2) In 2009 I started a business. I own, for all terms and purposes, a very successful, legitimate business here in San Francisco taking care of people's cats when they're gone. It was more or less a fluke--I never in a MILLION YEARS would have expected to be business owner, but in 2008 when I was laid off from my TV production job, I took what I was already doing as a favor for friends on the side and ran with it. And much to my surprise/chagrin, it actually worked.
Now, here I am four years later with a 150-plus (and growing) client base, an income that grows exponentially every year (don't let that fool you, I still earn quite a bit less than most 'normal' working people), and a hearty collection of 5-star reviews on Yelp. While all of this is amazing and fabulous and something I should feel grateful for (I do-- I promise, I do), the very serious downside of it all is that I am more stressed-out, anxiety-ridden, and more cripplingly depressed than I have ever been. In My Entire Life. Coping with the stress of maintaining a successful cat-sitting business is, on good days, a nightmare. For three years I have been more or less land-locked in San Francisco--unable to leave for fear of letting down the clients who depend on me. For almost just as long I have worked 7 days a week with no break. Holidays. Weekends. Days are often 12 hours long. From March through December I look at my calendar and see no respite from the deluge of cat-sitting requests that come in every day. I have lost a lot of friends. I have a weak social network, with holes that spread wider by the minute. To add to insult to injury, my latent fear that I will end up old and alone on the street (and probably insane, pushing a shopping cart) is only expounded by the fact that many of my days are spent without uttering a single word to a human being--the only words coming out of my mouth being baby/kitty talk to cats--making me walk one all-too-slippery slope toward becoming the Crazy Cat Lady of our collective mockery.
Needles to say, the unbearable stress of this all has led me down some dark paths. At times I've found myself unable to imagine a future in which life was tolerable again. I've constantly let myself down by bending to meet clients' needs rather than take the necessary time for myself to feel healthy and normal, in turn creating a relentless chain of self-loathing and punishment. I find it nearly impossible to say no--and thus am overextended, sleep-deprived, exhausted, and lonely. Life gets boring very fast when all you do is eat, sleep and work (and that's a LOT of eating--but I'll get to that in another post--and hardly any sleeping). And so, at times, I have found myself staring in the face of what seems to be the only way to break free--killing myself and ending it all. Now, before anyone starts calling suicide watch on me, I must explain--I haven't actually contemplated suicide. I know the drill--I don't "have a plan," I've never really, truly thought about it seriously, and despite my bleakest days have somehow managed to maintain a flag, beckoning me toward some distant, buried hope--but it has, more than a few times, crossed my mind as the only way out. Yet, it's really only a matter of simple decisions and choices that I have all the power to make in order to change everything for the better. EVERYTHING. So, when faced with the options: i.e; killing myself or finding the courage to tell a client "sorry, I'm all booked that day/week/time;' or even killing myself versus attacking the very-daunting process of finding my first employee-- it's clear what the better choice is. Hence, the title of this blog. God give me the strength to stand up for myself and make my own health and happiness a priority, because any other way about it is simply not going to work. The power to turn not just my business but my entire life around really does exist inside me, and all I need to do is let it out. I have to. I must. Because as daunting, or as painful, or as difficult as it seems--It's better than killing myself.
