Tag: employment

sober lifestyle

Redirection

jenwielgusjournalism

Graduation has seemed like a forgone conclusion, and a bit of an anticlimax, for much of these last few months. But if I needed a reason to get pumped about crossing the stage in cap and gown this weekend, all I needed to do was remember: No more summer sessions, with their excruciating four-hour classes and overwhelming onslaught of assignments! No more group projects or presentations where I’m at the mercy of other people’s shitty organizational and time management skills!

No more Wednesdays arriving at work before 5AM and driving home from class after 8PM! 🙏🏻

Those were the jubilant thoughts I summoned to make me smile as I took my last stroll around campus last week on my very last hellish hump day. Shuffling along the lake- and farm-side nature trail where I’d decompressed after many a long, emotional day at practicum/internship, and looking up at the vibrant green trees that have always calmed and comforted my jacked-up nervous system, I felt a bittersweet mixture of melancholy and relief.

I “did the thing,” as we said in my counseling cohort. I successfully walked this grad school path and took my first baby steps into the mental health field. I “made it through the woods,” if you will, and now, it’s time to pause and take in the scene/enjoy the view, then keep walking on whatever path reveals itself to me next.

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sober lifestyle

Insecurity

jenwielgusjournalism

Someone recently asked me if I went to rehab to get sober, and I was like, “No, but I wish I could go now.”

I mean, generally speaking, there’s nothing I would rather do than put responsible adult life on “pause,” indefinitely, to go read, reflect, hike, do yoga, get therapized, yak with likeminded folks about recovery, philosophy, history, humanity…which, incidentally, is what I do with my friend Kim on our “Living Sober” podcast. It’s worth a listen, if you’re into all that deep stuff, too! 🗣️🎙️👂🏻

I should probably warn you that some off-color language occasionally slips outta my mouth on the pod. In the only listener feedback we’ve received (from someone other than my mom), an emailer took issue with my “use of profanity.” 🙊

Figures! It’s been that kind of season lately, when my square-peg edges seem particularly rough, and all the world seems especially round. Like any good self-protective human who feels cornered, and like any recovering addict who buried their old trusty escape hatch, I find myself really yearning to run away and leave it all behind. Thus, I guess, the rehab fantasy. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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sober lifestyle

Interview

jenwielgusjournalism

On Thursday afternoon, I got dressed up — it might be more accurate to just say “got dressed” — and drove up to Quakertown for my first counseling job interview.

It’s actually an unpaid, 100-hour “practicum,” and it doesn’t start until next spring, during my second year of grad school. But, you know what I always say: “You’re never too early!”

I usually say this while sitting in my running car, parked outside the place I’m supposed to be going, with at least a half hour to kill because I gave myself 90 minutes for a 45-minute trip. 🙄 I say it right before I anxiously start snapping selfies (see above) because I don’t know what else to do with my idle hands. 🤣

My new mantra should really be “You’re never too late.” I mean, I turned 44 a week ago, and here I am, back in school and interviewing for internships in a brand new field. I’m in the midst of my third career transition in the past four years.

You might think this is a sign that something in my life has gone terribly wrong, but quite honestly, I feel like pinching myself. I can’t believe how very right everything feels with the world at this moment.

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graduate school, sober lifestyle

Performance

jenwielgusjournalism

Imagine a precocious little girl in a homemade, red plaid dress with matching ribbons in her shoulder-length, sandy-blonde hair (she has bangs, so clearly this is a flashback from long, long ago), and white anklet socks and brown top-siders on her feet. She is marching in the door with a good — in fact, near-perfect — report card, her whole body tingling in anticipation of that intoxicating hit of parental approval she knows is forthcoming.

That girl is me. Did you guess? It’s funny I chose to paint that exact picture, because the outfit was from first grade, when I had…let’s just say, “social adjustment issues,” that led to regular trips to the principal’s office and my teacher installing a special study carrel in the corner of the classroom to keep me from being disruptive.

Legend has it I was doing somersaults one day on the carpet in the back of the room that was supposed to be for, like, naps and storytime and docile 💩 like that. 😳

Explains a lot, right?

I ended up killing it in all the academic subjects, to the point they put me in the “gifted” —sorry, “enrichment” — program, but my conduct left something to be desired. Read on to see just how much has changed! 🤣

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graduate school, sober lifestyle

Compensation

jenwielgusjournalism

This week has been all about making up for lost time. I don’t know if one can actually do that, without injuring themselves…but dadgummit, I’m trying!

It’s like every moment I’m awake, I want to cram it to the brim with activities I enjoy. I want to take full advantage of my freedom and experience life on my terms!

So, I’ve basically been walking/running around Bucks County like a madwoman for days on end.

When I entered Tyler State Park on foot Friday afternoon, eyes fixed upward at the pure blue sky (when they should’ve been checking the path for those little round ankle-killers that fall from the trees 😬), I’d already run from Washington Crossing to Bowman’s Hill Tower on the canal path earlier that morning, then flowed through my usual yoga program on my deck shortly after breakfast. On Thursday, I walked in the park twice, in addition to working out in my basement and doing another hour of yoga. On Wednesday…

OK, Jen; they get the point. 🤐

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sober lifestyle

Confidence

jenwielgusjournalism
Covering one of my first stories as a one-woman videography band: the opening of Cole & Heidi Hamels’ charity headquarters on Philly’s Main Line. I ended up doing that video reporting job for six years (2012-2018)…and eventually learned to actually look at the camera. 🙈

There are dense clumps of cobwebs stretched across my memory banks, particularly in the pre-2019 era, so I can’t recall the exact details of the day when I officially became a video reporter.

In my head, it went something like this:

“We’re shutting down phillyBurbs.com [where you’ve worked as an online content writer for the past four years]; either take this camcorder and go shoot high school sports stories [which you’ve never, ever, ever done before] for the newspaper’s revamped website, or…seeya!”

I took the camcorder. That was 2012, and, by my calculations, it marked Major Life Change #4 for a young print journalism major from suburban Chicago.

Today, I’m on the threshold of #8.

Does that mean I have only one life left? 🙀

If everything goes according to plan (🤞🏻🤞🏻) that’s all I will need to reach my ultimate goal.

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sober lifestyle

Worthiness

jenwielgusjournalism

Someone from another life sent me this picture several years ago, and in case you need help understanding why, I’ve drawn you a big red blob.

It’s very possible I’m the one who needs help.

I mean, I was the one who took the very flattering label of “Most Athletic” female — in a senior class of about 500 total kids — and internalized it to the point where it completely defined my identity. This process started long before the (Niles, IL) West Word staff assigned their 1996 Senior Superlatives; I was probably 8 years old (and going by Jenny Wielgus) when I smacked my first home run in coach-pitch softball, and, based on the reaction of the parents in the crowd, instantly decided that sports were MY THING. From that point on, I was convinced my purpose in life was to be a top athlete, and that my worth as a person was inextricably tied to my performance on the field/court.

To be “good” at all, I had to be better than everyone else. Not that those were my explicit thoughts…but sadly, looking back after a lifetime trapped in a “fixed mindset,” that’s really what my belief system came down to.

And then, I walked on to a Big Ten softball team, and WHAMMO!

Literally. 🥎💥🤯

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sober lifestyle

Recollection

jenwielgusjournalism
So many of my bad memories started just like this…

Sitting in one of my very first recovery meetings last summer, I heard people talk about all the mysterious injuries they would wake up with after a night of heavy drinking — unexplained bumps and bruises, dried blood caked here or there, broken digits and the like — and I thought to myself, “Not me! I never hurt myself while drunk!”

Many months later, WHAM! The memory burst into my brain, like a 160-pound human body from a higher row, suddenly toppling on the backs of unsuspecting concertgoers, then slamming into the hard stone amphitheater stairs at their feet.

In case you hadn’t guessed, the uninvited crowd surfer in that scenario was me, six summers ago, “celebrating” my wedding anniversary at the Interpol show at Penn’s Landing after pounding sakis at my hubby’s and my favorite sushi restaurant, then guzzling who-knows-how-many $12 hard ciders from vendors at the venue.

I’ve attached a “BEFORE” photo from that night. Didn’t think you’d keep reading if I chose the “AFTER.”

My shins ended up looking like ground meat after my unfortunate booze-fueled tumbling act, and the (untreated) trauma to my lower extremities was so severe I basically crawled through our subsequent Hawaiian vacation — where, as I’ve recounted in previous posts, I went on to take several more spills while soused. I couldn’t walk normally for like a month. I nearly had to pull out of a half marathon that November.

But no, I never got injured in the throes of alcoholism! 🙄

Tequila Sunrise-to-Sunset…would be an apt tagline for our entire 2015 trip to Hawaii. 🥴
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