Some very personal news
I recently quit my dream job.
In 2016 all I wanted was to be on NPR. I had been freelancing for my local station but the big league still felt desperately out of reach. My friend Jeff asked me what my end goal was and I said I just wanted to have one story on All Things Considered. Not even Morning Edition. I wouldn’t let myself dream that big.
Within a year I did have a story on All Things Considered — my one and only. But that’s not the half of it. I was also editing a team of brilliant Alaska journalists. I helped them place dozens of stories on NPR in that first year (it would become hundreds in the years that followed), and we had a hit podcast that was downloaded more than a million times by people all over the country.
In 2016 I didn’t even know to dream about being an editor or an executive at a public radio station. I didn’t know to dream about making a home in Alaska. I didn’t know that my dream was to lead a local newsroom, to work with reporters all over this state. I didn’t know that my dream included shaping the narratives that would guide my community through a pandemic. I didn’t know that my dream was to fall in love with Lingít Aaní and to commit to figuring out what it means to be a brown woman leading a newsroom in a white settlement on stolen land.
Also, I didn’t know to dream about having a baby and how that would change all my dreams.
Two things happened this year that made everything kind of fall apart. The first is that I didn’t get a promotion that I really believed I had earned. The second is that an unleashed dog took me out at the knees on a sunny winter afternoon and I hit the back of my head on a rock. The resulting brain injury made it really hard to process my grief at not getting that job and made it impossible to start to imagine what I was supposed to do next. I’ve been living moment-to-moment since then. Thinking about the past is literally too painful and the future too terrifying. Most of the time, I’m not able to think at all.
I’ve had a debilitating headache for most of 2023. It’s one of those headaches that makes my ears ring and leaves a metallic taste in my mouth — a synesthetic nightmare. I’m extremely sensitive to noise. I have about as much control over my emotions as my five year old does over his. I have brain fog and I have forgotten a lot of names. I have a hard time processing what’s happening in front of me and I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with how I’m forming memories. I spend a lot of time sleeping or walking the dog — slowly, cautiously. I can’t read much or spend more than an hour looking at a screen and I’m too nitpicky to listen to most podcasts. I meditate a lot and try to let my mind go blank as often as I can. I relish the dreams I have because it’s the closest I can come to feeling creative.
It feels like I’ve lost six months of my life, but while I’ve been wandering around in this fog, something has been happening. Behind the curtain, there’s a transformation occurring — hidden even from myself. I think it’s probably like what happens inside a chrysalis. From my perspective everything is suspended animation, but something has been happening, like my cells are rearranging themselves.
I don’t think this is burnout. I think the fires that were supposed to subsume me have come and gone. I think they melted me, refined me. I feel like that — purified and ready to be poured into something else. I don’t know what that form will be or when that pouring will happen. I’m still in the goo phase, I think, just trying to survive. I like to think I’m quitting while I’m ahead, though — taking off the shoes that no longer fit even though I don’t have my new, bigger pair yet. I’m wrapping up my blisters, tending to my wounds, reflecting on the pain points and getting ready to learn from my many mistakes just as soon as I am able.
Still, it wasn’t an easy decision. I will mourn this job for a very long time. When I have the strength and capacity, I will probably kick and scream at the injustices of this year. But this decision feels right. The time has come. It’s a necessary sacrifice I lay at the altar of my future self, knowing that it will smell sweet when it burns, that it will please me greatly and that I will end up thanking myself for this gift.
