When I met Viktor, I completely lost—or maybe redirected—my creative verve. In the six months prior to meeting him I’d done nearly a dozen interviews and written, tested, photographed, and posted something like 50 recipes for Eat Like a Yogi. All of a sudden, after we met: crickets. Instead, I spent my energy on our dates—the waiting, the planning, the recovery. I had nothing left for recipes, interviews, or anything else.
About the only thing I did for Eat Like a Yogi during that season of my life was attend a conference to learn about fundraising. If I wanted to scale the site into the lifestyle business I believed it could become, I was going to need capital.
The keynote speaker was the CEO of a local software company. She was so brilliant in a certain way that I felt inspired to work for her. I said as much when I introduced myself, so she asked me about my experience. I quickly summarized that I was working on building my own company, but that I had a background in marketing and community management.
“Well our VP of Customer Success is here,” she said. “You should talk to her.”
I had worked through my 20’s and into my 30’s at corporate-y desk jobs, plenty of time to confirm it wasn’t my jam. So I should have known better. I guess I thought—hoped, really— this time might be different.
The interview process went on through the summer as Jack and I were falling apart, then culminated in an epic finale: I had to give a thirty-minute presentation to a six-person panel based on my analysis of thousands of data points, which might as well have been a billion for as much as I knew what I was doing.
For the second half hour of the final interview, I was to answer questions about my presentation from the panel. After that there would be six hour-long interviews, one with each panelist, plus lunch at a nearby restaurant with two people from other departments within the organization.
It was a company of Ivy-Leaguers and I wanted to prove myself. I had neither the education nor the resume to compete, but I was determined to shine. I spent more time preparing for that interview than anything I’d ever worked on in my entire life.
The day of my presentation, I stood at the head of the conference room, smiling hard. At exactly 9AM, I turned my body in a literal circle. This was my way of getting into character, of becoming a person I thought they might award the job. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t like a job that I had to play someone else to get.
When they called to tell me I got it, I held on as long as I could without crying. When I hung up the phone, I sobbed. Jack had told me four days before my final interview that he wanted a divorce. By the time I stood in front of those people, I knew how much it mattered—I not only wanted the job, I needed it. I was going to need a way to support myself and my son.
Once I signed the W-2, I resolved to move into my own place as soon as possible. Immediacy had always been my practice. Retract, evade, run…and don’t stop. I didn’t want to stay in the house where we had made memories as a family, said goodbye to our dog Zoe, tucked Asher in every night, argued on the porch, come apart.
I asked Jack to look at apartments with me. I implied the reason I was asking was that I wanted to be sure he approved of where I would be living with Asher, but the larger reason was that I was used to having him by my side. I still needed him.
Since I was planning to move out, we realized we would have to tell Asher. We sat down with him one night after dinner.
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