Living in Interesting Times by Joanna Novins posted: 12-22-03

With the way the economy has been going, we all know someone who has lost a job. Or maybe we're the one who is out of work. And whether we've known for several years that the company's stock was dropping and personnel were being downsized, or we've suspected for months that the office was going to close, severance still seems to come as a shock. It's not just the loss of income and security that are stunning, but the sudden loss of personal identity.

It's not surprising, I suppose, when you think of how most of us answer the question, "What do you do?" Almost without thinking, we say, "I am," and then continue with a job title. It is as if we have come to believe that what we do is who we are.

It's certainly how I felt when I left my job with the Central Intelligence Agency several years ago and moved to Connecticut. The move was abrupt: one day my husband called me at the office to ask if I'd like to give up my job, move to the New York area, and stay home with the children. I laughed, said absolutely not, (I'd recently been promoted to a management position), and hung up the phone. Two days later I was in my boss's office explaining why I would be quitting.

I made the decision for all the right reasons. The move earned my husband a partnership in a top tier consulting firm and my children the full-time attention of a parent. It brought us back to my hometown, down the street from my parents. It was perfect for everyone—everyone it seemed, except me. I loved my job at the CIA. I'd worked there for over a decade. I'd spent nearly as many years studying the topics that had earned me a position there. My job, my degrees, the schools I attended; they were how I defined myself. Without them, I felt lost.

I attempted to fill the void by trying to be a super mom. I cooked. I cleaned. I played games with my children. I read to them, sang to them, and let them loose with art supplies. It didn't work. I tried harder. I enrolled them in classes: music, art, gymnastics, skating, science, chess, soccer, basketball, and karate. They'd start each session enthusiastically enough, but by the end they'd be dragging their sneakered feet, begging to stay home and play, and I'd be struggling to get them into the car and lecturing them about missed opportunities.

Which is when it hit me.

I was the one who was missing opportunities. I was missing opportunities to learn, and grow, and redefine myself. For the first time since my late teens, I had a chance to think about what I'd like to do. But in contrast to the decisions I'd made in my teens, I didn't have parents or teachers telling what I should do. Moreover, I didn't have to imagine what I might enjoy, or what I might be good at; I'd had enough experience to know.

I started thinking about what it was that I missed the most about my job. I'd spent most of my time as an analyst. I'd loved the creative process of researching, analyzing fragments of information, and drawing them together in a tightly written piece. I thought about the elements of the job I didn't miss, the administrative tasks that came with management responsibility, and the bureaucratic politics. I realized that if I'd stayed at the agency, continuing along the path I'd set for myself in management, I would have moved farther and farther from the aspects of the job that intrigued and challenged me the most.

I stopped enrolling my children in classes and started enrolling myself. As simple as it sounds, taking classes isn't something most people in their thirties and forties seem to do. I don't think it is just because we're busy with jobs and family. It's almost as if there's an unwritten law that only the very young and the very old are allowed to try new things. I don't why this is, perhaps the young are seen as still deciding to do with their lives while the old are seen as having already done it. In between, it seems we are expected to stay the course.

A conversation I heard recently brought this home to me. A friend was speaking to another, a man in his early forties, who had recently lost his job. "Well," she said, "you have to be careful what you choose, because at your age, this will probably be the last job you ever have." With life expectancies soaring, why should this be the case? Why should we be expected to remain wedded to choices we made in our twenties? Only imagine if we were expected to stick with other choices we'd made that early in our lives, the fashions, for example, or the boyfriends?

I took classes in things that interested me, and not because I was looking for a new career, or a new degree, or even a new identity. Some of the things I chose to learn seem deceptively simple; I tried my hand at throwing pots on a wheel, dressing a loom and weaving, knitting. I didn't do all of them well, nor did I enjoy everything I tried to do, but it wasn't my intention to become a master potter, or weaver, or knitting designer. Without entirely being aware of it, I was changing my image. I was learning for the sake of learning, not to achieve something or impress anyone. And because this was so, I allowed myself to fail, I allowed myself to quit, and I became increasingly comfortable with starting over. Looking back on it, I suppose it's not surprising that I enjoyed knitting the best. With knitting you can experiment with color, with texture and with shape, and if you don't like what you're doing, in an instant you can rip it all out and start again.

Eventually, I tried something I'd wanted to do since I was a kid. I wrote a book, an historical romance full of wild adventure set in France and England in the early days of the French Revolution, called the Souvenir Countess. Though the setting is far from my suburban Connecticut lifestyle, the heroine's emotions, her sense of loss, her anger and frustration, and ultimately her sense of hope, are all drawn from the way I was feeling at the time.

At the heart of the Souvenir Countess is a heroine who is struggling with change. A sheltered noblewoman, Alix de La Brou has been raised with an expectation of what her life will be—marriage to a man who will maintain her in comfortable circumstances and who will place few demands on her beyond producing children. The peasants' destruction of her father's chateau casts the heroine out into the world and forces her to reinvent herself, discovering capabilities she never knew she had in the process.

The book sold. I tried my hand at another book, set in the American Revolution, which didn't sell. So I wrote another one, returning to the French Revolution and throwing a spy twist into the romance. Souvenir Of Love will be published back to back with Souvenir Countess in January and February 2004. I'm already at work researching another book, more French Revolution, more spies, and underground tunnels in Paris. Whether or not it sells, I'm looking forward to the research, the writing, and the emotional journey on which the process takes me.

Change is always frightening, especially when it is unexpected. In China, there is an ancient curse, "may you live in interesting times." To Western ears, it may seem like an odd choice of words for a curse—indeed, the other day I saw it quoted as in an advertisement for a workshop on spiritual awakening. But in China order is seen as a blessing, and disorder, or change, as a curse. It's a matter of perspective; do you cling to old order or do you strike out for the new?

 

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