It’s Like That Paula Abdul Song

You remember the one.  In the video Paula Abdul dances and flirts up a storm with her imaginary friend, MC Skat Kat.  The last 36 hours totally remind me of the lyrics of that song:  two steps forward, two steps back.

After spending a weepy Tuesday evening with my therapist confessing that I was terrified that I wasn’t ever going to escape my current job, I got a call Wednesday night from the one recruiter still working for me, about an opportunity that he thought would be ideal.  Great news, right?  Well, the big but in the room was that I would have to be in Korea for July 4th ideally or July 11th at the outside.  By the end of three phone calls finishing up at 2:30am, we were talking about a July 18th start date (better) and a phone interview with the school for this morning at 2:30am.

I should have been happy but I was miserable.  It’s funny how you can get an idea in your head of how you want things to play out and how jarring it can be when they don’t work out that way.  Apart from the fact that I thought I was going to have no trouble finding a job in Korea, I had planned for this nice, manageable timeline to get things done.  I envisioned getting an offer and having a couple months to wrap up my life here.  Not, barely 30 days.  By the time these phone calls started to get heavy, my go-to people–my sister and MissSnickerpants–were both fast asleep.  Even my late-night friend, the guy who is not being forced to edit this blog post right now, wasn’t answering my calls (turns out he’s not in town).

Thankfully, by yesterday afternoon, with the help of both my go-to people, I was feeling calm, if still bloody tired from late night phone calls and an early morning visit to the notary.  I looked up the school and it got some bad reviews, but the reviews were about two years old and all the really negative stuff about this location was posted by one person.  Also, this is a private school with both chain and franchise campuses and apparently the franchise locations are where a lot of the bad stuff has gone down.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to suss out if the location I’m looking at is chain or franchise, but obviously I planned to ask.  I also planned to ask some hard questions of my interviewer about their foreign teacher retention rates, just to get a sense of whether people are renewing their contracts or getting the hell out of Dodge as soon as their year is up.  I got through the work day coasting on three hours sleep and then waited up for my interview.  And waited.  And waited.  No call.

At 3:15am, 45 minutes past the interview time, I called my recruiter and asked what was going on.  It turns out there had been a mix up about the time.  We’re now rescheduled for an early Monday morning call.  In the meantime I will be starting to apply to job postings I find online independently.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

Apart from all that was happening between me, my peeps and the recruiters though, I was experiencing a personal two steps forward and two steps back.  After getting off the phone on with the recruiter on Wednesday night, I laid on my bed crying tears of abject terror at the prospect of not getting to have my “last summer” in Toronto and maybe having to take a job on a tight timeline because another one might not present itself too quickly.  Suddenly I didn’t want what I’d cried for in earnest just 24 hours prior, simply because it was sent by express rather than surface mail; because I might have to move from the wishing stage to the doing stage faster than I’d anticipated.   As a friend put it, sometimes you think that making the plan is the big step, when in fact the big step is actually following through on that plan. I also realized that I felt this irrational resentment that a friend who has a job placement in Korea already had basically gotten the timeline I wanted.  She also had the luxury of turning jobs down.  Somehow it just didn’t seem fair.

Even though it was an entirely different kettle of fish, somehow I felt as trapped in this potential job situation as I did in my current job situation.  Which begs the question, is trapped just my default setting?  Is it possible that trapped has nothing to do with actual events but is simply the lens through which I tend to see those events?  Today, with the benefit of some distance and sleep, I wonder if I am finding ways to throw up road blocks to change by trying to find all the things wrong with this opportunity–that the timeline isn’t what I’d like, that it might the only job I’m offered–as if these things had any real meaning.  A year from now, will it matter that I left Toronto in July rather than August?  Likely not.  A year from now, will it necessarily matter that I only ever got one job offer rather than ten?  Likely not.

During my session with my therapist, I told her that when I feel especially bleak about leaving my job, I visualize it as being held back by a mob of people.  She commented that my description sounded like something very internalized.  She theorized that apart from events happening outside of me, there might be something coming from within me that’s holding me back from making changes too.  At the time, it only kind of made sense to me, because there were tangible events happening that were making me feel afraid that change wasn’t going to happen.  But as this potential job offer situation came to a head, her comment made a whole lot of sense.  It was clear that I was the only one holding me back in this situation.

Entrapment is a word that’s all about victim-hood and so it removes any sense of empowerment or agency on one’s part to change a situation.  When I realize I’m not trapped in my present job–I can quit–and that I’m not trapped into taking a job I don’t want in Korea (if it’s really not a good one), it changes the dynamic drastically.  But it also makes me the grown up–the person in charge of these decisions.  Not the universe or an angry God or fate.  I have a feeling that I’ll shed a lot more tears in the course of this transition and that I’ll have to keep recognizing again and again that I am the captain of this ship, but I’m hoping that I’ll keep coming back to that belief rather than the belief that I am trapped in any way.  Because I’m not.

As I said, two steps forward, two steps back.

How Does Transition Begin?

If you’ve had a significant conversation or e-mail exchange with me since the beginning of March, you’ll know that I am trying to find work as an ESL teacher in Korea.  If you haven’t spoken to me since March, you’re probably wondering how I got from there to here.  Let me explain.

I did a series of pretty soul-searching blog posts in December of 2010 and one of the conclusions I came to, was that I was going to have to take some risks in my life in order to find greater joy.  I followed a plan of Micromovements, trying to make tiny changes every day so that there would be constant forward momentum in transforming my life.  This resulted in not only actual forward momentum but a much greater sense of calm about the idea that things were going to work out.

One of the things I had written down almost mindlessly in my list of micromovements was to get information about teaching English overseas.  On March 1st I went to an orientation session and by mid-April I was sitting in a crazy 9-day course to get my TESL certification.   Before I took the course, I e-mailed some friends and got a lot of really helpful feedback, including being put in touch with the hiring manager of a school in Korea.  I ended up applying for a position before I even had my certification.  For the first time in a long time it felt like the doors to opportunity were opening rather than slamming shut.  That was then.

Now, crying every day seems completely normal.  The job with that first school–which had seemed almost like a done deal–didn’t work out.  The placement service that is part of my TESL certification fee has also proven to be incredibly frustrating.  I was put in touch with two recruiters.  The first guy was the very definition of on the ball.  If he said he’d call between 6:00pm and 8:00pm, he’d call at 6:05.  We had a couple five or ten-minute conversations and I was appreciating his almost military precision.  People rave about him on ESL job forums.  A week ago he said he’d probably get back to me with some interview times this week.  This week he e-mailed and said he couldn’t place me and wished me luck finding work elsewhere.  WTF?

The other recruiter was much more congenial and we connected really well.  I’m hoping that will mean something in how hard he’ll be willing to work for me but I’m not all together hopeful.  While charming as all get out, this fella missed two phone appointments that we had, which doesn’t inspire confidence, if you know what I mean.

I’ve contacted the TESL certification organization about both of these issues and I have the feeling their patience with me is wearing thin–that they think I should just be grateful for whatever I get, rather than demanding that people do more.  So now I feel like I’m treading on egg shells trying to get my needs met while not coming off as a complete harpy bitch.

As if I wasn’t feeling shite enough, when I looked at a popular ESL job board, I found positions posted just today by the very recruiting agency that told me two days ago that they couldn’t place me.  On the same job board, I took a look around the forums and the race issue certainly came up in discussion.  And yes, on international resumes, you do have to post a picture.  It’s a good thing they can’t tell I”m fat right away.

As if this isn’t enough to stress a gal out, my workplace is slowly collapsing in on itself like some sort of dying star.  Since mid-May we’ve been in a complete state of limbo as to whether to the company will fold or not.  Before May 19th the company was six people strong.  Now we’re down to four.  One woman was laid off and the other was in a car accident and her situation is still unclear at this point.  Either way I’ve been doing the work of about 2 1/2 people since May 30th and it’s getting pretty damn exhausting.  One of the four left is our shipper and he doesn’t help with any of the work that’s fallen to me.  More strangely, he’s not required to do so by our managers despite our current staffing levels.  The other two people are management; they help but their help is often almost worse than if they had simply left well enough alone.  It’s getting better in some respects but worse in others.

I spend most days at work so angry and so frustrated that I when I leave I cry for the sheer release of it.  Until now I was intent on getting laid off so I could get my 8 weeks termination pay and unemployment money, but that seems completely unlikely now.  There’s too much information in my head, too much experience under my belt, for my boss to let me go easily.  According to the woman who was laid off, if other people (a company who owns shares in us) had had their way, my ass would have been grass back on May 19th.  I wish it had been.  It’s much worse to be a survivor in a situation like this.  It’s clear that my boss will keep me there until the ship sinks.  And as long as it doesn’t sink, it lurches along in a manner so awful that it’s quickly becoming untenable for me to keep working there–fallback position or not.

I am now careening between just giving my notice and quitting, poverty be damned, giving my bosses some inkling that I’m on way out as I can’t see any possible way in which they could retaliate, or of course, gutting it out.  I’m trying to figure out what’s the best thing to do in terms of my sanity.  I’ve waited years for a neat and tidy path out of this job, this situation, this crushing sense of inertia and time and time again it does not present itself.  I’m starting to wonder if I am meant to bushwhack my way out; if maybe the bushwhack is the only path that the universe has for me.  Maybe it’s the risk I need to take.

When I told friends that I was planning to make this move overseas, I was urged to blog about it.  I had figured I’d be so busy moving and wrapping up my life here in a sort of joyous whirlwind that there would be no time to blog until I was happily ensconced in my new home on the other side of the world.  I anticipated that there would be a time when I first arrived there that I would be depressed or anxious or just feel the weight of the transition.  I did not anticipate that the depression, anxiety and weight of just trying to make the transition happen would start on this side of the ocean.

Apparently, this is how transition begins.