Tag: indecision

6:00 am. Wanda rubs her eyes of crust and with a grumpy growl turns off her alarm clock on her smartphone, which is blaring Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and lay in bed for a good ten minutes.

Breathe in, breathe out. She looks up at the ceiling, figuring out what she was going to do for the day. If only she didn’t make a stupid poor decision to leave her corporate job to take a mental health break. What a bullshit excuse.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi….

She feels the tightness leave her chest. Her shoulders relax. She picks up her phone and started scrolling.

Crap. There’s civil war in Sudan. COVID is (technically) not over. And anti-Semitism is alive and well. She continued scrolling, and had a thought. Hmmm, what is my crush and his girlfriend up to? Her heart skips a beat, and a voice in her head screams, No! Don’t check social media today! You’ll be heartbroken. They’re vacationing in fucking Bermuda, for crying out loud! Bermuda!

She doesn’t listen to her conscience, and instead logs into Facebook. She searches under his name. “Jasper Friedrich.” He pops up and his girlfriend, Vera, is kissing him on the cheek in front of a palm tree.

Wanda’s heart goes down with a thud. Her conscience tuts-tuts and shakes its head. Girl, see, I told you. But would you listen? Nooooo….

She shakily logs out, and then with a thump her head falls back onto the pillow. Maybe it’s not a great time to do stuff today. It’s early and clearly things aren’t working out with my life.

But she knows that chanting is going to help her stay motivated, so she resists the temptation to go back to sleep. Her body, emotionally worn down, screams, No! Life is pointless. Go back to Dreamland forever, and never wake up! But she needs to. Her hands clumsily fish for her little orange bottle of Zoloft pills. Dr. Greenberg told her to take one at the same time each day. 6:15 am it was. She trudges to the kitchen downstairs, and nearly trips and falls on old Sparky, her fluffy white little dog. Sparky gives a little yelp.

Ah, shit! Sorry. She picks up Sparky and brings him down the stairs with her as she trudges more carefully down the stairs.

She puts Sparky down, and he runs across the stained white carpet. When she was 12, Wanda’s mom held a birthday party and the adults all got tipsy, and Brenda Crawford, their next-door neighbor, accidentally spilled wine on the carpet. Brenda and her family packed up and moved to Montana for Dave’s job, but Wanda’s mom still bears a grudge. If she had her bearings, she would mail that stained rug all the way to Billings so that Brenda would never forget.

Wanda turns the tap on, careful not to wake her mom, who lies and snores on the couch so peacefully. She stayed up late completing an assignment for work, and is knocked out. Wanda shakes out one of the Zoloft pills from the bottle, and knocks it back with a gulp of water. They’re not magic pills, the Doc told her, but they work. She crosses her fingers and hopes for no more staying in bed all day, no more appetite fluctuations, and no more suicidal ideations.

She goes over to her wooden altar, which is framed by two beautiful purple vases of dying flowers. A single navel orange sits on the side as a dear gnat dances giddily around it, intoxicated by the zesty smell of the slowly maturing fruit. She opens the altar and sits back in her chair, and starts chanting the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo…

She gets in rhythm with the sound of her voice, and it vibrates throughout her body. Sparky scampers over because he loves the sound of Wanda chanting. As Wanda chants, Sparky is calmed down and lies down, looking up at her with a yearning expression, Please pet me. With gentle fingers she strokes Sparky’s silky fur and continues chanting. She finishes reciting the second and sixteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra and closes the altar. Her mom is still sleeping. Wanda goes back upstairs. Okay, now she feels a tad better. Still heartbroken but feeling okay enough to get through the day without a panic attack.

She opens her laptop and waits as it buffers for a good ten minutes. She got this laptop five years ago, and while it held up pretty well over the years, she didn’t get a laptop cooler for it, so it’s been overheating and it’s exhausted the battery. Too bad they don’t make the kinds of batteries for her laptop anymore, so now she has to save money she doesn’t have to buy a new laptop.

When the screensaver of Homer Simpson eating a doughnut pops up, she double clicks on the Google Chrome shortcut icon on her desktop. She opens the YouTube app on her phone’s home page, and types in the search engine, “Beyonce Love on Top” and clicks on the first search result.

Tired of having erectile dysfunction? Then take Viagra Plus, the only—

She clicks the black box at the bottom, “Skip ads.” Beyonce’s soulful voice jams out, and Wanda gets to work. She types in the search engine, LinkedIn.com. She attended a webinar yesterday for career development and listened to Marissa, the person who connects all the alums together for networking and social events, talk about the value of networking on LinkedIn. The minute Marissa mentioned networking, Wanda’s heart skipped a beat, even more than when she saw Jasper and Veda smooching in Bermuda this morning.

She closes her eyes and just lets Beyonce’s greatness wash over her, and then she feels sad. If only I had a love like Jasper, then I would be complete. If Vera wasn’t in the picture, then him and I would be happy together. She knows she shouldn’t be jealous, but ever since he told her about his girlfriend, all these painful insecurities have emerged from deep within her life, and sometimes they feel too overwhelming and painful to deal with. Jasper keeps my love on top, and as she thinks this she imagines being Beyonce and singing a corny rendition of “Love on Top,” black leotard and fishnet tights. Not that she would fit in a black leotard and fishnet tights, because she is twenty pounds overweight and her flesh would hang out of the fishnet tights. Very unflattering look.

She shakes herself out of her fantasy when Beyonce finishes the song with a #flawless bang, and her eyes open. Yep, her practically nonexistent LinkedIn profile is just sitting there, collecting dust for about two months. She hasn’t posted a thing, but her rich and successful connections sure have. She panicks. She remembers in the webinar, they talked about how to have a complete LinkedIn profile, summary, job titles, everything. How can she wax poetic about her three year part-time stint in college at the Tailfin, a fish joint known for their lobster rolls and snarky staff? Or her one month gig spinning cardboard arrow signs, sweating while dressed as the Statue of Liberty in 100 degree Texas heat?

She hears a knock.

“Come in.”

Layla, her older sister, pops in.

“Mom headed to work an hour ago. I’m going to class.”

“Okay.”

She looks at my computer screen.

“What are you doing?”

I give her a blank look.

“Nothing.”

She snorts.

“Weird.”

And leaves.

I don’t care though because I have all the time in the world to work on this. My About section is short. Maybe I should put some accomplishments? But, like, how do you talk about accomplishments if you haven’t accomplished anything major? I’m not a bestselling author, I’m not even paying paid gigs, so can I even call myself any of these things?

She types a short sentence in the section.

“I am a writer and musician.”

Bam! But oh crap, according to that LinkedIn profile experts page she needs to put more, sound more like she knows what she is talking about and knows her brand. But like, what is my brand? I’m not very self-promotional.

“You need to have a brand to market yourself. Everyone knows that!” Lucy told her as they sat a week ago at Brandy’s Cafe eating shrimp scampi and mimosas for brunch. Because Lucy was working, she paid for Wanda’s meal, even though Wanda told her she wasn’t going to eat because she felt ashamed for Lucy paying for her meal.

Wanda spirals into another almost panic attack. Okay, just breathe. It’s not that deep, kid…

Her mind spirals into another self-critical cycle.

You suck. Your profile sucks. You have no value.

Wanda does a quick Google search, “How to write a linkedin summary if you quit your job.” The first result is a generic post about how to write a linkedin summary. She finds another article with examples of LinkedIn summaries that attracted employers. As she scrolls through the list, instead of making her feel encouraged, she feels less confident that she can pull off a compelling summary with her work history in retail and office administration.

She goes under the experience section. The Tailfin, January 2018- January 2022. She looks at the bullet points. Ugh, so annoying, she has written about it like it’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Really girl, it’s just a fucking resume, not your autobiography.

She looks up the profile of Maggie Bergman, who graduated as valedictorian at her alma mater and has 500 connections. Maggie’s angelic face, framed by curly brown hair, touched up for a professional photo. Maggie Bergman, Executive Director at The Metropolitan Opera.

About

Experienced executive director with five years in the opera music industry….

After reading the 2,000 word summary, Wanda panics. She’s not following the rules of the articles she read about summaries. Hers isn’t long enough, so why not make it longer? Maggie’s summary clearly attracted the likes of recruiters because she has mad connections and is so popular.

She looks up. Two hours have passed and she still hasn’t written a word. So she panics and looks up another article. One of the tips reads, “Sound personable. You’re not just your job title!”

Okay, she relaxes a bit. I’m not my job title, I’m not my job title. Maybe to break the ice I could talk about me.

She is about to type something and her fingers hover over the keyboard in anticipation. But wait, what if some creepy stalker dude, like the guy who groped her that time she went to her friend’s twenty-first birthday party and has stalked her ever since. She feels another attack coming on. He will find you, her mind repeats, he will find you and hurt you. So don’t post anything.

She chants under her breath to calm down. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, nam-myoho-renge-kyo….After a few minutes, she calms back down but still hasn’t written anything remotely interesting. Fuck it, she thinks, I’m going to spend ten minutes max on this. Whatever I don’t finish, I don’t finish.

Add a profile picture. That was the advice she heard on the webinar. It gets you more views. But I hate it when people can publicly see my picture. That dude at the party ruined shit for me. Thanks a lot, Bryan (or whatever your name is. It doesn’t matter. You were too drunk and disgusting to care.)

She clacks and clacks away at the keyboard. It’s not perfect but worth a shot, she shrugs. After an hour she has a summary:

Hello. I am a twenty-seven year old writer living in Dallas with my mom, sister and my dog Sparky. I am not sure what I want to do with my life, but I came in undeclared to college and after a lot of soul searching I majored in government and minored in Spanish. I was awarded a prize by the Grant Lewis Department of Political Science and got to represent an ambassador group at former President Barack Obama’s inauguration. I have worked a variety of jobs, mostly in retail and food service. I worked as a…..

It droned on and on. This will be a snorefest.

…I am not sure what career I want but by 2025 I want to write books full-time and release my first album on Spotify. My favorite books are Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Life of Bees, and anything by P.G. Wodehouse. My favorite music artists are Michael Jackson, Tyler the Creator and Johannes Brahms. My favorite movies are X-Men, Love in the Time of Cholera (ditto the book) and The Imitation Game.

Does anyone care if I’ve read P.G. Wodehouse? Do they care about any of this stuff? It’s a professional network, you dum-dum, not Facebook.

Wanda’s inner critic has a field day as she weighs whether to take down the summary or keep it. Five seconds later…

I’m deleting this. It sounds stupid and irrelevant. So for the third time I changed the summary back to “I’m an artist. Connect with me!” Desperate but short.

But you need a FULL SUMMARY. You’ve gotta rack up those views and connections, girl!

Her anger towards herself boils and she find herself feeling acid bubbling in her chest. She knows this happens in my body when she can’t make a decision. She grabs her water bottle and chugs. The cold elixir of life washes down her throat. She feel a little better now.

I have been at this for the past five hours, and haven’t gotten anything done. The only thing I can do… is just shut down my computer.

So Wanda shuts down the computer, angry at herself for going back and forth for an insignificant decision. She gets upset and pushes her pillow up to her face, and then lets out a painful loud blood-curdling scream. She feels the scream unleash itself from her body, releasing the pent up perfectionism, frustration, anxiety and insecurities she has held onto for years.

You’re perfectly imperfect, her old therapist told her. And she needs to hear that more than ever, because she just spent five hours working on something that nobody probably cared about in the first place. Worst of all, she couldn’t decide what to put. She kept going back and forth about her decision. Should I post this, should I not? And her decisions often carried the weight of other people’s expectations, or rather, what she thought other people’s expectations were of her.

Wanda goes to her Buddhist altar and cries, tears running down her face. I made such a stupid decision, wasting five hours working on a small thing like my LinkedIn summary. How could I have wasted so much time?!? I am falling behind in everything…

She continues to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

She feels better after thirty minutes.

I’m going to do some exercise.

Normally, Wanda can’t make up her mind whether to exercise on a given day. I’m too lazy, it’s too stressful, I don’t have time. But Wanda is running on empty and hasn’t worked out for a good while, so she turns on the pilates YouTube video that her friend sent her last month but that she didn’t open until now because she didn’t think she needed exercise. She does lunges, kicks, and punches, and twists her body in various directions. As she works out, her body releases stress and tension, and she feels in a better mood than she did before.