August. L asks me how it's going because it's been, what, eight weeks? I rate it a 6.5 out of 10.
That's low, he says.
Yeah, I answer. Seems low, right? But in the day to day honestly I really like it and everything's good. It's just. What's hard is the, like, tearing down and rebuilding of so many selves.
I count them off on my fingers: work, writing, life goals, relationships. I explain: it's good but not easy. A lot of staring into the abyss, on purpose. Chewing on things. Observing what's present, what I feel. Figuring out what I should do from here. Nothing's bad, but it's uncomfortable. And maybe not so productive to think so much about the future, or myself. Still, it's nice, having the space to do that. I'm facing a lot of things I wouldn't otherwise.
We make a loop on the Hudson River Park towards Little Island. We sit in the amphitheater, talk about The Odyssey with J and J, eat 1/3 of the coconut croissant left over from the cafe. It starts to drizzle as we leave in search of dinner. We order the perfect amount of Chinese food and this, too, is my break: a long conversation about work, and the meaning of work. A long walk with friends. A meal where we talk about the city and our families and what books we should read. The walk home, listening to a podcast, or just the sounds of New York at night.
One of my absolute favorite things to do is catch a vibe on a walk, then smile at a random New Yorker and watch their face brighten as they smile back.
Who am I when I'm not working?
I've been circling this question. The quick answer is easy: I write. And I read.
It hasn't felt equivalent to money-making work. But when I look at the list on my phone I see I've read 17 books since my break started. That's good. Getting reading back was one of my goals.
I've also written a lot of words this year, half of them since June. A lot of them for fanfic, but it's still fresh words.
I say it out loud, on the phone with Y: writing is labor. I always forget. It's why I'm so hungry when I spend six hours trying to plot. Why I feel worn out even if I'm just reading and annotating. I spend a lot of my time absorbing information, then hoping something, anything, materializes. I'm not even drafting yet. I'm just trying to feed my subconscious enough that things start making sense.
But writing is work, too. So am I really answering the question?
I do a bunch of things to take advantage of my free time. I go to Rockaway Beach, but the sharks keep us from getting in the water (I do cheerfully have an arepa). I watch some plays (Death of a Salesman fucks me up, in a good way). I visit the Frick Museum during pay-what-you-wish hours, and stare for a long time at Van Dyck's Portrait of a Genoese Noblewoman. I watch a World Cup game in a pub with friends and strangers; I ask who to cheer for. I volunteer at a food pantry and pack beans and lentils. I go thinking I might make new friends, but we stay quiet and busy. I realize, oh, New Yorkers are pretty shy, and I am, too.
I visit the MoMA with M and look at Marcel Duchamp's little museums, the Boîte-en-valise.
During working hours I see Montreal, Ma Belle and Mary Oliver: Saved By The Beauty of the World. (I text L: "Did you know Mary Oliver was queer?" He did. I didn't.)
My aunt gets tickets to the BTS Arirang Concert and we watch them in MetLife Stadium, waving our ARMY bombs. For their jukebox song they sing Autumn Leaves, one of my old favorites.
B and I walk by Greenwood Cemetery with her sweet dog. She shows me a part of the city I've only been to once, and completely forgotten. We continue finding things in common.
I enjoy myself. I'm also exhausted.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I sit at a cafe for 3 hours to read and write, quietly. I realize that's what's been missing. I decide to start doing more of that. I still do all the social things, but I give myself large swathes of the day to be with myself, too.
I tick a bunch of things off my lists. I've always lived my life by lists. The lists and checkboxes feel like anchors. I notice the things I avoid day after day, week after week. I try to do them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
I notice that I'm getting better at cooking. Nothing huge. It's just more confidence in the kitchen: I chop onions and garlic faster; I know which flavors go together, how to tweak if it's not tasting right. I stop nuking all my chicken for fear of it being too raw.
I try making a viral cottage cheese wrap, for protein purposes. I fail twice, but it's convincing the third time.
I visit A in Colorado. We go to St. Mary's Glacier shortly after I arrive. The trip breaks up my rhythm. I feel like I'm on vacation, which is silly, because I've been on vacation—but still.
A works remotely and wraps things up mid-afternoon most days. We hike. We have coffee. (When I travel I'm allowed one fancy soy latte a day.) We walk and talk. A is a great cook.
On some of the steeper hikes I feel my heart thrum hard against my chest. "It's the elevation," A says. "You're doing pretty good!" I tell A about the time I realized I was the worst hiker in my B-school section. One of the military guys hung back to make sure I didn't quit ("You can do it, Isabel, keep climbing, that's right, keep going"). It was very sweet.
We reach the top of Herman Gulch and eat our squashed sandwiches. I lie on the rock while A tests how cold the river is. We open our sketchbooks, like we used to, visiting the botanical gardens in the city, before he moved away.
I like seeing A's life in this new place. I love New York; I really prefer living in cities. But the mountains are beautiful.
We sing along to Arctic Monkeys in the car. We remember the concert in Forest Hills Stadium. Alex Turner sweeping his hair back, the crowd of girlies losing their minds over 505. We go home and pluck out the chords for Wanna Be Yours—A on guitar, me on uke. We sing. It's nothing serious but still, we both play music, we want it to sound nice.
I think: who am I when I'm not working? It's a little easier to consider, away from my life.
I read. I walk. I play music. I drink soymilk lattes. I ask how I can help in the kitchen. I draw what I see. I love the sky; I love bodies of water. I love walking through downtown areas. I'm grateful I get to take it all in like this. I'm grateful for the people in my life.
On the plane home I finish Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and think wow, fuck. Wow.
I visit my parents in California. I read old journals. Tracing back all these years, it's interesting to see what hasn't changed.
Who am I? can be partially answered by asking: who have I been?
I write. I read. I spend a lot of time looking at the inside of my own brain. One of my consistent pleasures is having good conversations with friends.
I think a lot about money: how to make it, keep it, how to be responsible. The persistent decades-long worry has finally softened somewhat, into something that's at times curious, but mostly considering.
I work. I try my best to do good stuff at work. I care a lot about work when I'm working (the fabled "ownership mentality"). I always want to add value to my team and do right by my customers. I always want to learn.
I read, with great interest, about the periods in my life where work swallowed me whole. I cried seven times in one week. I said goodbye to coworkers I loved. I tried to bring up what the problem was, over and over. I tried offering solutions. I was told this will change things; I gave it a shot and it didn't. I stuck it out for my team. Mostly, in hindsight, it was worth it.
I think about where to go next, because I still want to do that kind of work. But I don't want to put up with certain things anymore. I'm too old for that.
I study things. A lot of the happiest times in my life have been when I'm studying in an intense, compressed way: language immersion in Tokyo, short fiction in San Diego, my MBA program. The intensity is tiring but the learning is worth it.
And I'm always trying. Past Isabel reminds me: certain things are always difficult. Problems resurface. Lessons reappear, with increased difficulty. But my journal lets me see all the instances when I didn't think I could figure it out, or make it through—and yet did. It was so often a struggle. But I do like the idea of myself as someone who tries.
C and I talk about writing. I say the words I gave it everything. I reflect on this, after the conversation: I did, didn't I? But you can give something everything and it still may not have the outcome you want, and that's art, and that's life.
I find a quote from Eula Bliss in my diaries:
Do you think it's wrong, he asks, to make your living teaching something that won't earn your students a living? No, I say. And then I pause over why. The service I'm doing for my students, I tell him, is teaching them how to find value in something that isn't widely valued. And I think it's a gift to give another person permission to do something worthless.
[…] The value of what I do is that it makes me feel alive, I tell my sister. Even more than alive. […] Maybe the value of art, to artists and everyone else, is that it upends other value systems. Art unmakes the world made by work.
I'm still physically tired. Entries from 2018 remind me that I was tired almost the entirety of my then-sabbatical. I also got very sick three times. I seemed fine going into Business School though. Maybe that's how this works. Maybe the body takes as much rest as you can give it.
I've started keeping a list of people who ask me for directions. This happens surprisingly often, in almost every city I'm in, regardless of whether I'm local or not. So far, this summer:
- Two older white gentlemen looking for a leather bar near Hudson Yards
- A Latina lady in Eastern Brooklyn Parkway subway station
- An Asian man at a crosswalk in the West Village. He leaned past my friend specifically to ask me.
- Italian sibling tourists on the High Line
My brother doesn't have this problem because, he claims, he just wears his headphones and looks busy and walks quickly.
He clarifies: even when you have headphones in?
Yes.
Apparently I am a person with Resting Ask-me-for-directions Face.
A (not Colorado A, but writer A) is in San Jose the same time I'm in the Bay Area. We catch up over meh katsu. I tell A about the writing; I'm holding their hand. I talk about how it hurts sometimes, but it's still the best part of my day.
A nods, because they know this. We've been friends for thirteen years, progressing side-by-side in that swirl: trying to make a writing life work. Trying to live up to our potential. Trying to write for ourselves. A's career has a very different shape than mine; their success is more visible, but even beyond that, we've written towards different ideals. Still, there are similarities to the pain, the joy, the constancy. Because we've believed in each other from the start, it's easy to speak frankly about the work. What it asks. What it gives in return.
I've been taking group singing lessons in Brooklyn. It's fascinating, to stand there in the middle of the afternoon, wondering what lives other people have that allow them to do this, outside the flow of a workday, trying to make nice noises.
Among my notes:
- You can't sing from your diaphragm. That's an involuntary muscle. What they're really talking about is breath. Ask yourself: how much air do I need for this singing I'm about to do?
- Singing responds to coordination, not effort. The sound of your voice improves when coordination improves; focus on it feeling good, first.
- Make ugly sounds, then go loose. Don't push harder as you sing higher.
It seems silly, but one of my biggest takeaways is to get better, I have to practice. More than I think (daily, if possible) but also less than I think (for just twenty minutes). There's an input to get the desired output; the question is, do I want to make that tradeoff?
K and I regularly leave each other voicemails: what's going on in our lives, what we're thinking, doing. A long async conversation. Hearing K's voice, I'm always so grateful, that I have a place to share these things. That somehow, even with all the distance, my friends scattered everywhere, and sometimes, still, the loneliness—the sweaty apprehension of a future, where everyone leaves, everyone privileges someone else—I'm not alone. I walk by Hudson River Park with my friend's voice in my ear and know that as a certainty.
I do really enjoy talking about work, with friends who are working. As loserly as it sounds, I like digging into business fundamentals. I went to business school to learn strategy, and it remains one of my favorite parts of work. Since I'm not in it, sweating it out elbow-to-elbow within the constraints of targets, quarterly goals, management structures, and career ladders, it's easier to look at a business and go: here's what's compelling, here's what's wrong.
I ask how the company makes money.
I ask what they like about work, the team.
I listen for the challenges. I think about what I'd do in their shoes. Thirteen years into corporate and the patterns are a lot clearer. The hurdles, too. The insurmountable things. Usually, honestly, if it's not product-market fit, it's a people problem.
I ask L what he thinks the purpose of work is. I say: for me, it's creating value for my team and value for my customers. Then we both grin at this idea, re: shareholder value, re: that being the point.
But we're not being totally snarky about it. I'm sincere about that answer. Of course there's the money, but the team and product matter too, the what are we doing here, the how am I spending my time, the who is this even helping? We're lucky we get to ask, I know. As long as I have that privilege, I intend to.
That said, I also feel like it's my mission these days, to talk people into a sabbatical, assuming it's possible (and it is, most of the time, in some shape or form, with planning, with buffer, etcetera).
Among the pros: I feel healthier; I like the slower pace; I'm reading a ton; I've spent time with people I love (and can generously make the time); I've completed a bunch of languishing tasks; I feel more like myself; I've seen a lot of my city.
Among the cons: staring into the abyss is hard. I do a lot of that even with full-time work. Engaging with my brain, for lengthier periods of time, trying to figure out all the different threads that compose my life, can be challenging. And re-entry is lurking in the back of my mind, with all the looming industry problems.
It's often felt to me like there's no easier answer to what are you doing? than making money. Except maybe looking after children. They're both so clear and straightforward, no questions asked: oh yeah, for sure, makes sense.
It's a relief to have that easy answer. Not having it, at the moment, has been one of the harder parts. Even if no one's really asking but me.
Still. It occurred to me, listening to a podcast on memento mori, that if something were to happen, if I had a year left to live, and someone asked: would you spend your time differently?
My answer would be: no, not really. I'm taking the break. I'm giving myself rest. I read. I write. I walk. I try to say important things to those who matter to me. I do the groceries. I chop onions slightly better today than I did yesterday. I take a class where the writer of my favorite book of poetry explains what he thinks about line, image, and varying the propulsions. I listen to music. Sometimes I sing. I ask myself so many questions. I remember how lucky I am.
Most days, this is happiness. I'll take it.