I figured I’d do a bit of a check in with how things have been going lately… spoiler alert, it’s been a tough year.

As some know, I was laid off at the beginning of the year when the food company I worked for ran out of cash flow and the board voted to lay everybody off other than a skeleton crew to keep cooking and shipping meals to recoup as much of their investment as possible. On top of that, I’ve also been patiently waiting for my green card/immigration paperwork to process ever since we submitted it in April of 2021 (yes – 15 months ago) and it still hasn’t finished which doesn’t allow me to leave the country while it’s processing. This has caused me to miss two weddings that I was supposed to be in, as well as my families first holiday in the new house. Finally, consistent readers of this blog know that I’ve gone through some heartache and loss with love this year through some failed dating attempts. All of this combined has been weighing on me but yet I have powered through. Even though I’ve had something negative happen almost every single month this year, I continue to put a smile on my face and attempt to stay as positive as possible because that’s just what I have to do. Most recently though, I ran out of energy to deal with it all.

Without getting into too many details, I had an opportunity to become the VP of Marketing for a women’s athleisure brand about a month ago in which I was fairly excited for. It was going to be my return to fashion, as well as they had almost no performance marketing infrastructure set up so I had a lot of potential to really come in and grow their business with my expertise. I saw a ton of opportunity with the brand, and figured it could be the next achievement of my career to come in and really scale their business to a level they haven’t seen. My only hesitation was that the CEO is erratic and opinionated which reminded me of my past fashion company and is an environment I’ve been trying to avoid for my mental health. Due to this, we discussed a guaranteed 60 day trial period where both of us would evaluate whether we’re a good fit; it was no risk for both parties. At minimum they’d get a performance marketing foundation laid that they could continue to use, or at maximum they’d get their new VP of Marketing. I’d also have two months to figure out what I wanted to do with my career while bringing in some good money doing it. Well within a week of agreeing to this, the CEO changed her mind and pulled the rug from under me because she decided that she wanted to hire her friend who did marketing instead (according to their VP of Operations). As quickly as the opportunity came, it was gone and I was back to square one in terms of what I wanted to do with my career. At this point, I needed a break.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s been things that have happened this year that I am grateful for; My consulting gig for Netflix which has allowed me to keep a steady income and cover my mortgage, the support I’ve received from friends and having the time to finish the first draft of my book. I also realize that there are people out there who are having worse problems than me and really struggling compared to the position I am in, but that doesn’t mean this years events have been any easier for me to handle. This year has felt like life has been constantly jabbing me and I just haven’t had a chance to catch my breath yet to start countering. Due to this, the last few weeks I have felt like I just needed to do absolutely nothing outside of my consulting duties for Netflix in an attempt to pause and recharge. I haven’t been super social, haven’t been on dates, and haven’t really been writing. This has been a bit of an internal struggle as I am wired to always “go go go” and don’t really know how to do nothing, but I am forcing myself to stop and really just let life happen at the moment. More importantly, I am also stopping so that I can avoid ignoring how I really feel by keeping myself busy. I’m stopping so that I can process my emotions and accept the negativity in my life to eventually move on and get back to working towards what I want.

So how am I feeling, really? I’m frustrated and upset. I hold myself to high expectations and expected to have been full swing into the the next stage of my career by this point. I also didn’t think that my immigration paperwork would be this severely delayed, trapping me in the US and preventing me from attending some pretty important life events back home. Dating… well I never know how that’s going to go but I definitely wouldn’t have predicted the amount of times I’ve been ghosted and disrespected this year. Given all of this, it’s really caused me to become mentally exhausted with trying to stay strong all the time and put on a positive front for those in my life. I’m in an uncomfortable spot in life currently and am tired of pretending that I’m not just to avoid the potential judgement from others. Here’s the reality: Everybody wants a happy ending. We search for it, crave it, try our best to do whatever it takes to get it. It’s really upsetting when you don’t get what you want, right? Well that’s where I’m at.

This part is also difficult to deal with when it comes to others, but what happens when you’re in tough situations? Well, people provide support and say things like “guess that job wasn’t meant for you”, or “it wouldn’t have worked out with that person long term if they acted like this now” or “this too shall pass and everything is going to work out”. While I think all of us can appreciate the good place that people come from when saying things like this, these phrases also take away from how we may be feeling in the moment. Yes, I probably dodged a bullet at that athleisure brand working for a crazy CEO in the long run, but it doesn’t mean that I am not currently frustrated about losing the opportunity to move forward with my career and work on building a brand that I believed in. Same goes for any of the breakups/ghostings I’ve experienced this year. A lot of us never allow ourselves to accept the bad things that happen in our life, and it doesn’t help that others don’t allow it either with how they word their support. It’s not intentional by any means, but these phrases are not allowing us to feel how we feel and just embrace that things don’t always go our way in life. This isn’t healthy though! If we didn’t have the bad, then we’d never appreciate the good which means it might just be a necessary evil to hold a place within ourselves for the bad stuff. The reality is, everything probably will be ok for a lot of us. Things do have a way of working themselves out if you let enough time pass, but this doesn’t mean that it is any easier to deal with it while that time is actually passing. I’m realizing lately that we’re allowed to feel upset, frustrated, depressed, whatever we need to feel… it’s normal. Feel the emotions you want to feel. Take a break if you want to. Start putting yourself first and do whatever YOU need to do to get back to a place of positivity and don’t feel guilty for doing whatever that is. As long as you don’t sit in that negativity for too long, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break from life to let yourself recharge and get the motivation to start kicking ass again. That also means you shouldn’t be afraid to tell others that while you appreciate their support, you might not necessarily want it or at least the way they are providing it. Set those boundaries if you have to.

For anybody out there going through some tough shit like myself… here’s my advice. Take a break from life, sit in your thoughts, and embrace your feelings. You don’t need to be strong all the time. That is a mistake that I’ve held onto for a long time and have paid the price for. It’s not healthy to be outgoing, positive and moving forward every damn day because it’s mentally exhausting and you only have so much energy to give. Do not feel guilty about telling people that you aren’t doing so well or that you aren’t feeling good… you shouldn’t have to pretend to be something you aren’t with those who actually care about you. Also don’t be afraid of setting some boundaries and letting people know that you don’t want to talk about what’s going on if you aren’t ready to. It might be one easy conversation for them, but it’s multiple hard ones for you every time you have to have it. I also know from experience that it just repeatedly reinforces those negative feelings by reliving the shitty experience everytime I have to explain myself and this is overwhelming in itself.

It’s ok to not be ok.