Don’t Worry, Be Happy

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My friend Silent One in London recently wrote about her fear of change. I very boldly commented on that post saying that it’s good to have change in one’s life, that things usually work out and that she should not worry. I am realizing now that it’s well and good to dole out advice to others, but when it comes to your own life, all good sense takes leave of one’s brain. I am going to experience a fairly major change in my life and I am doing exactly what Silent described in her post – worrying about it and over-thinking everything. Worrying is sort of my core competency; that’s what I do best. But I am hoping that for once I will learn to not over-stress about the change and actually enjoy the extraordinary opportunity that has come my way.

I hope I have made you reasonably curious about this big change in my life. Well, it’s big in my opinion…..but may be fairly trivial to you. In January this year, I made a pretty gutsy decision; I decided to take a break from work. It took me a while to get there, but when I did finally ask for the sabbatical, I was completely confident in my decision. I had reached a stage where I really needed to forget about work and deal with the other ‘crisis’ in my life. I don’t want to talk too much about my medical struggles on this blog but since I have mentioned it a few times already, I’ll provide a few details. Basically, I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to conceive a baby. Month after month, I come back home from my doctor’s visit, feeling like an anomaly. I am taking a whole lot of medication to ease the situation but nothing has worked so far. What makes it harder is the fact that we did conceive naturally a year ago but that pregnancy didn’t work out. It’s been a struggle since then. The drugs took their toll on me and I was finding it really hard to be fully involved at work and to mentally detach myself from what is happening in my personal life. Hard as it is to go into work every day with this at the back of your mind, I was finally forced to think about it when I was tapped to take on a new role at work. This new role would mean more travel, more stress and more responsibility. I love my job but I just didn’t feel ready to take this new role on. I thought about it a lot over Christmas break and finally decided to ask for a sabbatical.

I have dreamed of taking a break from work; most of us do. But making up my mind to go ahead with the plan was hard as hell. I have pretty much been a career gal ever since I left business school. The thought of taking a break from work never even crossed my mind before. Of course there are days when i crib and moan about work and threaten to quit. But those generally pass and I become a sane person the day after. My mom used to work; so I grew up knowing that it was possible for women to have a career and a family and be good at both. I enjoy my work and I have excelled in all my jobs. In fact, right now, I am riding the high wave at work – things are going amazing well for me. So, sadly, this is totally the wrong time to take a break. But at the same time, I am dealing with some very new emotions in my personal life. I feel like a failure month after month, and sometimes these emotions take over and make it harder to enjoy the challenges at work. The things that used to motivate me no longer interest me. The thought of a promotion at work would have been a great incentive before. Now I could care less. It’s a strange new feeling. I have never not cared about work, but suddenly, I seem to find my career to be the least important thing in my life. I don’t know if this is the impact of all the drugs I am taking or if I am burnt out or if I am ready to look for another job, but I feel like I need to step out of the rat race for a little while, to give me some time to think.

Anyways, while this sounded like a fabulous idea before (and I was genuinely surprised when my company agreed to it, and even supported me in the decision), after the initial high I am left doubting myself. What am I going to do with all this time? Will I utilize it well? Not having an income for 6 months will be hard. I love having my own money; have been financially independent for 11+ years. For the next 6 months I am sure I will feel guilty about every single expense. I know it’s silly but I am so paranoid about this that I even plan to get my haircut and pedicure right before I start the break – just so that I am not blowing money on frivolous things when I am not earning my own money. HG of course is laughing at all of this; he has been the biggest supporter of the break and has assured me that he will not cut my clothes/hair/shoe etc. allowance. But you can never be too sure of these things. Husbands are not to be trusted in matters of women’s priorities.

While the main purpose of the sabbatical is to completely relax and detox my brain of all work worries, I also want to use this time to think about what I want to do next from a work standpoint. My current job is very analytical, and while I am left-brained for the most part, I have some right brain elements to my personality that I want to indulge in my next job. Many years ago, I worked as a Brand Manager for a music company and that seemed like the perfect role for me. I had an analytical job but for a creative product. Unfortunately, I quit that job to move to the US with HG. I don’t regret that at all, but I do remember how happy I was working there. I only worked there for about an year, so I don’t know if I would have hated it after a few years, but for now, I am hoping that I can identify something similar. My ideal job would be a mix of analytics and art, like maybe analyzing consumer trends and habits for IKEA. How cool would that job be?! What would be cooler is if an IKEA recruiter were to chance upon my blog and offer me a job. While I wait for that to happen I take pleasure in torturing myself with scary thoughts – what if I don’t figure out what I want to do with my life? What if I don’t find anything else interesting? Or worse still, what if I find out that I actually like staying at home? Then what am I going to do with my life? The bigger question in all of this, which I don’t have the courage to ask myself is - what if I don’t end up pregnant at the end of these 6 months? It’s too difficult to think about this right now.

Anyways, I am beginning a new phase in my life and I am excited and nervous. And glad for the opportunity. I know that I am very lucky to be able to do this. So I might as well enjoy the relaxed time at home. And make everyone else extremely jealous!

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