Waiting for Clearance
A burnt out engineer getting by on Alaskan beauty and Lexapro - March 2021 - Village of Atka, Alaska
SHINY AND NEW
July 2017.
I left grad school excited for the working world. I had spent 6 years studying to be the best engineer I could become, and I was prepared to give my heart and soul to my work. My first week at my 8-to-5 job felt like the beginning of a lifetime. The company I worked for served the underserved and brought vital amenities to people in need. It was the perfect start to my career. I told my superiors during my interview that I could see myself working there for at least 5 years. I thought I knew where my life was headed. I could picture it: I’d be sitting in that first engineering job, having earned my professional engineering license, designing water treatment plants, flying to remote villages in Alaska to assess community needs. I would be happily married to my then boyfriend. With the money I would generate, we would build a house on a picturesque piece of property overlooking the mountains. We would hike in the evenings and explore the wonders of Alaska on the weekends. We would have everything. I had unlocked the key to happiness, right? All you need is a career that pays well and a job that makes you feel like you are doing important things, right? This was the epitome of success, right?
At the end of my first week on the job, my supervisor asked me to work the weekend. I was thrown off at first but felt it was an opportunity to show my commitment to the job. I spent the weekend making copies of a mere 1,500-page manual for a water treatment plant and punching holes in a seemingly endless number of pages.
August 2017.
Within one month of starting the job, I had already fallen in love with the work. I flew to the village of Ruby with my supervisor in a Cessna Caravan to check on the construction of a new community building for the Tribal Council. I was enamored with everything around me. I was putting my years of education to use, exploring Alaska, and getting a glimpse of remote life. My supervisor was a wealth of knowledge and seemed to be an ally in my learning and growth. I hadn’t known him long, but I was already so dependent on his mentorship. Sadly, not all good things last. Before the month was out, my supervisor announced he would be leaving the company. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me.
As the months passed, I began to understand some of the reasons he left. He lacked a sense of autonomy working for leadership that often deliberated without employee input. I also began to feel the tug of the “greener grass” syndrome. Most of the feedback I received from my superiors was positive, but it was terribly sparse. My efforts at the company often fell into a black hole that my coworker often referred to as the “Tok Triangle,” a painful reference to the infamous “Bermuda Triangle.” I ached to actually execute engineering projects, not just write about them. My enthusiasm dwindled. How could I feel excited about work that would never meet the light of day?
Even outside of work, I had fallen into a rut. Though I might get home from my job by 6 pm, I could rarely muster the energy to accomplish anything other than a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy or the Walking Dead. I knew I had potential to do great things and great work, but I felt like I was sitting as a passenger on a plane waiting for clearance to take off. Waiting for the people in the tower to give the pilot permission to depart.
January 2018.
I sat bewildered, staring at an email in my inbox. An office manager from another company had reached out to me asking to chat about my career. He had received my email from my graduate advisor and knew I had only recently started my job, but wanted to get to know me and introduce me to his company.
I met with the new office manager for coffee. We had a comfortable chat about his company and my goals. The company sounded amazing, offering hundreds of opportunities for growth: opportunities for research grants, remote field work, business development, great healthcare, and top notch experts in niche fields of study. I nearly drooled at the thought of it all while sipping my chai tea latte. Without much coaxing, I relayed to him why I loved consulting and how I dreamed of owning an engineering firm someday. I even found myself disclosing complaints I had about my current job. It felt like infidelity. An hour later, my chai tea latte had emptied and it was time to return to my life, but there really was no going back. The grass IS always greener on the other side, right?
HEAVY CROSSWINDS
April 2018.
The office manager offered me a new job and rushed every aspect of my transition, including talking me out of a month off of work in between jobs. I clocked 9 months in total at my first job, an uncomfortably short length of time in my mind. I took the office manager's eagerness as a sign of flattery and a sign that this was the right choice.
My job was composed of an entirely new landscape. Corporate America. This work was fast-paced unlike the sleepy homestead-grown business I left. I was enthralled by it all. I was learning so much so quickly and the people around me really were experts. I wanted to be them. I was exposed to so many new areas of expertise. I quickly grew my technical engineering skills. I even fell deep into the rabbit hole of understanding corporate life: business development, marketing, joint business ventures, contract vehicles, billability, and so much more. I was convinced that consulting was the life for me. New problems to solve all of the time and challenges to face.
I had unlocked the key to happiness THIS TIME, right? All you need is to be an expert in your field, right? THIS JOB was the epitome of success, right?
2018 and 2019.
As the months went by, stress heaped on fast. So much to learn, so little time, so many projects. My life outside of work still suffered, but, by now, it just seemed like that was probably a reality of life. Who really had time or energy for anything after work anyway?
Leave time accrued slowly, and unspoken expectations prevented me from using my sick leave. Sixty, even eighty-hour work weeks littered the months. Oftentimes, those hours never reached my timesheet for fear of repercussions. Learn on your own time, not company time. Never make a mistake on company time. You are responsible for your own growth. Your superiors shouldn’t have to train you, you should have come to the job perfect already.
All the while, a fog had been taking over my mind. The worst critics of my performance reigned supreme in my head. How could this be so difficult? Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people have jobs like this. Even worse jobs! How could I be struggling so much? What was SO wrong with me?
I flinched every time my superiors called my name from their offices. I had a pit in my stomach as I approached knowing the never-ending criticism I faced. My anxiety was so high, I could barely function.
November 2019.
I sat in the lobby of my doctor’s office trembling, hyperventilating, but subtly enough not to attract anyone’s attention. I waited for an hour past my appointment time. I felt like I would burst.
Finally a nurse called my name. She weighed me and measured my height. She took down all of the basic information. Then she left me as I continued to vibrate anxiously. When the doctor finally entered, he asked me what he could do for me today. I could barely make one sentence before the tears poured out. I just knew he would turn me away. I knew that I was an absolute idiot for even thinking he would take me seriously.
“I can’t focus, I am so afraid all of the time, I can’t function, I don’t know what to do. I need something to make it bearable.”
“Ok, I can prescribe you an anti-anxiety medication. This is normal at your age. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to reset your nervous system.” So he prescribed me the medication.
I stopped sobbing immediately, shocked. Wait, he believed me?
For the first time in my life, I took medication for my mental health. I felt relief within a matter of days. The constant feeling of crisis looming dissipated, but a weight still hung on my shoulders.
March 2020.
I’m sure many of you remember what happened in March 2020, so I’ll spare you the details. Needless to say, everything around the world and many things in my life were changing. Within the month, my coworkers and I moved our monitors and docking stations to our homes, while my office manager pleaded, “If you want to stay, we can make it work! We can social distance in the office!” The weight of his pleas hung on my shoulders as I reassured myself, “Working from home will be wonderful. It’s the responsible thing to do. Oh, and no commute! I will be so productive and I’ll have more time to exercise and enjoy my life!”
It certainly started out that way. I felt like a rockstar. I felt so fortunate to have such improvements in my life while others suffered the consequences of the pandemic as it ravaged lives and the economy. My weekdays were filled with productivity and my weeknights and weekends were filled with recreation. I should never have a reason to complain again.
The Rest of 2020.
I started to lose my steam. A fatigue like I had never felt before set in. It was imperceptible at first. How could anything be wrong? I spent all day with my dog and the evenings with my boyfriend. And of course, I had a great engineering job: the epitome of success. I was still loving the anti-anxiety medication which kept all of the noise dulled. It should have been a perfect life.
At least once a month, the office manager would reiterate how everyone should consider coming back to the office. He never left and “missed” having the interaction. He checked our statuses incessantly. So did my supervisor. The meetings were constant. I had never had so many meetings and unexpected phone calls in my life. I felt like I was drowning in busy, but accomplishing absolutely nothing.
Day after day I found myself sleeping in later and later, struggling with all my might to drag myself to my laptop. More often than not, I was actually dragging the laptop to myself in bed. I stared at my workload in a haze. Nothing really made sense anymore. My hours at the computer bled into the night in an attempt to make up for lost time. It was unclear when sleep started and work ended.
The pressures gradually built. The check-ins from my supervisor became more frequent and more unfriendly. I expressed that I was struggling time after time, unsure how to say “I’m drowning” in a professional way. My expressions were mixed between an attempt to say “dear God, please help me” and an attempt to save face. The words I received in response were scolding. My supervisor and office manager appeared to be completely unphased. Business moved forward as usual despite the upset in the world and the employees.
My boyfriend began to question my habits, insisting that he had never seen me work so many hours off the clock. I snapped that it was the only way to stay on top of things because I could not get anything done during the normal work hours. I began to use my sick days just to catch up on work I had failed to complete during the week without my supervisor knowing. Something was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I keep up?
Writing this today, it is hard to believe the lengths I went to, clinging to something that was killing me. I did not need alcohol or drugs or any other substance to destroy my life. I only needed to believe that my worth revolved around my career, my productivity, and what my superiors thought of me.
December 2020.
In one of my many unintentional lapses in focus, I flipped back and forth between my Facebook feed and Facebook messenger on my phone with the work laptop on my lap. I had been chatting with an acquaintance for a few months about life and money. Shelby seemed to have a lot of her life figured out in a way I had never considered. She asked provoking questions like, “What are you investing in?” and “What’s your target number?” All I could think about was a dream home in the mountains. My boyfriend and I needed to build up enough for a down payment and then we would have the dream home.
Dream home. Dream job. Dream life, right?
Then she asked, “Have you heard of FIRE? Financially independent, retire early?”
IFR TO VFR
March 2021.
Though months had passed and hard conversations with my supervisor and office manager continued, nothing had improved. The fog in my mind had worsened. Even with the medication, my mind vibrated constantly fearing every second of every day that I would be fired. I could “afford” to lose this job, but I felt certain that my precious career would never recover.
In the backdrop of this doom-ridden landscape, a seed had been planted and a tree was growing. I had been researching, learning, and connecting. Financial independence felt like a missing puzzle piece in my life. I hadn’t quite determined where it fit, but I knew it did. I consumed as much finance content as I could in between my unproductive attempts to catch up on months of work and hours of paralysis panicking about the future.
The concept behind financial independence is simple: create options in your life by saving enough money to walk away from anything - ANYTHING - that no longer serves you. The nuance behind this concept is that even a little bit more money brings power to your side of the court. Since the day Shelby brought the words “financial independence” to my world, I brought a new vigor to saving and investing money. By the time April rolled around, I had enough money to scrape by for a year without a job. Though I didn’t know it at the time, that was a lot of power on my side of the court.
April 2021.
The fog was unbearable. Amongst all of it, something told me to try going off my medication. It wasn’t helping anymore. Of course, I chose the most stressful time in months to try this experiment. I was thrust into close quarters with my supervisor and office manager for a demanding field project. I sat in the hotel room each night after working 12-hour days in the field, scribbling notes and filling out forms frantically in an attempt to keep up. Despite giving my best performance since the pandemic started, their disapproval piled on top of me. Whenever I felt I had a moment where they were not looking, I cried.
Amidst one of the most trying times in my life, however, I began to feel a sense of clarity. As the month raced on, I began to understand that there was little I could do to fix my relationship with my supervisor and office manager. Even if I suddenly became the best employee in the company, my reputation was tarnished and their treatment of me was unlikely to improve.
My annual review happened only a week after my return from the field project. It brought my life to a screeching halt as I grappled with the most extreme anxiety I had ever felt. I sat in front of my supervisor as she interrogated me and dehumanized me for 2 hours. At the end of it, she assured me we would set aside time the following week so she could finish her interrogation because 2 hours had not been enough.
I should have been so relieved that she didn’t fire me, but the cold clarity washed over me. I. Could. Not. Sit. Through. This. Again. I decided within the following days that I did not need this job. I did not even need to be an engineer. It was suddenly so obvious that none of the things I had always believed would lead me to success and happiness even mattered. Having another job in hand didn’t even matter. Why? Because financial independence had prepared me for this. I had enough money to go without a job for a year. Would it be comfortable? Hell no. Would it be better than this? Hell yes.
I put in my two-week notice a few days later and before the week was up, I was jobless. I was no longer in the passenger seat of the airplane that was waiting for clearance to take off. I was the pilot, there was no air traffic control to tell me what to do, so I took off.
