A friend of mine and one-time love, Scott, got on my case recently about the fact I’ve stopped writing. In response to me making wistful noises about wanting to write, Scott wrote back: “Steph, a lot of people want to write. Heck, I want to write. You, however, are a writer. So start writing again already.”

Now, I am certainly guilty at snarling at Scott on occasion, but, even on a bad day, I will admit that he’s pretty good at calling things like he sees them. Most of the time I appreciate that trait about him.

Here’s the thing–I may be a writer, but I’ve always struggled with putting words on paper when I feel like my life is falling down about my ears.

To me, there are two types of writers when it comes to how they handle crisis… those who can turn inward and draw comfort from their writing during those difficult times and those who dry up until they are able to resolve the crisis at hand. I have always firmly fallen into the second camp.  I’m not sure I can even articulate why. But when things that are deeply important to me start going wrong: relationships, work, health of loved ones, etc., the words stop flowing.

This certainly hasn’t been the smoothest of years on a lot of fronts. Ending my relationship with Charlie was really freaking rough. Struggling with a difficult job and then losing it was also rough. But then, most of the people I’m close to seem to have had a pretty tough time in 2009.

Anyway, obviously things have turned around enough that I’m feeling the urge to write again. So let’s start with the good news… As of the beginning of December, I became once again gainfully employed.

The day I lost my job I started reaching out to work contacts of mine. A friend of mine at a former employer in the brokerage industry was kind enough to send me two job reqs and also to put in an enthusiastic good word for me (along with her boss who was also familiar with my work). The interview process took about a month and involved a last-minute flight to San Francisco, but I ended up being offered a Senior Manager position working with client data which is where I tend to be happiest.

So, two months to the day of when I lost my job, I received my first paycheck from my new employer. In that regard, I know I’m a lot more fortunate than a lot of people out there right now.

In my new position I’m making close to what I was previously and, so far, I’m working a lot less hours. My vacation and health benefits are better, as well. Some really weird things clicked together for me on the job front which I’ll talk about in later posts. However, suffice it to say, the “Hand of God” phenomena seems to be continuing.  To what end, I really wish I knew.  But no one seems interested in filling me in on the plan.

So what’s the downside? The downside is that the position is based out of Phoenix. I had planned to spend the winter in AZ since my place in Portland is not complete weatherized yet. But that doesn’t work out so well in terms of what I had planned come spring.

I am a virtual member of a team that is based out of San Francisco. So a case could possibly be made that I’m already working remotely. But there are some advantages to me being based in the call center the brokerage has in Phoenix. So, yeah, there’s some longer-term issues that remain to be resolved.

A big thing I need to determine is whether my hunkering down in Phoenix is a temporary thing where I simply need the comfort and support of my friends for a time. Or, rather, if it’s my way of conceding defeat about all the renovations that still need to be done to my place in Portland and the loneliness of starting over in a new place away from all friends and family.  I’m just not sure I’m that tough anymore in terms of going it alone.

Here’s what the readers of Coming Unmoored probably won’t like… I have gone so far as to list my little house in Portland with a realtor for the winter. But, considering the current real estate market and the amount of work that remains to be done, I’ll be surprised if anyone expresses interest in it. And, quite frankly, I’m kind of hoping no one does. I really don’t think I want my hand to be forced until I know what I would like to have happen.

I’ve clearly torn on the subject because I’ve spent the last week delaying writing this post. I just didn’t want to have to type the words admitting that I’ve put my place up for sale. It haunts me. I know also, though, that I’m feeling lonely and beaten up from this year and am not ready to take on the place construction-wise again until at least spring. Both my emotions and my bank account are calling it quits for the present time being.

The good news, though, is I seem to have found a safe place to hunker down and consider my options. I have a job and a place to stay this winter close to friends. That feels like quite a lot, right now.

A few months back, I ran the trailer for Lemonade The Movie.  If there ever was an uplifting film about the current economy, folks, this is it.  I strongly believe that anyone who’s been sweating the possible loss of their job and everyone who’s already experienced it, needs to sit down and watch this short documentary, which espouses “It’s not a pink slip.  It’s a blank page.”  Preferably a couple of times.  I’m convinced we’ll all be a hell of a lot better off five years from now if we do.

Lemonade is a documentary created by Erik Proulx and directed by Marc Colucci which interviews sixteen advertising professionals who were laid off and follows what happens to them afterward.  The answers are widely varied, sometimes hugely surprising (like the ad exec who opted to have a sex change), and entirely uplifting.

Back when I was gainfully employed working as a massively stressed out consultant in the banking industry, I watched the initial trailer repeatedly and cried happy, wistful, telephone commerical type tears.  It just touched a deeply truthful chord in me.

Then, I was laid off myself back in October and I replayed the thing a million times trying to ask myself what my own, best response to being laid off should be while trying to resist the urge to freak out and grab the nearest available $10-an-hour job just so I could say I was gainfully employed.

Then, I found work again in a field similar to my prior work experience and, a week later, the roughly 30-minute movie was finally finished. And, man, it’s got me asking all sorts of interesting questions.

You can now buy Lemonade online for $10 + shipping.  And it’s worth every penny.  I’ve watched it multiple times.  I’ve shown it to my friends.  I’m half tempted to order more copies and send them out as late Xmas gifts to friends and former coworkers who are still looking for work.

It’s good, guys.  It’s human, funny, and deeply touching.

I’ll be quick to say Proulx doesn’t have all the answers waiting for you wrapped up in a neat bow.  But I think the movie will help you get in touch with the right questions to be asking to find that answer for yourself.  And give you the chance to get to know some people who are on a similar course with their lives.

If you’re looking for additional inspiraiton, there is also a fantastic interview Jonathon Fields did with Erik Proulx which you can listen to here.

And, Eric, before you track down this post, too, and spend time saying thank you.  You really don’t have to.  It’s brilliant.  Just keep doing good work that people can draw strength and inspiration from.  You and the other people on the project have earned some major good karma from this thing.  Hopefully it’s already  headed your way as I type...

No, you’re not seeing things, guys.  I’ve gone back temporarily to the old layout for the blog.  Odds are you’re going to see further changes over the next few weeks as I rethink how I want to manage content.

Along with several other areas of my life, I feel like I got off-track with the direction of Coming Unmoored.  Now that I have some time and energy again I hope to take things in some new directions.

I had also wanted to experiment some with advertising.  I think I’ve now got a reasonable sense of what works on this site and what doesn’t.  I think I’ve reached the conclusion that the visually distracting Google Adsense ads are going to  go permanently away.  The Textlink ads in actual article entries and those that appear at the bottom of the RSS feed are going to remain for the present.

Rather ironically, the past two months in which I’ve had very little time to devote to the blog are actually the first two in which the blog turned a profit after all operating expenses.  Go figure.

More than anything, though, I hope to continue to grow Coming Unmoored as both a record of my personal journey and as a resource for others making their own.

October 15, 2009 turned out to be what I’ve come to refer as a “Hand of God” Day.

Those are the handful of days in my life when it feels as though whatever divine entity who’s in charge of the universe exceeds his (or her) patience waiting for me to grasp whatever the current lesson is I’m supposed to be grokking and decides to step in in a far more direct fashion to move things along.

My “Hand of God” Days have never been pretty affairs. But then, I guess that’s rather unrealistic to hope for when Fate decides to step in and starts rearranging things in someone’s world like a two-year-old redecorating a doll house.

My last real “Hand of God” day prior to the most recent was the day my now ex-husband came home from work, made us a lovely three-course meal and then, between course one and two calmly informed me that he’d decided the best thing he could do is go out, buy a gun from Walmart, and blow both of us away “to put us out of our misery”. Suffice it to say, I didn’t end up staying for dessert. That was the day when I realized I really had to get out of my marriage before I ended up dead..

My current “Hand of God” day involved me checking in for my weekly one-on-one with my boss only to be greeted by an HR Rep and the information that my employer no longer required my services.

Now, anyone who’s been following this blog will probably know that I’d been struggling with my job for awhile. Actually, “struggling” is too polite a word. My job has been knocking the snot out of me most of 2009. In September I’d actually started to enact a plan I’d hashed-out in the hopes of eventually being able to transition out of my current job into something I hoped to like more. But the time frame for my escape was apparently way-too-conservative for the Powers-that-Be. So the Divine hand dropped in to the picture and handed me a pink slip from my high-salary job in the banking industry.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that my first reaction upon receiving the news was: “Oh thank, God. This means I don’t have to work through the weekend again!” The panic of being jobless and having no immediate prospects for a new position didn’t hit until the middle of that first night.

Since then, I’ve been busily doing all the right things. I’ve been going through all the paperwork hoops for Unemployment benefits. I’ve gotten my COBRA coverage up and running. I’m networking. I’m interviewing. I’ve actually found a couple of positions I feel I’d be a great match for. But all of this still falls into the category of “survival mode” for me. These are the things I need to do in order to weather the current storm.

There still remains to be answer the bigger question of what I want to be doing with my life. How do I want to use my remaining time on this planet and given talents? And I know I need to figure out the answers to that question soon.

The universe just handed me an opportunity to point my life a new, better direction. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that if I don’t seize this chance the way I’m supposed to, things will get impatiently shaken up again.  And again.  Until I get the lesson.

No offense to the Powers-That-Be, but one snowglobe-style shake-up of my life every couple of years is quite enough. So please believe me when I say: “I’m on it, Boss.”

Today I finally made time to go see Julie and Julia before it completely left the theater.  For those of you who missed the trailer, the movie follows the parallel stories of Julia Child and Julie Powell, an aspiring writer.  Powell is a passionate foodie who, searching for some sort of  “meaningful accomplishment” in her life on the verge of turning 30, decides to cook through Child’s cookbook in a year and blog about the experience.

This movie caught my attention for a number of reasons.  First, my mother and brother were avid watchers of Julia Child as I was growing up.

Now, I’ll be the first one to confess that I’m pretty much culinarily challenged.  My friends have a longstanding joke that my survival strategy involves always falling in love with men who enjoy cooking.  Amongst my many ignoble disasters in the kitchen, I have managed the feat of setting fire to my kitchen cabinets attempting nothing more ambitious than boiling a pot of water for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

I’ve never had much of an interest in cooking, but I have a deep appreciation of  good food.  And, growing up, Julia Child on the TV meant two things: 1) reasonably good entertainment and 2) interesting things happening in the family kitchen that beat my mom’s traditional Friday night zucchini quiche hands-down.

My childhood is laced with memories of Julia Child killing Bertha the Lobster, a provincial French table covered in 50 lbs. of monkfish, and random intervals of self-multilation and bloodshed coverage courtesy of PBS.  Better still, my younger brother Chris would get inspired by the showz and interesting things would happen in the kitchen courtesy of my family’s a much loved and bespattered copy of Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

With Julia Child a fixture of my childhood, I really enjoyed seeing Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her life.  What resonated with me even more, however, was Julie Powell’s half of the film.

Powell is just turning 30 at the beginning of the story and questioning what she has to show for her life.  I just recently turned forty and have been doing my own share of soul-searching about my life looking radically different than I expected it to by this point.

Powell is a frustrated aspiring writer who’s editor husband convinces her to start a blog.  I think the story does a humorously good job of capturing the narcissim and self-absorption involved with writing a personal blog on a regular basis.  Let’s face it.  There has to be a certain level of arrogance to put the details of one’s day-to-day existence out there in the public ether in the belief that anyone else out there is going to have any interest whatsoever in reading it.  And in prioritizing getting another post out there over spending quality time with one’s significant other.

Perhaps my favorite part of the film is when Powell has had two back-to-back major culinary disasters.  (Aspics, followed closely by stuffed chicken.)  She is lying prostrate on the floor of her kitchen amidst the remains of Disaster #2, howling in despair, when a writer for the Christian Science Monitor calls asking for an interview.  Powell immediately pops up and answers the phone sounding perky as a cheerleader and totally in command of the situation.  Oh yeah.  Been there.  More than once.

I also loved the relationship between Powell, her mother, and the blog.  While my own mother never voiced an opinion telling me to shut the thing down, like Powell’s, she tends to follow it, and mommy- radar kicks off when something breaks the normal pattern and concerned phone calls and emails follow.

Powell’s storyline resonated with me enough, that I just downloaded a copy of her book from which the movie was drawn: Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

Anyway, while I doubt it will be winning any Oscars, it’s definitely a movie I’d recommend to the Julia Child fans out there and also to female bloggers.  For my part, I am inspired to cook up some lovely, local-area corn for dinner (boiling is within my skill-set these days) and am busy reminiscing over Charlie’s lovely beed bourginon. 

So while I’ve been in AZ, I’ve been staying in my friend Jay’s guest room.  My current plan is to continue to rent a room for him while I’m down in AZ completing my certification course.

My friends in AZ are acquainted with Jay but for those readers who don’t know him, Jay is a 40-something, gay, black man I’ve been friends with going on two decades.  I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about Jay in the next few months, but I’ll start by saying that Jay’s decorating tastes diverge widely from my own. A lot.

Jay’s condo is known in my circle of friends as “Vermillion Manor”. Jay happens to believe Versailles is the peak of architectural achievement and he has designed the interior of his condo to be a miniature homage to Versailles’ glory.  He even has his own tiny hall of mirrors and collection of statuary.

Imagine walls and walls of mirrors, crystal chandeliers, baroque furniture, tassels cascading from every available vertical surface, and a surfeit velvet and you get the general vibe of the place where I’m staying.

Rumi took one look at the place, fell into immediate love, flounced upon the floor of the main salon, and announced loudly in Balinese that he had finally “arrived”.  I, on the other hand, with my love for zen lines and muted color schemes, have been cautiously tiptoeing around like an unplanned-for extra on the set of Night at the Museum.

I don’t in any way mean to make fun of Jay’s decorating.  Creating Vermillion has been an act of passionate creation for more than a decade, now.  And I’m fairly certain, Jay would feel as much a Stranger in a Strange Land aboard my floating home as I do padding barefoot around Vermillion.  But even Jay would concede that Vermillion can be a bit daunting for the first-timer.

To add to my whole down-the-rabbit-hole sensation, Jay has decided to dub me the “Lady in Residence” at Vermillion.  Unfortunately, if he had hoped having a woman in the residence was going to class-up the joint, I’m afraid he’s been sadly disappointed.  I’m much more of a Pygmalion-style project.

When I first arrived Jay had visions of the two of us sitting down on Sunday mornings to high tea with NPR Baroque Sundays wafting softly on the stereo.  I’m afraid his sensitive, artistic soul was well and truly crushed the first time I came home from a night at a fighter practice looking like a sweaty version of a Fraggle, popped open a domestic bottle of beer, and proceeded to share it with the cat–without either of us even bothering to use the crystal stemware intended for weekday use.

So far, though, Jay has been a remarkably good sport about me invading his sanctuary from the modern world.  And, for my part, I’ve been grateful for the lack of domestic chaos and also having regular good company in the form of a roommate.

I promise at some point I’ll do a more detailed video or photo tour of Vermillion.  I just know if I try to take any more pictures when Jay is home I’ll send him in to an apoplexy of cleaning and I’ve already disturbed his natural habitat more than enough for the present.

Okay, folks.  Sorry for going AWOL while I figured things out (at least as far as the short run at any rate).

Let me start by saying thank you for all of you who have sent notes or left comments of support.  They’ve really been appreciated.  I can’t say I’ve got everything sorted out but I’m slowly getting there.

Coming down to Phoenix has given me a chance to reconnect with friends, get relatively on top of work, and take a breather from renovation hell.  (I cannot begin to describe to you the depth of pleasure Rumi and I have both taken in being able to sprawl on a clean, carpeted floor…)

Part of the reason why there hasn’t been anything on the blog lately is I’ve been lost in soul-searching about how I wanted to handle the next few upcoming months.  I just reached a decision on that today.

I do intend to return to Portland and continue to work on the house.  However, in the short run, I really need to figure out things in terms of my work situation. More than anything, things not going well with my job has really sucked the life out of me.  While I continue to work hard to try to turn things around with my existing employment, I have also decided to extend my time down in Phoenix by a couple of months to finish a certification program I had started when I lived in Arizona previously.  I’ve decided I need an exit strategy in case things don’t improve (or my employer decides to let me go).  I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the specifics of this at some point.

Long story short, I’ll be starting classes in the evenings starting next week.  I should have my program pretty much wrapped up by the holidays (assuming the stress of holding down both a job and classes at night doesn’t do me in during the interim).

In the meantime, I get to spend some more time in a supportive environment amongst friends and family, which I can really use right now.

The following is a guest article written by Shireen Qudosi…

Long before the mod designs of today’s sustainable homes, there the “Glass House”.   Built in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1949 by Philip Johnson for his personal use. It was a ground breaking project in its time and still continues to astonish those of us today who cannot fathom living in a see-through house.

While most people love the concept of a glass house, they have one major problem with it – privacy. But there’s a simple solution – curtains. Lightweight curtains would provide both shade during summer months as well as privacy, without compromising the structure’s aesthetic appeal.

But what a lot of people also don’t realize is those eco homes aren’t cookie cutter houses. On the contrary, they can be built with a lot more forethought and personalized design than traditional real estate. Just ask Michelle Kaufman of MK Designs.

When Michelle Kaufman and her husband moved to California, they decided to fill the market for clean green homes after their own difficulty in finding one. Clients can design their own custom home and choose the features that work for them. According to Michelle, “the real challenge, and the critical area for a successful project, is the implementation and the production.” Fortunately, through many years of being in the business, Michelle and her team have been able to iron out this wrinkle.
Regardless of whether or not you’d choose to live in a glass house, our mutual love of aesthetic and design are instantly drawn into Johnson’s minimalist creation. A balanced sense of proportion and a design that connects with the environment is what ultimately has paved the way for modular and prefab.

Yet no matter what your home is like, you can get it be more sustainable – and contrary to what some may think, sustainable doesn’t mean living a “bare bones” lifestyle. A sustainable lifestyle can be chic and creative while still be eco-conscious.

With fall at our doorstep and winter around the corner, the number one consideration is learning to reduce heating costs. Insulating your home, using an energy-efficient space heater, and good old fashioned bundling up will certainly help you do your part in reducing energy consumption. But for extreme green, try installing a geothermal heating system, with loops deep in the ground around your home, and a heater exchange to collect relative heat from the ground.¹ If you’re already in a DIY renovation mode, then consider installing windows and skylights that’ll let more light come in – thus reducing your dependency on electrical lighting. There are also a number of window designs that not only let more light in, but also help keep in the heat.

But if you’re a quick-fix type, there are still versatile ways you can prep your home for winter and reflect your stellar taste – especially if you’re a notorious coveter of wooden floors.

If you’ve got wooden floors (hopefully bamboo), try covering them with rugs during the winter. The use of rugs is a quick DIY insulation that gives you a chance to add a new style element in your living space. Far from perhaps over bearing eclectic themes too strong for certain tastes, some eco-inspired pieces are also designed for the utilitarian thinker. For the military-mined eco-enthusiast, there’s Rebekah Rauser’s Redeploy Rug that combines the necessary military durability of surplus blankets with organic fluidity. Made of 100% wool Russian army blankets and with topographic pattern, the Redeploy adds a unique dimension that makes the piece not only necessary but stylish.

Ultimately, no matter which route you choose, the goal is to create a home that is both functional and stylish, while still doing its part for the environment.

Eco winter ideas is brought to you by Shireen Qudosi.
http://www.canadianhomeworkshop.com/home-reno-and-design/green-renovations/five-ways-to-make-your-home-more-sustainable/a/21292

Image 1: Philip Johnson’s ‘Glass House’

Image 2: David Salmela

Image 3: rauserdesign.com

Alright, so apologies for disappearing on ya’ll but it’s been a couple of really rough weeks.  Several different areas of my life have been going less than ideally and things just hit a really nasty head.

For starters, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with the interior renovations that remain to be done on my floating home.  I’m frustrated with how little progress I’ve managed to make this summer and the fact I’m still living in the middle of a construction zone.  I’m having a difficult time finding a healthy balance between work, working on the house, and actually managing to have some semblance of a life.

I’m also still mourning the end of my relationship with Charlie.  And, for whatever reason, working on the house alone just serves to underscore those feelings. It takes me a long time to build new friendships and relationships and I don’t have much in the way of a support system yet in Portland, so I’m feeling quite sad and alone.

On top of that, work is not going well for me at present.  I’n spite of working an insane number of hours for a large portion of the summer,  my current manager is less than pleased with my performance.  I just received my midyear review and it’s the first time in my professional career where I’ve received marks in some categories that were less than at least “Meets Expectations”.   Unless I can turn something around soon, odds are I’m going to need to be looking for a new job.  Right now I’m being micromanaged into the ground which I loathe. So I’m enormously stressed on the work front, as well.

So I was sitting up in Portland, miserable and unhappy, when I received a phone call that my friend Larry died suddenly of a heart attack. While not related by blood, Larry has been my de facto uncle since I moved to Arizona immediately after college.  He was always there with a smile, a hug, and a strong back when it came to moving furniture when I reached the end of relationship.  He was the person who always made sure I had somewhere to be on the holidays and got safely home to my own tent at camping events. And the thing was, he was that person for so many different people.  More than 600 people showed up for his service, if you can imagine that.

Losing Larry underscored to me just how adrift my own life is currently feeling.   How I chose to dealt with it was packing a suitcase, grabbing Rumi, and driving down to AZ for the funeral.  I already had plans to be in AZ the last two weeks of the month, over my birthday, so I simply extended my trip.

I’m currently staying in my friend Jay’s guest room in Phoenix.  I’ve been spending as much time in the company of friends as possible, meaning writing has been on the back burner.  Odds are I’m going to stay through the first weekend in September and then head back up to Portland.  I’m making arrangements, though, to probably winter in AZ once the weather turns ugly up north.

More on that when I figure it out myself.  But I wanted to let you all know I hadn’t been taken by brigands.  I’m just spending some time deep in thought about where I want to go from here.

I cannot wait to watch this!  This is a documentary which features people in the ad biz who were laid off and discovered it was an opportunity to take back their lives.

This project is the creation of Erik Proulx, founder of Please Feed the Animals a website which focuses on the recently laid off.

The documentary website can be found  here.