there and back again...
This is a picture of me at the age of two or so. The image is an awful quality - an old polariod with cracked and discolored emulsion. I look a combination of terrified and isolated in this picture and it is the best illustration I've found to show what those two emotions feel like when rolled all into one. The look on my face, my body language all say "I give up! I surrender!!"
I am not going to say that changing jobs from working at an art funding agency to working at a gallery was the right or wrong decision as I think that remains to be seen. But what I can say, what I already know for sure is that as I emerge from this summer I feel like I've come through a fire and am just now emerging into something brighter, a place where I can breath. I think that I really underestimated how hard it would be to leave a place I enjoyed working, a place I really grew up in and spent five years of my life. I told myself that it is only a job but that is really the biggest lie. Jobs, if you love them, become such a staggering part of identity. Although it wasn't everything, I really began to understand myself, in part, through what I did. And all that changed when I joined the gallery and for the first time in a long while I felt like the kid who has no one to eat lunch with, who sits in the bathroom stall for an hour just to feel the security of being alone. And it's not even because this is a terrible place to work because in a lot of ways it is great, but it is different and I was an outsider looking in and that made me very, very uncomfortable.
So here I am, nearly three months in, and I am finally beginning to relax and feel like maybe I belong here. I still have my moments, like during my presentation on branding today, when I wonder what I am doing here. Then I get back to my desk and the real work of my job and I start to feel like I own a bit of this and it feels wonderful.
So, the picture is really me three months ago. And now, here I am. I've come through it and I feel so much stronger because of it. And I am really proud.
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