a new resolution part xii

Like 2021, 2020 before it, and I suppose 2019... but if you include 2019, you include 2018, and if 2018 is in there then 2017 should be too... and obviously 2016 because that one just was what it was... 2022 kinda sucked. Like too many 'culminations of the year' before it, this blog makes me realize how happy I am to be moving into another year and another hopeful shot at fresh starts and new opportunities. I wish it wasn't like that. I wish I could sit and write 'this was the best year of my life', but it's often difficult to summarize things so positively. Maybe that's an outlook that comes with age, and with age and experience sometimes comes a certain jilted disposition. The inescapable reality of life. To be fair, this year had a lot of big things in it for me. Some I'll write about, some will stay private out of respect for others, but all were large enough to carry significant weight.

I wrote more blogs this year than I have since 2017 and I suppose that's something to be happy about? Maybe it's an indicator of another shift in me, but it's a little too early to know that for certain. This still is one of my favorite blogs to write though, all things considered, and I'm happy to wrap up the year so that it can go forward as a time capsule for me to visit whenever I deem necessary.

I sat down the other day and turned on my decade-old video project, "26 Golden Things." 

I know, groan.

Double groan because as I look over last year's blog (a new resolution part xi), I literally watched the video project the day before writing so that I'd be inspired. What an asshole.

Anyway, being an asshole aside, I tend to gain new perspectives when I watch the project now. I couldn't help but notice how much enthusiasm was captured in the 60 minutes presented on a DVD I made with my iMac. There was hunger for a life that was finally developing in the way I wanted (and playing out to some great music, I might add). What I also found interesting is that with this being the 10 year anniversary of the project, just HOW MANY of the 26 things repeated themselves in 2022:

#1 letting it die; the realization you are finally over your ex (Andrew)

#2 the key; obtain a passport (a new passport, at least)

#8 a new partner; ladies and germs meet Bernice (Blythe, the Mitsubishi)

#9 opening a door; land a new job (as a technical writer)

#10 an old door closes; walking away from Express (Pottery Barn and then retail in general)

#11 a tidy conclusion; finish writing my third novel (finished the fourth and final of The Onyxus Chronicles, AND have now published the entire series)

The thing I taught myself 10 years ago was that you're only as happy as you make yourself, and that's a lesson I'm still trying to gain a foothold in.  The resolution I set last year was to "make the changes that would set me on a new path," and that's what this year largely turned out to be for, right? Standing up for yourself when it has all gone to shit and making strides toward betterment? 

Standing up for yourself in your relationship when it was just not working anymore?

Standing up for yourself in your job and saying that enough was enough?

Standing up for yourself in your living situation and essentially saying "fuck this shit, I'm out"?

I've never before been a person that swung wildly with big life choices and kept marching onward, flames on the sides of the road or not. Never. Everything in my life, for the most part, has been meticulously thought out and planned for, and then executed to varying degrees of success. It's always been safe, and I have always been safe. This year though... there was something inside of me calling for change. I yearned for change, often tearfully and desperately. I had found the hunger for life I had felt in 2012 once again, or at least... I could see the desire for that hunger and how it was starting to creep back into me. With each subsequent "thing" I crossed off my list this year I felt better and lighter and more and more ready to move forward.

In December I sat down and wrote out Christmas cards. This might seem like, y'know... an 'oh, big whoop' thing, but for me, it's a big deal because I haven't written them since moving to Minnesota. Not en masse, at least. Maybe it's because my time here is coming to a close soon? Maybe it's because there's a light at the end of the tunnel now and I feel like I have hope for a brighter future? A future that is on my own terms... not dictated by my job or by a relationship... but for me.

Minnesota wasn't a great part of my life, and when you look at it as "life in the state of Minnesota," that means the last 6+ years haven't been great. Maybe it's circumstantial, maybe it's being an adult, I don't know. 

What I know is that it has been so incredibly long since I felt like I was living in color. 

I haven't wanted to do anything for a really long time... I haven't wanted to be a part of things or events. And as those feelings drop away and the shades of grey shift into technicolor, I get this weird rush of joy as I emerge from my seclusion. It's fun and scary and exhilarating. 

It's a life. 

There are a lot of moments from 2022 that I don't care to ever look back on. To elaborate on that, there are a lot of emotions from 2022 I don't care to ever feel again. I thought I would write about them eventually, be it the work stuff, the relationship stuff, or the health stuff... but I won't. Sometimes, there are parts of a person that need to happen, and then they need to go away. For the first time in my life I'm comfortable letting them go away.

I decided a month or two ago to move back to my hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin this coming spring. I'll put my house in Minneapolis on the market in February, and with any luck, it'll sell right away. Then it's back to my old stomping grounds, to reconnect with a version of myself that I didn't really understand when I lived there before... maybe because I didn't want to understand him. Will I stay forever? Probably not, but who's to know the real answer to that. Certainly not me. And I guess that brings us to what the new resolution is, doesn't it?

Enjoy your choices and follow your bliss.

Too often I've set a goal for myself of something to cross off the list.  Too many times I've lofted it up in the air, curious as to where it would fall and how I will decode the messages when it hits the ground. 2021 was to take steps to recapture my happiness, 2022 was to make the changes to set myself on a new path... I think it's time I enjoyed where all that will bring me. To my hometown, to my family, to some of my oldest friends, to a new project in a house, to a new foray into social media... to a new start. I've never been so excited for a new resolution to come to light, and I am so equally thrilled to take you all on the journey with me.

The other day I got a tattoo, meant to not only to wrap up my relationship with Andrew but also my time spent here in Minnesota. It's from my favorite Florence + the Machine song, 'Cosmic Love', and it's my favorite verse:

i took the stars from my eyes and then i made a map,

and knew that somehow i could find my way back.

then i heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too.

so i stayed in the darkness with you.

the stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. 

you left me in the dark. 

no dawn, no day, i'm always in this twilight. 

in the shadow of your heart.

I think it's safe now to leave the shadows. Ciao for now (c:

when it comes to leaving retail

The purple key ring that was with me the whole time.

In August of the year 2000, I took a walk with my best friend Katie and her two dogs.  We talked about if we had "powers" and what they would be like... mixing X-Men (which had just come out in theaters) with The Craft (because witchcraft was cool to 14-year-olds (and still is cool to 36-year-olds, just sayin')).  Together we came up with scenarios that just sounded like a plain good time, two 20-something's living in a beach house in California and using their abilities for... whatever they used 'em for.  We went back to her house and picked out the names of our characters from a baby-name book, and the rest is history.  That was the day "The Onyxus Chronicles" was born, however much in its infancy.

It was also the day I had decided in the back of my mind that I was going to grow up to be a writer.

Let me tell you some stories.

Now, if you'd asked me on December 26th, 2002, as I stood inside Hollywood Video on Memorial Street in Appleton Wisconsin, and applied for my very first job, what I would be doing in 19 years... I promise you it wasn't going to be retail.  At that moment (delayed a full year because when I was 16 and went in on my birthday they told me the hiring age had JUST changed to 17), I was going to get my first job.  They were hiring me at $5.25 an hour, and I was just over the moon about it.  I got to work at a place I loved, with people I enjoyed, around a product that I adored.  I mean, if there's one thing I loved more than anything else growing up, it was movies.

Movies sparked my imagination.  They showed me realities that could exist if you only tried dreaming of them, and they spoke to me on a level I could not comprehend when I was younger.  Looking back on it, I can see how it was what developed the writer in me, the creator, the person who would eventually go on to write four novels (as of 2022) that spanned an entire universe he had largely made up.  But back then it was cool, and it wasn't the food industry because HELL no was I gonna be slingin' burgers at McDonald's.  

A few months later I picked up a second job at Regal Cinemas, where they paid more ($5.35, paaaaarty) and I got to work around more people my age.  I always get a kick out of that meme that pokes fun at the reality of teenagers working with 40-somethings and making best friends with them at their job.  "Damn, where's James today?  I wonder how his kids are doing."  Regal was faster-paced and a bit more wild, we got up to ridiculous things there that in hindsight, we should have (and would have, had we been caught) absolutely been fired for.  And also for things I'm sure the health department would've shut the place down over.

How did we see no issue in the fact that the big white shovel we used to move ice from the giant machines in the back to buckets for dumping at the soda towers, was stored on the floor?  ON THE FLOOR? 

I digress.

By the time I had graduated from high school in 2004, I was only working at Regal and ready to be done, as "traditional" retail (i.e. American Eagle) was calling my name.  And again... the rest is history.

So much happened in that first year after high school.  I spent the summer at American Eagle, dropping close to 60 pounds of baby fat and coming out of the closet in the process, indulging in gay depravity as much as any reckless 18-year-old would.  By the time fall came around, I shifted from American Eagle (re: was told I was a summer hire and I should fuck off) to Express.  I was part-time, and that was fine.  What wasn't fine was the mountain of credit card debt I had already accumulated, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge that yet and would continue accumulating it over the next year.  I also had my first real adult relationship, one with a lovely guy named Peter that I've sadly lost all communication with.

When that year had wrapped, I dropped out of college and consequently forced myself to drop into full-time retail, owing around $13,000 in credit card debt that I could no longer juggle with a job paying $7.10 an hour.

Full-time Stock Manager at Express, November 2005

I started making friends at this point that would stay with me through the long run.  Some fell by the wayside eventually, like Shannon in this picture, for one reason or another.  But as happens, they often have a way of coming back around.  Like Shannon reaching out through Instagram a few weeks ago to reconnect.  Because it's never too late, right?  I did pick out her wedding song, y'know.

Time seemed to fly once I was full-time there.  You'd hit the holiday season, you would hate your life, and then you would move into the spring season and all would be well.  After a few months, you forgot about retail hell when Christmas approaches, and by the time it rolled around again the next year, you shouldered your way through it and just did the damn job.  Perhaps guilt keeps you there, as it always did with me, because how bad would it look to leave your team high and dry at the busiest time of year?  To leave your COMPANY, because they NEEDED you, right?  And there was always the off-chance your company would do something cool for you.  Like a pizza party!  Or some cheap swag for enduring the holidays!  Like a battered housewife, you stay because you can't imagine it being better elsewhere.  Not my best analogy, but you get it.  And that's retail in a nutshell.

You consistently go through living hell on a daily, if not weekly, if not monthly, if not yearly, basis... and you just deal with it.  Because you're certainly not replaceable, no sir, you're one-of-a-kind.

A mirror selfie at Express, 2010.

Eventually, I was promoted at Express to being the Brand Co-Manager, basically the person in charge of visuals that operated as the store manager's right hand.  It was what I had wanted for so long, and it was great pay ($15.30 an hour, which is just... insanely depressing) that would allow me to buy my very first new car.  At this point in my retail career, or at least by the time of that picture above, I had gone through several failed "relationships", none lasting more than 3 months, and was in the midst of my first big one with Ken, which would fail just before hitting three years. 

I was lost and confused in my life.  I needed the money still, but I had finally paid all the credit card debt off and that was awesome.  But I needed the money... and there was no other option for a job.  I hated clothing by then, I would have a good year with Express and then a total shit one.  The rollercoaster was one that I couldn't get off of and had no idea how to even if I could.  What a mess, right?  The relationship with Ken ended in April of 2011 and I was at an even lower point, hitting rock bottom and having to move back in with my parents because of, you guessed it, money!

A lovely thing happened that winter... I turned 26.  And a few months later in June of 2012, #9 opening a door and #10 an old door closes on my list of 26 Golden Things occurred.  I left Express for Pottery Barn.

My last day at Express.

As had happened when I first worked with Hollywood Video, I was chasing after a passion I had always had but never realized.  My interest in interior design had definitely been with me from a young age, re-arranging my room every other month and just delighting in the fact that I could "reveal" it to my mom was the best thing ever.  This joy was sparked with Pottery Barn, where I could finally learn something useful about LIFE, something that could be applied to a living space and enjoyed.  More so than clothing ever could provide, this was something that you would yearn to live in and breathe in, honing a skill that could induce all sorts of feelings and emotions as a result.  

At least, the first couple of years were like that.  Then I moved to Texas and it all went to shit.

Pottery Barn Kids, December 2015

Moving to Texas was bad in a lot of ways.  Was I following my dream of leaving small-town life and getting to the big city? Sure was!  Was I leaving behind the place where I was perhaps a big fish in a small pond and weirdly everyone seemed to know me, and moving instead to a world where no one was bound to give a crap about me and what I had achieved?  Sure was!

I gained a ton of weight in a remarkably short time.  My second big relationship, the one with Derek that would end at just shy of (wait for it) three years, started to fall apart.  I became disenfranchised with Williams-Sonoma Inc at this point because I got to see the ugly side of it (re: pbKids) and how people were often chewed up and spit out in the machine that it is.  It wasn't all bad all the time, certainly.  And after my brief stint with pbKids, I went to west elm and met some of the most truly lovely, astounding individuals that I still have the pleasure of calling my friends.

After 11 months in Austin, Derek and I moved from Texas to Minneapolis, where I took over my Pottery Barn #733 The Shoppes at Arbor Lakes.

Now don't get me wrong, I met people at Pottery Barn that changed my life.  Courtney, who hired me and is one of my closest friends, is one of them.  Renae, another of my best friends.  Nancy, and Jackie, and Angie and Robin.  The team in Minneapolis in general, both in my store and outside of it... people I will have in my life for hopefully always.  But looking back on the last 6 years at the Maple Grove store, it was almost as if time stopped.  What once was a job that sparked joy, now only brought complacency and an under riding sadness.  Especially after my relationship with Derek ended in mid-2017, I just felt stuck.  I needed the money, now more than ever, because I didn't have the choice to move back in with my parents and start over.  

I had rent to pay, and a car to pay for, and a life that I was so desperately trying to prove something with.  So I trudged on.

My first Williams-Sonoma Inc. GM conference in Scottsdale, AZ, August 2017

I think for a time I was happy at Pottery Barn as a General Manager.  For a time, at least.  There were always issues... there were always problem-child associates and assistant managers that I had to navigate my way around and learn how to deal with.  But there was a brief moment I was happy.  I think it might have been in 2018 when I bought my first house, the Manor, and was able to use all of the interior design knowledge I had accumulated to restore the place.

But hindsight is 20/20, yeah?  And when you take a look back at the blood and sweat and tears you logged in a place, it's hard to let the rose-colored glasses sit so firmly against your eyes any longer.

I was constantly subjected to toxic behavior at Pottery Barn.  Let me reiterate that: constantly.  Daily.  As much as I couldn't admit it at the time, my way of handling it was just a classic avoidance tactic: pretend it doesn't exist.  Even though at your very core you are starting to rot from the inside out, pretend it doesn't bother you and just move forward.  Shitty behaviors from people you are supposed to trust as they stab you in the back and talk negatively about you to everyone in the store are rewarded by your avoidance.  For what purpose they did do this... who the hell knows, it wasn't for their personal gain.  And it wasn't because they didn't like me, I think it was just easier to try and undermine me than constructively talk about changes they wanted me to make.  But it was always there like a cloud over the store, and since I allowed the store and the job to become my life, it was a cloud over me.  So I just led onward, willfully naive on the outside, hating myself on the inside for what I tolerated.

Sometimes those employees would just leave of their own accord, and that was always the best.  It meant I didn't have to hold them accountable.  Other times I did have to confront the situation, something I hate doing very much, and while it yielded the results I needed... I loathed it.  It made my skin crawl.

That's insight into who I am as an individual.  Only a handful of times in my personal life have I ever had to confront a gross situation that I no longer wanted to be a part of, and it never gets easier.  At work it was the same.

After Black Friday 2018.  Wiped TF out.

In late 2019 it was hitting me that I wasn't cut out for the job at Pottery Barn, as my anger and frustrations were working their way into my relationship with Andrew, the third of my "big three" loves.  Something not dramatic at all (truly) had happened in October of 2019 between us, I can't even recall what it really was, but the semi-annual warehouse event at work (a total shit show every time we did it, ask anyone) was happening and I just broke down sobbing and shouting at him one night.  And if you know me, you know that's not really who I am.  

I'm the calm/cool/collected Capricorn that slings witty insults and emotes only enough to get a point across that he's trying to make.  Vulnerable in a controlled environment, only and always.  Like writing things in a blog, you might say.  I don't lose control of myself often.  

Knock three times on the ceiling if you agree with that.

But then Covid happened and I was locked in again at work because what're you gonna do for a new job when the whole world falls apart?  Jack shit, that's what!  So I toughed it out.  And the job got better in 2020, miraculously.  And then in 2021, well, it was the worst year I've ever had in retail.  Ever.  I've never cried so much at a job before in my life.  As 2022 got rolling, it was worse and worse almost on the daily.

Outside of work, my health was continuously falling into the gutter and my relationship with Andrew sputtered out just before hitting (I'm sure you can figure it out) the three-year mark.  My mental health was in complete shambles by the spring of 2022, like... total dog-shit shambles, where I could cry at the drop of a hat.  And only a few people knew this!  Any idea how fun it is keeping that side of yourself locked down?  As I said, I don't like to broadcast the "truth" behind my eyes, but it was there for a couple people.  Therapy and medication and all that crap... and a job that was just taking more and more and more and more.  The future in retail was bleaker than I had ever seen before, and I felt more hopeless than I ever have in my life.  

But I needed the paycheck.

When I told my boss in July that I couldn't do it anymore, I had truly hit my limit.  And I cried on the phone to him and let everything out, and I felt horrible for it as if telling the truth about myself is something to be ashamed of when it comes to a limitation I had finally realized.  A month later after games were played with me, I gave my notice, with the intent of moving onward and upward at Banana Republic.  

I was going to make a lot more money, woo-hoo, and the stress of the daily job was going to go away.

A final retail mirror-selfie, in a jacket from my first holiday with Express in 2004.

But the stress went nowhere.  

My health took an absolute nose-dive, with two big health issues.  One of which is now contained and shouldn't be a problem... the other of which is called Meniere's Disease, an inner-ear condition and autoimmune deficiency that has no cure and is generally just a miserable experience when it flares up.  It is what it is and I invite you to google it if you are curious.

With all of this combined, plus a massive anxiety attack in late September in the bathroom at work that had me thinking I was having a heart attack for good measure, I spoke with my friend and boss, Robin, and decided the time had come for me to just be done.  

I needed to be done.  

As any good friend would be, she understood and she encouraged me to put my health first and to leave.  I felt so stupid and foolish, having forged new relationships at my new job and having to abandon the place so quickly, but they all were so lovely about it as well.  Everyone understood the situation, and in turn, encouraged me to step away and focus on my health.  Retail does have some of the most lovely people working in it, and it is this side of humanity that proves good still exists in the world.

I had been doing Technical Writing, part-time and on the side, for a while.  It was a role Katie had worked so hard with me to attain at her company, all the way since last December, but I finally got the gig late this summer.  Technical Writing could be my fallback as I exited retail, and though the money aspect was still an issue that normally would have stopped me, this time I did not listen to it.  My strategy over the next few months is to decompress the mayhem in my mind, it is to manage my stress levels and get them into a positive space, it is to get my physical health under control, and then it is to ultimately sell my house, the Ranch, and move away from Minnesota.  

All of this while really, uh... while really just being paid to write.

For right now, I think about how it has taken 19 years of my life to figure out how to move toward the passion my 14-year-old self had.  Has... not had.  Writing is, was, has been, and always will be, my passion.  But as I write this and recount my time, there are certain memories that erupt in my mind as fresh as they ever were.  I wanted to share a few of them with you, if you'll indulge me just a bit longer.

I remember standing at the front of Express in the Fox River mall in the late fall of 2004, my white folding table extended open before me.  We youngin's, dressed in our Producer pants and 1MX dress shirts with a tie, would be scheduled like... I dunno, 5pm-11pm, if we were closing.  The store was always such a shit show in the evening and everything was utterly destroyed from shoppers.  When I think of fall meeting winter, of October-December, I often think back on that first holiday season at Express.  Board folding an absolutely destroyed mountain of Merino Wool sweaters in a variety of colors, all of the red marketing we had throughout the store, and the "i wish..." campaign going on with the sexy models advertising it.

I remember my brief stint working at Aldo shoes, for this absolute bitch of a district manager named Paresha.  I was writing my second novel at the time, and when I needed to find a name for the queen of the usha (goblin-like creatures), it was almost too easy to settle on Paresha Drow.

I remember watching Chase Powers clock in and grab his walkie, absentmindedly walking with me to the sales floor and swinging his earpiece around.  And I remember Jennie Gabriel stopping him, holding her clenched fists up to her mouth with this kind-of wince thing, and saying "oh, Chase, please don't swing those!  You could damage them!" And then Chase looked at her like he was going to stab her in the neck as he agreed not to swing them anymore.

I remember meeting my former best friend Mark Plowman, a person I never write about in blogs because some hurts go too deep.  We met at American Eagle, built our best-friend status at Express, and continued it through Pottery Barn where I was the best man at his wedding.  I remember introducing him and his husband to Andrew as we met for dinner on Black Friday in 2019, and then after 15 years of friendship, we never spoke again after that night.  I don't know why... perhaps he does.  Maybe he doesn't know why either and assumes I do.  Regardless, that is what happened.  Now Mark can stay there in my memories of retail, forever... where pieces of my broken heart will remain with him as well.

I remember my first holiday at Pottery Barn.  I didn't have much to do with setting up the decor... though I can't really recall why that was in 2012.  Everything was so jerry-rigged, the trees were prelit but all those lights were burnt out so Courtney and the team had wrapped additional strands of lights around them.  I will say that in later years when they sent all new trees to all stores, they were super shitty compared to those original trees whether the lights worked or not. Everything smelled so good in the store and was so bright and cheerful and happy.  I was so happy to be there and to be part of it, and I felt really special.

I remember my first real closing shift at Pottery Barn in Appleton and the front window inexplicably exploding.  I remember security guards not showing up at Pottery Barn in Maple Grove for overnight shifts when the store needed to be repainted and me having to stay til 2 am.  I remember crying in the office after 7 consecutive phone calls in 2021 with a horrifically mean woman and her daughter, furious that I couldn't (or wouldn't, according to them) fly to Vietnam to oversee the construction and subsequent shipping of their home office furniture that had initially arrived damaged.

I remember being happy so many times.  

I remember being unbearably sad and feeling hopeless so many others.  

I remember relying on my staff at Arbor Lakes to help me limp through the two greatest heartbreaks I've ever known.  

I remember the ease of doing a job I had done so well, every day, for 10 years... and I remember the pure elation at walking away from it this summer.

I was standing at work in Banana Republic the other week, on the men's side, folding stacks of Merino Wool sweaters, when I got to thinking.  It's funny how everything eventually comes full circle, isn't it?  How in October of 2004 I was doing this exact same thing and heading into my very first retail holiday season.  And how this time, in October of 2022, I was escaping just before it could begin.

Sean Parker, writer

And then there's me as I am, now... today... finally coming to terms with the fact that my only source of income is from writing.  That I, Sean S. Parker, once a self-proclaimed author, am now both a genuine author and writer.  What a wild ride it was to get here.  To see a dream realized from your childhood and to realize your life is about to change so incredibly much.

I think about the people I met along the way, and I always think about some of the ones that I lost.  I think about Mackenzie from Express, who took her own life in 2012 at the age of 20.  She was the first person I had ever known on a personal level to commit suicide, and when I think of her it makes me so sad.  I think of my old assistant Megan, a true wonder and delight that brought so much joy to my time at Pottery Barn, and who had a box of two dining chairs fall on her head the weekend of Thanksgiving in 2018.  I was off that day, cutting down my Christmas tree.  When she called me in the middle of the night, slurring her speech and saying she was going to the ER, I had no idea it had even happened, and certainly no idea Megan would be left permanently disabled from it.  And I miss her.

You go through things in retail.  

You go through trauma, occasionally much more than whatever living hell a customer can put you through.  These are the traumas that remain, the ones you never forget or let go of.  Partly because you can't and partly because you don't want to.  You do also go through great joys, of course.  The weddings of coworkers, meeting new friends that eventually become your family.  You learn lessons, many of them are really hard ones... but you learn them just the same.  And in the end, you're better for it.  

Maybe you have some permanent scars on your mental health from it, and maybe a few of them are scars that will never fully heal.  Maybe you also have some true joys in your heart that will ride with you until your journey in life is over, and that part is also true.  

I loved retail and I hated retail in the same breath, but I also would not be who I am today without it.  The sweet can never be as sweet without the sour.

8th Grade Farewell with Katie, June 2000

Right now I look back on that 14-year-old kid, sitting with a girl he'd known for less than two years, and not knowing how much she would change his life.  Not knowing how two months after this picture, he would start writing a short story called "The Originality," precursor to four volumes of "The Onyxus Chronicles," because of her influence.  I also look at the two of them and chuckle that now, a full 24 years later, she would be the best friend he ever had and one that showed him so many new opportunities whenever she decided, inadvertently or not, that he was ready for them.  I am indebted to Katie, my Scoop, forever. And that's just another fact you can all now know about me.

So, it's forward that I go.  With no corporate giant at my back, or riding on my shoulders, as it were... but instead with a keyboard beneath my fingers and a lifetime of experiences ahead of me.  I will never regret my time spent in retail... it taught me who I should be, and definitely who I shouldn't be.  

Right now I'm more excited to find out who I will be.

Ciao for now (c:

the twelfth iteration

    I was on a trajectory of posting these "iteration" blogs later and later in the year, almost as if I didn't care any longer about the commitments I'd once made to myself and what they were supposed to represent versus what they actually represented.  That's the thing about holding yourself accountable... eventually you need to do just that, right?  Whether it's time to pay the piper, or where the chips all land, or, y'know, whatever the hell you wanna put here... eventually you need to hold yourself to doing it.

    As is often the case, I'm in a very different position right now than I was a year ago when I wrote the eleventh iteration.  I'm not currently sitting in the house, I'm not listening to Christmas music, and largely, I'm just not happy.  The feeling of being in love at that exact moment was indeed fleeting for me.  In fact, when I typed those words last November, my hard-earned love was already slipping from my grasp.  I knew it, Andrew knew it, but we were both stubborn and narrow-sighted and shouldered on with our routine anyway.  I didn't realize just how much was slipping from my grasp, but rarely do these things present themselves in the black-and-white terms we would prefer at the time.  Here we come to it though, and I'll explain in this, my favorite of the anniversary blog series':

The Eleven Year Anniversary for

Musings of a

Self-Proclaimed Author

    It's sad for me to write this today and I don't know entirely why.  I've been sad a lot lately in general, and it's funny (not in a haha way) when I weirdly actually have so much to be happy about?  I dunno.  Fortune rarely smiles without something up her sleeve and that's a lesson I've come to learn in my time.  So what to get out of the way first?

    Last year I didn't really make any bold proclamations with this blog.  I thought I would maybe write some more, and I thought I might share more about the renovations on this current house that I am in.  And these were actually safe proclamations to have made, as it turned out.  In regards to renovation blogs, no, I did not post those, HOWEVER, I do have plans set in motion for what that is all going to eventually look like.  I started a new Instagram account, @restoring_sean, and that will be the hub for what is eventually going to be one of the largest passion projects I've taken on.

    Instead of just writing one or two blogs with a bunch of pictures about the house, I am going to be doing a deep dive into all of the work that went into restoring my first home, the Manor.  This includes narrated videos, in-depth photo reviews, random one-offs about the day-to-day life there, and so on.  I spent weeks scouring my old text chains, emails, phone(s), my computer(s), and external hard drives for all of the content.  Then I had to painstakingly organize all of this media into categories; it was a lot of work, trust me.  I was going to get it up and running back in early September, but as luck would have it, my 2012 iMac wasn't strong enough to edit videos any longer.  I have a nice shiny new iMac now, and in a month or so, I will hopefully start putting that content out on a weekly basis.  The plan of course when I get through maybe 6 months of posting about the Manor, and then possibly another 4-5 months posting about the Ranch (current home), I can get cracking on what the next project is.

    Here's a hint, it'll be a new house.  More on that in a bit.

    So in a way, I did come through on that renovation blog idea.  I just reworked it and made it bigger.  As for the writing... yes, I did do more of that too.  In 2021 I posted three blogs total, and so far in 2022, this is blog number six.  In addition to the blogs, I spent a good solid month this spring with my nose down in the final edit of The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode IV.  I added something like 40 new pages of material to the book, give or take?  Then the printed manuscript was off to a couple friends for proofreading, and then... well, then it was time to publish.  

    I published my fourth novel in eight years, and that's got to count for something, right?  I guess if you average a new book every two years like that, then the first prequel book will be coming out sometime in 2024.  I wouldn't hold your breath on it because that thing is barely an outline right now.

    Still, I did write more.

    I don't want to get too insanely into the nitty-gritty on what else this last year has been like, as most of that is best reserved for the "year in review" series.  But there are other things to of course comment on, and as I said above, it's time to pay the piper.

    Andrew and I didn't work out, we know this.  Last year I was in a state of denial as to what our relationship was going to transform into, and I still am not comfortable sharing the minutiae of why it was going to move in any direction other than perfect bliss.  It just didn't, and that will have to suffice.  Because it ended though, that put a lot of things in motion for me.

    I was miserable in my job at Pottery Barn.  Completely and utterly; I had been for a long time, and I would continue to be for a long time after.  I started looking for a job as a technical writer waaaaay back in December of 2021, and later this summer I was able to get in finally as a part-time contract writer.  It has been a really great experience so far, I've learned a LOT already, and I look forward very much to the day I can take it full-time.  You might be asking yourself "But Sean, you are currently the General Manager at your NEW job with Banana Republic, are you not?"  And yes, I am.  

    But it's complicated.

    A few weeks ago I had a massive anxiety attack at work, so bad that I thought I was having a heart attack.  It all sounds very dramatic, but really it was just me hiding in the bathroom, hunched on the floor, clutching my chest.  I won't get into the details here, partly because I don't want to and partly because some things need to stay private, but with doctor appointments after this little/big episode, I had a few things come to light health-wise.  Maybe I'll dive in more at the year-end blog, and maybe I'll have exciting news or something to share, but what it boils down to is my stress level.

    I am affected by it... perhaps a bit too much.  And, coupled with some of the things going on medically, stress affects everything greatly.  To a point where it can be a life-threatening thing.

    So, I spoke with my friend and boss, Robin, and we had a really frank but great conversation about all of this.  I told her my health was more important to me focusing on than staying in this role as the General Manager.  The reality being that I cannot be what the store and the team need me to be.  So I will leave Banana Republic, sadly, after only two months.  I'm in a unique position to still have a cash flow, albeit smaller, and enough set aside in savings to get by until the spring of 2023.

    "But why spring, Sean?"

    Well, that would be because I am going to put the Ranch up for sale in February / March.  And, the current plan, is that I'll be moving away from here.

    This is all very new and hypothetical, but it's also very real.  At 36 I've finally hit the critical mass of who I once was and who I am going to be, the crossroads of this being tangible and rough.  A lot can change between now and February, obviously, so I don't want to be definite in any of my plans because really... you just never know.  But I am taking care to plan for my future and line up the things that need to be assembled into neat little rows.  In an ideal situation, I will be able to take a year or so to just rent (because buying a house seems silly in the current market), and then figure out WHERE I want to live and also how amazing of a project house it will ultimately be.

    So, though it doesn't really need to be said, what do I expect for this next year?  I don't know.  I expect to sell the house at a great profit, which will allow me to pay off any and all remaining debt that I have.  Since I won't be in retail anymore, I will have the ability to either move to a rental property here in the cities or back home in Wisconsin... or really anywhere else.  I expect the road to be long and bumpy as I gain control over my health issues and I expect I will be angry and frustrated by most of it, most of the time.  Is that's what it takes though to grow and become a better person, then it's a smallish price to pay.

    But... I also expect to be happy.  And happiness will come from following my passion over my pension, as a new friend so eloquently said.  For what feels like the first time in my life, there's this great big question mark hanging above me and what the future holds.  Is it coincidental this is happening 10 years after 26 Golden Things?  Yeah, actually.  But is it too important for me to ignore it?  Yeah, that too, actually.  I'm excited to see what happens, and I'm excited to share as it does.  Onward.

Ciao for now (c:

leaving pottery barn... again

I created this blog post on January 6th, can you believe that?  Well you should... if you don't.  It has remained empty because I didn't want to fill it out and jinx anything with a potential career change, but the post has existed.  Anyway, lemme tell you why.

I was/am/have been unhappy for a long time.  The reasoning as to why is varied and complicated, because it touches on all sorts of things.  Love life, personal friendships, living situation, physical fitness, and of course, my job.  Some days certain topics carry more weight than others, and some days none of them seem to bother me.  But it's a constant fluctuation on the ferris wheel of my life and it has kept me spinning for a long time.  

Way back in December of 2021 I was told about an opportunity with my best friend Katie's company as a Technical Writer.  This meant working from home, not customer facing (thank god), and in a field I have always been passionate about. 

Not sure if you kids know this about me or not, but I'm a writer.  Author, if you're nasty.

I was hesitant but ultimately ready to jump at this.  We polished up my resume and I fired it off... and then waited.  And waited and waited and waited and waited.  False hopes were constantly thrown at me, "you'll get a call this week" and "you should have an e-mail today."  But nothing ever came.  I was holding out for what was supposed to be a sure-fire thing with my foot so firmly in the open door, and eventually it resulted with a phone call in April that was another clear indicator the job was mine.  But I would have to wait longer.  And longer.

And longer.

I gave it a time limit, saying that if I hadn't heard anything by mid-July, then I was going to move on.  The hard thing about having this dangled above my head for so long (to no fault of Katie's at all) was that it was a false hope I was attaching myself to.  And that's hard, when you've also attached yourself to a false romance.  And a false joy in your house that you never liked from day one... and a crushing disappointment in your health and fitness journey.  See where I'm going with this?

Andrew moved out at the start of July, and having that piece of the puzzle set in place (or removed?) gave me the small amount of clarity I needed.  It made me realize that at the core of a lot of this was that I was no longer happy, in any meaning of the word, at Pottery Barn.  I'd spent so many months thinking "it's not the company, it's that you want something different!  It's not your role, it's that you just need a change!"  But that wasn't it.  

It was the crushing responsibility of being the General Manager there.  Constantly on-call, constantly answering e-mails in your time off and messages from the staff.  Problem solving at any given moment.  Thinking of how to spin bad news to a customer base that is so volatile and cruel that the words they sling back at you stick and stay, long after your shift has ended.  I really don't have a lot of negative things to say about Williams-Sonoma Inc, by any means.  It is a pretty great company with excellent benefits and inclusivity.  Pay is "fine," but that is always subjective.  It's the customers.

This isn't because of Covid and the shipping issues created because of it, either.  This is well documented amongst my peers that have left over the years.  When you're "in" the situation, you make excuses.  You're so conditioned to just taking it from them that you understand it's just part of the job.  Part of the paycheck.  I've had grown ass adults screaming at the top of their lungs at me both on the phone and in person for several years because of their furniture not coming on time, or being delayed, or arriving damaged.  Screaming at me over "stuff."

It's just.  Fucking.  Stuff.

I've had people demand I fly to Vietnam to oversee the construction of a home office suite to ensure the quality.  I've had people expect free sectionals due to a botched delivery and that is what they feel they are owed.  I've had quite wealthy clients come in and throw a full-on temper tantrum over a floor model that they got cheaper at another store and demand I credit the difference for the one they purchased at my store.  This instance in particular involved a hand-slapping-on-the-counter-with-raised-voice-and-demeaningly-ruel-words-full-on temper tantrum.

Eventually you realize the effect this all has on your mental health.  Eventually you realize it's not normal to dread going to work because of a phone call you've got to make to a customer or an e-mail you need to reply to.  Eventually you realize it isn't normal to be on the verge of tears because of the fear you hold in handling a situation for one of your associates because it means you're going to be the one taking the gunfire.  Eventually you realize that you no longer spend your time at work as the General Manager actually managing... you're just putting out fires and throwing "the Sean Parker spin" on e-mails to get your team out of danger territory with a guest.

Ultimately... eventually... you realize how much Stockholm syndrome has taken hold of your life and that it's time to make a change.

I told my boss a week after Andrew moved out that I didn't want to be the General Manager at Pottery Barn anymore.  I couldn't handle the stress of the job, and I could no longer be what my team needed me to be.  I'd spent so long putting myself and my mental health on the back burner that the damage control I was doing for myself was almost insurmountable.  It wasn't okay anymore.  I had heard a rumor from several people that the District Visual Manager was wanting to step away from her role, and I suggested that I would like to take it.  He thought this was a great idea, as there was merit to the rumor, and he would reach out with next steps.  I felt better already.

Only a week later, however, he called to ask me point blank "why are you telling people you are pushing so-and-so out of their job and taking it for yourself?"  I was gobsmacked.  I had never once said that... never would say that... and was confused as to how the words I had actually shared had been twisted that way.  "So-and-so is really happy in their position and won't be stepping away, so what you need to do is control the narrative in your store and make sure your team understands how happy you are in your role."  I sat there with my face burning with so many emotions... embarrassment, betrayal, heartbreak, anger, confusion... when the big words came out from him:

"You need to make sure you're leaving behind a good legacy."

10 years of service wasn't enough to secure my "legacy."  Six full years as the General Manager, plus two holiday seasons as the Acting General Manger... that wasn't enough for my"legacy."  Getting my team through Covid and quarantine and George Floyd and the civil unrest, that wasn't enough for my "legacy."  Never-mind that I never made waves, or asked for help from other stores, or needed assistance in hiring.  That we were always staffed, that my team was happy, that I advocated and fought for more pay to each one of them that deserved and earned it.  Never-mind that my mental health was at the lowest point it has, arguably, ever been in my life.

I needed to leave behind a good legacy, and because I was crumbling as a human being, said legacy was in jeopardy.

That afternoon I accepted the invite from a recruiter with Gap, and in a little over two weeks, I had secured my new job as the General Manager for Banana Republic.  A former colleague had made the transition earlier in the year and for a moment I was concerned people would think she had something to do with it, but I knew that wasn't the truth and came to understand that it didn't matter if that's what people assumed.  I earned the job based on my own merits, my own skillset, and that is something I am very proud of.

Did you know I never actually interviewed to be the GM with Pottery Barn?  They just gave it to me when the spot opened up at the store I was in.  Talk about not feeling like you earned something, right?  Retail is a thankless job and it's definitely something everyone should have to do at least once in their life.  But to feel like it is a thankless job from within your own organization... that was the final straw for me.

Giving my notice was difficult because it was emotional.  I'm an emotional guy (no big surprise), so letting your friends (essentially your family) know that you are leaving is a really tough thing to do.  And what's funny is that when you DO give that notice... suddenly the "legacy" you are leaving behind is now crystal clear.

Emotions from everyone start to emerge.  There you have me, the writer and self-appointed "emotional vampire," sucking it all up.  

You start to understand for maybe the first time what you actually meant to people.  

We had a whole-store meeting the week after I gave my notice, the first whole-store meeting we'd been directed to host in 6 years.  I had already told everyone personally about my decision to leave and why, so they all knew about it going into the meeting (which was supposed to be about where we were on the year and then some trainings that needed to happen as we moved into the third quarter).  What the meeting turned into was a general love fest, if that's the right phrase?  I went around the circle and told each associate and manager what they meant to the store and to me, thanking them each for their service and what they brought to the table for the team.  I glossed over the more touching aspects for each person, because I kept feeling myself inching toward the point of tears and I didn't want the meeting to be about that.  Me, crying, waxing poetic.

But then they turned it to me.

They went around the circle in the same order and told me what I had done for them.  A few used the words "you saved me," and when I tell you that my throat sealed itself almost completely, that's an understatement.  Some I saved from a crummy former work situation, some I gave a chance because I saw talent in them.  There were the people I saved from isolation due to Covid, and others who had a specific schedule requirement that I was always fine accommodating.  My energy, my humor, my kindness, my empathy, my understanding... it was a lot to take in, being that for the most part, it was the first I had ever heard of these sentiments.

Admittedly there is a part of me that wishes I knew some of these things before I decided to leave.   Not that it would have changed my decision, but just... I don't know.  I guess it's nice to hear that you're doing a good job now and then.  It's lonely at the top, as they say, and you spend a lot of your time celebrating the achievements of your team (as you should) when not much usually comes back to you for leading them there.  There were the "I love working with you!" comments over the years, but (and maybe I'm alone here) those sometimes can feel like throwaway statements, y'know?  Akin to "I love when you make this for dinner!" or something.  You listen and you appreciate but ultimately you disregard.

I'm also this way when people compliment how I look, it's just a thing I do.  Anyway.

My open letter to the staff

A week later, my last day with Pottery Barn carried such odd feelings.  My boss and several General Managers and managers in training were in my store for the day, coincidentally, and I got to have a great final lunch with them and meet the person who was maybe taking over my store.  I felt complete in my decision making, realizing it was time for the passing of the guard or whatever you want to call it.  My time had come.  It was the first time I've ever left a job and didn't write personalized letters to the staff, or at least some of the staff.  I used to do that for some reason that was lost on me... maybe I just thought it was appropriate back then?  I instead this time wrote an open letter to the staff, so that they knew where my heart was and that largely, it stayed with them.  

When the day was over, I got in my car and sat there, tears welling in my eyes and my hands shakily holding the steering wheel as I stared at the store.  I was thinking about the two weeks preceding... then the 10 years preceding... and what the future holds.  It was surreal.  I felt like I was standing at the precipice of something new and exciting again.  I felt this same way 10 years ago when I first started at Pottery Barn.

Because 10 years ago, #10 on my list of 26 Golden Things (an old door closes) seemed like the most impossible one to achieve.  Leaving Express after 8 years was this weird, foreign concept to me because it was leaving familiarity.  Today I re-read that blog and it sorta struck me how similar I feel now as I did then.  The uncertainty before me, the fear of stepping out of a comfort zone and learning how to do things all over again.  Not being the most knowledgable in the building, not having all the answers at the drop of a hat or the work around in any given situation.  But staying meant staying complacent in a life I have been far too... complacent... with.  That's not what I need right now.

What I need is change.  It's what I crave.  New starts and fresh beginnings and glimpses of hope that will direct me on my path.  Like I wrote back in 2012, the time has come for it to be over and for me to move along.  I've been in a stasis with Pottery Barn (re: life) for too long, waiting for things to happen to me instead of making them happen for myself.  Taking the reigns again feels good and it's something I'm trying to re-learn in many different ways right now.

Pottery Barn #733, The Shoppes at Arbor Lakes

I rest easy now in knowing what legacy I leave behind at Pottery Barn.  I know that I always led people first and foremost with kindness.  I know that I was always fair, that I strived to do what was right, and that I chose to see the good in everyone.  It may not have always been the best strategy, as some people (as we all know) are just plain and simple rotten, but it was what worked for me.  And in the end, I feel it worked for them too.  I was anticipating a call from one of the Regional Vice Presidents... or the Senior Vice President that had hired me.  People I had developed relationships with over my 10 years and ones I thought might be curious to why I was leaving and would want to maybe wish me well.  I also expected a call from HR to give me an exit interview.

None of that happened.  

Because none of that happened, I rested even more easily in my decision to leave.  Perhaps I held myself on a higher pedestal than my role was truly worth... perhaps, like the entitled customers I had come to loathe from my exceptional service over the years, I, too, had become blind to what I was owed.  But then when I think on it, I never had a bad corporate visit, did I?  Nope.  Not from the CEO, not from the brand president, and not from the multiple visits with the Regionals and District Managers.  In my six years in charge at this store, the visual standards were always exemplary, operating procedures were followed to a T.  I was always fully hired, we were always happy, and we were always professional.  Maybe I wasn't owed a phone call... but I know what true respect looks like, and I know how I was respected by my team and my peers... and I know I had earned a phone call.  

Holding onto that kind of anger is pointless, however, and when it all boils down... it's too harmful to not just let go of it.  So I've written it out here and I gladly leave it behind with all the other things unsaid and undone with this company.

Deepak Chopra wrote the quote at the top of the blog, but it does leave out the second sentence and the one I like the most: "All great changes are preceded by chaos.  The disruption we see in the world is the prelude to emergence."  I think my life this year has been such a big damn mess (read my blogs), but it can only mean good, right?  Just like saying when you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

Tonight I went to my former stock associate's house for the farewell party the staff threw for me.  I visited with them, we chatted, and we all had a good time before I came home.  It's surreal to not be "the boss" anymore, but the most exciting thing is now I can transition into "friend" with them and be able to fully be myself with them.  Tomorrow I start my new career at Banana Republic.  It's wild that this has all finally come to a close, but here we are!  When all is said and done, it's another big change for me.  It's not the last one, probably the last "big" one for this year, but certainly not the last one.  Guess you'll just have to see what comes next.

Ciao for now (c:

when it comes to therapy

I remember when I was a tween... maybe 12... and going to see what I now understand to have been a childhood psychiatrist.  At the time I thought I was so cool and important, the way I felt cool when I got braces for the first time or when I got my glasses that I wore all around even though I didn't need to.  My mom took me in because I'd been having stomach issues (bad gallbladder) and the doctors were thinking maybe it was in my head.  So we got there and I thought there was going to be some miracle thing around fixing me, but there wasn't.  The guy chatted with me, I tried not to exaggerate my life up-to-then, and then we left.  

I said I didn't want to go back because ultimately, it was a disappointing experience.  No cure?  Get lost.

Launching forward another 12 years, I started seeing a couples counselor with Ken.  We had gone through a couple cheating scandals/affairs, and I said that if I was going to stay, then he needed to get us counseling to try and work through whatever it was that we were going through.  I can remember sitting down with this lady, someone that was paid for through Ken's work, and her asking "so why are you both here?"  And he looked at me with eyes that said "your story, you tell her," and that was therapy.

It was me talking, waxing poetic, artfully crying, attempting to get her on MY side, and trying for a limited four sessions to fix whatever "love" meant to me at that point.  In hindsight it was sham.  I wasn't taking it seriously because in my heart of hearts, I knew we were toast.  And I think in his heart of hearts, he was doing it because it was just what you should do to not rock the boat anymore than you already have.  And then of course in her heart of hearts I think she was just getting a paycheck.  Can't fault her, really.

And that was what I maintained was therapy for a long time after, just kind of a ruse where you could go and chat and say you were better and then scoot along and be allegedly better for it.  Maybe other people got more from it than I did, and maybe not.  My own experiences had been poop.

In 2017, after another relationship ended in cheating, I was left once again looking at the broken pieces of a life I had held publicly in high regard, but in reality had grown to resent for the mirage that it was.  I say this because it was a life of Instagram posts and witty blogs to show everyone how happy I was and how great my world was, and aren't you jealous?  Don't you wish you could be here WITH me to experience it all?  But it was a trick of the light... a figment of a reality that didn't exist.  When I realized this, I also realized I needed help.  Depression is a funny thing in how it hides so cleverly below the surface, waiting for a chance to dig its claws in and drag you under.  I was going under.

I had mentioned in the summer at a doctor visit that I wasn't doing well with my own happiness, and it was suggested that I reach out to a therapist for help within the hospital network.  I said yeah, that would be great, but I left it there and never intended to act on it.  Luckily some doctors take that sort of thing seriously, because had they not submitted me to whatever system they operate in, I never would have received a call a few weeks later from the scheduling team.  They had a therapist ready for me, and I just needed to agree to an appointment.

And so I met Kelsey.  

She was newer to the field, having recently graduated from school, and everything we talked about needed to be gone over with her supervisor (or at least, that was how I understood it).  I remember sitting in her small office that had a little... loveseat?... against the wall, a couple lamps, a couple pieces of artwork, and her desk.  Oh, and two desk chairs.  I always chose one of the desk chairs, my back to the door, and I stared a lot at one of the images on the wall.  It was of a dam, if I remember correctly, and the shadows of the cables running in the air above were cast on the dam wall.

When she asked me what brought me in, I realized in that moment it was my chance to drop the bullshit.  In that instant, my chance had presented itself to shed the past like the dead weight it had actually become.  I had no partner in the room to point the finger at, I had no parent with me to stop me from sharing possibly too much, it was just us.  And I was 31, so really, the jig was up.  I started talking.  And I talked and I talked and I cried.  I was heartbroken over my relationship ending, first and foremost.  I was devastated and embarrassed, and in some ways to this day, I still am.  I've had three great loves in my life and Derek was one of them, the one that was perhaps the most consistent with no breaks during and no scandals until the very end.

Why I would still feel some sort of devastation and embarrassment, I don't think I could tell you.  It's not a big part of me, yet it lingers in the dark sometimes.  You put too much focus on it, you give it too much weight, and it can come out of the shadows for a visit.  However brief.

In the beginning I was seeing Kelsey weekly, and after the first month, it moved to bi-weekly.  We graduated from talking about Derek and Ken to talking about other things.  Family dynamics, my relationships with my parents as a whole, my mom and dad separately, and the same with my siblings.  We worked on the issues I had there, issues I never knew I had, because I'd not brought them up before to focus on and I'd also never been asked the... right questions?  Or maybe the right follow-up questions?  I don't know.  We moved into work issues, friend issues.  I addressed the at times crippling anxiety that I deal with.  The phobias I handle seemingly with ease.  How I can be controlling, neurotic, and perhaps too head-strong.

By the spring of 2018, Kelsey felt like my friend.  I don't know if that's the point of therapy, I assume it's not to pay for a friendship, but there we were.  I trusted her.  She occasionally gave an opinion but never one of "this is what you should do."  It was more of "I hear what you're saying, and I understand why you say it.  What do you feel when you're in this situation?" It was a constant flow of addressing my feelings and seeking to understand them.  At this point I was only seeing her once a month.

So I bought the Manor, my first house, and we had a session that June where I told her I felt like I didn't need to be in therapy anymore.  Weirdly it felt like breaking up, y'know?  We weren't going to talk anymore, not outside of that office, because that crosses some sort of boundary that I didn't go to school to understand.  I just knew it was a non-negotiable and best not to ask.  She was having a baby that fall, her first, so I knew the time limit had sort of been established anyway on when we would be sunsetting our chats.  My last appointment would be in July, and when it came, she had to reschedule it due to maybe a doctors appointment or something popping up on her end.  I took it as a sign not to reschedule, that it was the universe telling me I was good to go.

I worked on my house for a year, and I focused on bettering myself for ME, not for someone or anyone else, and it worked.  After being single a year and a half, I dated again that winter, my lovely Jonathan, aka Mursula Gandalf O'Brien.  Ultimately it did not work out with him, but it was the first time I in my adult life had been able to sit down with someone and explain why it wasn't working out.  Odd how three years later and he is undoubtedly one of the best friends I've ever had.  Anywho, hey girl.

I met Andrew in 2019, a year to the day after buying the house.  Nine months later I lost Andrew when he left me, citing reasons that dealt largely with his mental health.  I was so flabbergasted, to put it lightly, over what happened with us, and I was so fucking MAD at myself for having let go of all the work I had done to become the guy he had originally been attracted to.  It felt like punishment for thinking I could have bettered myself, and this was the universe's way of smacking me with reality.  I was a mess, doubled over with my own issues as Covid spread and turned everything familiar upside down.  Social interactions that could have helped me move forward were ripped away.  Being out in public and writing, like I am right now, was not an option.  

There was a lot of shame that came upon me when Andrew and I first broke up.  Pure shame that I had lost myself so willingly and so blindly to a love I had felt like no other before it.  And that sucked.  When we had a brief quarrel that spring, I used therapy as if it were a weapon, telling him I'd been forced to go back to it because of him, as if that were a bad thing.  It was also a lie, because of course I had not gone back.  I thought about it, sure, but I never pursued it.  In hindsight I'm not sure why I thought saying I had gone back to therapy was a bad thing... maybe my mindset was on "you hurt me bad enough that I can't cope by myself"?  I don't know.  

When we inevitably got back together a year later, there was the small voice in the back of my mind telling me not to do it.  I felt like I was setting myself up for more pain, and yes, eventually I was, but at the time the pros outweighed the cons.  

Ultimately by the time winter came around this past year, I was not doing well.  There were a lot of reasons why, most of them had to do with my relationship and what was going on within it.  I could not easily find Kelsey, either.  I knew her first and last name, but not if she was even working there any longer.  I probably could've called but that would mean stepping out of my comfort zone and we certainly couldn't have that.  So I hunted her down through the hospital directory, eventually found her, and eventually was able to make an appointment.  

Therapy started back up in January this year.

It's funny, but I can't really even describe what that first meeting was like with her.  It had been nearly four years since we last spoke and there was a lot to catch her up on, but ultimately it was this incredible, all encompassing relief that I had found her and could talk to her.  She'd been with me before... she still had the notes from before.  It was almost as if no time at all had passed.

Eventually I started seeing an additional therapist to work through another kind of trauma that I was grappling with, which was expensive and on the side and something that I learned from but don't need to participate in again.  That was for two months and not something I'll get into here.

When Kelsey and I reconnected, she had by then welcomed two children into her life and a third was on the way this August.  That gave me a time limit, as it were (and as I assigned), to work through my shit.  I didn't want to come back with a no-end-in-sight mentality around therapy, because that's not how I operate in general.  What's the problem, why is it a problem, and how can I fix it?  The sessions were all going to be remote and through zoom, something I was nervous about at first but ultimately came to enjoy.  It was quicker, easier, and there was no lost connection between us despite not being in the same room.

Sometimes it was hard having these sessions when Andrew was home.  He would lock himself away in his office with his noise cancelling headphones on, but I felt like I needed to be guarded and careful about what I said in the off chance he would hear me.  After all, the bulk of our conversation was around him, me, and what was going on.  I'm pretty open in this forum about my life, the blog forum, and with Andrew I was pretty open as well, but what Kelsey and I talked about was between us.  They were my darkest, most desperate thoughts, and sharing those with anyone else just didn't compute.  He would ask me after my sessions if I wanted to talk about anything we had discussed, and I rarely if ever did.  Sometimes it annoyed me that he would ask, made me angry, because I was trying to get it in my mind that I was doing this to better myself.  I was not trying to better him, because largely at that point I had given up trying to do so.  Our agreement had been that he would go to therapy as well on his own, and after two sessions he stopped.  There was a lot of fury in me towards him for that, because to me, it just looked like he had given up on himself, and thus our life together.  I had to be in it for myself and no one else.

I never voiced that to him, not until now of course if he's reading this, and it is what it is.

When we broke up, I had resigned myself to reality and accepted it for face value.  I could no longer try to look deeper in him, I could no longer make excuses, I just had to give up.  And for me, giving up is a very hard thing to do.  Maybe because I'm stubborn and a control freak, though the latter is something I'm not supposed to say about myself.  Kelsey once phrased it as "oh we don't say that, we like to say persistently with our choices."  It was a laugh.

In July, after Andrew had moved out, we determined I needed to figure out how to be a generator of my own happiness again.  What does it take to be a generator?  We ended a call one day and I went and grabbed a huge sketchbook, writing in great big bold letters across the top "HOW TO BECOME A GENERATOR."  I filled out three columns beneath that, What's the problem? Why tho? and What's the solution?  I then took my time filling the columns out, coming up with 15 things in my life that bother me, what exactly the reason is behind them bothering me, and then what the ways are in which I could hopefully resolve them.  The effect was pretty immediate, seeing all of the swirling thoughts that had bombarded my mind for months, neatly put onto paper.  Organized thoughtfully, carefully, and in a way that I could take action on them.  Some I already have.

Yesterday was my last day of therapy with Kelsey as she prepares for maternity leave next week.  I had felt that after Andrew moved out, I put the pedal to the metal to get myself together.  That meant compartmentalizing some things in a way, and it also meant setting plans into motion in another (such as quitting my job at Pottery Barn (more on that soon)).  It's funny though how in the rush to get these things all going, I felt like I was doing it to make my teacher happy.  Not because I could then scream out "I'm CURED!" but because having a time limit meant I needed to just figure my business out... to show I had figured my shit out to the one person that knew what that shit was.

I don't know if it's the last session I'll ever have with her, or even if it's the last time I'll ever talk to her.  When I closed my laptop after exiting the zoom, I put my head down on the dining table and I cried.  Perhaps it is the overwhelming happiness I feel at accomplishing something again, when it feels like it has been years since I last did.  Perhaps it's the sadness that this individual, large in part a tool of recovery to me themselves, has to go away for a while.  And then perhaps, also, it is because for the first time in a very long time I feel hope for what is to come.  I feel like I've got a chance now to change my circumstances, in whatever way I want, and that's a really great thing.  

Just like therapy turned out to be, as it were.

I used to be so skeptical of a stranger coming into your life and turning it in so many different directions through the power of conversation, but that is what happened here.  Kelsey saved me in ways I didn't know I needed to be saved... in ways I didn't know I could be saved.  And I'll be forever grateful to her for being a person I could turn to in my lowest hours, for just a little reassurance and the slightest hint of guidance.  The rest was up to me, as it always has been, and she let me see that for myself.

I'm filled with gratitude toward her, more than I know how to say.  And if you've ever had the opportunity to participate in something such as this, perhaps you agree.  It's not always comfortable, it's not always easy, and it's certainly not always fun.  But in the end, it's important work and it's so alleviating (hopefully) as to what is troubling you.  I'm living proof of that.

Ciao for now (c:

when it doesn't work, take ii

the first day together, june 2019

I used to turn to my words when I was lost.  It was a habit I picked up quickly and off the cuff way back in the MySpace days of like... 2006?  I'd give anything to go back to those mini-blogs and see how melodramatic they were, because I am certain they are just absolutely groan inducing now.  The problems of a 21 year old seem to pale in comparison to a now 36 year old, at the time having never actually been in love and not really understanding the intricacies that came with being so.  During love, after, and then way way after... when you've had a few years to reflect and learn... you can see the minutiae of it all.  When I picked up the pace on blogging again in 2011, here in its current form, I turned back to writing in my lost wanderings after the first of my three great loves had ended.

Even with writing my books, scribbling thoughts out is a habit I have let drop by the wayside in subsequent years.  Maybe because I would choose to turn toward other distractions instead, rather than dealing with things bothering me.  For example after Derek, I bought the Manor, and I spent a full year with my nose down renovating it as a distraction.  It worked in the sense that I eventually pulled my head up and realized I was in a different place than I had once been.  It didn't work in the sense that I when I did eventually lift my head up, it was to lock eyes with Andrew.

I don't need to re-tread the steps of our relationship here, I've done that enough and kept you all updated as much as I was willing to do.  When we broke up for a second (re: final) time in March, I jotted down my thoughts and figured that I was quickly and tidily wrapping everything up.  No muss no fuss, a place for everything and everything in it's place, whatever metaphor you wanna insert here.  Yes I was sad that it ended, as was he, but it was gonna be fine and we were gonna be fine and I was gonna be fine.  

Flash forward to July 1st and whoops, no one was fine.

october 2019

Y'see, the first month after our breakup wasn't an issue.  We took a couple weeks before we stopped sharing a bed before he moved to the guest room, and then we took a few more weeks for him to move his closet and dresser into another room.  I wanted it this way, because after our first relationship ended so abruptly, I never had any closure from it.  This way, it was a slow slide out of what we were and into what we would eventually be, with no rushing and just a gradual letting go of things.  Then everything slowly dematerialized into a status of "friends".  

Only we never were actually friends... the relationship aspect of things only ended in the sense that we stopped saying "I love you" 50 times a day and there was no more cuddling on the couch/physicality.  Everything else stayed the same.  He would pick up random things at the store for me he thought I might like, I did the same.  He'd make dinner, I'd make dinner.  He'd buy some drinks, I'd buy some drinks.  We always viewed it as a form of yin and yang, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, but there was a thought and devotion to it also that lay just beneath everything.  Just beneath the surface.

We did these things because we still loved each other, y'see.  Maybe we weren't "in" love, but that also is hard to quantify, right?  After all, at some point being "in" love just turns to "unconditional" love, and you do the things you do because it makes the other person happy.  I've had a lot of mental health struggles over the last 8 months and I talk about this with my therapist pretty frequently as I attempt to sort through the bog that is my mind.  By early May and after a bout of Covid for both of us, I was starting to crumble.  My mind was stuck in this sort-of revolving door of thoughts that I was still in a relationship, only I wasn't, but I couldn't move on, because I didn't want to and also because I couldn't, because I was still in a relationship... only I wasn't?  I had not made any progress forward and I was feeling constantly like I was going out of my mind, feeling like Andrew was setting a lump of limitations on me as an individual, even though he wasn't at all.

I still felt like I had to check in all the time, to tell him where I was and who I was with and what we did.  It just wasn't healthy.  So then I told him we couldn't live together anymore, and within a few days he had found an apartment in Madison that he'd be moving to July 1st.  That was that.

december 2019

From there, we did what we do best.  We put our blinders on and just moved day to day, planning things for the move and largely ignoring everything that the move meant.  It's easier to ignore things... to not write about things... than it sometimes is to confront and understand.  For my own part, I kept telling myself "you're going to feel great after July 1st, you're going to be free and feel like you've got a new lease on life and who you were BEFORE you got back together is gonna come right back in, and hey!  You're gonna instantly drop weight!  You're gonna be HAPPY!  Everything is going to change when you drive away from Madison, just wait and see!"

Only things are never really what you anticipate, right?  You have a high hope, and the reality of it is that you land somewhere amidst the dirty feet of said hope.

A week before move day, I got sick again with Covid.  Then Andrew got sick again with Covid.  I spent two full days face-down on my bed, navigating fevers and chills and coughing fits and essentially feeling like I was going to die.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't smell or taste anything; any plans for that "final week" were out the window.  No grilling out, no going to a restaurant for a nice goodbye meal, it was just sitting in the house and mostly him taking care of me, and then a little bit of me taking care of him.  Then on Thursday night it was both of us struggling to load up his car and my truck, fevers and all.  And then on Friday, it was kicking off our 4 hour drive to Madison through America's bullshit independence day traffic.

july 2021

It took a couple hours for us to unload the vehicles, and we were drenched in sweat and pretty quiet from just feeling rundown when all was said and done.  I helped him put his new bed frame together, and then we got the TV unboxed and on its stand... and then I could just feel the constant nagging in the back of my throat as it tried to close itself off from the tears I had been fighting back.  

So I said I was going to go and get started on the drive back to Minnesota.

Andrew seemed a little surprised.  Not that it wasn't the plan, because it was.  But it was also the sudden end to nearly three years of trying to navigate and figure out what our love for each other was.  What it was meant to be, what it was supposed to be, and where it ended up.  It was the conclusion of a journey during which we both earned our licks.  There will be no more five hour car rides to just spend a full day with one another.  No more hopes for surprise kisses or wonderfully healing hugs.  No more mornings together drinking coffee and just talking for an hour about everything and nothing at once.  No more goodnights and sweet dreams, no more oft-quoted jokes in passing or quick checkin-ins when I get home from work.  

Eventually you have to lay things down where they are supposed to be set, and you have to move on.  Ours was a relationship that perhaps crushed itself, more than once, under the weight of its own self-importance.  Trying to live up to a standard for the other person so desperately that there was no place else for it to go but downward.

september 2021

So I held my arms open for a hug, and I got one.  And I cried.  And I tried to force myself to let go once and for all of this man I have loved like no other.  I tried to force myself to say the words I'd rehearsed through my tears the night before, but that was to no avail.  Suddenly for every small thing I couldn't stand about him, for every small thing that bothered me and hurt me and annoyed me, there were infinite more things that brought me so much joy and happiness.  It was in that small infinitesimal moment that I so desperately wanted everything to go back to how it had once been.

I pulled away and he took my hands and he thanked me for everything, in a way so sincere that I interpreted it as much more open-ended than just helping him to move.  And then I turned and I left the apartment, glancing back one last time and feeling like it was the last time I'd ever see him, wether that feeling was warranted or not.  I put on my sunglasses in case someone saw me in the hallway and wondered why I was crying so hard.

I habitually keep myself firmly planted between expectations and reality, and maybe because this was our second go-around, I had to let reality win this time.  

Because that's how it works, right?  Win some and lose some?  I suppose that's the thing between expectation and how the real world is.  There's reality.  Or at least, there's reality as it actually happened.  Then perhaps there's the reality as you were told it happened.  Then ultimately, there's reality as you experienced it.  What's the right one, and if there isn't one, is it wrong to prefer one over the others?

november 2021

Maybe in another life, maybe in some upside down... we're still together.  Andrew and I are quoting movies into the middle of the night, staring at each other lovingly on our pillows and believing nothing else in the universe matters but us.  We're sharing a pair of AirPods, their song is lulling us to our content, and we're just good staying exactly like that.  But then I think of Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, and how she said "I would've loved to come live with you in your castle, Bruce.  Just like in a fairytale.  But I just couldn't live with myself."

Eventually you have to look at the world without rose colored glasses on and you need to take the steps necessary to start moving yourself forward again.

In the car, as I answered a myriad of text messages through my sobs, one came through from my mom as I started driving back to Minnesota.  After I had asked her why it was so hard for me to let go, one of the things she told me was "the deep feelings you have for the people in your life are part of what makes you so wonderful."  It's a blessing and a curse, in part, because often times for me the pain is just an inevitable part of the process.

The drive home was not liberating.  The day that followed was not liberating.  In all actuality, what it made me realize was that we had just broken up all over again.  Stupidly, what I fear now is that my life will be boring... because it's just me now.  It's me, alone, on my own, solo, yadda yadda.  And it makes me so sad.  I wonder if there comes a point in your life when it's too late to become the person you thought you would be?  Or maybe who you hoped you would be?

december 2021

We've spoken several times already since the move, and it shouldn't be such a concept for me to talk to the person I thought I'd share my forever with, and speak in an actually constructive way that illustrates people can truly be adults.  To have my emotions relayed back to me in such an honest and truthful way that I would believe what he is saying and understand that in this, I'm not alone.  

I might cry about it all a lot more, but I'm not alone.

I think back to the letter I wrote for Andrew after we broke up the first time, and I had been reading Memoirs of a Geisha.  I read this passage and loved it, and I shared it with him.  I think it still rings true.

"...and of course, I couldn't stop from thinking of the other life I'd once led.  Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it.  It's like a window that will simply open of its own accord.  The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver.  But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it."  

This will pass.  Right now, I'm sad knowing it will pass, because that means putting away these emotions as they currently exist.  Our relationship will continue to transform and change over the next weeks and months and years, as it has for other people in my life.  For now I take refuge in the memories of what it once was, and when I feel like I've spent my time with them, I'll take another step forward.  I wish I knew what that direction was, but hey... it's a direction.

But I'm here to say that I know how love endures, beyond what the obvious concept of it once was for me.  And to Andrew, my Meatball, if love is fire, I'll burn for you.

Ciao for now.