Everything Fall Apart

[Charise Zelnick]

Feelinglost is stressful enough, but what about when we disappoint ourselves more than anyone around us? What do we do when we have no sense of direction or purpose, and dwindling confidence in ourselves?

I found myself in what would be one of the darkest moments of my life at the ripe age of twenty-five. My girlfriend of five years and I split up as I was planning to propose, an F4 tornado destroyed my hometown, and I quit a successful job in advertising all in a matter of months.

Many successful people we know today found success later in life. Stan Lee started the Marvel Universe at thirty-nine, Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of the Species at fifty, and Grandma Moses began painting at seventy-eight years old.

So trust that when everything seems to be falling apart, new things are coming together. But you have to be open to embrace them. Simply float the river. The point of life is not in the destination, it is in the journey. But we are led to believe that life is serious and that it must be leading us to some grand destination.

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It took years to allow everything to fall apart, but when I finally did, when I finally left the relationship, sold the ill-fitting business, lost the house to the recession, a little tug called me home.

Alone and bewildered, or, as Martha pronounces it, be-wilder-ed, I began to sense a feral inner self. Without my social self trying to strong-arm everything, this wild self gradually guided me to be centered and strong and to trust myself. She taught me how to use my secret super powers for good, without jeopardizing but rather enhancing my own well-being even as I forged new relationships. This deep, wild aspect of my own consciousness began to call me to mysterious adventures, magical healing, and my deepest purpose.

Have you ever felt like things are falling apart, and all you're doing is trying to hold onto the pieces with every last bit of effort available to you? And then you realise that what you're doing is spending more time holding on than giving shape or purpose to your actions. Because you're worried, what if everything falls apart?

And then, one night, I just sat down and started to write, and it flowed out. Words after words, sheer clarity of thought meeting the keyboard. And all I needed to do was to give my mind time to heal from the extremely formatted, algorithmic, more clickbait rather than authentic flair writing loop I had put it on last year. And bring back the feeling that made me start in the first place, the need to share things that have given value to me in life as an Adult, Leader, Parent and mildly ageing human being.

Last July, I fell out of love with writing. It started feeling like something I needed to do other than what I wanted. And so I decided to take a break to let this feeling go away, and I somehow never returned to it. I started making more video content, grew my team, became a father again, built my own studio space, and began working on a new company with my partner in life, and slowly the itch started returning. I didn't scratch it right away. I spent time circling around the idea of writing... I bought a notepad and started to scribble on it. I Made a mental note to plan how i\u2019d evolve how I write. I even wondered if I should move out of substack onto an entirely new platform (I'm still thinking about that).

#3 Starting this week I\u2019ll keep adding music to a playlist to become the sountrack to life. If there\u2019s a track you want to reccomend to email it across. ( I\u2019m picking a song a week to feature here but I\u2019ve added a few more on the playlist to get you started)

-Returned last year to film a trailer, only to have the project fall apart in the first 3 days but then come together, only to continually fall apart and come together again for the next three months.

So, once again I leave for the Middle East with hope in my heart, plans in my head, and excitement to see friends once again. And I tell you this with a sly glint in my eye, I am so excited about the projects I have planned and I cannot wait to see how they transform.

I'd never lost a job, but I'd had my share of breakups. This time, my boyfriend and I were discussing our plans for the week over brunch. I suggested bringing him dessert after one of his business dinners. He was unenthusiastic. "You know the thing about this relationship?" he said. "You think about us. I think about me." By the end of the meal, we were done, in every sense of the word, and I was back to square one in the love department.

I doubt the breakup itself would have been enough to shake me out of my rut, but combined with the job loss and my upcoming milestone birthday, it made me realize that I needed to change my life. "We're programmed to get on track and stay on track, as in 'I've been dating him for five years, so I've got to marry him.' We forget that it's OK to redirect ourselves," says Deborah Carr, Ph.D., a sociologist at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New Jersey. "Often, though, we need something to push us into action." For me, that weekend when everything fell apart was it.

I was certainly doing my share of pausing. I'd always been tethered to a schedule; now I was free to do what I wanted. So I booked a midweek vacation to visit friends on the West Coast. I watched movies in the daytime and ate cupcakes for dinner. But after three weeks, my pause began to feel more like paralysis. (There's only so much daytime movie watching and late-night cupcake eating a girl can do.) When I thought about all the things in my life that needed fixing, I moped and felt sorry for myself. Once, when my mother asked me why I was so grumpy, I broke down in front of Dunkin Donuts. "Because I have no job!" I wailed. "And I'll never find anyone because I'm old!"

That I was ready to move on to the next phase was a good thing, say experts. If you wait too long to act, "your energy will subside, you'll fall back into old ways and the window of opportunity closes," Buffone warns. Living in limbo was fine for a while, but I needed to figure out what my new course would be.

Luckily, I have a circle of friends who not only helped me find my way, but who also responded with fresh outrage each and every time I relayed my saga. One dropped everything to have impromptu cocktails and "strategize" my next move. Another invited me to sit with her in her home office so I had company while composing my online dating profile. "This 'friend capital' gives you various angles from which to view the issue, so you can reframe it positively," says Crystal Park, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

The only thing more effective than having friends tell you that you deserve better is believing it yourself. That inner confidence comes from understanding what your best talents and skills are, then making the most of them. "Try asking yourself, Who am I when I'm my best self?" suggests Karen Reivich, Ph.D., codirector of the University of Pennsylvania Resiliency Project. As I thought back on my various job experiences, I realized that as a magazine editor, I'd felt constantly harried, but I was also one of the few people I knew who loved my job. Banker and lawyer friends dreamed of early retirement; I felt lucky to be paid to work with talented writers. Yet I couldn't help wonder about my current career path. Where was I headed? Was this all there was? I wanted more, but I wasn't sure what "more" was.

Normally, I'm proudly self-reliant, but this time I called Jan Tillotson, a therapist and life and health coach in St. Augustine, Florida. Like Reivich, Tillotson recommended that I zero in on my strengths as a starting point. After taking two tests to assess my abilities and values, I learned that I'm a voracious information gatherer, meticulous, results-oriented and a planner. I'm eager to please, but I need my efforts to be recognized and reciprocated more than most. I'm not particularly extroverted or community-minded. These traits suggested that I should make a career move I'd always fantasized about: becoming a freelance writer. As an editor, I'd always been secretly jealous of writers, but I never thought I could give up the comfort of a steady paycheck and the health benefits. Now I had neither of these things. I was free to move forward without taking a risk. The proverbial window of opportunity was open.

At first, I felt strange working on my own. But Tillotson cheered me on, giving me hints to nix my self-defeating tendencies, such as being too eager to please. "You don't always have to give yes for an answer. If a deadline seems unreasonable, say so," she instructed. With practice, I grew more self-assured, landed assignments and relished my freedom.

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