Moving Backwards to Move Forward

Down-shifting my job moves me out of the sobriety danger zone, too.

On September 1 – a day I picked in April though I didn’t realize it would be a Sunday at the time – I will officially shift from being a full-time employee of the Vineyard Gazette Media Group to being a part-time employee of the Vineyard Gazette Media Group.

I will still be the editor of two products – Cook the Vineyard and The Vine – but I will give up editing two others – the Island Guide and the Welcome Guide – and I will no longer be on the management team. I will also finish up a long run of writing the food column for Martha’s Vineyard magazine (which I began doing as a freelancer before I worked for the company, almost ten years ago). Over the last six and a half years, I’ve also written for the newspaper, edited a weekly events newsletter, edited a tourist website, done a lot of social media, and participated in various marketing initiatives and events.

I haven’t written much about this change, because I needed to work the details out with my employer. But now that it is truly going to happen, I wanted to share this news with you, because it has everything to do with staying sane and making sober decisions. And I know for so long my writing here has carried an anxious edge, sharpened by the pressures of so many deadlines coming at me all the time.

For a time I had two weekly deadlines, two deadlines that came 7 times a year, one that came 5 times a year, and one (big one) that came once a year. It was hard to get a rhythm going with those clashing deadlines, and especially hard to find time for breaks. I was on deadline almost constantly for six and a half years straight.

If I hadn’t gotten married in the middle of those years, if I wasn’t going to be 63 (and he 74) on the next birthday, if I didn’t feel such a strong pull both to garden and to pursue my own writing, if I didn’t have a 94-year-old Dad and sister and old friends I want to be able to see as much as possible…my job could carry on as it was and I would happily work that hard. The people I work with are smart, kind, creative, and equally hard-working. You couldn’t ask for better colleagues – or be prouder to work in a place where essentially, everyone’s job is to support the continuation of a 178-year-old community newspaper.

But those are a lot of ifs.

When I began to sense that all those things – getting married, getting older, wanting to see more of my family, longing for more creativity – were dampening my enthusiasm for the work cycle, I did something that essentially made the situation worse before it could get better. I threw energy at two personal projects – expanding the garden and starting the Substack newsletter – while still maintaining my work duties at a level I felt was essential.

In the back of my mind, I knew this was going to be untenable, but I had a plan. Maybe if I could earn some income through the newsletter and the garden, I could justify downsizing my job (if such a thing was possible). Giving up the job altogether wasn’t an option, since I needed health insurance and enough income to pay the mortgage on my house in Delaware, which is home to my Dad.

I began to work (work being some project or another, whether for the job or not) every night and all weekend. Neither my husband nor I, nor my family when I visited them and worked most of the time, found this very pleasant.

And it wasn’t clear that my “plan” was exactly going to work. Of the two ideas for bringing in a little freelance income, the Substack newsletter was clearly the winner over the gardening, since it began to generate some income based on the time I put into it. In my case, I’d liken that income to something like writing a regular column for a small magazine – not a lot, but something.

The problem with the garden/small farm/flower operation is that no matter what kind of value you put on your time, you can’t begin to make a profit until you’ve covered your infrastructure costs and other expenses, which are high in the first few years. And if you really want to make a decent, steady income, you have to invest in even more expensive infrastructure. (With flowers, you need a cooler to hold them in, a proper vehicle to transport them in, etc. etc.). And honestly, while it is possible to farm “part-time” (or I should say, many farmers also have other jobs), it is not a “side gig.” It can’t be done without a pretty good chunk of time invested.

At some point, I began talking with my (then) boss about alleviating a little bit of work pressure. She was the person who had hired me and knew everything I was doing, so she was sympathetic to my need to make some changes. We made one change – I got rid of one weekly deadline – and began to make a long-term plan for me to dial back. But then the day of her retirement party arrived and suddenly she was no longer my boss.

With her departure went the last of my enthusiasm for starting new projects, thinking up big ideas, throwing myself into all aspects of the job. I hadn’t anticipated this would happen so dramatically, but when my dynamic new boss arrived with fresh enthusiasm, I immediately realized I couldn’t offer her what she deserves – managers who are all-in on company growth, eyes on the future, new ideas or solutions to problems always percolating.

I was exhausted and felt stuck, and it reminded me of the triangulation I had towards the end of my drinking when my job as editor of Fine Cooking got too stressful for me, the home my (then) husband and I had built suddenly became too expensive for us when the taxes doubled, and my marriage simultaneously became strained. In that situation, I had relied heavily (and ultimately ineffectively) on alcohol to treat the anxiety.

But two things were very different about this current situation: my marriage (the man, his support, my commitment to him, and our life together) – and 17 years of sobriety under my belt.

Being sober didn’t actually prevent me from acting alcoholically – here I was, doing what I always do – taking on too much to the point of making myself and those around me uncomfortable. But it did help me to see the problem and look at it squarely – and to act more directly and more quickly to reverse the trajectory. I knew I was bumping up against my own personal limitations – the workload might be fine for someone else, but for me, at this point in my life, it was too stressful. And anyone who has stayed sober for a good stretch knows that we each have our own red flags, and when they go up, danger lurks. This was beginning to feel dangerous.

I realized I had to stop wringing my hands and start taking responsibility for managing my own well-being. On a drive back from Delaware in April, I talked through my thoughts with my husband, and we discussed the repercussions for us.

In the end we decided that dropping the writing and/or the flower growing – which might have been the best financial solutions – weren’t good long-term solutions to my well-being and happiness. (Though we have scaled back our expectations and intentions for the garden as a money maker.) That meant something would have to give with my job. We went over numbers and came up with a threshold for a point to which my income could drop. And that night at home I wrote up a proposal for a part-time job, and emailed it to my new boss.

Ultimately, we (my boss and I) agreed on a new job description and salary for me, and I insisted on a transition date of September 1, 2024.

I felt great relief.

I feel great relief.

I feel as if I did the right thing.

It is a little unusual to stay with the same employer and take a pay cut and fewer job responsibilities.

But in my case, I feel like moving backwards is moving forwards.

The challenge for me now is to not rush in and fill the void. The reality is that there won’t be much of a void – my “part-time” job and personal commitments are still going to keep me plenty busy. But it is my singular crazy-making talent to keep adding things on. Maybe I can finally resist doing that. Let’s hope so. 🌸

Wedding photo: Maria DeForrest