Stay

I appreciate all of you who commented or wrote to me personally after my cry for input when I was trying to decide whether to stay in my current (toxic) work situation or take a more worthwhile job, but in a new community with no tangible support network. Your kindness reminded me that I have a lovely, supportive community wherever I am. I carry you with me in my heart.

I really wrestled with the decision. All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something on the other side. For example, sticking it to my so-called leadership team by leaving them in the lurch would require a year or more of social isolation in a new community for me – I’d have caught all the shrapnel from that self-inflicted wound. Furthermore, most of my wheel spinning and list making was about what would be good or bad for someone else. What do YOU want to do? I asked myself, over and over. But I could not get to an answer.

Until my friend Jay weighed in, that is. (Jay is in the Air Force, and you can check out his super-cool-not-a-mouthpiece-for-the-military-although-he-literally-is newsletter here: https://jayheltzer.substack.com//). Jay suggested I try the very scientific Throw a Dart Method™. This is a trick he learned from his aunt, who says when faced with two tough options, throw a dart. If wherever the dart lands makes you want to throw it again, you have your answer. As soon as Jay suggested this I didn’t even need to throw a physical dart at a tangible object. All I had to do was imagine hitting a mental dartboard, and the dart landing on the hypothetical target that said I had to move. I would have kept throwing mental darts until one of them landed on “stay.”

Bullseye.

I don’t want to move. I want to stay in our little flat, in our little town, working on our little military installation. Work sucks but there’s scope for quiet quitting, and I want to use whatever scraps of creative energy I have left at the end of the day to read and write and be a good literary citizen. Will I have many infuriating moments, wishing I was using my time and talents on behalf of children? Of course. Will I, at precisely the ten-year mark of living in England, be out the door of the current job faster than you can say Indefinite Leave to Remain*? Absolutely also yes. I have books to write. I’m not doing very well at that while I juggle everything else. But I can ride out my remaining time (less than a year, y’all) in the company of kind, smart, funny, and fun people who are supporting me in countless ways. We can pretend we’re characters from The Hunger Games. I’m staying.

I promise not to focus on the hard stuff ahead. There are so many cool things happening, book-wise and personally! For one thing, I’m leading virtual writing sessions for the RAF Mildenhall Library during November:

And the lovely people of the Community Heartbeat are sponsoring a Veterans Day tea & author talk at the best local tea house (so fun, because you may remember that in the opening scenes of Playing Army, Min’s mother hosts a Pink Tea for the disgruntled soldiers of Min’s new unit):

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts, and what you’re up to, so please drop me a line below! Or, I’ll see you on the socials.

Thanks for playing (Army)!

Nancy

*Indefinite Leave to Remain is the first tier of permission to stay in the UK. It can lead to full citizenship but doesn’t have to, sort of like a US green card. It means I can stay here, or come and go as I like, without a work visa.