Jen Koch

It’s a good day for writing, and things are starting to look up.

I’m probably a morning person by biology or upbringing, if not by preference. I think those preferences have to do with evenings being mostly unscheduled, and my formative online communities were available during college, but I actually do like being up with the sun, and it doesn’t take me too long to wake up.

There’s enough self-awareness in me not to oversell you on the merits of this. Retraining myself for early mornings in preparation for my upcoming commute has been rough. I’ve learned that taking showers by nightlight has helped me adjust more pleasantly to being awake, avoiding that classic stabbed-in-the-eyeballs feeling of flipping on the bathroom light at 5:30a.m. I keep the lights low while I’m puttering around my house, and that seems to be good for my morning mental state as well – it pretty much always has. This will probably change as sunrise comes later and later, but I’m aware and trying to figure it out ahead of time.

But even as I struggle to establish an earlier bedtime and other routines to make sure I won’t arrive at work starving in a pair of pajama pants, I’m reconnecting with how much I like having this quiet time in the morning. At 6:00a.m. it’s just me and the cat, moving in tandem from bed to bathroom to kitchen. Words can wait for after breakfast, other than a soft and mostly nonsensical conversation with the owlish furball prowling around my ankles. The dapples of sunlight streaming in various windows is already rich and golden, this time of year. I can run on autopilot, making low-stakes decisions and breakfast mostly from muscle memory. And when I’m really awake and thinking, the coffee is made, everything is done, and I have the rest of the morning. It’s now officially my day to make what I will of, and there’s hours of it left.

Life is moving in a positive direction, for which I’m both grateful and anxious. Anxious because I have some confirmation bias to fight, grateful for what I have in the present. The loss of my previous work is still a source of grief, but I’m in a place to truly see the good things it brought, the experience it gave, and the skills and relationships I built there. My life is richer and better for having been there, and with a few months between it and me, grief and shock has shifted into a warm, gentle sadness. I’m ready and willing to face the future without it, because I got the closure I needed, and I’ve been lucky to take the parts I’d miss most – my relationships with faculty, staff, and students – with me. We’ve made our own moveable feast, as we celebrate each other’s hopes and successes, as we meet in other times and places with the same familiar warmth.

But the golden girl, the grand lady, is still gone, and thus comes the confirmation bias. It’s hard to believe that anything good will come, let alone stay. Creatives in any industry struggle to find fulfilling work that simultaneously pays the bills and allows for a separate creative life. That’s been my lot. I’ve made it work, more or less, although it hasn’t been perfect and it’s required outside help to manage. I’ll spare you the details of my life between LinkedIn updates; it’s been punishing. It’s hard not to desperately snatch at any good thing, not to second guess it, to confirm and re-confirm and re-re-confirm that things are getting better. The past weeks have felt like one long inheld breath, and required more patience than I thought I possessed. In the hustle and self-promotion of job sites, everyone talks about the active doing: nailing the resume, the portfolio, the interview. But nobody talks about the passive waiting. If you’re currently job-searching, or about to be, you’re going to do a lot of it. This summer stretched from a comma, to a semicolon, to ellipses, and I had to figure out how not to fill the pause with frantic gibbering. How not to send worried emails. How to wait without hope.

I have no class on this to teach. I have no advice. I only have what worked (occasionally) for me: take charge of the small things I could control. Clean something. Fix something. Put something away. Make something. Cook something. Research something. Go for a stupid little walk for my stupid mental health. Use my gym membership. Play music and dance. Play a board game. Try not to drink too much. Say yes to friends, and let them help me. And when it’s bad, when it doesn’t work, when the waiting and the loneliness has turned into pressure on my chest and I don’t think I can drive today, maybe not even go outside, remind myself that it’s not going to be the rest of my life. That the feeling isn’t permanent, and this insurmountable weight will pass. I can go back to bed today, I just need to get up tomorrow.

I got up tomorrow, and it was a good day for writing, and things are starting to look up.

If you are waiting, if this doorway between one thing and another has stretched into a hallway and the windows are starting to look like carnival mirrors, you’re not alone. Whatever works for you, whatever helps you remember that tomorrow will not be exactly like today, and in three months things will be different than they feel now, do that. Keep making things. Keep walking.

The confirmation bias that good things can’t happen to you is just that. You deserve good things. We all do. I’m with you.