What I Learned From My Pantry

A five-minute call with the Director of HR released me from a stressful and unfulfilling job.The layoff wasn’t unexpected. Plenty of signs warned me I was on borrowed time. Plus, I’m at the age where you wait it out rather than start over.

With my new surplus of time, my first task was not a job search but instead a search for the real me. I wanted to know where the sanguine, creative, and joyful me went. Without fully realizing it, the last decade didn’t merely burn me out, it slowly ate away at what made me…well… me.

How could I have not seen the effects of this soul-sucking job in my life? I took cleaning out my kitchen pantry to unearth the answer. 

Take for instance a jar of sunflower seeds sitting on my pantry shelf. They looked fine but that’s where it ends. As I open the jar there is a slight rancid smell and the seeds were stuck together in a not-so-easy to remove clump. And so it was with my job. In many respects it looked fine from the outside but if I’d taken the time to fully explore the situation I’d have realized it was like those rotten seeds. 

As I dug through the messy shelves, I found a box mix crammed in one cubby hole, another buried behind a seldom used thermos. These items, and a dozen more, became invisible—proof the old adage “Out of sight, out of mind” is true.

If I’d taken the time to read through my journals, I would have noticed what was hiding in the nooks and crannies. How easily did a series of frustrating days get shoved to the back due the pressure to take on the next task. Or the day my boss failed to follow through on a task and allowed me to take the fallout—that  got stashed on the lowest shelf rather than address the betrayal.

Probably the biggest reason for the disorder in my pantry (and why I stuck it out in my job) is what I call the “expectation deception.” In my pantry it looked like seaweed wraps, garlic couscous, and almond flour. 

Each item represented the belief that I’d somehow change my cooking habits to use these healthy foodstuffs. At work the hopeful  expectation of better days took the form of new senior management, a large grant, or improved technology. 

Hopeful thinking effortlessly led me astray. My pantry was loaded with false potential. My inability to see the destructive nature of the company culture allowed inertia to take hold. 

After a few hours my pantry was functional, my garbage can was full, 

and I gained some perspective on exactly what happened in the last decade. 

Now to attack the basement!