The Smooth Glide of Knowing

When something new takes unexpected time and energy.

The metaphor:

After a deliciously, concerningly mild fall, December arrived decisively, with highs in the twenties and snow on the ground. Fresh back from Thanksgiving travel, I found myself standing in front of my dresser, perplexed, trying to remember how to layer. The effort to keep up with the changing seasons took me back to a theme from summer about how much time it takes to do something new. That idea echoed throughout the week as I saw friends struggle with unexpected changes, the same way that I struggled to cross country ski this past Friday on snow that was only mostly past the sticky stage – not yet ready to glide.

The story:

You guys, I started a new job last month that uses Microsoft Teams. I’ve spent the past 10 years using Google Drive, Slack, and Zoom. On my first day, a kind and organized new colleague walked me through the system, which made no sense to me. I doubtfully wrote down foreign words like OneDrive, Sharepoint, Channels, and Notebooks. Oh god, I thought, I’ll never make a document again.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about start-up energy: the effort it takes to do something new. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the million assumptions and habits I’d built up at my old job to get through my day, conserving energy so I could get more important things done. Now that my autopilot can’t run as usual, I’m suddenly spending time and energy on the basics, on just getting by.

I thought about start-up energy on Tuesday when a friend tried to say the word chi. She had just gotten adult braces and hadn’t yet attempted the ch sound. The mouth position she’d been using for years now sent breath whistling around her teeth, through the new space created by the otherwise-invisible brackets. Ssscchssi. Ssscchssi. She looked amused and frustrated, one eyebrow raised, trying to get control of the sound. Ssscchssi.

I thought about it again on Wednesday when a childhood friend sent a string of texts with immediate corrections.

Coming I. May sounds great!

Sorry.

Coming in May sounds great!

Is what I meant to say.

ASlo

AlSO

(My phone undated last night for the first time in awhile and I can’t type the same way now ftw)

ALSO

!

These moments made me feel better about having to ask my coworker how to make a shared document, or being almost 10 minutes late to an org-wide meeting where the first agenda item was to introduce me. But most of all, they made me feel better about the summer.

I spent the summer in between jobs, a lucky adventure and a gamble that paid off. After four years in my last job, I arrived at the old feeling that it was time for something new – and then the very new feeling that I didn’t need to line it up before I left. Instead of starting a job search in my after-work hours, I gave notice and wrapped up by the end of May. (This option was sponsored by the Western New York cost of living, which I deeply appreciate and recommend!)

From June through September, I led by far my most pleasant job search, mixing in lots of summer free time between job posts, applications, and interviews. Job searching is inherently out of control, so “pleasant” is a relative scale, but I felt grateful to contain it, as well as to take time and revisit old assumptions: did I want to keep working in a social impact setting? For a small organization? In a remote role, on a four-day week schedule? (Spoiler alert: yes.)

This blank canvas feeling spread from my job search to my recreation: what hikes, bars, and Finger Lakes had I yet to visit? In what new ways could I spend time with friends and family? What creative projects could I now pursue? It was stunning to wake up each day with interesting, worthwhile things to do, and no factors but my own preference to follow. I’d strike out with enthusiasm – and then be surprised by my incredibly slow rate of progress. A new hike! I’d decide, then lose half an hour on AllTrails, reviewing the options. Or, lunch with my grandma! Then read reviews about where to take her before calling her to make the plan.

It was such luxury, and I always felt grateful – but I was surprised to find how much administration there was, how much setup. All these new ventures took start-up energy, which I hadn’t allowed for at all. I’d end days happy but exhausted, excited about what I was doing but confused why I wasn’t doing more.

I kept thinking about all the routine I’d apparently honed over 15 years of working, all the little autopilot moments that I’d walked away from when I stopped having weekdays be workdays. Without structure and routine, everything took a confusing amount of time and effort. Should I still have oatmeal for breakfast or make eggs? What should I wear if I didn’t know what I was going to do?

I kept thinking about Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck, “the way he settled on a uniform to reduce the number of decisions he had to make in the mornings, the better to focus on his work.” I had done the opposite, wildly proliferating the number of decisions I made in a day.

Some days brought the high of a great new hike discovery, where others brought the low of a park I didn’t like, a brewery that had closed. Even the idea for this Substack brought the excitement of a new creative project as well as the false starts of learning a new platform. I resolved to start it in September, then spent a month writing sample posts to figure out what it would actually be like, followed by a couple weeks of “soft launch,” sharing with a few close friends to see what it felt like to have my writing online. Everything took longer than I thought it would.

I’d thought my summer exploration would give me the feeling of freedom, of lightness and fun, of being fully present and truly alive. I had that feeling sometimes: swimming in a Finger Lake I don’t usually frequent, laughing with my 96-year-old grandma over chicken caesar wraps at noon on a Tuesday. That feeling is like cross-country skiing on a downhill slope, which I got to do a few times on Friday this past week, as the powder finally built enough for the first ski of the season. But I also spent a lot of time shuffling through patchy snow, where rocks and sticks slowed my stride, and inching up inclines to get to the downhills.

As winter continues, as the ground freezes and stops melting the snow from the bottom up, when the volunteer groomers come pack down the trails, it will get easy to glide through those parts. Then the whole trip will be fun, and not just those few downhill payoffs. But early in the season, when there’s no strong foundation, those patchy, uphill parts are real work.

That’s what happened in the summer, too, and it took me aback. I felt like I should be having a transcendent time every moment I spent with no job – and many of them were great! But some of those moments were their own kind of work, the extra effort of doing something new. Then, some moments were rest and recovery from all that effort, even though it felt like I hadn’t achieved much, hadn’t earned that rest.

When people asked what I was doing with my time, it was hard to know what to say. I felt invested in doing many disparate things, but I didn’t have a clear narrative: I wasn’t exactly relaxing, but I didn’t have much to show for the effort I was putting in. I didn’t even know how to describe what kind of job I was looking for, because I was revisiting so many of my job search assumptions.

Once I accepted an offer in October, the story started to coalesce. With an end to the search, I could build a narrative arc excluding the offshoots that didn’t pan out. While I was sorry to say farewell to the freedom, the returning structure also brought a sense of relief, a feeling of being back on steady ground – a sense that any post-job relaxing had been earned.

I still think taking time off is the best way to job search, for anyone lucky enough to have the chance. But it’s not a leave of absence, a sabbatical where you’re stepping away from a life that’s waiting for your return. I hope that I’ll be able to do future job searches in a similar way, kicking all the tires and revisiting the assumptions. But I also hope it’ll be a long time before I need to do that. I hope I’ll figure out how this new job works and stay there for years, letting new defaults build up in my day to day. I crave that smooth glide of knowing how to do things, of saving my energy for problems I’m proud to solve, getting the payoff of that downhill adrenaline.

On Friday, it felt like that when Steve and I crested the hill at Harriet Hollister just as the sun rose over Honeoye Lake, turning the clouds as pink as our cheeks. We slogged back up the hill and were home just after 8am, full of kinetic energy. We put on music and sang at the top of our lungs while we took our standard pre-work showers and made our go-to oatmeal breakfast. We watched the snow falling out our windows, hoping the cold would hold long enough that the next day’s skiing would be even better.

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