Dear Erica: MY VISION BOARD JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE IN 2011

Erica’s Vision Board, April 2024

This week on This Is Your Strange and Beautiful Life, Vad and I took a stab at this tome of a listener question: My Vision Board Jumped Off a Bridge in 2011. But as fate would have it, I had many more thoughts. So, I decided to bring the blog out of its hiatus and give MVBJOABI-2011 the longform treatment she deserves. The word count is generous, so bring a snack, put your legs up the wall, or read it in the bathroom at work. The photos of my various vision boards are also rather generous. Enjoy!

Love, Erica

Link to podcast episode (And/or, please hit up your favourite podcast platforms!)

Listener Question From: My Vision Board Jumped Off A Bridge In 2011

Dear Erica,

I'm in my early forties and I've recently made peace with the modest fixings of my adult life. When I was in university, I studied International Development and I thought I'd end up joining the Peace Corps and working for the UN or doing something similarly praiseworthy and altruistic. Instead, I am trucking along at a humble 9-5. It is not particularly glamorous, or even fun, and sometimes it takes up more energy than I have. But it lets me pay for my life with relative ease, and I can splurge on treats to make up for some of the inconvenience.

One of my favourite parts of my life is my group of friends. We met in university and never lost touch. At least once a week, we get together to eat and shoot the shit and online shop for deals and laugh at reality TV clips. I know I am so lucky to have these people and this outlet, but lately I've felt a bit triggered by one of my friends. Let's call him Alex. Alex has a similar livelihood as I do, though maybe it doesn't drain him quite as much. But it's like he feels oppressed by steady income with benefits. He's constantly berating the complacency and grind of a day job, how the 9-5 is a crime against humanity, stripping us of our joy and physical health and creative potential. He's constantly pouring himself into self-improvement projects: impossible fitness regimes, the keto diet, life coaches, empowerment conferences, and mysterious online "communities" where bright-eyed and Botoxed high achievers exchange life hacks for optimizing their existence according to their Vision Board. At least two of these endeavours reek of some kind of cult or pyramid scheme. Alex always claims to be on the cusp of some pinnacle of ultimate growth. But he never seems to get there. I watch him ride up and down these waves of hope and possibilities only to fall into deep discouragement and depression when the diet or the ahayuasca journey or conference failed to launch him into the life he was meant to live. It's exhausting to watch! And it makes me feel like because I'm accepting of my own gig and simple life, that he's probably judging me for being complacent and unambitious. Do you think I should say something? He is more or less driving me nuts.

Love, My Vision Board Jumped off a Bridge in 2011

Erica Can’t Fix It—But She Has Thoughts

Dear MVBJOABI-2011,

Gosh, I feel like we need to have a support group for everyone who signed up for an International Development degree in the early 2000s. International development majors, also English majors who thought they were going to become the next Margaret Atwood. It’s like, Generation Mr. Rogers Unite. So much to say about how we didn’t get to become fashion designers, veterinarians, marine biologists. We were supposed to be destined for great things. And here we are.

Black-and-white photo of Fred Rogers and Neighbourhood Trolley. Image Source (public domain)

Fred loves you just the way you are.

But remember what Mr. Rogers said. I love you just the way you are. I don’t need you to change. Mr. Rogers was right. And he is proud of you. I am proud of you too. I am very proud of you for learning to accept your “fixings of adult life.” This is no small feat. It sounds like you are approximately my age and we were raised with this idea that we could do anything! Everyone was always telling us how deeply special we were. But what they weren’t saying was, when you grow up, if you want to eat vegetables more than once a week in 2024, you might need to get a day job, and it might even be a little be boring.

Listen, I empathize with Alex. When I graduated from university in 2010, I thought it was just a matter of time before Oprah discovered my blog. My blog was called, The Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is someone who renounces enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. I think this blog title is a bit excellent if rather to spell. Still, I believed that Oprah would find my blog and she’d call me and be like, Erica J. Schmidt, get your yoga ass over here. And, she’d invite me to her magical Oprah forest and we’d sit on her lime-green chairs and we’d shoot the shit about how I was living my best life with my Olympic yoga routines, cleaning routines, butt exercises, menstrual blood (which I gathered into a peanut butter jar and photographed), letters to my eleventh therapist, and Oprah would be so delighted, and everyone would be so delighted that I’d never have to get a day job for the rest of my life.

As fate would have it, that’s not what happened. Oprah has not yet found my blog, and I have a day job. I’m on my second moderately serious day job of my adult life. I walked into both of them kicking and screaming. And yet, they both turned out to be incredibly reasonable, incredibly manageable, not that glamorous, but overall, a net positive for my life—especially for my bank account and nervous system. After years of funemployment mixed with cleaning other people’s bathtubs, finally, I have enough enough money to buy vegetables, and eat as many carrots as I want. This is excellent news because colorectal cancer is on the rise for millennials.

Tragic Elements of a Day Job, by Erica

But, back to Alex. It must be said that all day jobs are created equal, and many day jobs consist of tragic elements. Here’s what I believe to be tragic about a day job:

Number One: You probably have to wake up with an alarm clock. So, you start the day with a loud noise, and not getting enough sleep.

Number Two: If you do not have the wonderful fortune of working from home, and you have to leave the house, you might miss your pooping window! And maybe you are one of those brave souls who is able to poop in public. But maybe, like me, you are not. So you’re stuck at the office all day, clogged up and gassy. Number two tragedy of a day job. Probably the biggest tragedy.

Number Three:  you’re stuck on someone else’s timeline, and you’re probably going to have to rush a bit. Like, you can totally fit in exercise, maybe chip away at your creative projects before work. But you’re gonna need to set a timer. How I feel about rushing in the mornings is, I’m sad we have to do it. I used to work at a Montessori school for tiny children, like 18 months to five or six years old. And I remember, I would wake up at like 4 in the morning to do my Olympic yoga routine, and then I would rush to get to the bus, and sometimes this would be really stressful for me and I would cry on my way to work, and I’d get to the school, and you’d see the families hauling their kids to the gym and everybody would just be so flustered, and the kids would have tear-stained cheeks and I’d be like, I know. All this so you can build a pink tower out of specialty wooden blocks. A three-year-old’s day job is building a tower out of pink blocks. And then they grow up, and all the adults are rushing out of the house to build their pink tower, whatever it is. People like Alex feel oppressed by this. I understand.

The best is when the pink tower of your day job is working from home. I’m super lucky. I work from home 95% of the time. In case you are dying to know, my dreamy day job is, I translate soothing sentences about riveting medical topics like how to take blood pressure and how to empty an intestinal stoma collection bag.

Once a month, I have a field trip. On field trip days, I take the metro to the ends of the earth, hang out, and talk shop with my colleagues. As a perk, I’m allowed to eat as many doughnuts as I want. Unfortunately, when I was 11, my swim coach told me that doughnuts took three days to digest and we weren’t allowed to eat doughnuts, and I still retain this doughnut trauma. Therefore, I do not partake in the doughnuts, but I do find that within about an hour and forty-five minutes of Powerpoint presentations and ongoing discussions about workouts and Ozempic and intermittent fasting routines, I’m like, where is my chocolate muffin.

To describe the days when I return home from the office, I have a saying that goes, “I’m too tired to do anything, but I’m not tired enough to do nothing.” And I could see if that was your entire life, after a while, you might feel like you’re disintegrating.

And maybe Alex has a crappy commute, his job is truly draining, and he feels like he’s losing at life. He feels like he’s not living the life he was meant to live.

“Doing the Work” by Erica J. Schmidt

(Black-and White Image: Erica plays ukulele that kind of looks like an electric guitar. She is wearing a foldy and zippery jean jacket, plus bargain yet somehow kind of stylish sunglasses in front of her minimalist bookshelf which consists of photos of library books she has read between Winter 2022 until now.)

Toddlers on Leashes and Doing the Work

Fair enough, Alex, I guess. Congrats on your vision board. But MVBJOABI-2011, I’m glad you mentioned cults and pyramid schemes because many, (not all but many) of these people on the quest to manifest the life they were meant to live, they can be kind of smug and exclusive and abhorrent.

Like, I’m so special, I’m doing the work. Nauseous! This is nauseous! There are people who spend all day rolling tires, installing doors, cleaning windows. Like think of caregivers at daycare who are responsible for the tears and diapers and physical safety of five to eight toddlers. Have you ever seen these brave souls trudging down the sidewalk, dragging a row of woozy two-year-olds on leashes? In snowsuits? These people are doing the work! We are all doing the work!

Nobody’s quest is better or more important than anybody else’s.

So I get it. Lots of baggage there. Irritating. But the core issue is, Alex is talking about stuff you don’t care about.

And you’re like, Alex, please! No more biohacking or human design readings or vibrational leadership conferences. Nope.

But conversations with friends are not the same as an Uber Eats menu. We love our friends just the way they are. What is friendship but trying to be Mr. Rogers for each other, in this world that won’t even give us the time to take a shit on our way out the door. So probably you feel like you can’t say, hey, can I get a little less about your co-worker, family drama and reality wrestling recaps.

Actually, you can. You can gently (or aggressively) get your friends to change the subject. My friends do this to me several times per year. You’ll be shocked to know that sometimes I get really fixated on a topic. My Gay Husband, was a big one. My brain also likes to dwell on death, tragedy, and extreme illnesses and injuries. And though I strive to keep it riveting, every now and then, my friends are like, okay, that’s enough spinal cord injuries for today.

 But there’s a loving way to do this. I’ve had people interrupt me and say, “Can we talk about something else?” in an irritated voice, and that hurts my feelings.

Other, gentler friends have been more subtle. I recommend keeping the focus on your friend but asking an unrelated question. You can even be like, “It’s a bit of a tangent but I need help with this awkward email. I need your advice on how to say no about coming home for Christmas.” Hell, you can even take out your phone and show him some funny photo or meme. Just keep trying.

But Alex may be the kind of passionate person with the kind of brain that runs speeches on a loop. His brain cannot rest until the entire speech comes out, perhaps multiple times. And god bless everyone with a brain like this, and god bless their loved ones.

MVBJOABI-2011, if sounds like you have started to make speeches to your shower walls about how much Alex is driving you nuts. I find that when you start to make undelivered speeches about someone, in the shower or at any other location, the relationship has an expiration date of approximately six months. So, you need to say something. The truth is important, but as my thirteenth therapist says, you don’t need to dispense sledgehammer truth.

Just keep it light. You can be like, “I love that you’re finding this so helpful, I just haven’t had the best experience with life coaches and self-help books, and it’s not my favourite topic.”

Or, “Listen, I’m just feeling like a slacker these days. It’s all I can do to get through the work week. I kind of feel like I’m listening to a Tim Ferris episode and it’s making me kind of tired. Do you think we can go a little lighter on the self-improvement talk?”

Or, “I can see you’re really into this and that’s great. But it feels like you’re being really hard on yourself. And I can’t help feeling overwhelmed when I hear about you doing all these life-affirming practices and I’m just here trudging through the status quo. Maybe this isn’t the best thing for us to talk about.”

It’s all a bit delicate. You don’t want to come down too hard and diagnose his life coaches with narcissistic personality disorder. That’s kind of like voicing a negative opinion about your friend’s partner. The Instagram relationship coaches do not recommend this.  I mean, if you believe that Alex is in an abusive situation and in harm’s way, then you can voice a slightly more specific concern. You can maybe throw in some podcast or book recs about cults or coercive control. But limit this to not very often. Like maybe even just one time.

Recently, I’ve been trying to embrace a deeply basic but critical revelation: Everybody’s life is their own life. Everybody’s life is not my life. It’s better to let people live their own lives. What a gamechanger. I don’t have to save my dear ones from their choices. I also don’t have to get all twisted up when I see my friends in a terrible situation, or one that I absolutely would not choose.

Compared with romantic relationships, friendship allows more space for disagreement and discord—and that’s a gift. Like your friends can make all kinds of questionable decisions, they can go to their overpriced full-body leadership conferences but you are not going to bed with your friends, so it doesn’t need to slam you in the face every morning at 6:35 a.m.

Alex may never stop fetishizing his life coaches or chasing after the life he was meant to live. But this doesn’t need to ruin pizza night. So I hope that you two can work this out. It sounds like you’ve had a long and rewarding friendship. You are lucky to had such a good friend for so long. You are also lucky to have made peace with the modest fixings of your adult life. I think acceptance is an underrated and tremendous accomplishment. And so, My Vision Board Jumped Off a Bridge in 2011, bravo pour ta vie. Congratulations on achieving the life you were meant to live—life you are living right now.

Love, Erica

Erica’s Vision Board, October 2023