Along with a lifetime of disappointment.
I thought about every single stupid time in my entire life I’d aspired to something and fallen short. It was a long list, but I had nothing but time to think about failure these days.
I remembered every time I raised my hand and the teacher called on someone else. Every boy I liked who liked another girl, a cuter girl, a nicer girl, a more popular girl, a smarter girl, a girl who was anyone but me.
At my very first summer job other than babysitting, I’d asked for a promotion from busgirl to waitress, and my boss had just laughed and said he’d tell me when I was ready. I’d never asked him again and he’d never told me I was ready. Eventually, summer ended and I crept back to another school year.
All those times I’d tried to grow out my hair and quit when the awkward stage lasted too long. When I decided it was too much work to do a double major in college. Too hard to learn to play the guitar. According to family legend, even my first puzzle as a toddler, the one where you were supposed to put the single red heart in the single heart-shaped cutout in the wooden puzzle, was too much for me, and I hurled it across the room on a regular basis.
Instead of building a life, I’d spent eighteen years building a career at Balancing Act. And then I’d let myself get tricked into taking a buyout. Maybe it was a good move. But I’d never really thought about whether or not it was a move I actually wanted to make. I’d done it because I liked a guy who wanted me to take the buyout. And maybe I thought he would like me more if I did. That we really would run off together and start a new life. Instead, he dumped me. Actually, he didn’t even bother to dump me. He just ghosted me.
After decades in the corporate world, I’d thought my next step should be something creative. I’d gone crafty, painted a few retractable clotheslines, some decorative bottles to hold lavender water, some lavender shoelaces. I’d updated Rosie’s lavender farm’s website and added online shopping. And then I didn’t know what to do next. Or maybe I didn’t want to put in the energy to figure it out. At this point, I hadn’t even made enough money to pay for the clotheslines.
So I’d pivoted. I decided becoming a health coach was the way to go. It seemed like a natural progression from working for a sneaker company. Plus, it would be an opportunity to get healthier myself.
I’d worked hard and learned so much. I’d soared through my certification exams. Well, maybe not soared, but I’d passed them. I’d even put my health coach certificate in a beachy turquoise and gray weathered driftwood frame I’d found online. And I had every intention of hanging it on a wall one of these days.
I guess I hadn’t really thought things through beyond that. Maybe I’d imagined clients would miraculously appear, waving their hands, waiting for me to call on them. Eventually, because I was that good, I’d have a waiting list a mile long. I could see it. They’d be needy and I’d be brilliant. They had the questions and I had all the dazzling, cutting-edge answers.
For someone who didn’t have a job, I’d shelled out a crazy amount of money to become a health coach. And now it looked like I wasn’t going to even recoup my tuition. Since I didn’t have any clients.
Okay, I knew my first step had to be to try to find some. But after that, things got vague. And the thought of putting myself out there was so painful. What if I failed? Again?
Malcolm Gladwell once wrote that ten thousand hours is the magic number for greatness. That if you put ten thousand hours into anything, you can become an expert. I’d certainly put my ten thousand hours in, and then some, at Balancing Act.
But now? Ten thousand hours? Twenty hours a week for ten years. Forty hours a week for five years. At which one? Health coaching? Whatever came after health coaching? And what if I’d picked the wrong thing? And what if I picked something else, put the time in, and it didn’t work? How old would I be when I finished failing at my first choice? My second one?
Just thinking about all the variables was giving me a math headache.
The whole career thing was almost as much work as trying to figure out how to connect the dots from starting a relationship to whatever mysterious thing was supposed to come next. I knew how to date. I even knew how to live together. But somehow I didn’t seem to know what to do next.
Eventually, things just went flat, and the guy moved on. Or things went flat, and I’d think, hey, I’m not going to be one of those women who settle, and I’d move on. And then six months later, I’d look back and think, was that it? Was that the guy? Should I have tried harder to make it work? I mean, what was so fatally wrong with him? Is this where Rick and I were heading? Into Flatsville? Why didn’t life come with an instruction manual?
And then there was the fact that I’d had all this time off and I hadn’t even gotten around to fixing that stupid crack in my ceiling.