Quitting like a Fat Babe does.

 

Babes. I fucking quit my job. A job I loved. A job I was good at, that I think made a tiny difference. And, let’s be real, a job that paid half the bills and meant that we could have fancy cheese sometimes.

That is some messed up, holy shit, mid life mother fucking crisis business, no?

Rhetorical question – IT IS OBVI WILDLY RECKLESS. Especially for a fat babe with a protestant prairie work ethic. YOU NEVER QUIT A JOB WITHOUT ANOTHER JOB. It is the middle class mantra of prairie people since time immemorial. But I totally fucking did. So there.

Welcome to the party. Confession: by party I mean the exact opposite.

I am fucking exhausted. Babes I’m tired. The kind of tired that makes me want to sleep for days. The kind of tired that makes nothing seem worth getting up for. The kind of tired that often requires expensive therapy and significant life changes. And, y’all, I have been tired for a while. So I quit.

Look it was either quit or lose everything, so the choice was a no brainer. I mean, babes, I pretty much have it all : partner that I love and that I still think is a total babe who is kind and patient and knows how to fix shit, a scrappy kid that is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me, a couple dirt bag dogs, a mostly un-fucked up family that loves me, enough disposable income to ensure that I look sick as fuck, and a place to lay my head every night – not the worst life. In fact, kind of the best life.

And then there was a moment in time (my fucking birthday if we are going to be specific – which I am) where my S.O. was all ‘get your head out of your ass and engage with the people who love you like you love them back or I am outta here’ – Babes that is the kind of sentence that you fucking pay attention to. And then you fix it.

The reality of my life is that my anxiety has always been a tricky little fucker. And the other truth is that the kind of work that I do is deeply impactful – in all the good ways and all the really fucking bad ways. And then this other shitty thing happened where my crazy went and tied itself to land and humanity and the ways that this planet and her people are so sick. Babes, there is no escape from a sick planet. A lover once said to me ‘i don’t know how you can manage your anxiety when the world is so full of hurt’. She nailed it, babes, how do we manage in a sick world? How do those of us with giant hearts who feel things hard and long and deep stay afloat?

The hard truth is I have no fucking clue. I can’t tell when I am sick and when I am just anxious. I feel like I am dying every single day. I can’t turn off my worry about dying and leaving my little girl, I can’t stop being afraid that she will turn out like her mama, hurting in a world that needs more love and heart and peace than we can give. I can’t stop wondering whether today will be the day when my partner has just had enough of it and walks out the door.

Honestly, babes, anxiety has pretty much meant that I can’t have nice things (or maybe, secret confession, that I don’t deserve them). Or at least that’s how it feels. A lot.

That is why I had to quit the ever loving hell out of my job. Cause this is the kind of wonky brain stuff that fucking destroys lives and I may be crazy but I am not stupid and I was not gonna go down like that. Hell to the fucking no. Cause babes, on my clear days, I know that we are all worth fighting for, I’m worth fighting for fer crissakes. My people and community and this planet deserve a fat, kind hearted, blaspheming warrior femme to bring the noise, the chaos and the motherfucking style.

Now I get that quitting a damn job is maybe a large-ish gesture and that many people just hire a life coach or do yoga or something less, well, drastic. But I am a babe that tends to lean towards the dramatic, the hysterical, the ‘burn it with fire’ approaches to significant life problems. I mean why do anything halfway, amiright?

K, and to be clear i am also fully aware that quitting a job the same day you first think about quitting said job is not just born out of enormous balls and recklessness, but also privilege and a partner who works, so I get that I sound actually ridiculous. But here is the goddamn lowdown: I have until mid February to figure out what the fuck do with myself that will give me energy instead of suck the life out of me. I gotta figure out how to live in this world in a good way for my family and my community.

So the current plan is to start by doing myself a solid and taking some time to chill the fuck out. And from there, I am banking on the fact that adventure awaits.

So I quit. I worked my last day Friday. So that I can live.

First Day at No Work:

Post Work Out:

My new work has an even more casual dress code than the clinic!

My New Co-Workers and Office:

This one pees on everything

this one sleeps on everything

Things could definitely be worse.

 

The bar for efficiency and work ethic is extremely low here. Like, if I stay awake and don’t pee on the couch I will have surpassed my colleagues by significant amounts.

 

 

Checking privilege like a fat babe does

So wanted to lay down some thoughts before I get too far into this blog. I mean mostly I wanna talk about clothes and bargains and righteous survival, but I want to also make sure that we can all be aware that the way I get to do that is because of a fuckton of privilege.

Here’s the bare ass truth of the matter: as a white, middle class, cis person navigating the world, shit is just not that hard. And it’s not hard cause the world is made for me and the systems in it tend to work pretty good for me. Sure I’m queer as all hell, have a hearty dose of crazy , and I’m obvi straight up fat, but at the end of the day my privilege means even the hardest most difficult days are just a little easier than those of the fat babes I love who are navigating the world without cis and white privilege(among others).

Even just a simple thing like wearing whatever the hell I want to work is informed by my white and cis privilege. Fashion and who gets to wear what and what that ‘signifies’ is not a thing I have to think about, and that babes is straight up privilege. I literally just had a conversation with a friend about how to make a ‘sluts with guts’ crop top business casual. If that isn’t made possible by white and cis privilege I don’t know what is. Now I’m not saying days can’t be hard- some days the work I do means that I come home and just cry, and I am eternally irritated that the world keeps fighting a drug war that should just not be a thing, and I’m certainly pissy about the fact that my kid’s safety is compromised just cause she is a girl in the world.

All I’m saying is ‘yo! I have privilege and that’s a thing I need to be aware of’, even as a totally inspirational blogess, but I digress.

So if any of you reading this blog(ever) is thinking ‘whoa that was a sketchy thing to write’ AND you have the spoons to gift me with frank and honest feedback about it I will promise gratitude and checking my shit and doing everything I can to address and change my ways to make things safer for all fat babes.

And even more than awareness is action. Maybe consider this post a fat babe call to arms, a challenge to all the privileged fat babes to use that shit for the powers of good. You don’t have to change the world- just a smidge of the one you roll in. Know a trans fat babe who takes heat shopping at the mall? Go with them and back them the hell up!  Got some time and wheels? Give a ride to an Indigenous babe who, in my town, can’t be sure she will get a safe taxi ride(search ‘Ikwe: women helping women safe ride’ on Facebook) and also What.The.Actual.Fuck. Basically let’s just show the hell up for each other. And babes if you are rolling in privilege and notice some other privileged person being sketchy and brutal let’s actually talk about it and address it and try to do what we can to show some fat babe solidarity and minimize the microagressions that fat babes have to deal with on the daily. The world is hard enough so let’s think about where we hold privilege and where we don’t and try to hold each other up.

Cause at the end of the day the more of us wearing sluts with guts crop tops to work the better. Smooches.

 one of my fat babe besties rocking the ‘sluts with guts’ crop top like she can.