On December 28, 2009, I posted this on my name site. It was not a manifesto, to be sure, but it was a promise I made to myself.

The Goal: Quit my job and be working as an independent by June 30, 2010.

Goal achieved. In fact, I was out of my job on June 15, and sitting at this desk, looking out onto a tree-lined brownstone street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Then, in January I posted this on getting my financial and physical house in order. I had grand plans of having six months income socked away before I started my new life. That was before I remembered that I’d blown my savings on some family obligations. I don’t begrudge those expenses (much) but it has definitely made things a little more, um, pressing. Yesterday I had $50 in my checking account; today, a client’s payment arrived and I am back in good shape. By the end of September, I’ll have enough to get me through the end of the year, even if I didn’t do another job. That’s a liberating feeling, even if it was a nail-biter for a few days.

A little later that month, I ruminated on my procrastination, my disaffection for the job I had (or really, the industry I was in), and also noted that I wasn’t that into a guy I was certain I wouldn’t go out with again, but instead dated unproductively for 3 months. Oh my, how I can wallow in something unpleasant for awhile because coping and dealing and figuring out can provide enough cognitive load that I don’t worry about anything else (though that’s because I become a big ball of worry).

Anyway, it’s now the last full week of August. A lot has happened. And as I look back on those early posts – those little prayers tied to the fence posts, I have realized something very interesting: I don’t have a process for this. I can map out a strategic plan for a client, sketch a campaign, develop a methodology. But for me…

I do leaps. I do tricks. I get from here to there on what feels like and sometimes looks like wild instinct. I react. I make moves out of the pure sense of growing panic, that if I do not do this thing, I never will, that if I never do, I will go crazy, or worse.

Then I second guess, I question my own credibility, I wonder if maybe the headhunters are hinting at something, that maybe I need to build a brand at some hot agency before I can do this on my own. But I also know that I will lose a part of me if I do, that I won’t be any closer to doing what I want to do, and that I will be doing it under someone else’s aegis. Fuck that.

So anyway. This past week I dwindled down to my last $50. I put Drano on a credit card to fix my clogged tub. I tucked into my cupboards and freezer. I permitted friends to buy me a drink or two. And this morning, with my housekeeper coming, and a doctor’s appointment later in the day, I poured the change in those two Ball jars into a hot pink nylon shopping bag, tucked it into my purse, and carried it like a baby on my hip to one of those banks with the ‘penny arcade’. There were $106 in those jars. Enough to pay the housekeeper and the co-pay, and buy a sandwich later on. I would make it through today, even if the check didn’t come. I’ve been this close to the wire and on the other side of the zero balance before, but it never gets easier.

I thought of my dad, talking about days when he had half a tank of gas in the car, and the knowledge that today he had to make a sale, because the baby needed shoes, or the baby needed diapers, or they needed to pay the electric bill. He’d hope the car wouldn’t break down and the half a tank of gas would be enough. And to remind him what he was doing this for, he’d come into the baby’s room and look down, and there I was, smiling back up at him, so happy to see him. That image would motivate him to get his ass out the door and on the road and in those offices, selling, selling; that image would break his heart.

I have nothing like that at stake. But I relate to the sense of urgency, the sense of responsibility. Just as he wanted me to be happy and cared for, to love and respect him, I want to feel that way about myself, provide that to myself.

So at about 2:30, I went downstairs, sure that the check would be there, half-believing it would never come, unlocked the mailbox and took an envelope from the stack containing the payment for consultancy on a project. I took it to the bank, and deposited it, and am breathing easier. It’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to be awesome, actually. But at this particular moment, I feel like I got pulled back from falling onto the subway tracks, just as the train came barreling into the station. The adrenaline rush is quite something. Here’s to no more of that.

There is a sensation that I sometimes experience, maybe it’s familiar to you?  The sides of my tongue pressed against the inside of my molars, my jaw hovering and semi-clenched, my neck straining to keep me out of a hunch.  These are the physical symptoms of keeping my mouth firmly shut.

Now, I can talk while I’m cinching up my mandible.  I haven’t fallen into Carthusian silence, because these symptoms are symbolic of the cage in which I keep all the words I’m not uttering.

And why don’t I utter them?  There are a lot of reasons, but a key censor in my world is that easy archetype, the bully.

McFly!!

This is the guy who comes to mind when I think of a bully (but it doesn’t have to be a guy).  Biff Tannen: a loud mouth power by a dim bulb, a seemingly privileged kid from an actually unloving home, a constant tormentor, a cheater, a ringleader, a thug.

What is it, really, that Biff is doing?  He is demanding things that don’t belong to him, and when they won’t be given, he takes them with force.  He escalates violence as he meets resistance.  He takes a joyless pleasure in seeing other people’s fear or misery.

But some bullies I’ve known exert their power quietly, in code, behind-the-scenes, through a proxy, or through patience.  They sit quietly enough, but as if they are presiding over the proceedings; people turn to them for their approval, even when they aren’t sure why.

Or they select the topics and guide the discussion by force – no one getting a word in edgewise – so that they are center stage, and everyone else has to keep up with or join them in forced frivolity… a kind of unspoken, “dance, monkey!”  Often as they select these topics, their criteria rests on exclusion and inclusion: drawing clear boundaries between who is in and who is out.  And occasionally they will condescend to offer a small nugget of praise on one of the outsiders trying so desperately to get in, though no one is quite sure whether the praise is sincere, or merely condescending.

This dividing – us and them, in and out, cool and uncool – this is what bullies do best.  They make the rules, they enforce the rules – hell, they live the rules.

Obviously we could talk at length about the hurt souls inside these bullies – the damaged and flawed people who need our compassion, if not our company. Mostly though, I wonder why people are attracted to charismatic dominant personalities who turn out to be bullies.  And by people, I mean me.

Anyway, someone I’ve known a long time and always thought of as the warm, gooey center has decided to turn himself into a bit of a bully.  I know he wants control, to feel important. But he winds up forcing everyone to orbit him at the distance and velocity of his choosing.  He leads people on aimless death marches to see who will stick it out.  Frankly, he seemed to be working at depriving me of meaningful interaction with our mutual friends, when this was something he once so loved about our group. And while I understand – that is to say that I know – why he is behaving like this, I am simply too disappointed to be compassionate.

some surprises here – and some things i’m really interested in reading:

http://www.squidoo.com/morebooksforlinchpins