Today is my first day not at my job. It's been a full year there and today is the first monday that I woke up and didn't have to go it.
I remember the time that we had a show in Bowling Green and I woke up Bethani and Norm at 5 in the morning so that we could start driving home so that I could be at work on time.
I remember the time that I had strep throat, not sure what was going on with me but still going to work because I was too bullheaded and broke to go to the Doctor. I remember that bug really threw me through a loop. I was in my back cubicle, in my little happy place with my orchid smiling at me, sipping tea from my favorite duck mug, trying to swallow and my boss came back to ask me to move to the front desk. It sounded like a promotion that I didn't want. He said I was going to move up to processing assistant and that I had to be in the front to do this. I told him that I would move up to processing assistant, but I didn't want to move up to the front. He couldn't understand why. I couldn't swallow enought to clear my throat and explain. I just muttered that I'm not good with people, I like my privacy back here... which he took me mean that I was goofing off in the back. Maybe I was, but I was doing well none-the-less. I was happy and comfortable and I only went up front when they needed me. So I said no to the front, and yes to the training. The next day, I woke up sweating, no sleep, just that aching feeling. I went to work. I slipped into the back and started working. Then they called me into the main office and asked me again. I was sweating and the room was spinning. I couldn't hear over the muffled snot building in my brain and restricting my ears. and I agreed. That's all that I could do was nod. And I moved the girl out without even asking her. I felt so terrible touching all of her stuff, diabetic needles and bills and all. They asked me to so I did it. I moved up there and had never felt more awkward. Brenda, my female boss was incredibly judemental and had a way about her that was accusatory even in the most simple of statements. I couldn't hear a thing and my lists and organizational tactics fell through in this muddled pile of people walking through as thought hey were treading straight on my brain. The next day with temperature rising was the Schumacher meeting. I couldn't miss it. I don't think I've ever hated myself more than when they were showing us all a powerpoint presentation on how to push small businesses out of work and take over, building more Schumacher homes than ever.
I couldn't even eat lunch. I couldn't even swallow. I couldn't hear a thing and I thought that I was just being dramatic. Then Paul Schumacher (or Schmuck-er as I called him) got up there and told us that the company is going to raise one billion dollars by 2010. Some people acted excited. Others just kinda looked at that giant number as compared with the small sales that we were pullind down and whinced. The best part of the day was when I put a sweaty piece of paper made for comments in my clammy hand and scrawled out the statistical impossibility of maintaining quality control with the gross amount of houses that the company would have to pump out in order to make a billion dollars. It's unfathomable.
In any case, after the meeting, the directions to push out family businesses, the greedy Presidents pushing his employees for more more more, the sales encouragements, the tempting cancun trip for the highest seller... I went home and cried. I curled up on the couch in a feverish, hormonal ball and cried and cried and cried until my mom came in and said that it's not that bad,.... and I cried some more. It was after a couple of hours that she dragged me to the ER kicking and screaming to the tune of a temperature of 103. Strep throat. Stuck at the front desk. and signed up for a crusade of a job that I didn't believe in.
I guess right now, I'm going over the whole thing. The slippery slope that brought me to the point of not wanting to wake up in the morning. I guess I could blame it all on outside sources, but rather, it was more of a mindset that I adopted along with it that carried me down the rapids.
It's funny sometimes how things just get under your skin and you don't notice until the wound festers, then you just medicate the fester without removing the splinter.
Here I am processing the past when I should be planning for the future, but in all honesty, I'm terrified. I'm in this limbo like I'm waiting for something. I've always known that I don't have the guts to just up and move to a random place without a dime in my pocket. But now I feel as though I am more in a corner than just being broke and scared of change. I don't remember when I started hating myself. And I'm not sure where I'm supposed to go from here.
What's going through my brain right now is this sense of urgency. This feeling that time is slipping away from me and I'm waiting at a station for a train that never comes. I just want to be alone and I'm not sure if it's just quitting my job or starting a new one or that it's sleeting outside. Jason just walked in, excited about the day. I just wanted him to leave. I didn't know what to say to make him leave, but I feel as though I need to process what I'm feeling alone. I don't know what to tell him that I haven't already before. And I'm glad that my mom isn't here. My dad walked in before Jason did and asked if we were going to finish the house this week while I'm off. I really need to get internet at my house. I muttered something. I feel like all I want to do is get away from everyone. Last week was completely consumed with doing band stuff, just going to shows and passing out demos and doing a recording in a real recording studio, which was all awesome, but I just wanted one night to myself and I'm pulled in a million different directions sometimes that I don't feel like I ever can just sit and process all the things because they are happening too fast.
Wait, that doesn't make sense. How can I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for a train, but I don't want to do the thing that are right in front of me because ther'es too much going on. I think that I'm just slightly annoyed right now as all that Norm could say about the band is all this shit that we have to do and how much he wants shows and how we need to blah blah blah. I just bit my tongue until he stopped babbling and then specified that I'm doing what I can and spelled out what I'm good at, which is talking to booking guys and chatting it up and talking to bands and trying to get shows that way... then I told him that I'm not good at sending out demos or anything with the mail as it is hard enough for me even to get my shit together enough to pay my bills... and those already come with addresses and envelopes! It just made me upset that the one show that we have and the 4 clubs that have our demo are because of me and he's pushing me and bitching about not having more! Come on, what more does he want me to do! and the four or five shows that we have already had were all from me talking to my old friends and getting gigs through them. I guess the more that I thought about it, the more mad that it made me how he just kept whining about nothing happening when he's not doing anything to make anything happen. I can't milk my friends for all that they are worth and I don't want pity shows. It's really annoying to keep pestering my friends or only calling people when I want something. If they like the band, they'll book it. if not, nothing I can do will stop that. He did a half assed recording and didn't pay any attention to the glaring details and he expected me to hand that to clubs like I was proud of it? And recently it was Joe who came through with a friend with a recording studio that did our new recording for free, which sounds phenomenal. Ugh, I just hope that he doens't keep going on about what we're not doing when he's not doing anything. He didn't even pay for gas when we went to Toledo and he knows I'm broke! He bought me a coffee when I was driving home in a snowstorm and a beer at the club so that I'd go up and talk to the booking girl. Thaaaaaaanks....
Ok, so that's what's going on with the band.
Now my parents are doing what they do best, I guess. I'm keeping my distance a lot more than before. My mom is helping with Jason's quilt a bit, which is nice. She's good at sewing and sometimes I work backwards on sewing and it's nice to have help. My dad on the other hand had been pushing me all last week to pitch this idea to my bosses that I would be an independent contractor for licensing when they needed me. He wanted me to tell them if they needed me after I was gone, that they could call me at any time and I would just come in and fill out the paperwork for state licenses and they would pay me per license. Sounds like a good idea, but my bosses are kinda not built like that. But anyway, dad kept making me explain this contractor idea to everyone. I'd be standing there and he'd make me tell mom about it, which i didn't. Then when Jason and I were over, he told Jason that I had this great idea and that I should tell him about it... I just stood there with my back turned saying nothing while my dad talked about my silence like it was me bucking the business world or something. Just a few minutes ago he came in and asked me how I was financially doing. What the hell. I'm in between jobs, literally. Am I supposed to be really well off right now or something??? Well, I'm not. Jason just paid off two of my credit cards, which was nice and one less thing to worry about. But I'm on limited funds and the band promo thing is making things even tighter along with all these projects that Jason and I have planned for my week off and his spring break.
Anyway, I'm kinda having a bit of trouble thinking about the future. I don't think that I've ever had a sense of urgency about anything until this birthday. I'm 25... or at least I will be. It seems like I should know what I want to do with my life by now. Right now, what I have is a half finished house, a very sweet boyfriend, 30 chickens... with 50 more baby chicks in the mail this week, a BA is b-s that I don't use, the loans to prove it, a severe leaking eye problem, and no long term career goals to speak of, and a band that I am severely questioning at least one of the members of as far as fortitude and passive-aggressive nature.
I think I'm just going to take this week to calm down. I don't want to think that I wasted a year. I don't want to think that I have no direction. I want to see the good that might come. I guess we'll see how the next few weeks go.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
quail eggs and quitting
So, quite a bit has happened since my last post. I guess just sitting at work and blogging about how much I hate work got me thinking about working through my difficulties with... um, work.
After only a month in therapy and reassessing my goals in life, I am right now sitting at work, enduring my final 2 weeks notice. I'm in my last days here at the mortgage company and I honestly don't know what's coming. I do know that I'm getting talkative again, laughing more and there's an excitement in the air that ranges a bit beyond the scent of spring with the melting snow.
On the same day that I turned in my 2 weeks notice at the desk job, I was interviewed for a greenhouse position. I guess I just wrote down all the jobs that I would be good at and enjoy and the greenhouse was pretty high. It's creative and outside and most importantly, it's not really focused in the "business" world. I think I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the head of a company can send their kids to private schools and disneyland 7 times a year and buy them new cars before they even have licenses... but the bottom of the totem pole people just sit behind their desks, staring at a picture of their kids thinking about just putting in their time to get home to help with their kids homework - the highlight of their day.
I don't think that you should do something that you don't like to do. And it's pretty easy to slip into it. I guess it's a comfortable spot to be in with the security of having a job and whenever I would wake up and not want to go in, I'd say to myself well... at least you have a job.
But le sigh... my brain is always in overtime. I would just sit here and spend the money as fast as I could make it to try to make myself cheer up or to try to challenge myself. I kept reading about these things (wikipedia is both my best friend and worst enemy at times) and then I'd want to do them, but wouldn't have time, but would have some cash in my account, and with internet access, ebay was always so close. After awhile, my house became cluttered with unfinished projects with the best of intentions and I swear 8 hours out of your day will make you so tired by the time you get home... it's unbearable. So I'd wait for the weekends, but when the weekends would roll around, the backlog was soo thick that I couldn't prioritize.... and the vicious cycle continues.
I like the people that I work with a lot. They are nice. I just don't care too much for the job.
I also got stuck when thinking of things that I want to do. It seems as though I detest the business world with terrible loathing, but oddly enough, I also hate the creative world. Maybe because the creative world always puts that little focus on the dollars that it can make from being pretty instead of focusing on doing things for the sake of doing things. I was torn with interior design for so long because it seems to me as though art is wasted on the rich. It's not accessible. It's stale and hanging in some mansion in the west wing that's only used on the fifth saturday in may for a women's tea. If I would design a house, it wouldn't be a real house. It would be one that someone would be bored with the silk couch and want something different. No one is really going to see it. No one is really going to care.
So what about fashion design. That's fun... but I can imagine hating it and the ever changing "what's new for fall" attitude.
Even just walking around the art building sometimes made me a bit nauseous in the way that people fed into such bullshit while condemning others for the expressions.
So design is out and selling is out and brokering is out. I like playing in the dirt, but even farmers now-a-days have 9-5 jobs to support the losing industry that is their plot of land. So I guess I like hobby farming, but I'm not sure where exactly I can go with it.
Now that I've ruled out what I'd be good at, but wouldn't enjoy, I whittled down the rest into something that I can actually base my life along with my living wage. I think working in a greenhouse is a good first step. I guess I would be pretty happy working at a food co-op or at a horse barn, but I'll take what I can get. And the best part about the interview is their focus on organic gardening. I walked out of there only feeling mildly like a hippie, but we discussed PBS and DDT and orchids and I might have mentioned my chickens because it's kinda hard to go a half hour without talking about them.
But anyway, I think it's a step in the right direction. The next step is building more pens for all the new additions to the High Mill farm that are coming into fruition. I got a new kid that should be coming right around my birthday, even though my parents swear they don't want one. he's so cute, you just can't say no.
So that's what's happening. Oh, and I've found a new-found obsession with quail eggs. They are just beautiful
After only a month in therapy and reassessing my goals in life, I am right now sitting at work, enduring my final 2 weeks notice. I'm in my last days here at the mortgage company and I honestly don't know what's coming. I do know that I'm getting talkative again, laughing more and there's an excitement in the air that ranges a bit beyond the scent of spring with the melting snow.
On the same day that I turned in my 2 weeks notice at the desk job, I was interviewed for a greenhouse position. I guess I just wrote down all the jobs that I would be good at and enjoy and the greenhouse was pretty high. It's creative and outside and most importantly, it's not really focused in the "business" world. I think I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the head of a company can send their kids to private schools and disneyland 7 times a year and buy them new cars before they even have licenses... but the bottom of the totem pole people just sit behind their desks, staring at a picture of their kids thinking about just putting in their time to get home to help with their kids homework - the highlight of their day.
I don't think that you should do something that you don't like to do. And it's pretty easy to slip into it. I guess it's a comfortable spot to be in with the security of having a job and whenever I would wake up and not want to go in, I'd say to myself well... at least you have a job.
But le sigh... my brain is always in overtime. I would just sit here and spend the money as fast as I could make it to try to make myself cheer up or to try to challenge myself. I kept reading about these things (wikipedia is both my best friend and worst enemy at times) and then I'd want to do them, but wouldn't have time, but would have some cash in my account, and with internet access, ebay was always so close. After awhile, my house became cluttered with unfinished projects with the best of intentions and I swear 8 hours out of your day will make you so tired by the time you get home... it's unbearable. So I'd wait for the weekends, but when the weekends would roll around, the backlog was soo thick that I couldn't prioritize.... and the vicious cycle continues.
I like the people that I work with a lot. They are nice. I just don't care too much for the job.
I also got stuck when thinking of things that I want to do. It seems as though I detest the business world with terrible loathing, but oddly enough, I also hate the creative world. Maybe because the creative world always puts that little focus on the dollars that it can make from being pretty instead of focusing on doing things for the sake of doing things. I was torn with interior design for so long because it seems to me as though art is wasted on the rich. It's not accessible. It's stale and hanging in some mansion in the west wing that's only used on the fifth saturday in may for a women's tea. If I would design a house, it wouldn't be a real house. It would be one that someone would be bored with the silk couch and want something different. No one is really going to see it. No one is really going to care.
So what about fashion design. That's fun... but I can imagine hating it and the ever changing "what's new for fall" attitude.
Even just walking around the art building sometimes made me a bit nauseous in the way that people fed into such bullshit while condemning others for the expressions.
So design is out and selling is out and brokering is out. I like playing in the dirt, but even farmers now-a-days have 9-5 jobs to support the losing industry that is their plot of land. So I guess I like hobby farming, but I'm not sure where exactly I can go with it.
Now that I've ruled out what I'd be good at, but wouldn't enjoy, I whittled down the rest into something that I can actually base my life along with my living wage. I think working in a greenhouse is a good first step. I guess I would be pretty happy working at a food co-op or at a horse barn, but I'll take what I can get. And the best part about the interview is their focus on organic gardening. I walked out of there only feeling mildly like a hippie, but we discussed PBS and DDT and orchids and I might have mentioned my chickens because it's kinda hard to go a half hour without talking about them.
But anyway, I think it's a step in the right direction. The next step is building more pens for all the new additions to the High Mill farm that are coming into fruition. I got a new kid that should be coming right around my birthday, even though my parents swear they don't want one. he's so cute, you just can't say no.
So that's what's happening. Oh, and I've found a new-found obsession with quail eggs. They are just beautiful
Sunday, February 4, 2007
apathy and exhaustion were not always my best friends.
Clinched jaw, I kinda hide. I'm just going to sit this one out, wait for this feeling to pass, grab a beer, glance out the window. It's snowing. It looks cold.
And now I'm starting to feel like a whiner. Like all I do is just sit here and say poor me - poor me, all the while pining for the times that I would sit on the back porch, glancing up at the stars as the crickets twittered at me, peeling the dried mud from between my toes.
And the past few days have been lists and lists. Lists of things I love and lists of thing I hate and lists of places that I love and miss and lists of places that I would never live in, lists of worst jobs to have, lists of the happiest times in my life. And I kinda feel like I've aged 20 years in the time it took me from being 24 to my 25th birthday, which is fast approaching.
I feel like the irritable man in the sitcoms, coming home from a long day at the office just to snap at the kids he hardly knows on his way to the easy chair. No time to look at his wife, just snarfing down the food on his plate, looking through everyone he meets and flying off the handle at every little thing that goes wrong.
I'm impossible without a beer after work. I hate that feeling. I'm up to 2 cigarettes a day, which is putting a permanent brick in the back of my throat and I'm sure wrecking my voice, but at the same time, it's all I can do to limit it to two some days.
This is the part of the sitcom where the flashback happens to happy little me taking the test in 6th grade when a career specialist came in to class to bestow upon us each a future, bright and wide as our eyes and only wavered when the boys in the back row would scoff at the mention of any boy.... OR girl... could become president.
It didn't take me long, I know what I like and what I don't like and even from a young age, I would keep the mice in glass jars as part science and part odd fascination. I picked weeds with my grandma and ran around in the sun, and the rational part of me always hated art, swearing that it was a really fun way to pass time, but nothing more.
I don't know how I feel about making money. I think I'm going to make a giant equation of energy and time and money... for starters, there is only a certain amount of energy that one person could have, save for time spent sleeping and factor in whether this being is eating good foods, consuming legal stimulants or depressents, and the small environmental factors of decreased vitamin D intake during the winter. We'll call this factor M.
There are a few things that you can go to decrease or increase factor M, but for the most part M is stable with a calculatable entrophy as every year goes by. For the sake of continuity, let's just say that M = 100
I would say that being winter with the frigid 3 degrees currently with very little sun and nothing but blustery cold snow building up on top of ice, that would decrease my M by 8 points.
100M - 8 = 92m
but it's not just winter here. I'm not sleeping right because it's cold, so that's another 2 points off. Stress of living next door to my parents is about 4 points off.
92m - 6 = 86m
My fucking goddamn job though probably sucks 68 M points out of me. Fucking full time, stealing the best hours of my day, taking all the daylight time for a stupid paycheck and a dirty rotten feeling about my life with little if anything in return....
86m - 68 = I'm a shell of a human being.
So the point of this excercise is to point out in some sort of science that I don't like where I'm at. I'm sure that I can have another shitty equation to say that doing what I want = no money but that's for another day.
In any case, I'm coming to the conclusion that I just sit at my desk and buy things. i'm no better off making 10 dollars an hour working full time as I was at Bittersweet farms making 7.25 working only part time. The way I see it, if you are doing something that you love, then you don't rely so much on buying shit to make you happy outside of work. At bittersweet, I didn't come home and crack a beer to make my eye stop twitching. I pretty much just danced around and called people up to make some music and had weird movie night.... but then again, maybe it's not all just my job, maybe some of it is the area. I do have a lot of faith in canton/akron. I guess one shitty city in Ohio is as good as any other. I'm just have a bit of a tough time right now.
I don't know, maybe I went through bouts of depression before, but never really realized it until I had stable people around me. Maybe my mom staring at me during breakfast every morning, asking me if everything ok and my dad just chiming in "make the best of it" before I go to work has a little bit to do with this whole confusion. Maybe it's Jason saying "just quit" combined with this nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I couldn't get a job doing what I like to do that's causing this internal struggle.
All that I know right now is I'm 24, turning 25 and I feel like I've pissed away a damn good year with nothing to show for it.
And now I'm starting to feel like a whiner. Like all I do is just sit here and say poor me - poor me, all the while pining for the times that I would sit on the back porch, glancing up at the stars as the crickets twittered at me, peeling the dried mud from between my toes.
And the past few days have been lists and lists. Lists of things I love and lists of thing I hate and lists of places that I love and miss and lists of places that I would never live in, lists of worst jobs to have, lists of the happiest times in my life. And I kinda feel like I've aged 20 years in the time it took me from being 24 to my 25th birthday, which is fast approaching.
I feel like the irritable man in the sitcoms, coming home from a long day at the office just to snap at the kids he hardly knows on his way to the easy chair. No time to look at his wife, just snarfing down the food on his plate, looking through everyone he meets and flying off the handle at every little thing that goes wrong.
I'm impossible without a beer after work. I hate that feeling. I'm up to 2 cigarettes a day, which is putting a permanent brick in the back of my throat and I'm sure wrecking my voice, but at the same time, it's all I can do to limit it to two some days.
This is the part of the sitcom where the flashback happens to happy little me taking the test in 6th grade when a career specialist came in to class to bestow upon us each a future, bright and wide as our eyes and only wavered when the boys in the back row would scoff at the mention of any boy.... OR girl... could become president.
It didn't take me long, I know what I like and what I don't like and even from a young age, I would keep the mice in glass jars as part science and part odd fascination. I picked weeds with my grandma and ran around in the sun, and the rational part of me always hated art, swearing that it was a really fun way to pass time, but nothing more.
I don't know how I feel about making money. I think I'm going to make a giant equation of energy and time and money... for starters, there is only a certain amount of energy that one person could have, save for time spent sleeping and factor in whether this being is eating good foods, consuming legal stimulants or depressents, and the small environmental factors of decreased vitamin D intake during the winter. We'll call this factor M.
There are a few things that you can go to decrease or increase factor M, but for the most part M is stable with a calculatable entrophy as every year goes by. For the sake of continuity, let's just say that M = 100
I would say that being winter with the frigid 3 degrees currently with very little sun and nothing but blustery cold snow building up on top of ice, that would decrease my M by 8 points.
100M - 8 = 92m
but it's not just winter here. I'm not sleeping right because it's cold, so that's another 2 points off. Stress of living next door to my parents is about 4 points off.
92m - 6 = 86m
My fucking goddamn job though probably sucks 68 M points out of me. Fucking full time, stealing the best hours of my day, taking all the daylight time for a stupid paycheck and a dirty rotten feeling about my life with little if anything in return....
86m - 68 = I'm a shell of a human being.
So the point of this excercise is to point out in some sort of science that I don't like where I'm at. I'm sure that I can have another shitty equation to say that doing what I want = no money but that's for another day.
In any case, I'm coming to the conclusion that I just sit at my desk and buy things. i'm no better off making 10 dollars an hour working full time as I was at Bittersweet farms making 7.25 working only part time. The way I see it, if you are doing something that you love, then you don't rely so much on buying shit to make you happy outside of work. At bittersweet, I didn't come home and crack a beer to make my eye stop twitching. I pretty much just danced around and called people up to make some music and had weird movie night.... but then again, maybe it's not all just my job, maybe some of it is the area. I do have a lot of faith in canton/akron. I guess one shitty city in Ohio is as good as any other. I'm just have a bit of a tough time right now.
I don't know, maybe I went through bouts of depression before, but never really realized it until I had stable people around me. Maybe my mom staring at me during breakfast every morning, asking me if everything ok and my dad just chiming in "make the best of it" before I go to work has a little bit to do with this whole confusion. Maybe it's Jason saying "just quit" combined with this nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I couldn't get a job doing what I like to do that's causing this internal struggle.
All that I know right now is I'm 24, turning 25 and I feel like I've pissed away a damn good year with nothing to show for it.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
mission one......
So I think that I'm verifyably having a midlife crisis.
I don't know what I'm doing. I kinda feel like a robot, like I'm stuck in this body that keeps moving, eyes blinking... but it's not actually me.
I don't want to get out of bed most mornings. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that my brain stays in bed and my body goes around and does stuff. I can't even tell you the last time I read a book or wrote something that I cared about or really laughed.
And then I think it's guilt for feeling the way that I feel that keeps me going in my relationship with my family and with Jason. I'm irritable a lot and I'm not sure what I'm doing. Damn, I didn't think when I moved here that this is how bad I would feel. If I knew, the worst moments at Toledo weren't even near this. I guess it is better to be broke and happy.
So this is it. I guess I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm going to be a poor traveling musician. Me and Ryan are getting our stuff together and hitting the road, with an open French Horn case in front of us, we'll beg for change with beautiful melodies as couples pass by on date night, tossing a couple quarters our way just for the effort of making the space around us more beautiful.
I guess my first step (according to my wonderful new therapist) is to write out where I see myself in a year. All that I have to say is I'd better not still be here.
I don't know what I'm doing. I kinda feel like a robot, like I'm stuck in this body that keeps moving, eyes blinking... but it's not actually me.
I don't want to get out of bed most mornings. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that my brain stays in bed and my body goes around and does stuff. I can't even tell you the last time I read a book or wrote something that I cared about or really laughed.
And then I think it's guilt for feeling the way that I feel that keeps me going in my relationship with my family and with Jason. I'm irritable a lot and I'm not sure what I'm doing. Damn, I didn't think when I moved here that this is how bad I would feel. If I knew, the worst moments at Toledo weren't even near this. I guess it is better to be broke and happy.
So this is it. I guess I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm going to be a poor traveling musician. Me and Ryan are getting our stuff together and hitting the road, with an open French Horn case in front of us, we'll beg for change with beautiful melodies as couples pass by on date night, tossing a couple quarters our way just for the effort of making the space around us more beautiful.
I guess my first step (according to my wonderful new therapist) is to write out where I see myself in a year. All that I have to say is I'd better not still be here.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
give me freedom or give me death... or both.
My week has been a bit tough. I guess with the lack of in foliage to hide in, my chickens have become target practice for the hawks and easy pickings to say the least. I lost my favorite white silkie named spike one day, then evil lester the blue cochin the next. This morning, I woke up to a hawk about the size of a serama chewing on maurice, my little black silkie. The hawk just kinda looked back at me like --what the fuck are you looking at, i'm eating breakfast here-- as he peeled away the skin on the neck of my former friend. So I was pissed off and all the ducks were watching from their little house as I ran to get the gun, not sure what I was going to do with it but still pissed off that this stupid bird was eating the head off the little chicken that I hand raised from a day old peep.
By the time I got back, the hawk was perched up in the tree, swinging it's tail around like a taunting kid on the playground, and I was damn pissed. Not like I did anything, but I guess I impressed him just by standing in my pj's, freezing with a cold clip in one hand and the rifle in the other, wondering how the two go together and how bad the kick it going to be.
In the end, I just stood there, staring at him, melting the snow around my boots as I watched him twitch his tail and move from one tree to a farther tree to a farther tree until he was a speck. I'm sure he'll be back. The ground was frozen and I couldn't bury poor maurice. I let the ducks out, despite my best judgment. The chickens, however, are staying in today.
Le sigh... such is life in the wild, wild open. It constantly comes down to the dichotomy of safety with no freedom, or freedom without safety. If I keep them in the pen all the time, they are fine, but then they never get to run around in fresh grass. But then again, running around in fresh grass could have them turn up dead.
I guess I subject them to what I would rather have; a life with the wind blowing through my hair, er feathers in their case, throwing caution to the wind and possibly becoming someone's lunch.
But I guess we all feed ourselves to the wolves sometimes....
By the time I got back, the hawk was perched up in the tree, swinging it's tail around like a taunting kid on the playground, and I was damn pissed. Not like I did anything, but I guess I impressed him just by standing in my pj's, freezing with a cold clip in one hand and the rifle in the other, wondering how the two go together and how bad the kick it going to be.
In the end, I just stood there, staring at him, melting the snow around my boots as I watched him twitch his tail and move from one tree to a farther tree to a farther tree until he was a speck. I'm sure he'll be back. The ground was frozen and I couldn't bury poor maurice. I let the ducks out, despite my best judgment. The chickens, however, are staying in today.
Le sigh... such is life in the wild, wild open. It constantly comes down to the dichotomy of safety with no freedom, or freedom without safety. If I keep them in the pen all the time, they are fine, but then they never get to run around in fresh grass. But then again, running around in fresh grass could have them turn up dead.
I guess I subject them to what I would rather have; a life with the wind blowing through my hair, er feathers in their case, throwing caution to the wind and possibly becoming someone's lunch.
But I guess we all feed ourselves to the wolves sometimes....
Friday, January 19, 2007
One, two, three... juuum.... er three jump.. no. wait. one twoooooooo....
yeah, i can't do it.
So recently I am coming to terms with those terrible little demons in my life. Not like the real spiritual struggle that my dad talks about (the end is coming, you know) but rather the things about me that I try to hide by sweeping them under the couch, rug, dog, or whatever I can find to hide under. Everything is fine. Yeah, everrrything is fine. Fine. Fine.
You know the easiest way to tell if someone is lying about how they are is if they repeat the word over and over.... example: How are you today? response: "good... good." That means that things are not going too well.
So it's been awhile of "fine... just fine" days as of late and so last night after fruitlessly trying to re-learn the french horn, I sat my ass down and tried to figure out why I hate myself and have such a tough time even getting out of bed every morning. I just made a simple list of pros and cons because it is easy to feel muddled and confused if everything is lumped together. Classification is science and all that jazz. So I classified my life. I searched deep down to try to find out what the root of my discontent is. It ended up turning into this huge chart, kinda like when you're writing a play and looking for character development. Anyway, this chart linked all my pros and cons together, which would be a balanced give and take relationship. An example being the vet bill for my dog last week was astronomical, but I love my dog terribly and she's a joy to be with, so I don't mind.
After awhile, I started to find a common thread in my cons... and it wasn't my parents (shockingly).
I don't know. I think what I have here is a good start. I kinda like the area, not my favorite but it's got potential. That and I've never been to any city that I walked through and could completely call home. One of the first pros was my chickens, and I know that might sound weird that poultry would be higher on my list than say... my mom, but it is. So I admitted to myself that I like chickens. A lot. And my ducks. The whole rent fiasco with my house is kinda annoying and proximity to my parents is a bit disturbing, however it's not really the main worry in my life. Ok, this is starting to get muddled again. Back to the list.
Pros:
-chickens
-friends - jason, beth, norm
-knitting club
-the band... and music in general
-family nearby... kinda a pro and a con, but mostly a pro
-resources. i have a woodshop and i have land that i have access to and use both to the best of my ability / time
Cons:
-no $$
-no time
-no energy
-i never see my chickens because i'm at work from dawn till dusk
-lack of freedom, can't just up and take trips
-not really growing as a person... which is a big one for me. i've always been in school or been feeding off of other people who are learning and growing. now the only knowledge that i'm getting fed is the prime rate and how many foreclosures there are in canton.
Anyway, I guess seeing that all on paper kinda helped me out. After I wrote it all down and read it back to myself, I started linking them and some things really made sense. The pattern is suffocating.
And here I am again, sitting at work, staring at a pile of files and checking the clock at regular intervals because if you look too often, then it doesn't move as fast. And I'm ducking and covering from my least favorite person in the world who keeps just standing around talking about nothing or something, I can never tell which. I think he just likes to hear himself talk. For awhile my favorite thing to do to him would be to contradict what he was saying and listen to him go around about how my idea makes sense and then he'd change his whole discussion with himself. I don't find that amusing anymore.
This is the point in my life that I contact a therapist and say help.
I was going to go back to school, but I didn't know what for. After going to the first day of class and realizing that I didn't know why I was in there, I kinda decided to take that $654 dollars and something cents that I would have wasted on yet another undergrad class and put that money towards getting a third party un-biased opinion about my life. In all actuality, I think I'm paying someone to stroke my ego, calm me down, then kick me in the pants to do something. I think I am right on the brink of what some might call hysteria.
So, the therapist called me to return my message and try to set up an appointment time. She took my name and basic info as I was swallowing the lump in my throat and then she asked me why I was seeking therapy. This is the point in the conversation where the tears that I had been trying so valiantly to hold back came screaming up through my damnable tear ducts and burst out onto my face as I blurted out, "I think I'm having a midlife crisis and I'm only 24!"
I pulled the phone away from my face and kinda hung my head in shame. How much self control do I have, honestly. Or maybe the real question is, how long have I been holding that back.
A part of me hates that I can only really sort things out in these rantings on online blogs. It seems so odd that I would let anyone who can do a search find my innermost vulnerabilities and confessions that I can't even articulate to those closest to me. But I guess the other, more prevalent part of me prefers this anonymity of not seeing anyone's face, not hearing anyone's voice and not knowing whether or not this is actually being read.
So I guess this is where I am at now. Sorting my life into two piles and seeing where I can cut the fat. I'm going back to my lofty aspirations when I would stand in front of a class full of my peers and say with my whole heart "my name is Janeé and I want to be...." which I'm not sure if that was when I was in second grade when I wanted to be a vet (before I realized that I was deathly afraid of needles) or when I was in 9th grade and wanted to be an art therapist or sophomore year of college when I wanted to be a lesbian rock star or a year ago when I wanted to be a house renovator. I don't remember a time in my life when I wanted to be an assistant in the money biz.
ACTION:
So, I think no good plan is indeed a plan without some sort of action. But then action without weighing out things rationally is just impulsive... yeah, back to the point.
1. If I want to get back into psych, the thing holding me back now is the black mark on my record... so I called a lawyer to try to see what was going on, what my rights were and how long that would stay on my record. I kinda cried a little because I'm pathetic and emotional right now, but he pretty much told me what I wanted to hear, that things fall off your record after two years, but if I was still worried about it, to write a letter to my desired employer stating what happened if they did a background search and happened to still find it. I guess that was comforting learning that I'm not damned forever if I do plan on moving into that.
2. GRE.
And yes, I am dreaming about grad school. What little girl isn't. But then again, there are a few things holding me back on this lofty aspiration, namely 1. would I go for psych or english? 2. i doubt that my grades are good enough, but then again, you never know until you try, right? 3. letters or recommendation. <--these are going to be the toughest. The only classes that I ever gave a damn about in school were my english and art classes, and regrettably I don't have much to show for those. So I guess my question is, should I go back for psych, a field which I love but classes that I don't really love, or should I go back for english, a field that has no jobs but classes that I love.
Ok, I think that's enough preponderance for today. I fear as though I might have bit off more than I can chew, but then again. That's life. I'll let you know how crazy my new shrink thinks I am. In that lawyers eyes today though, I was altruistic, young and hopeful. That's kinda a good feeling.
Aaaaand I'm crying again.
......damn feminine hormones.
yeah, i can't do it.
So recently I am coming to terms with those terrible little demons in my life. Not like the real spiritual struggle that my dad talks about (the end is coming, you know) but rather the things about me that I try to hide by sweeping them under the couch, rug, dog, or whatever I can find to hide under. Everything is fine. Yeah, everrrything is fine. Fine. Fine.
You know the easiest way to tell if someone is lying about how they are is if they repeat the word over and over.... example: How are you today? response: "good... good." That means that things are not going too well.
So it's been awhile of "fine... just fine" days as of late and so last night after fruitlessly trying to re-learn the french horn, I sat my ass down and tried to figure out why I hate myself and have such a tough time even getting out of bed every morning. I just made a simple list of pros and cons because it is easy to feel muddled and confused if everything is lumped together. Classification is science and all that jazz. So I classified my life. I searched deep down to try to find out what the root of my discontent is. It ended up turning into this huge chart, kinda like when you're writing a play and looking for character development. Anyway, this chart linked all my pros and cons together, which would be a balanced give and take relationship. An example being the vet bill for my dog last week was astronomical, but I love my dog terribly and she's a joy to be with, so I don't mind.
After awhile, I started to find a common thread in my cons... and it wasn't my parents (shockingly).
I don't know. I think what I have here is a good start. I kinda like the area, not my favorite but it's got potential. That and I've never been to any city that I walked through and could completely call home. One of the first pros was my chickens, and I know that might sound weird that poultry would be higher on my list than say... my mom, but it is. So I admitted to myself that I like chickens. A lot. And my ducks. The whole rent fiasco with my house is kinda annoying and proximity to my parents is a bit disturbing, however it's not really the main worry in my life. Ok, this is starting to get muddled again. Back to the list.
Pros:
-chickens
-friends - jason, beth, norm
-knitting club
-the band... and music in general
-family nearby... kinda a pro and a con, but mostly a pro
-resources. i have a woodshop and i have land that i have access to and use both to the best of my ability / time
Cons:
-no $$
-no time
-no energy
-i never see my chickens because i'm at work from dawn till dusk
-lack of freedom, can't just up and take trips
-not really growing as a person... which is a big one for me. i've always been in school or been feeding off of other people who are learning and growing. now the only knowledge that i'm getting fed is the prime rate and how many foreclosures there are in canton.
Anyway, I guess seeing that all on paper kinda helped me out. After I wrote it all down and read it back to myself, I started linking them and some things really made sense. The pattern is suffocating.
And here I am again, sitting at work, staring at a pile of files and checking the clock at regular intervals because if you look too often, then it doesn't move as fast. And I'm ducking and covering from my least favorite person in the world who keeps just standing around talking about nothing or something, I can never tell which. I think he just likes to hear himself talk. For awhile my favorite thing to do to him would be to contradict what he was saying and listen to him go around about how my idea makes sense and then he'd change his whole discussion with himself. I don't find that amusing anymore.
This is the point in my life that I contact a therapist and say help.
I was going to go back to school, but I didn't know what for. After going to the first day of class and realizing that I didn't know why I was in there, I kinda decided to take that $654 dollars and something cents that I would have wasted on yet another undergrad class and put that money towards getting a third party un-biased opinion about my life. In all actuality, I think I'm paying someone to stroke my ego, calm me down, then kick me in the pants to do something. I think I am right on the brink of what some might call hysteria.
So, the therapist called me to return my message and try to set up an appointment time. She took my name and basic info as I was swallowing the lump in my throat and then she asked me why I was seeking therapy. This is the point in the conversation where the tears that I had been trying so valiantly to hold back came screaming up through my damnable tear ducts and burst out onto my face as I blurted out, "I think I'm having a midlife crisis and I'm only 24!"
I pulled the phone away from my face and kinda hung my head in shame. How much self control do I have, honestly. Or maybe the real question is, how long have I been holding that back.
A part of me hates that I can only really sort things out in these rantings on online blogs. It seems so odd that I would let anyone who can do a search find my innermost vulnerabilities and confessions that I can't even articulate to those closest to me. But I guess the other, more prevalent part of me prefers this anonymity of not seeing anyone's face, not hearing anyone's voice and not knowing whether or not this is actually being read.
So I guess this is where I am at now. Sorting my life into two piles and seeing where I can cut the fat. I'm going back to my lofty aspirations when I would stand in front of a class full of my peers and say with my whole heart "my name is Janeé and I want to be...." which I'm not sure if that was when I was in second grade when I wanted to be a vet (before I realized that I was deathly afraid of needles) or when I was in 9th grade and wanted to be an art therapist or sophomore year of college when I wanted to be a lesbian rock star or a year ago when I wanted to be a house renovator. I don't remember a time in my life when I wanted to be an assistant in the money biz.
ACTION:
So, I think no good plan is indeed a plan without some sort of action. But then action without weighing out things rationally is just impulsive... yeah, back to the point.
1. If I want to get back into psych, the thing holding me back now is the black mark on my record... so I called a lawyer to try to see what was going on, what my rights were and how long that would stay on my record. I kinda cried a little because I'm pathetic and emotional right now, but he pretty much told me what I wanted to hear, that things fall off your record after two years, but if I was still worried about it, to write a letter to my desired employer stating what happened if they did a background search and happened to still find it. I guess that was comforting learning that I'm not damned forever if I do plan on moving into that.
2. GRE.
And yes, I am dreaming about grad school. What little girl isn't. But then again, there are a few things holding me back on this lofty aspiration, namely 1. would I go for psych or english? 2. i doubt that my grades are good enough, but then again, you never know until you try, right? 3. letters or recommendation. <--these are going to be the toughest. The only classes that I ever gave a damn about in school were my english and art classes, and regrettably I don't have much to show for those. So I guess my question is, should I go back for psych, a field which I love but classes that I don't really love, or should I go back for english, a field that has no jobs but classes that I love.
Ok, I think that's enough preponderance for today. I fear as though I might have bit off more than I can chew, but then again. That's life. I'll let you know how crazy my new shrink thinks I am. In that lawyers eyes today though, I was altruistic, young and hopeful. That's kinda a good feeling.
Aaaaand I'm crying again.
......damn feminine hormones.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
yeah, i don't know.... but who does.
So, I don't know. I haven't blogged in quite a long time, I guess partially because I completely hate the word "blog" and partly because I don't have the internet at home.... certainly not for lack of content. I think once you're out of journaling for awhile, it's tough to get back in, but then again, transitions were never my strong suit.
In any case, here I am at work, staring out the window at what looks to be a beautiful sunny day but in all actuality, it is brutally cold on the other side of my big picture windows. My bosses are taking a long cocktail lunch and I'm pacing around trying to decompress from a terribly stressful morning visit courtesy of the state of Ohio licensing compliance board. I guess I'm in charge of a lot, but it's one of those jobs that "anyone can do" and therefore, they do not pay much. I bullshit online a lot, but kinda check and make sure that we are in compliance with the different states that we operate in and file quarterly reports and blah blah blah. Point being, it's one of those things that no one really notices until something goes wrong.
Not like anything went terrible this morning, but a short stocky guy with a wheeze came in with super amazing glasses and at least 30 years my senior and much the wiser for it. He came in and talked with my dude-boss for about an hour before I got paged into his office. It doesn't take much to get me shaking like a leaf and in a matter of 4.8 seconds after one question, I swore I kinda almost peed myself. I guess there was a compliance issue that I thought was resolved but indeed was not resolved and we were out of compliance and my boss was flipping.... but then after a half an hour of my heart in my throat, I remembered what I knew all along; that I knew what I was doing and we actually didn't need it.
And I have no idea why I'm spouting this all out into the cyber-world. Maybe I am just reaffirming why I don't keep a blog and haven't kept one in so long... namely because I'm boring and all I can talk about at work is work. So I guess this is the part where I move on to my personal life.
I think the major thing that is going on right now (being winter, the most boooooring time of year in Ohio) is that I just started class. Granted, it's one class at the local college and I just found out that it counts for absolutely nothing, but whatever. I like being in school and learning stuff all the time. I get stagnant and not fun if I sit around for too long. So I signed up for some journalism class thinking maybe I would get back into school and become a magazine writer or something. I don't know.... why not pile on the worthless majors. This week it's magazine journalism, last week I wanted to go back for interior design, a year ago I was going to Akron for anthropology... I think I'm cursed with the too many options and not enough focus disease.
In Germany, students at the ripe age of 14 must take a test which will determine what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. (yeah, stress?) This test is administered in 9th grade and whatever your marks are determines if you will continue on in school or if you will move into an apprenticeship with someone who is pursuing the field that you are to enter.
I guess modern day Germany is no match for just a few centuries back with the major social stratification of the proletariat vs. the bougeois where your family would determine your place in the world (oh fuck, I'd be making finn tubing for air conditioners and refrigerators in a dank garage out back 10 non-working cars for the rest of my life... or on the other side of my family, i would be an engineer for airplanes, which I guess wouldn't be terrible... but then again, I would probably just be the little housewife of an engineer.)
I think that the point of my indecision is not that I do not have the ability to do anything, but rather the possibility to do too many things.
The problem with searching for a job is the actual decision and convincing myself that this is what i'm going to do ---for the rest of my life life life ....
It's terribly scary and I tend to get bored of things after about a year, which sucks because then I'm a novice at everything, expert of nothing. That and the fact that all the things that I want to do are the typical things that every twenty-something year old girl dreams of doing... well, plus an aviary that I tote around with me. This only means that there is a huge pool of twenty something girls who would love to start up a bistro or work as a freelance writer or at a vet clinic or whatnot. What ambitious young whelp is going to say "oh god, how I would love to work the front desk of a mortgage broker business in -shittown- ohio, making a salary that's well below the poverty line".
I think this whole rant is spawning from the cruel and utter embarrassment that I was dealt yesterday, staring at the floor, in front of the entire class on the first day of school.
It was one of those dumb assignments that everyone hates where you interview one of your classmates; find out their hopes and dreams and where they grew up and whatnot in 5 minutes and then just give the highlights while people pretend to be interested.
Mine kinda went...
Name: Janee
Employed at: mortgage broker's office
Major: Undecided
Career Goals: Undecided
Why you took this class: Undecided
Something Unique: uh.. I own 50 birds.... although my ever-sweet interviewer when introducing me to the class emphasized the "really, total weirdness" of this to which the entire class responded with laughter, which I guess means that they were awake which is kinda good, but it just meant that I stared more intently at my shoes as all the blood from my quickly beating heart rushed to my face. As I scurried back to my desk, I thought over and over -why didn't I just say I'm janee who wants to write a novel who likes drinking beer or I'm janee who wants to be a school teacher and help kids who likes to cook soup.
Nope. Now I'm the registered crazy bird lady of the class who doesn't know what she's doing with her life. Sweeeeet.
In any case, here I am at work, staring out the window at what looks to be a beautiful sunny day but in all actuality, it is brutally cold on the other side of my big picture windows. My bosses are taking a long cocktail lunch and I'm pacing around trying to decompress from a terribly stressful morning visit courtesy of the state of Ohio licensing compliance board. I guess I'm in charge of a lot, but it's one of those jobs that "anyone can do" and therefore, they do not pay much. I bullshit online a lot, but kinda check and make sure that we are in compliance with the different states that we operate in and file quarterly reports and blah blah blah. Point being, it's one of those things that no one really notices until something goes wrong.
Not like anything went terrible this morning, but a short stocky guy with a wheeze came in with super amazing glasses and at least 30 years my senior and much the wiser for it. He came in and talked with my dude-boss for about an hour before I got paged into his office. It doesn't take much to get me shaking like a leaf and in a matter of 4.8 seconds after one question, I swore I kinda almost peed myself. I guess there was a compliance issue that I thought was resolved but indeed was not resolved and we were out of compliance and my boss was flipping.... but then after a half an hour of my heart in my throat, I remembered what I knew all along; that I knew what I was doing and we actually didn't need it.
And I have no idea why I'm spouting this all out into the cyber-world. Maybe I am just reaffirming why I don't keep a blog and haven't kept one in so long... namely because I'm boring and all I can talk about at work is work. So I guess this is the part where I move on to my personal life.
I think the major thing that is going on right now (being winter, the most boooooring time of year in Ohio) is that I just started class. Granted, it's one class at the local college and I just found out that it counts for absolutely nothing, but whatever. I like being in school and learning stuff all the time. I get stagnant and not fun if I sit around for too long. So I signed up for some journalism class thinking maybe I would get back into school and become a magazine writer or something. I don't know.... why not pile on the worthless majors. This week it's magazine journalism, last week I wanted to go back for interior design, a year ago I was going to Akron for anthropology... I think I'm cursed with the too many options and not enough focus disease.
In Germany, students at the ripe age of 14 must take a test which will determine what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. (yeah, stress?) This test is administered in 9th grade and whatever your marks are determines if you will continue on in school or if you will move into an apprenticeship with someone who is pursuing the field that you are to enter.
I guess modern day Germany is no match for just a few centuries back with the major social stratification of the proletariat vs. the bougeois where your family would determine your place in the world (oh fuck, I'd be making finn tubing for air conditioners and refrigerators in a dank garage out back 10 non-working cars for the rest of my life... or on the other side of my family, i would be an engineer for airplanes, which I guess wouldn't be terrible... but then again, I would probably just be the little housewife of an engineer.)
I think that the point of my indecision is not that I do not have the ability to do anything, but rather the possibility to do too many things.
The problem with searching for a job is the actual decision and convincing myself that this is what i'm going to do ---for the rest of my life life life ....
It's terribly scary and I tend to get bored of things after about a year, which sucks because then I'm a novice at everything, expert of nothing. That and the fact that all the things that I want to do are the typical things that every twenty-something year old girl dreams of doing... well, plus an aviary that I tote around with me. This only means that there is a huge pool of twenty something girls who would love to start up a bistro or work as a freelance writer or at a vet clinic or whatnot. What ambitious young whelp is going to say "oh god, how I would love to work the front desk of a mortgage broker business in -shittown- ohio, making a salary that's well below the poverty line".
I think this whole rant is spawning from the cruel and utter embarrassment that I was dealt yesterday, staring at the floor, in front of the entire class on the first day of school.
It was one of those dumb assignments that everyone hates where you interview one of your classmates; find out their hopes and dreams and where they grew up and whatnot in 5 minutes and then just give the highlights while people pretend to be interested.
Mine kinda went...
Name: Janee
Employed at: mortgage broker's office
Major: Undecided
Career Goals: Undecided
Why you took this class: Undecided
Something Unique: uh.. I own 50 birds.... although my ever-sweet interviewer when introducing me to the class emphasized the "really, total weirdness" of this to which the entire class responded with laughter, which I guess means that they were awake which is kinda good, but it just meant that I stared more intently at my shoes as all the blood from my quickly beating heart rushed to my face. As I scurried back to my desk, I thought over and over -why didn't I just say I'm janee who wants to write a novel who likes drinking beer or I'm janee who wants to be a school teacher and help kids who likes to cook soup.
Nope. Now I'm the registered crazy bird lady of the class who doesn't know what she's doing with her life. Sweeeeet.
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