I'm actually doing okay. I use this blog as a major outlet for me, and I wonder sometimes what people think I must be like in "real life." I'm actually pretty damn funny. I always smile at you. I know one person at my old job that doesn't like me, but she's honestly it. Maybe other people talk shit about me behind my back...but in general, people like being around me and I'm blessed to have alot of friends drifting all around this great country of ours.
(My best friend once told me when I was yakking about someone else she didn't know - "you have too many goddamn friends!" - now all friends other than her are referred to as yet another gd friend)
It really could be worse.
I'm still waking up each morning with a goal of to continue to get paid until the next day and to make it til bedtime without any kind of crisis. Things are okay. My meeting is going much better. All 9 of my panelists are now set, I've got 8 states coming, and my powerpoints are all made. I'm kicking it off and facilitating for the two days, so it's going to be a LONG couple of days, but after that I get to go home for memorial day and hug up some little ones and my friends and I'm determined to cherish things more this time.
My friend Tif, who I've known since I was about 8, and friends with since I was ....13? is someone that I email every day. I have since we graduated college (together) and I don't know nearly anyone that knows me the way she does. About 6 or 7 years ago, when I lived in DC the first time, she emailed me one day out of the blue with simply this: "Are you about done up there yet?"
Yep, she was ready for me to come home. She is a woman of very few words, we are not ones to be sentimental and we've had a long history of me metaphorically laying my head on her shoulder and her pushing me up to stand on my own two feet.
She has two young sons, and is one of my favorite people in the entire world and I'd be lost without her.
This afternoon, we were grumping back and forth at each other about how it was Monday, we both were tired and we both felt fat and we both forgot our lunches, and, and.... We switched subjects into something else random and along the way I said "Ha! Yeah right. No one has ever loved me THAT much."
A few minutes later, I get this back:
"i do."
Two words - from someone who has seen my face at every age and every stage. Reminders of grace.
My former place of employment was in town last week - I absolutely loved seeing them all. Walking into a room and everyone knowing me and trading business cards with me and we laughed and grabbed hands and talked about a few years ago when oh-my-gosh-can-you-believe-that-actually-happened?
My life is rich, full, and capable of so much more than I often see these days. So this is me, peeking out behind the curtain, telling you I am okay and that I still have hope that someday, things will be even better.
5 comments:
So glad to hear you have hope and that things are going better. I had a lot of thoughts about your last post, but not much time to write, so this is a two for one comment. When my career overwhelmed me and broke me with its stupidity and hopelessness, I made the grand decision to become a stay at home mom, and I actually said "I know I can be a great mom" which cracks me up now. I didn't have a clue. I felt like I could never win at my job and it was sucking the life out of me and making me miserable. I was sure that I could be happy if I just got away from that career and that hopeless industry. Well I've eaten those words so many times because this mom gig is so much harder and I'm screwing it up royally on any given day and sometimes I wonder what I was thinking. Instead of same circus, different clowns, I'm the same clown in a new circus. Maybe I brought my same idealistic yearning for "more" and my worries to this job too. So I mock myself a bit when I'm feeling inadequate, that I'm getting it wrong, that nobody appreciates me like they should: these are the same things that made me miserable at my job, and there was something tangible and validating about having a career and a paycheck, even an uncertain one. I hate feeling obsolete, because once you jump off the merry-go-round it's really hard to get back on. I wouldn't do it differently, I would just rethink my rationale for doing what I did, and wish I had known that the grass isn't greener, it's just a different shade of green. I made the right choice for my kids, but I had no idea what I was getting into. At least with my sucky job - which was similar to yours in that I was doing what I believed in, trying to make the world a better, despite rampant stupidity, greed and insanely inefficient government regulations, moved far from familiy and friends - at least I had a handle on who and what I was: a Laboratory Director with an MBA, doing important things. Now, I pack lunches and do laundry and I'm yearning for more and worried constantly about my kids. Irony.
Yikes, I'm babbling, comment hogging and failing to say what I mean, which is you may be right, yearning for something solid, but be careful what you wish for, maybe, because the ground is never too solid in life. And hang in there, hope you keep getting paid, hope the conference goes well and it's a great thing you have all those gd friends to keep you grounded and remind you that you are awesome and loved! And relativity therapy has saved my sanity. When things are going wrong, instead of wishing for better, I count my blessings they aren't worse. XXOO
I am glad to hear these words, glad to know that there are happinesses in your life that you have every reason to celebrate and be proud of.
Yes I am.
Love...M
I am happy to hear this, SJ! And I know just how funny and fun you are in real life. I had a blast with you when you visited. Come back soon, okay?
glad to read this dare i say, happy post. I understand - i often use my writing as a pity party. The place to hash out all my feelings and insecurities. It makes me feel so much pain for my younger self when i go back and read those journals i wrote relentlessly in as i grew up.
But it's so good for you to just have an outlet i think. No matter what - and you can't think in the moment of writing something tragic and beautiful and honest that you'll be ashamed of it later. Your writing is so honest - and i appreciate that new part of you (the part that writes) that i've seen emerge over the last few years. I love that at 30...i'm still learning new things about you.
Ketchup.
good to hear SJ.
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