Coping with Life’s Ups and Downs: Lessons Learned

Standing on the Ledge — a new day.

You may notice my posts are getting a little less philosophical. That might actually be a good sign. It means I’m not dwelling as hard. The stress load feels like it’s easing up a bit… even if I know it could spike again in the future. We’ll see.

Paperwork for the stuff I’m working on has been signed, and now I’m waiting on a response back. I hate the “holding pattern” part — that limbo where you’ve done your piece, but the outcome isn’t yours to control.¹

Also: the second edition of my book has been published, like I mentioned earlier.

Did I get much accomplished today?

No. Not really. I’m not even sure why — I just didn’t. I did get a few job applications out again. I didn’t do much on the business side of things.

But I did hear back on a potential job, and it looks like I may have it. I’m waiting for confirmation from the person doing the hiring. Hopefully I’ll hear back later today, or maybe Friday. Either way: more holding patterns.

Sleep, structure, and the wobble

Sleep has been a little wonky. Part of that is probably lack of structure right now — when the days don’t have firm edges, my body clock doesn’t know what to do with itself. Routine is a sleep tool. Not a magic one, but a real one.²

If this is the only thing going sideways at the moment, I can live with it. Once I’m back in a work routine, sleep should fall into place. Hopefully. Routine should fall into place. But like I said… we shall see.

The cycle I can’t stop noticing

I’m contemplating another book. Maybe. But if I do that, I need to flesh out a few ideas and see what’s actually there.

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that life seems to run in cycles. I don’t know if this is normal for everyone, but for me it looks like a seven-year, seven-to-ten-year pattern. Career-wise? Yeah, it kind of tracks. Seven years in a job, then something shifts or drops out. It’s been like that since high school.

Part of this might just be how modern life works. My father’s generation had a version of stability that doesn’t feel available now — stay in one job, stay in one place, keep the same routines for decades. A lot of us don’t get that deal anymore. Work is more flexible, but it’s also more fragile. Careers don’t always feel like ladders — they feel like patchwork.³

So when I look back at my own timeline, I don’t just see “bad luck” or “personal failure.” I see turning points. I see role exits. I see the reality that identities get built around jobs and relationships — and when those end, you don’t just lose the thing. You lose the version of yourself that was built to survive inside it.⁴

And then there’s the part that still hurts

I’ve been on this road at least twice before — where something radical drops out from underneath me. My marriage fell apart suddenly. Home and job shifted. My relationship with my kids became complicated, and then painful. I stayed in their lives for a few years after the separation, but I couldn’t stand dealing with my ex-wife anymore, and that made it harder to keep a relationship going with my children.

I tried to pick it up again later — direct communication with my kids, not having to go through my ex-wife — and I put the ball in their court. I told them: if you want me in your life, say so, and I will be there. The most candid response I got was from my oldest: “It’s not up to me, it’s up to mom.”

They were twelve at the time — old enough to have feelings, but still stuck inside someone else’s gatekeeping. I’ve heard from them twice since. The last time was because they wanted medical information. That was the purpose. That’s it.

There’s a name for the kind of grief that doesn’t resolve cleanly — where someone is still alive, but not accessible, and you’re left holding a relationship-shaped absence. It doesn’t behave like normal mourning. It just sits there, unfinished.⁵

But that’s enough philosophy for one post. I said I was being less philosophical — and I meant it.

That’s it for now.

Godspeed.

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Footnotes

1. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969). ↩
2. Ellen Frank, Deborah J. Kupfer, and Cindy L. Ehlers, “Social Zeitgebers and Biological Rhythms: A Unified Approach to Understanding the Etiology of Depression,” Archives of General Psychiatry 45, no. 10 (1988): 948–952. ↩
3. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). ↩
4. William Bridges and Susan Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, 3rd ed. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2009); Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). ↩
5. Pauline Boss, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Paul R. Amato, “The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62, no. 4 (2000): 1269–1287. ↩