When I left the corporate retail, e-commerce life behind in January 2016, I felt more than a little adrift, more like unmoored. I had been desperate to work for that company since 2008, applied for multiple positions multiple times for over a year, willing to accept any wage just to get my foot in the door. When I was contacted for an interview in September 2009, I had given birth to my daughter just days before and was afraid they would move on to another candidate because I was physically unable to get to the office. Thankfully, I was able to interview, was offered the position, and started shortly after my daughter was eight weeks old, just old enough to meet the minimum age requirement for day care.
My desperation was largely anchored in the company's culture and core values. I am a mission-driven person; I need a cause to champion. I am fulfilled and rewarded when I am on a team working toward a common goal and for a common purpose. I am probably prime cult bait if I didn't have a tendency to ask too many questions. At this point in my career though, I wasn't questioning anything. I sacrificed time with my newborn, my husband, my friends, my family as I threw myself entirely into the deep end of an industry and professional environment I had never before experienced. That's how intensely I committed to the company and to the mission.
At least part of the reason I submerged myself in work without hesitation is that I was wholly converted to the company line that we were all a family and that the line between work and home life didn't exist. So I didn't feel terrible mom guilt when I was working because I was still amongst family, one that I would do anything for just as much as the one I birthed and married. Yes, technically we were just selling shoes and clothes online, but we shared life (and death) events, holidays, countless meals, tears, laughs, all of it. I loved my colleagues and still count many of them as friends. There did come a point, however, where I could no longer deny the other part of myself, the nosy one asking all the questions.
By September 2015, the situation became increasingly clear that we were no longer working in service of the mission, and we were stuck in a navel-gazing loop of rejecting traditional corporate hierarchy and manipulating a new reporting structure to make it seem like we were all equal contributors when we never were. Not only were we no longer a top-selling retailer, but we were also turning on each other in an attempt to salvage whatever careers we had left. I didn't recognize this company as the one I fell in love with, as the one who swore we were all family, so when a group of us were offered a buy-out to walk away, I surrendered in solidarity with my team. I didn't want to do the work without them, I didn't want to clean up the mess that had been made, and I was flat-out heartbroken.
I had no idea what to do with myself when I no longer had a 9-to-5 job. I had no emails to check, no vendor dinners to attend, no reports to run, no data to verify. I didn't know how to respond when someone asked where I worked. All I could come up with when asked what I do was: "I don't." And let me tell you, that response makes folks immediately uncomfortable, which I get because I was uncomfortable, too. Any time I had an appointment during "normal working hours," I would lie and just nod my head in the affirmative when asked if I had the day off. I never identified as a stay-at-home mom or a housewife or any label currently used for women who aren't employed outside of their homes. My kid was already halfway through the first grade by the time I left the company I started at when she was two months old. None of the labels felt accurate. I had to come up with my own mission, just so I knew what to do when I woke up in the morning.
This is what I wrote, ten years ago:
Sleep.
Eat.
Take my kid to school.
Sweat.
Eat.
Read.
Write.
Pick up my kid from school.
Eat.
Repeat.
I could not put more words together than that. Stripped to the bare essentials, this is what I had left when I could no longer build my identity around my job. And I still needed to refer to this list often because I would forget, like some kind of phantom limb loss, thinking I skipped a meeting or missed a report deadline. For someone so accustomed to complicating life and truly believing that complication is what makes life interesting, the simplicity of this mission seemed too easy. Can a mission so spare be worthwhile?
The conclusion I've come to is: yes. For the last ten years, I have learned that simplicity is not synonymous with ease. Actually, I've not been able to pull off everything on the list simultaneously at any point. And that is what makes this mission worthwhile. Of course, I have done things that are not listed, accomplishments that have also been fulfilling. But my personal mission remains a series of guide posts that I use daily to ground my energy, to refocus my thinking, to clarify my intentions. This fall marks the beginning of the end of two actions: take my kid to school and pick up my kid from school. She starts her senior year, a milestone that feels just as monumental as when she took her first steps. Our relationship will change as she transitions from teenager to adult and as her dad and I transition from coaches to cheerleaders. So I have the next ten months to consider how my mission will reflect this change, another journey I am eager to share with y'all.