Pondering changes

I've never kept it a secret that I have a blog. I've never shouted it from the rooftops, either. Thus far, this has worked for me.

But things are a-changing, and unfortunately, I'm a-changing too.

If you read this blog regularly, and would like to continue to do so, please send an e-mail to lucyarinATgmailDOTcom and let me know. Why? Because as of February 1, Well Behaved will be private. I do not intend to stop writing, and I do not intend to delete the blog, but it can no longer be public. I know that there are readers out there who I know personally, and a great many more that I've never met face-to-face. Whether you know me or not is not the criteria for being given access, though. Interest in what I write about is the key. I'll be happy to grant access to just about anyone who is willing to delurk just enough to tell me that they're here.

It saddens me to take this step, because I'd like to believe that some random person out there might read or have read about my struggles with depression and sought help after recognizing themselves in one of my posts.

I'd like to believe that by being open and honest with the world about my mental illness that I've helped to destigmatize it a little.

I'd like to believe that my political rantings inspired someone to get involved with the ongoing and difficult struggle for women's reproductive rights and the right to equal pay.

I'd like to believe that someone was inspired by my writings about exercise and weight loss, inspired enough to get out there and take better care of themselves.

I'd like to believe that by writing about Sweden, I've piqued someone's interest in the world beyond their backyard.

I'd also like to believe in leprechauns, unicorns, dragons, fairies, dryads, psychic powers, happily-ever-after, and that everyone I meet is genuine and honest.

Lest you think that some personal tragedy has befallen me, or that my blog has somehow gotten me "in trouble," allow me to reassure you on that point. Not at all. There are two forces at work here, and they're both vaguely work-related, so I'm not going into extreme detail. My work forces me to be a public person, someone who is recognizable as a representative of the organization. As I meet more and more people, and the things I get involved in become ever more expansive, I'm faced with the growing realization that I don't really want everyone I meet to be able to read about some of the soul-searing stuff I've written here. The second reason is that to date, there's no "official" policy about social networking and web 2.0 applications, but that day is coming. Do I like it? Not really. But I do like being employed, and I love what I do. That makes the way forward absolutely crystal clear.

...and we're back

Blogger, oh, Blogger. You irritate me so. I'd love to be able to take this off of Blogger and use my own domain, but my html skillz are not good enough for that.

I'd been toying with the idea of doing what I have heard called a "flock" a friends lock for a while; I don't know who y'all are out there, reading my missives, rants, recipes...of course, most of y'all don't know who I am, either. I kind of liked that arrangement. If I wanted invisibility, I'd keep a paper journal, after all. I have many faults. Self-centered, diva, control freak...I know them all. Narcissism figures in there pretty large. Someone who really thinks that the world gives a damn about what they think and feel, that's the type of person who keeps a public blog.

Who reads a random blog? Anyone, really. Someone Googles Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's quote that contains the title of this blog, stumbles across something I've written, reads it, likes it, comes back. Or you're one of the people who I have trusted in real life enough to share the url. Or you like that randomocity of that "next blog" button at the top of the screen. Who are you? You are everyone, anyone.

I am a 34 year old married woman who works full time at a job she loves, knits, has a beautiful circle of amazing friends, a family she adores. I'm your sister, your friend, the woman behind you in the check-out line at the grocery store, the woman next door, the person on the mat next to you in your yoga class. Everyone and no one.

I've fretted over some random person figuring out exactly who I am and "outing" me. Why? Really, I don't know. Nothing I've written here is against the law; having an anonymous blog isn't a crime. I was worried when I first started writing that my employers at the time wouldn't really appreciate my point of view on certain subjects. They wrote me a paycheck; I kept quiet in public about my opinions. Being a faceless, nameless person on the web allowed me to say some things that I really wanted to, but couldn't, in the world. Then there was my fascination with an actor and a TV show; forum posts live forever, and some of the things I wrote on fan forums are not things I'd want my grandmother to read, let alone someone I worked with. Having "Lucy" connected to me; well, it'd be a little embarrassing, really. Add to all of that the fact that I have written extensively about my journey with mental illness...and "a little embarrassing" speeds past "a little" and straight to "mortifying".

A nebulous future potential employer may choose not to hire me based on my mental illness if they read what I've written here; sure, that's completely illegal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. Mental illness is still so poorly understood that many people think mental illness = dangerous. Most people who have a mental illness are normal, functioning members of society. They are your neighbors, your sister, your friends, the woman behind you in the grocery line. Look around. At one time a few years ago, it was estimated that one out of every 5 Americans were taking Prozac. That's 20% of the population. Out of 10 of your friends, two of them. We don't talk about it. We don't advertise it. I'm NOT ashamed, but much like the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell, I feel no need to shout from the rooftops that I have a mental illness.

We are everyone. We are no one. We are out there. We shouldn't need to be silent.

I did the flock partially while trying to change the Blogger template, but also because I was worried that someone in particular had "found" me. I unlocked it for the same reason I started writing about my mental illness; I sought help because of another blogger. Maybe one of you will do the same; recognize yourself in a post and decide to stop suffering in silence. If one person does that, then my potential embarrassment is a small price to pay.

I am anyone. I am everyone. I am no one. I am your sister. Your daughter. Your friend. Your neighbor. Who are you?

Hemlängtan

Swedish -- of course -- for 'homesickness'

How is it possible to be homesick for someplace that isn't your home? I don't know. The way I feel about Sweden is NOT the same way that someone would feel about a favorite vacation spot...like on a bad day, you wish you were there instead of wherever "here" happens to be. No, this is more than that. Sweden isn't my home, and really, I can't honestly say it was my home when I was an exchange student, either. Home then, just as now....Ohio, USA.

I got an e-mail last weekend from a Swede, showing a picture of his new sailboat and his faithful canine companion, a pug, in a harbor near Jonstorp, Skåne. As the picture opened on my browser, it showed the harbor in the background first, and then the boat and puppy appeared. The first house that came clear, a yellow 2-story with what must be a stellar view of the water, hit me like a shot to the gut.

Swedish houses out in the country, summer cottages, usually, or old farmsteads, tend to be one of two colors, red or yellow. A very distinctive red, and a particular shade of yellow. When I was 17, someone in Sweden told me a story of why, exactly, those two shades of those two colors were used, but I don't remember the details. It probably had something to do with class status, once upon a time, nobility vs. non-nobility, but these days, even though Sweden still has both royalty and nobility, they're pretty egalitarian.

That yellow two-story house in the picture my friend sent to me says "SWEDEN!" at the top of its lungs. I can imagine how the place is furnished. Light blonde wood. White walls. Light-colored window coverings. No attached garage. Sparse furniture. The windows have latches that require downward pressure to close. The kitchen is large, but the appliances are small. Everything is orderly. Bookshelves line the walls in every available space, and the books are mingled with small curiosities from all over the world. There's an orange or blue Dala Häst on a shelf, along with a few small pieces of crystal from Orrefors. Every wall has artwork. Family pictures from the recent past are small. Pictures from the early days of photography, or paintings of ancestors are large. Light is abundant, each room has big windows. There is no air conditioning, because until the very recent past, it has not been necessary. (Sweden has felt the realities of global warming.) Rooms that have been redone (at least the bathroom, if not the entire house) have radiant heat in the floors, and you never place a foot on an ice cold floor on chilly mornings. Places near the water, be it the ocean or one of the many inland lakes, have a breeze that cools the house when the windows are open.

I suppose that it is only natural to be thinking a lot more about Sweden than usual, having only recently returned from there. In the normal course of life, I did/do think about Sweden nearly daily, so it isn't that this line of thought is unheard of. I often wish I lived there. I often wish I could spend more time there. I often wish that I could see my host family more frequently, and I don't care which side of the pond that happens. (I've been trying to convince them for years that we should meet up in Florida in the winter, with no success. Of course, they've been trying to get me to Croatia, where they have a second home, for nearly two decades, with no success there, either.)

I wish I could say that I remember what I felt like when I came home from Sweden in 1992, but I can't quantify that other than by saying I was miserable, and an incredible brat to everyone in my life, I do remember that. I had wanted to stay so badly, and Mama wanted me to stay too. She in fact encouraged me to stay after my visa expired, enraging my mother a little. Ooops. At 17, I didn't know how hurtful me saying I didn't want to come back to America was for her. That was never my intention. On the other hand, I know that I could have done much more to attempt to stay, including the very easy step of having a conversation with the immigration authorities, but I never did.

I hate to say this, because it feels fiercely disloyal to the region where I lived as an exchange student, but I thought that Skåne was incredibly beautiful, even prettier in parts than Västmanland is. They're radically different, and so I treasure them each in their own way, but were someone to offer me a choice of job & apartment in Stockholm or Malmö, I'd have a hell of a time picking one over the other. (n.b., we ain't talking about reality here, folks.)

Hemlängtan means literally 'to long for home'. An accurate descriptor of how I feel about Sweden. It is with wistful longing that I look to the north and east, wondering when I will get to go back.

Vitriolic

adjective; something felt to resemble vitriol especially in caustic quality ; especially : virulence of feeling or of speech, (vi-trē-ˈä-lik)

High school was hell on earth for me.  No, I wasn't abused, no, nothing terrible happened.  Quite the contrary.  I went to a suburban school, lived in a two-parent family, had a safe and mostly happy home.

What was bad requires a rather long-winded explanation.  My old high school is located in an upscale little bedroom community.  There aren't just a few McMansions; there are many developments full of them.  It was not at all unusual for kids to be handed the keys to a brand-new car on their 16th birthdays, and I ain't talking about a basic Chevy, either.  

Besides the cars, there were the clothes.

One of my classmates went to Paris and came home with tons of new clothes; I remember the brand names because they were prominently displayed.  She had a bunch of things from Gucci, and lesser-known Naf Naf, along with uber-popular-in-the-80's Benetton.

She was the only one - so far as I know - who went to that length of going to Europe for school clothes, but at the time, the popular brands were Express, Limited, Gap, Learner New York, things like that.  (huh, the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?)  

My family wasn't poor, but brand new clothes for my sisters and I came from K-Mart.  Often, "new" clothes came from the thrift store or as hand-me-downs from a cousin, long before vintage was cool and "re-purpose" was a buzzword.

I got teased a bunch about clothes from K-Mart, often got crap for not having the latest shoes or purses.

Kids are cruel.  Things that you would say to a 5th grade classmate would be completely beyond the pale to say to a colleague at work; "You're fat!"  "Yo, Lucy, nice generic shoes!" (said with all the sneering of a practiced snob.)

You would think that it might get better as you moved through junior high and then high school, but I don't think it did.  The terrible things that were said to me would today be taken far more seriously, as schools have been sued over bullies and school-yard taunts, but back then, it was put up or shut up time.

This was a daily barrage, not of threats, I never feared for my safety, but of nastiness and verbal attacks, with lots of vitriol.  It probably goes without saying, but I was miserable.  I felt less than worthless.  I felt ostracised.  I felt ugly, because I was told every day that I was ugly, useless, worthless, and far too smart for my own good.  Yep, even getting good grades was grounds for harassment. 

Eventually, of course, I got over it, although I didn't really develop any self-esteem until I was 20-something.  I came home from Europe with a lot more bravado, and faked it well, but inside was a different story.

I haven't thought about those days at all in a very long time.  No need to dwell on it, although I would probably take great delight in knowing that my tormentors aren't happy adults, because what goes around comes around, sucka!  Yes, yes, I know that's petty and vindictive.  Ask me if I care.

But lately, I've been thinking about those days a lot as I've gotten friend requests on Facebook from people that I don't remember all that fondly.  None of the true bullies have sent me friend requests (yet), but people who were mean little shits and wow, do they remember things just a leeetle bit differently than I do.  

Go figure.   Of course they don't remember treating me like yesterday's garbage.

Re-living those days in my head has stirred up a lot of resentment and anger that I didn't even realize I still had within me.  Maybe even a few steps beyond anger to outright rage and fury.

As an adult, I'm rather blunt.  (I hear you laughing out there!!)  I say what I really think; don't ask my opinion if you aren't ready to deal with the fact that I'm not going to lead you down the primrose path.

So there are things that I would say to these people NOW that I would have never even dreamed of saying back then.  And I find myself compiling a mental checklist of what I'd like to say, among them things like, "I hope someday that someone treats your child as cruelly as you treated me." 

Ouch.  

That's....that's....well, that's awful and evil and rude, and sadly, true.  I do hope that somewhere along the way, they come to understand that the words they threw at me daily left deep and permanent scars, and the same part of me that wishes for that knows that hurting them wouldn't hurt nearly as much as someone hurting their child.  Even though I'm not a parent, I think that's something which is instinctively understood.  Why?  Well, exhibit A is my mother; she's sweet, and nice, and not too outspoken.  But harm one of her children, and the Furies of Grecian mythology pale in comparison to what she will do.

I really don't like thinking of myself as a petty vindictive bitch.  Anger left to fester only hurts the person who is angry, it certainly is no skin off of the collective noses of the nasty brats.  But I'm having a very hard time taking a deeeeeeep breath and letting it go, as I usually can with anger.  Wounds I thought long healed are in fact still wide open.

Clearly, I'm not done with therapy yet! 

'Cause they were, like, totally awesome and stuff.

Facebook, again.

I went to a very small school system, K-12, except for the school year I spent in Sweden.  I graduated with 135 people.  I knew their names, I knew their siblings, I knew where they lived, I knew what their parents did for a living.  Small, small place.  I don't think that there were more than 400 kids in the entire high school, so of course I knew a lot of people in the class ahead of me and the class behind me, too.  My sisters often had the younger siblings of my classmates in their classes, so I knew a lot of them, too.  

When I take a peek at the other people who note that they graduated from my alma mater and the same year I did on Facebook, I don't recognize many of them.  There are only roughly 30 of my classmates out there, and I don't know who about half of them are.  There was someone named Tito in my class?  Really?  Um, OK.  Suuuuuuure there was.

Hilariously, of the half that I *do* recognize, I didn't like about half of them back then.  I lived in a pretty upscale little place, and if you weren't rich (and we weren't) and you weren't a cheerleader (and I wasn't) and you weren't considered "pretty" (and I never thought I was)....well, to put it mildly, there were a lot of cliques, and like not mixing grains when you're drinking, or oil and water when you're cooking, there was very little crossing of the clique lines.  I had a great group of friends, many of whom I still see/talk to/e-mail on a regular basis, please don't misunderstand that.  

But there are a bunch of those people that a) I don't really care about, b) weren't nice to me then and I don't see why I should be nice to them now, and c) apparently, I don't remember them at all.  

Mean-spirited evil little bastards they were.  Cruel, nasty, elitist snots.

Saying I don't care about them is harsh, truly, and not exactly what I mean.  I hope they're happy, I hope they have nice little lives for themselves, I am glad they're still alive, but that's about the extent of it.  

When I was in high school and people would tell me that my high school years were "the best time of your life" I either wanted to stab them, repeatedly, or myself, fatally.  I used to ask adults, "You DO remember being in high school, right?  Best time of your life?  It doesn't get better than THIS?  Eurgh." {eyeroll, eyeroll, eyeroll}  And I'd be thinking, "Dude, seriously?  I think you're, like, young for Alzheimer's and stuff, but you obviously don't, like, remember, like, what fucking hell on earth high school really is."  Yep, had a potty mouth back then too, and was horribly guilty of the over-use of the word "like".  Obviously.

It does get better, by leaps and bounds.  Thank the gentle goddess.  I look back on the time I was in college with lots more fondness than high school will ever be recalled.

Searching through lists of classmates and checking out these people's friend lists has turned up a few folks that I really did like and have lost touch with.  I'd like to send them friend requests, but there's a little demon in my ear that whispers..."What if they remember YOU with vitriol like you remember the popular kids?  Do you want to know that?  Worse, what if they don't remember you AT ALL?  You were such a wallflower.  I doubt they'd even recognize your name, and you KNOW sure as 'ell that they're not going to recognize you with your short-short hair, and hello?  Did you forget that you've gained a treeeeemendous amount of weight since those days?  Oh, and sweetie?  You were no angel yourself at 15."

I say to the demon, "So what?"  and "I looked anorexic back then, I look normal now, bite me, 'you've gained a lot of weight' jackass."  When I'm filled with bravado, that is.  The rest of the time, I just look at the pictures and wonder.

Goddess of Laughter

Laughter is the sunshine of sounds. That elusive (sometimes) goal: to make us laugh. An addiction for some ---who become comedians, humor essayists, comedy writers.

I wasn't a class clown growing up. No, I was a wallflower, painfully, p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y shy. The first and maybe only time I ever managed to crack up a roomful of my school mates, I wasn't even sure why they thought what I'd said was funny. So that wasn't a life-changing event.

I think that among my group of friends as we grew older, I managed to make people laugh from time to time, but I really don't remember all that well who was the "funny" one, or even if there was ONE. We all laughed a lot, all the time.

There's a lot to be said for having a cadre of friends who get you. Friends that don't require a long-winded explanation about why something is funny.

The web has expanded those circles for some of us, allowed small groups of people scattered across the globe to get the inside joke, to have their own lexicons of in-jokes.

I read a very, very silly number of blogs on a daily or near-daily basis. Some of them I discovered before I began blogging myself, others discovered through fandom or friends of friends. Overwhelmingly, the ones I continue to read are the ones that make me laugh or are are particularly thought-provoking. Over time, blogs that have dropped from my list are those who either update too infrequently, or are never funny at all.

No, I don't use bloglines. I'm a complete luddite when it comes to RSS feeds. Not a priority to learn how to do it, set it up....nah, I'd rather wait eternities while the 30-odd pages load.

Usually, checking the blogs is a part of my morning ritual. On days when it doesn't happen that way, then I read them after I have finished my work for the day, after I have sent out the required work-related e-mails. If that's the time of day that I'm catching up, DH is usually fast asleep. Thank goodness I have a laptop and can move to another room so that the clicky-click of the keyboard isn't disturbing him when I'm leaving my own clever commentary on blogs, but more than that, I need to be in another room because I often burst out laughing over something I'm reading.

Since personally, I hate, despise, and detest when someone wakes me up, I do my best to not disturb his sleep. I have a large, loud laugh, the kind of laugh that you hear in a grocery store and recognize, you know it is your great Aunty Clarice, or your mother's strange friend Bea because of the distinctive cackle. A head thrown back, full-on ab-muscle action recognizable ha-ha-ha-ha.

DH makes fun of me for my witchy cackle. I, on the other hand, like it.

We should all be so lucky to have such a belly-roll laugh each day.

Reticene

I am a gabby girl. Talkative isn't really the word, although it comes close. I'm gabby in my writing, too, notice how often I wander from topic to topic. You don't always see it, as sometimes when I'm editing, I'll realize how far off track I wandered, or that the length of the post is guaranteed to put the casual reader to sleep, so I shorten it up and say less than I originally intended.

Online, sometimes I am more brutally honest than I would be in real life. The perceived anonymity of the 'net leading me to say more than I ought. Outside of the computer, I've learned a few really tough lessons about over-sharing.

Once upon a time, in the Dark Ages, when I worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I joined an international women's organization that strives to better each community it exists in. That'd be a no-brainer for someone like me, you would think. One night, at a regular monthly meeting, after an abysmal day at Ye Olde Savings & Trust, I shared a few of the details of my horrible day with the group of "ladies" (I'm using that term as sarcastically as possible here) I sat with at a large round table.

I had been working on an estate with a large funeral bill, and the attorney for the estate had called me with a total number for the dollar amount on the check. The law firm promised to fax an invoice later, and assured me that the dollar amount they gave me verbally was the correct amount for the bill. Accordingly, I cut the check and sent it off through Ye Olde's back office operations.

Of course it was incorrect. And of course, it was too late in the day to get the check back from the processors who were in another city when the law firm called me to say, "oops!" (Ye Olde relied very heavily on a courier service.) And who looks like the asshole in that situation? Me. No one likes to be made to look like an idiot, and I was very upset over the whole situation, and angry with the law firm's lackeys.

From those details above, could you figure out who the stiff was? Who the legal firm was? What city or state the dead person lived in? No. No, you can't. And yet, some 'lady' from that table of women I sat with that evening proceeded to call not my boss, and not his boss, but one step above that, and tell the big honcho that I had broken banking secrecy laws. As you can imagine, working for a department that had the word "Private" in its official name, breaking banking secrecy laws was taken extremely seriously.

What, you thought my old department really called itself the Stiffs Division?

Anyway, I got hauled in to the head honcho's office and read the riot act. For a good hour. The honcho told me that the only reason this meeting was not to announce to me that I was fired was because this sort of behavior was not typical of me.

In my head during this meeting, my inner monologue sounded something like this:

Let me get this straight. You're believing some phone call from some random person about my public behavior over me? I've worked here for seven years. I can't believe that you're taking the word of some yahoo over me.

Or at least, that was part of the inner monologue. The rest of it wasn't as civil as that. Not surprisingly, Ye Olde wouldn't tell me who the caller had been, but as I sat around a table of 8 women the previous evening, and only one had the most tenuous connection to Ye Olde (she was in the financial services industry, and had met the honcho the year before) I wonder who it might have been. Gee. I dunno. Maybe the only one who knew the director? Wow, maybe, possibly, perhaps.

When I got back to my desk, shaken, angry, bitterly disappointed, nearly with smoke pouring out of ears, the first thing I did was draft a letter of resignation from the women's organization. Pounding the keys with all of the frustration I couldn't manifest in a cube farm, (like screaming "MOTHERFUCKER!" at the top of my lungs) the first draft of the letter was a bit less than polite. Eventually, I calmed down enough after I got home that night to hand write a very polite and prosaic letter, simply stating that the time required to belong to the organization presented a conflict with my current employment, and that I hoped at some future point to be able to work with them again. Warm regards, yada yada yada. The only thing that might have betrayed my irritation in that letter was the fact that the fountain pen I use for such missives made a nice FIRM indentation on the paper, so if you had turned the letter over, and you could decipher written words by touch, there was plenty of detail for you to feel. No, I didn't tear the paper, but it came awful darn close.

The truth of the matter was that Ye Olde's honcho who drug me into the office strongly suggested that I resign. An employer can't fire you for belonging to an innocuous charitable organization on your time off, but they sure can (and sometimes do) look for any excuse to let you go if you're doing something they don't approve of with your time off. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that had I not resigned, my tenure at the bank would ended sooner than I intended, and not by my own personal choice.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me as far as Ye Olde was concerned. I had been hunting for another job, just not with vigor and purpose up to that point. After that day, I focused my efforts on getting the hell out of there before they made me into an old and bitter harpy.

A few months later, I handed in my notice when I got the non-profit job. My direct supervisor, who was a wonderful person, knew that the dust-up with my volunteerism had a lot to do with my quitting, but I was careful to not vocalize it to anyone, lest it bite me in the ass one day. Because it was only one out of literally hundreds of reasons I wanted the hell away from the bank.

A difficult lesson. On many levels. It taught me a bitter truth about working with women; sometimes we work even harder than the boys do at dragging each other down, which is a dammed shame. It also made me more reluctant to trust, and a bit more reserved in social situations for a good long while. Eventually, that wore off, and today I'm just as boisterous in a social situation as I always have been. I'm just usually more circumspect about what I say. I keep my venting about miserable days to a trusted few friends, people who I know would never work behind the scenes to get me fired.

It has also left me with a mystery that I suspect I will never solve, until and unless I ever confront the perpetrator. Which would, in a town this small, be social suicide. What on earth did she hope to gain? Was she after my miserable nineteen thousand dollar a year job? I find that nearly impossible to believe. Did she hope to curry favor with the honcho? I really can't imagine what favor the honcho would ever show her, given the negativity of this event. Even people who thrive on the misery of others don't remember events that were awkward and difficult for them with relish, and lemme tell ya, AWK-WARD isn't even close to the tension that was in the honcho's office that day.

I have made a new friend through my current job, a nice woman who has a wicked sense of humor to match mine, and shares some of my complaints about the place, but I've had to obfuscate and be less than 100% truthful with her in conversations I've had with her, because I'm afraid that she'll run to the employer and tell them how serious my job hunting is.

And isn't it sad that an event that happened more than four years ago still affects me that way? As women, we need to stick together and look out for one another. The powers that be at the top of almost any business are men, and even in this day and age, as a professional woman, I've run into more bozos than I can count who think that women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant, or if they are in the office, they certainly shouldn't be in positions of power, being the fragile and emotional things that we are. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand chauvinism, or what makes certain people tick.

On the other hand, what a dull world it would be if we were all 100% alike.

The reason I'm thinking about this today? I've been invited to join the organization again, and I'm wondering if I should jump at the chance, for the major networking benefits it offers, or if I should walk away, seeing as last time around it nearly cost me my job. I'm reluctant on one hand, and excited about the possibilities on the other. A bunch of cliche`s, useless and unhelpful, keep running through my head. Once bitten, twice shy. Everyone deserves a second chance. You don't shit where you live. Make hay while the sun shines. Hard work is its own reward.

None of which is helping me make up my mind. Welcome to the street where I live: Indecisive Way!

Talent

Recently, I've been spending a lot of my online time on Ravelry, a knit and crochet website, kind of like a MySpace for folks in the fiber arts. But comparing it to MySpace isn't a particularly good description of the site, because it is so much cooler than that. It is a place to store lists of projects, yarns, things I want to knit, things I already have knit. Do you see why this appeals to me? Organization of all of my knitting. It makes lists. It even does math for me. How much cooler than that does it get?

{Editor's note:OMFG, you are such a dork.}

The only thing that's been a hassle about Ravelry is that they use Flickr for photo-sharing and I prefer Picasa, 'cause I'm such a Google fanatic. If that's the biggest complaint, well, then, there's not much of a problem, is there?

My whole family uses Picasa, which makes it very easy for the sisters in NYC and CA to post pictures of their adventures and then the rest of the fam can take a look and see what they're up to. I posted recent NYC pics the other day and sent my mother a link so she could see us playing in traffic on the bikes.

The parents are living in Flo-reeeda these days, and I don't like them being so far away. So I talk to them nearly every day, just to check in, to allow them to harass me about how much better the weather is there, to keep them up to date with the trouble that I'm causing. I mentioned the recent spate of frenetic knitting I've been doing to my mum, and then sent her a link to the Flickr photos so that she could see the hats and scarves I've been making like a madwoman.

She shot me back an e-mail, praising the beauty of the things I've made and telling me, "You're very talented."

Will I ever get to the point in my life where compliments don't make me uncomfortable? Will I ever get over the urge to devalue myself? Because my gut reaction to that was a snort, an eyeroll, and the thought 'talented? not really.'

Knitting is a learned skill. You don't come out of the womb with the ability, but then, anyone who does have an innate talent, like a prodigal harp player, also has learned the skill. They may have been born with the ability to play the harp better than you or I, but someone had to show them how to pluck those strings just so to make beautiful music.

I have told this story so many times in real life that I don't know if I've ever written about it, so if I have told it to you, interweb, sorry for repeating myself. I learned how to knit at a yarn store, an upscale boutique that caters to a very special breed of needle-craft nutcases. Walking in there is sensory overload; the tactile pleasure of plunging your hands into yarns that are displayed in cubbyholes, the textures of which are soft, rough, smooth as silk or scratchy stiff wools. I find it soothing, the vibrant myriad of colors, the way things are organized into yarns for specific projects.

My first knitting class was a disaster. Unmitigated disaster. There were about 8 women in the class, two of whom were deaf and read lips. Everyone in the class left that first two-hour session with a square knitted potholder. Everyone, that is, except me. Even the hearing impaired were able to follow the spoken instructions well enough to comprehend and make something. I cried the whole way home, an hour plus drive. I was so frustrated! The instructor and I just weren't communicating at all during that first lesson. It wasn't a personality thing; I really like her. I just didn't get it that first day.

I worked diligently on the needles they gave us over the next week, and somehow, eventually, I figured it out and was able to knit. Something just clicked at one point. Good thing, too, because I had been feeling like I was obviously some kind of moron for not understanding.

Over the years since, sometimes I'm really into the knitting, and sometimes I don't touch it for months. I'm like the moon that way; waxing knitting or waning knitting. Currently waxing, of course. You wouldn't have EVER guessed that, would ya? Considering the amount of time I've spent writing about it lately. Usually when the weather gets nicer, I lose some interest, because knitting something made of a heavy wool isn't all that appealing in July when the temperature hovers around 28C or 85+ F. We'll see what happens this year, because ATM? I feel like I'm missing something if I don't have a project to hand that I can work on. I knit while watching TV. I knit while riding in the car. (Not while driving.) I knit while BS-ing with friends. I did some knitting in the subway in NYC. I'd knit during meetings if I could get away with it. I feel compelled, driven to it, a sense of urgency. So many things to do, patterns to try, things I want to make.

Is that talent? Or just my usual OCD-ness? I'm voting for OCD.

Something that I do honestly believe is that I have an affinity for learning languages, an innate talent to make the connections in my head that make it easy for me to pick up a whole new set of vocabulary. But again, learned skill. If I hadn't been an exchange student, I would have never known this about myself; living as I do in the midst of the Midwest, there just isn't all that much opportunity or need for the ability to be bi-or-trilingual.

I'm not very good at my present job. At all. Part of the reason I want to find another job is that I'm not excelling at this one. I'm enough of a type A personality that I want to be the best at everything I do, try, or touch. The job too is a learned skill. I understand how to do it, I'm just not doing well with it. I want to do fantastic with it, but I'm beginning to think that it just isn't all that possible for me to do well at this particular job. It is a bad fit, all around. I disagree with the employer about nearly everything, from politics to procedures the office follows. I think that the ability to excel at this work has to be an inborn trait, one that I don't have.

Urgh, I can't do this online. Getting way to close to writing solely about work, got to stop doing that.

The Discovery Channel has a commercial that I've been entranced with lately, the backing music fascinated me the first time I heard it. So I googled some of the lyrics and discovered the name of the band, Mute Math, and the name of the song, Typical. The lyrics are relevant to this post, and my feelings about my job; can I excel at it? Can I stop being 'typically' bad at it, break the spell?

Everyone has some talent, something that they're good at, something they can do better, smarter, faster than someone else. Breaking out and finding that something is the trick.

I'll leave you with the lyrics.


Come on, can’t I dream for one day
There’s nothing that can’t be done
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone

‘Cause I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical

I’ve lived through my share of misfortune
And I’ve worked in the blazing sun
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone

Cause I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical, the typical, the typical, uh huh

I'm the typical
I'm the typical
Can I break the spell of the typical

Because it’s dragging me down
I’d like to know about when
When does it all turn around

I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical

Yeah I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical
The typical, the typical, uh huh

Of the typical
Break the spell (of the typical)
Break the spell (of the typical)
Can I break the spell of the typical, of the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical

Ego-trippin'

I took some time to take a memory lane stroll yesterday. My old non-profit job was tethered loosely to a hospital. Since I lost the job, I haven't been back into the building but once; and that was under extreme duress. (No, *I* wasn't in the hospital, but I'm not telling what it was for. Anyway.)

So yesterday I went of my own free will, because I'd spoken on the phone recently with one of my old colleagues, and he suggested when we spoke that I should stop in and see him if I was in the neighborhood. I've purposefully avoided that part of town for quite some time now, because seeing my old office shuttered and looking abandoned breaks my heart.

I know the closure of the place wasn't my fault. As much as I despise that phrase (not my fault) in this case, it is true. Intellectually, I know that. I do. Really. In my heart, it is another story. The fact that the place closed on my watch....I was the director. If not *my* fault, whose? The buck stopped with me. Even being in the neighborhood brings all of that back. The rest of the time, I don't think about it much, so staying away has been a good policy.

But I like my old colleague, and I've missed him. I decided that it was time to face the elephant in the room, bite the bullet, tackle the tiger.

Everyone in administration at that place has a gate-keeper. Someone who decides if you're holy enough, or whatever, to get in the door. I breezed past his, asking if he was in. The gate-keeper didn't recognize me, but didn't stop me either.

When I walked in to his office, he did a double take; just like in the cartoons. Hilarious, truly.

"Look at you!" He nearly shouted. "You look like a model!"

We had a lovely chat, and then I popped in to see someone else I haven't seen in a long while. She also told me I look fantastic.

Later, I was at Sam's Club, and the cute little cashier was shivering; I'd thought it was hot inside the store. I told her she was cold because she's skinny. "When I was skinny, I was cold all the time too," I said.

"You're not heavy," she said.

Um? Yeah? I am? That's what I think, anyway. So I told her that a year ago I was nearly 200 pounds, and I still think of myself as hugely overweight. She asked how much I weigh now.

"157 on the scale this morning," I said.

"Aren't you so proud of yourself? You should be so proud! I don't even know you, and I'm proud of you!" She told me. "And you're thin! You're doing great! Keep it up!"

Isn't it amazing how the words of a stranger can change your outlook? I walked out of that store on air. All I see when I look in the mirror is the additional 20+ pounds that I still have to lose, the muscle that still isn't there, the dark circles under my eyes, the things I don't like.

My head swelled just a bit. All those compliments combined with the fact that I wore a pair of size 8 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) pants......well, it was good for the ego.

Retreat! Sound the retreat!!

On the phone with a friend the other day, I was discussing the possibility of a yoga retreat. There's someplace in Massachusetts, somewhere in the Berkshires, that she wants to go. Sera Gamble over at VHJ has me thinking about Esalen (funny, salen in Swedish is 'hall' or a common area; Esalen sounds like it believes big-time in sustainable community living. Nod and smile, folks, these are the connections my brain makes).

My yoga instructor, a serene woman who is mother of 4, has been pushing me to go and get my yoga certification, so I can teach classes. The first time she said it to me, I didn't believe she was serious, then I was really touched that she thought I was good enough to be an instructor, and then greatly humbled. She gave me a website for someone who does certification locally, and I promised to look into it. Months passed; she nagged me, and I'd say sure, I'll check it out, and then just....didn't. (I blame the depression, and laziness.)

When the calendar turned, though, I made it part of my plan for 2008 to actually get off my ass and get it done. I'm appalled to discover, though, that the certification process costs $1800. I dunno how expensive I was thinking it was going to be...but I haven't got a spare $1800 lying around. You apply to this program and give them a $1000 deposit; IF they accept you, you owe them another $800. If not, then they give you back your $1000.

Sure, the potential for making some extra money by teaching yoga kind of balances out the price tag, but in my hippy-dippy way, I kind of think as an instructor I shouldn't charge to share yoga with others; the benefits it has brought to my life are priceless, and karma demands that I pass that good fortune along. Or something.

Then there are weekend retreats where you can get a yoga certification. Those are all over the country, and pricey, too. Some of the retreats my gf was looking at are one price to attend as a student and another price to attend as an instructor. Ouch.

I'd love to tag along with my friend to the Berkshires; I'd like to go back to Lilydale, too. Esalen has over 300 programs that I'd be interested in. Unfortunately, not only do I not have the spare cash to do all of this (Esalen is waaaay expensive; Lilydale not so much) but I also don't have the vacation time to spare. Very unfortunately. Because I'd also like to get over to Sweden, visit the 'rents in Florida, the sisters in New York and LA, go with DH to a thing for his industry in Chicago, and then there's a con or two that I might be willing to sell my soul to get to. (Kidding! About the selling of the soul thing, not about wanting to go to a con. Or 3.)

And yet...how dare I whine about such things? I've a roof over my head, enough to eat, a life that is rich with friends and family. Are any of us ever satisfied with the lives that we've got? When I'm thinner, when I've got enough money, when I'm whatever, we say all the time. What about now? Is now good? Because blink, and you'll miss it, and ten years will have gone by.

Huh. Gettin' a wee bit philosophical today.

Listening to: Turn on your love light, The Grateful Dead, Live Dead, 1969

Atone

In a holiday greeting, a friend urged me to remember those we lost this year, and celebrate those that are still here. We do that around New Year's. That and make new starts, new resolutions.

Generally, for a reason that remains unknown to me, I tend to think of fall, rather than the new year, as a time for resolutions and changes in habit. Probably just 'cause I like to be contrary, more than any other reason. However, since most of the rest of the world does it now, I'll indulge in a bit of it as well.

I'd like to be able to let go of the guilt that I carry around.

That's my resolution, to feel less guilty about any and everything. There's a website I discovered years ago, I don't know if the domain is still active and I'm not about to check; it was called Catholic Guilt, and it was a porn site.

The name stuck with me, though, making me wonder at the time if the Church created guilt in its practitioners, or if those who practice the religion are just prone naturally to more guilt.

It starts young, this whole guilt thing. It varies from parish to parish, of course, but the sacrament of Confession, a Catholic's FIRST confession, takes place anywhere from 8 to 12 years old. Mine was in the 4th grade, at about 9 years old.

Confession is all about receiving absolution for your sins. Now please tell me; what sins could the average middle class American 9-year-old possibly commit? Lying, fighting with siblings, OK, I'll give you those. I imagine that the priests tasked with hearing those first confessions howl with laughter as soon as they're able....the kids are so nervous, and the sins so petty, I'm sure it is an exercise in hilarity for the most part.

I dutifully made my first confession with the rest of my class, but the strains that became fissures, then cracks and finally breaks in my faith started not long after that first confession.

I was about 12, and playing with a new friend in our neighborhood. I'd gone to school with her for a while, and like most of my suburban schoolmates, she was Catholic like me. Her parent's new house was within walking distance of mine, and we spent a lot of time together in the summers.

"I have to go, I have to get to Confession," I told her one afternoon. The local parish had open time for confessions on Saturdays, and I went from time-to-time.

"Why?" She asked, hugely startled. "I don't believe in Confession. How can a priest grant forgiveness? Only God can do that. Priests are human; forgiveness is divine. I don't believe that they really have the power to grant absolution, do you?"

(Yes, we really talked like that. Bright kids, with big vocabularies...dorks...shoot me.)

"Um, yeah..." I trailed off. She was by far cooler than me during the school year, and I didn't want to seem provincial. "That's what they teach us..."

The more I thought about it, the more I decided she was right. How did saying a few Hail Marys fix some petty wrong that I'd done? God somehow was closer to the priests than the ordinary people? With typical pre-teen sarcasm: What-ev-er! And: plur-eze! That was the end of confession for me. I've never been back.

It is a really nice idea, though. That with a few simple prayers, you can atone for wrongs done, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way for me.

What guilt am I carrying around? Oh, a few things. I feel guilty that I'm not as good at many things as I think I ought to be. That I'm not perfect, which who knows where I got that idea, I ought to be absolutely perfect at everything I try on the very first attempt. Or that I'm insanely jealous of the lives my sisters are leading, I feel really guilty about that, how jealous I am of them, because it is patently ridiculous. I should be proud of them, happy for them (and I am) and able to leave it at that (but I'm not).

The times that I know peace from this cacophony are only when I'm able to enter into a meditative state of some sort; either during my yoga practice, or when I'm running. Both of those things being times when I can concentrate solely on what I'm doing just that second, and nothing else.

Not even when I'm sleeping does it go away; I had way, way, waaaaay too vivid dreams the other night that I feel very guilty about. And yep, there ARE limits to my over-sharing, because I'm certainly not about to share that one.

So the question remains; how to let go of the guilt? And the only answer I can come up with is to increase the amount of time that I spend running and doing yoga. An answer that I like a whole lot, incidentally.

In my spare time (hahahahahahahaha) next year, I am going to get my certification to teach yoga. As well as apply to several graduate programs, after taking the GRE.

hmmm. perhaps the guilt factor comes from setting expectations far too high, then feeling like I've failed when I fall short.




Nah.




Listening to: Rent soundtrack, Seasons of Love

Unnecessary

The weather is ever-changing here in Oh-hia-ia. One of the very few things that I like about living here is that we have four distinct seasons; there's no mistaking summer for winter or vice-versa.

Although the actual date of winter is a few weeks away yet, we've been having a sample of winter's fury over the last few days. The wind, bitter, biting, and at near gale-force over the past few days has blown down power lines and trees. Overnight last night, each time I woke, I was reminded of people interviewed on the news after tornadoes; they always say that it sounds like a train. As it whipped around our home last night, I wondered if we were about to have an out-of-season tornado, because it sounded like a train had taken up residence on tracks that must invisibly circle the house.

And then it started to snow.

All day Monday, the snow was propelled to the ground with such stinging force, were you silly enough to leave any skin exposed, you'd be sorry.

I went to see my hairdresser, and was frozen walking across the parking lot. The salon is near my old place of employment, and for no reason other than self-torture, I drove past the old office.

It was dark, cold, snowing. Really, it couldn't have been more bleak. The signs identifying the place have been removed; I took the sign off of the front of the building myself, back in June. The bigger sign, near the sidewalk, was still there the last time I had been there. I don't know when it was removed, nor where it went. The blinds are all drawn, making the windows look like dead, empty eyes.

There was a time when this action would have sent me into a tailspin of agony, a long bout of self-flagellation, wondering why I couldn't have done something, anything, to save the facility from closing.

I'm mostly past that; circumstances far beyond my control converged into a unique situation that forced the closure. I know that now. I hate it when people tell me that something, "isn't my fault." Own up to your mistakes, take some responsibility for your own actions. But the loss of my old job wasn't my fault.

I'm still not to the point that I think that the loss of my job was a good thing; I can finally view it as an opportunity for a new direction. My new job is taking me on avenues I never expected, an adventure that I'm still not sure I can see the end of.

Needless torture, that walk down memory lane. It is still too painful to remember the good, fun, positive things that happened there. But it hurts a little less than it did a few months ago.

I found some of my old business cards in a bag I hadn't used for a while. Losing a job you love is like experiencing a death of a person, someone you loved. Just when you think that you're mostly over the grief, you stumble across something, like those business cards, that bowls you over and makes you catch your breath, trying to hold in the grief until the moment passes you by. So perhaps voluntarily choosing to drive past the old office was foolish, opening me to more grief needlessly.

To my extreme surprise, in the light of a new day, it isn't painful. But yes, it was unnecessary.

It IS still snowing, and fucking freezing.

Its a bitch to get old, man.

But it is always better than the alternative.

I went to see my physical therapist, physical, as opposed to my shrink...don't ask about my shoulder injury that he works on. It makes me feel older to complain about my aches and pains. As I was walking in the door of the office, I was thinking about something that would make a great blog post. I didn't write it down, and consequently, I've forgotten what the heck it was about.

Since I can't remember that, I'm going to indulge in my vanity instead and tell you how fabulous I'm looking these days.

I had my hair cut and colored over the weekend. This super-super-super short style I'm wearing needs cut often. More than about 3 weeks and it is too long. My hairdresser (love, love, love, love him) put streaks of 3 colors in my hair; a blonde, and two reds. One very red, nearly punk, and the other darker, more of my mother's natural hair color, an auburn. Depending on which direction I style my hair, the punk streaks either show or don't, which is a good thing now that I'm working. Conservative and businesslike for work, punk and loud when I'm not.

Then I went shopping for new clothes; I'm broke as a joke, but didn't have a full week's worth of work clothes since I shit-canned all the stuff that doesn't fit me. Now I've got a more than a week's worth of beautiful clothes thanks to the assistance of my friend K (couldn't have done it without ya, babe!) and most of it? Is a size 10. Considering that my most comfortable suit a year ago was an 18, I'm pretty damn happy about that. Ten! Ten!! Yes, I still have about 25-27 pounds to go, and yes, I'm still working my ass off on it, but I look better than I have since my early 20s. I'm older, more confident, and more fabulous too.

Still highly medicated for depression, though. And not interested for even a second in tapering the anti-depressants right now. I still don't want to need to take them for the rest of my life, and the sooner I can get off them, the better, but they're working right now and I'm feeling better than I have in about a year. I know that part of feeling better is because I'm back to work; my shrink told me that I could not allow my self-worth to be tied up in what I do for a living. I'm still working on that one.

Also still working through the grief of my Aunt passing away. One day at a time on that one.

I'm very cautiously optimistic about feeling better. Once upon a time, when DH and I had just moved in to our current house, the non-profit job was going very well, I remember telling a friend that everything was going swimmingly but yet I had this sense of impending doom. In fact, I'm pretty sure I wrote about it. Is it my Catholic upbringing that makes me wait for the other shoe to drop? Superstition? I don't know. But I'd rather feel that than as if I was living in a black hole.

Contemplations

"Wouldn't it be great if people could get to live suddenly as often as they die suddenly?" ~Katherine Hepburn

I spent a few days this week alone, trying desperately to figure out what my next step should be. Reading, some, yep, can't deny that. Silly, silly trash, that I will pick up as brain candy reads. I also walked a labyrinth, several times, doing walking meditation. While I found that somewhat soothing, it was supposed to answer questions for me and it did not.

I spent no small amount of time contemplating belief. Labyrinths were around before Christianity, according to what I read about them. Scandinavian sailors would walk labyrinths that were angled to face the sunset at the summer solstice to insure a good catch and safe passage. The Catholics, who co-opted and attempted to incorporate many pagan beliefs into Catholicism, encouraged followers to pray the rosary while walking labyrinths.

I remember hearing an NPR report sometime in the 90s about old cathedrals discovering labyrinths hidden under floors of sanctuaries when they attempted restoration or refurbishment. The trend then was to allow them to be used again. I've never walked one before this week, though.

There was a suggested meditation for this labyrinth, which was slightly spiritual, but wasn't religious. Each time I walked it, I couldn't help but think, "This is stupid. Who believes this shit, anyway?" The repetitive motion of walking the circles was soothing, but didn't provide the answers I was hoping for or perhaps expecting.

But I did have several moments while walking and thinking that were flashes of insight, bursts of creativity. I saw Katherine Hepburn's quote above on Google, and it seemed to fit so well with all that I've been thinking. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Shawshank Redemption, starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. Freeman has a monologue at the very end of the film, where he says, "...get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." The entire monologue tears me up, every time.

So, life? What are you going to throw my way next?

Unemployment kinda.....rocks, acutally.

This is the first time in my life, ever, that I have not had a plan. Through my school days, I was hyper-focused, got excellent grades, had my eyes firmly on the prize. Which was, of course, a good education, good job, fulfilling career at the end of the schooling.

I structured my high school curriculum around my desire to be an exchange student, having almost every requirement needed to graduate in Oh-hi-ia finished by the end of my 10th grade year. What few requirements weren't "done" at the end of my sophomore year the administration assured me that they would count either classes in Sweden as credit, or that I could easily finish them my senior year of high school.

Overseas, I focused on learning the language, being the "best" exchange student that I knew, the example held up to other exchanges as in "Why can't you be more like Lucy?" Obnoxious, I know that now, but my drive and desire to be #1 has always been a big part of who I am.

When I came home to the states, reluctantly, because I loved Europe and wanted to stay, I skipped my senior year of high school and started college immediately. I was in such a hurry, to grow up, to get on with my life, to be an adult, to be out on my own and working full-time. If I could talk to that girl now...I'd tell her to slow down a bit. But hindsight is 20/20, and a time-machine has not been invented yet.

It took me a while to finish up my college career, but that isn't because I wasn't a focused student, it was because of the dizzying array of options available to me at University. I took a little of this, a little of that, ending up with minors in German, Accounting, and Psychology, because I kept taking classes in each that interested me, even though they weren't my major.

Once out in the working world, I discovered that I didn't really like working full time, but then, really, who does? And part time employment doesn't really pay the bills, so what choice do we all have? Not much of one. At the bank, I worked on climbing the corporate ladder, and by the time I left there, I was on track to be an AVP, assistant vice-president, a title which the bank hands out like penny-candy, but it is the way up the ladder.

When I went to the non-profit job, I discovered a passion for the work, and I loved working there full-time. I loved the fact that I was doing different things every day, I loved having my fingers into every single pie there, I loved the challenge of keeping the doors of the place open. I said often that I was truly blessed to have a job that I loved so much. Even when it could be the most heartbreaking thing in the world, days when I drove home sobbing, it was still an amazing thing to be a part of.

And now it is over. Doors closed, a part of my past, relegated to "when I did thus-and-so." Which should be devastating, especially considering the depression that I've been fighting. But it isn't devastating, it is instead somewhat freeing, because at the end, it was a huge dragging suck, and it was making me miserable.

I'm at a loss without a plan, though. Everyone, every single person from casual acquaintances to lifelong friends has asked me, "What's next?" and I've responded, "I don't know. For the first time in my life I don't have a plan." And their come-back to me? Every single one of them? "That's good."

Is it? It certainly does not seem so to me. What the hell am I supposed to DO now? Babysis, most UN-helpfully, suggested that I have a baby. Um, no. Wait, let me say that again. No. Hell, no. Dear, merciful goddess, NO. Bad idea.

For me, it has been more important most of my working life to enjoy what I'm doing for a living than to be making huge amounts of money. Life is too short to hate what you do. But I don't know what I want to do. I don't know where to go. I don't know how to take the next step, and that is a bit more paralyzing than being unemployed is.

It is only Thursday of the first week of being unemployed. And there was a big holiday in the middle of the week, so it feels much more like I'm just on vacation. A vacation where DH is not also off, but nonetheless, it seems more like I've just got some time off. Each day this week, I've had a specific goal in mind, and not been able to accomplish much more than that one thing. Each day has slipped by so quickly that I look at the clock at 3 pm and wonder where the whole day has gone. How come no one has ever told me that NOT working is quite a lot of fun? I don't have to be up at an ungodly hour, I can spend hours at the gym if I so desire, I can go to the grocery store whenever I want, I can be on the computer until 3 am if I want to. This is incredible fun!

The downside of being one of the grown-ups is that no one can make these decisions for me about what my next step should be. One of the problems with the depression is that you're so concerned about making a "wrong" choice that the inertia can paralyze you. So I want someone to tell me what to do, but I also want that answer to be perfect, something I can get excited about, something that ignites my passion.

I'm trying very hard to not panic about it yet, but I do need to make some decisions and decide what is next. I have some time. But I have never had any patience.

Feeling like the weight of the world is off my shoulders

"G'on, brush yer shoulders off"~Rapper Jay-Z

I told you a week or so ago that my personal life had a bit of a blow, that I'd be dealing with the fallout for a while. I could not share the details at the time, but I can now, and it feels so incredibly freeing.

I'm tempted to throw caution entirely to the winds and share the whole story, and shed my anonymous pen name, almost like "coming out" must feel. I'm giddy, and thinking that perhaps I ought not feel giddy, that I ought to feel sad, or bad, but I just don't. Can't.

I resigned from my job. The job that has been such an important part of WHO I am, the job that has given my life extraordinary meaning for almost 3 years, the job that in the beginning was a dream job, being the boss, being in charge and doing something for the community where I live. Things at the job were closing up shop, and I resigned before the bitter end, when I would have been laid off anyway. Gave up, in a way, I suppose. But I don't feel bad about it, I feel that I made the best decision I could for myself, for this time, this place. That "living in the NOW" idea, which has always been so hard for me, that sense of serenity, that almost state of grace is with me now that I have decided to finally let it go.

This job has also been the reason, well, the primary reason, but maybe not the only one, that I've hidden behind a pen name. My stance as an abortion-rights activist, flaming liberal, and champion of feminist ideals probably wouldn't have gone down very well with my employer. I never hid who I was and what I was from them, but I didn't flaunt it in their faces, either.

I'm old enough, and wise enough, to continue to use the pen name, and to not identify the former employer by name. But now I can tell you that I was the director of a local chapter of a global non-profit organization whose work on behalf of children is recognized worldwide. If I did tell you the name, you'd know who it was right away. Heck, you may be able to guess just from those details. *shrug* SOOOO not my problem anymore.

I was the head of the local chapter, a small branch of the wider organization, responsible for keeping our programs fiscally healthy, running the day-to-day operations, supervising a small staff and a group of volunteers. I loved it deeply. It was the most frightening, trying, and at the same time the most exhilarating thing I've ever done in my life.

Coming as I do from a white-picket-fences background, two parents, stable home, good schools, college education, around the time I turned 25 I realized that I wasn't doing much to give back to the community at large, which had shaped who I am. Working as I did back then for a huge super-regional bank, what was I doing every day? Making the rich, richer. Pushing paper. Data entry. Stock transfers, legal document review, taxes....it mostly made me miserable. I wanted to be doing something that made a difference. Something that mattered.

In business school, they don't teach you how to become a middle manager, a corporate slave. Many of us with business degrees end up as just that, but I assure you most business students have plans to take over the world, to run a company, to be the top dog somewhere along the way. And the curriculum, indeed the instructors themselves, encourage that ideal, that when you graduate, you're set to hit the ground running.

For most graduates, reality smacks ya in the face about a year or so after you graduate, when you realize that no one is going to give you that promotion to senior vice president, and you have to work hard to impress everyone. For me, the first epiphany came when I was passed over for a promotion and they hired someone even younger than me for the job. The second one came when I hung up the telephone with a client one day after the client said, "Thanks, you've been really helpful. We couldn't have gotten through this whole process without you, Lucy." I realized when I hung up the phone that I'd just had the best compliment I was likely to get all week, and that was possibly the most satisfaction I would EVER get out of that job, the occasional times when I was able to help someone with a specific problem, solve some issue for them. Six months after that phone call, I was out of there when I was offered my non-profit job.

You might wonder, and perhaps rightfully so, "Lucy! How could you? Walk away from a children's charity? How *DO* you sleep at night?"

My answer to that is twofold; first, my insomnia has been a well documented occurrence on this site. Since making this decision, I've been sleeping better. Not fantastically, but better. Next, it is simply time. Time to move on to something else, time to re-evaluate what the hell I'm doing on this earth, time to breathe for just a minute.

We all spend more of our adult lives at work than we spend doing anything else, including sleeping. Think about it. Forty hours (and most likely more than that, 50-70 perhaps) a week if you work full time. Fifty-two weeks in a year. Most of us get 2 weeks vacation, so for sake of argument, and the easiest possible math for me, let's call it 50 weeks a year at 50 hours a week. 2500 hours a year spent at work. Multiply that by 40 years or so and be prepared to be astonished. But let's stay focused on just one year. There are 8760 hours in a year, 365x24=8760. So you work 2500 of those hours. That leaves you with 6260 hours a year to yourself. If you get 8 hours a sleep a night, lucky you. Most of us don't, so let's go with 6 hours a night of sleep. But that deletes another 2,190 hours from your free time, so you're left with 4,070 hours to do with as you will. I'm not going to sit here and figure out how much time we all spend in running errands, commuting to and from work, working from home or on our CrackBerries, e-mailing when we're supposed to be "off" because my point is this. If you don't love, and I mean absolutely LOVE, what you're doing for a living, why are you doing it?

Yes, yes, we all have bills to pay, and we're all looking for that dream job in Hawaii, but really, if you get up every morning and think, "Ugh, I have to go to WORK today. I hate it there. Please help me get through this day." Then you are wasting what little time you have on this earth. You're a grownup. Change it.

I loved, with my whole heart and soul, this non-profit job, loved it as much as I despised the bank job. It breaks my heart that the services we offer to people are going to disappear from my rust-belt community. That is far more painful, as idealistic as that sounds, than the fact that I'm going to be out of a job. Really, it is. I can get another job. I have a degree. I'm pretty damn employable. I'll survive. Thrive, even, who knows what I might find as another job in the future?

So now what for Lucy? I'm not going back to the bank, I can tell you THAT beyond a shadow of a doubt. I'm in the rather silly position of being 32 years old and having no idea what it is that I want to be when (if) I grow up. I think I'd like to stay in the non-profit arena. I also KNOW that I'd like to move far, far, far away from Oh-hia-ia, and that this may be the last, best opportunity that I have to do so.

But for the immediate future, I'm going to take a minute.

Breathe.

Savor the fact that I've survived the terrible depression that I suffered from, which was related in no small part to this job, as it broke my heart to watch it slowly die.

Take a week or two to work on the book, sit in the sunshine, watch the world go by, and for once, (and maybe the only time in my life) be unemployed. And then I'll get back into job hunting and being a productive member of society. How lucky I am to be able to do that for a minute. How scary, and how exciting.

News, and Not News.

I've been out of the loop on the cycle of news since both sisters were home. No NPR listening, very little web-surfing over the past week. It was OK at first, being out of touch with current events, too much else going on to care, but then I got antsy about it. I had this weird feeling, itchy almost, that something was missing.

I'm still not caught up on national and international news, and it isn't likely that I will by the end of this week either. The level of personal angst has shot up sky-high since both sisters left. I was handed a particularly bad piece of personal news yesterday, something that I can't yet share with the internets, and I will spend quite a bit of time over the next week or so dealing with the fallout. Once it is complete, I may share the entire sordid story, or I may not, but I'm fairly certain that even though it was a huge body-blow initially, it is more of an opportunity than anything else. I'm fairly sure that my mental health will improve by leaps and bounds once I'm past the introductory shock.

In other news, if ya know me IRL, the party's this weekend. Midsommar, doncha know. This is a Swedish holiday that I started to celebrate here in America the year that J died, when I realized that life is short. We all say, "we should get together more often" or "I'll call you and we'll have lunch" and then we never do. So I began celebrating Midsommar because I damn well want to. It is one of my favorite holidays. There will be some traditional Swedish food, and I've encouraged guests that if they want to bring something, they should bring their own favorite ethnic dish. So I'm sure it will be a bevy of interesting things. We start at 7 on Saturday.

Listening to: Podrunner

Confused by the chemistry

Dr. Hottie upped the dosage on my anti-depressants, Wellbutrin XL, from 150 milligrams a day to 300 milligrams a day. A doubling of the dose. That seems like a lot to me, but I know that there are folks out there who take lots more and varied medications every day.

When I started taking the medication back in April, it didn't help right away. As the doctor had told me, it took a while for it to start making a difference. Better? Yes, I felt better. But as the weeks passed and I didn't feel any more human, and even felt as if things were on a dimmer switch, getting darker and darker, a few days ago I made the decision to contact the doctor to ask for help. Unfortunately, I can't be more precise than 'a few days ago' because I can't remember if it was Thursday or Friday, May 24th or 25th. Either way, as of the writing of this post, about 7 days with the new dosage, and unbelievably, amazingly, I feel fantastic.

I felt fantastic yesterday. I slept last night. Yes, with Ambien's assistance, but, I slept for a total of ALMOST eight hours, do you know how long it has been for me since that happened? More than a year. Got off the computer around 11 pm, read a book for about 10 minutes, fell asleep while reading, slept solidly until 3, back asleep by 3.30, didn't roll out of bed until 7.15. Not an uninterrupted night's sleep, but honestly that's asking too much at this stage.

I wish that I was able to read the research available out there on anti-depressants and depression and understand the scientific ins and outs. I can speak 4 languages, but can't add, subtract, divide and multiply. I only passed my high school chemistry class because the teacher was kind enough to tutor me in the subject for an hour every day in addition to lab time and class time. I really LOVE chemistry, but I don't understand it. At this particular point in my life, I don't think that there's much chance that I ever will. I've mostly made my peace with that, but it would be nice to have more than a basic grasp of chemistry.

I've read fascinating research on Seasonal Affected Disorder, (SAD) which while like depression isn't the same thing. Many, many, many people in Scandinavia suffer from it (yes, speaking from experience) actually, many people in all extreme northern or extreme southern climates, near the poles of the earth, are plagued with problems from SAD. Sweden did some groundbreaking light therapy back in the late 80s/early 90s that seemed to work; expose sufferers to more light than what they were getting. I think it was called White Room Therapy. When I lived in Sweden, the village that I lived in was not that far north, being on the latitude of 59.4167. The northernmost city in Ohio has a latitude of 41 by comparison. The arctic circle is at 66. (Remember that the equator is zero, so the lower the number, the warmer the climate, which works in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere.) But in the worst part of the winter, the sun went up at about 9.30 in the morning and set at 2.30 in the afternoon, meaning that we got about 5 hours of daylight. It ends up being very draining.

I understood the research on SAD because I read it in places like Newsweek and Time magazines, in places where it is explained for the lay person. All of the research I've been able to locate on depression that interests me is in places like the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) or other publications aimed at the scientific community. I've yet to find something that explains in plain language why this happens to people with no prior history of depression.

I don't know if my feeling better is because of the better weather, it has been sunny and warm all week here in Oh-hi-ia, and that's remarkable enough to note. While my idea of hell on earth is 90 degrees and 100% humidity, which is what we've had this week, it has been nice to see the sun and realize that the world does go on. Summer is coming! Heck, it is kinda here! I am hoping that I can take a few steps out of those dark rooms my brain has been in.

Major depressive disorder runs in my family, and considering the way my life's been going lately, it is no surprise that it happened to me. But there is no explanation for why your brain chemistry changes. Honestly, I don't think the scientists know either. Thank goodness that Tom Cruise doesn't rule the world and there are meds and treatment for this kind of thing, because if I shudder to think how I'd be doing if I just took some vitamins, as he suggested that Brooke Shields should have done!

Thank heavens it seems to be getting better.

The Stranger

And a music/mental health post to end the week. Maybe I'll get back to politics next week. Maybe not.

You might have never heard of O.A.R. Or maybe if you're a fan of a reality television show where they tear down houses and build new ones, you've heard of them because they sing the theme song. They're a band, with a decent sized following, but not (at least as far as I know) mega stars on the top 40 circuit. They're mostly from Maryland, but the band lived in Columbus, while they all attended Ohio State. Which is of course my connection to them, that they lived once upon a time in Oh-hi-ia. Never mind that it is a large state and Columbus isn't all that close to me.

O. A. R. stands for "Of A Revolution." It is tough for me to describe their music, being comprised as it is of equal parts crunchy sweet pop, reggae, roots, ska and rock...

I'm a fan, have been for years. Babysis introduced me to their music, back when she was in high school and running to Columbus from the cornfields of our region to visit friends of hers who were going to OSU. I never went with her, but I wish I had, she got to see them in small Columbus clubs.

They released their latest album, Stories of A Stranger, in 2005, although a quick check of their website shows that they've got a new live album dropping on June 5th. Their website is also currently featuring the song I'd like to talk about, "The Stranger," so if you'd like to take a listen, check out the link to their page.

The song captures well what I've been feeling lately, being alienated from everyone and everything with the huge dragging suck of depression. It is hard to explain to someone who has never been there, but I feel cut off from the world, which is sunny outside my door. Inside, however, it is dark and gloomy, and I don't know how to change it. I can see where I want to be, I know how I used to feel, there's memory for the pathway back, but I just can't take the first step. There's a lyric in the song,

I remember
how to get there
Will you be there
When I'm coming through?

Take me back
Into your arms
Where I belong
Where I'm no stranger
To you

I'm fairly certain that friends and family feel that I'm radically different than I was a year ago because of this fog that surrounds me, that I've become a stranger to them with very little that is recognizable as "Lucy," when they're not thinking simply that I'm completely off my rocker.

Unfortunately, as I have told nearly everyone in my life, this is something that they can't fix for me, can't change for me, that I have to work through it on my own, despite how much I appreciate that they'd like to be able to just wave a wand and change it for me. (Why, yes, I'd happily accept a Cheering Charm from a Hogwarts student!) Some days are better than others, and as I told one friend the other day, I feel like every time I talk to any one of my wonderfully supportive friends, all I'm doing is whining and dumping on them, and I really wish I could stop that, because it isn't fair to them.

I can't help but wonder if the meds are not as much of a solution as I'd hoped. I'm taking 150 mg/day of WellButrin XL, and I've been taking it every day since early April. Do I feel better than I did during the darkest days before I was able to admit that there's a problem? I do. Do I think it is working as well as it ought to? I do not. Unfortunately, with the entire class of anti-depressant medication, sometimes what works for one person will not work at all for another. Another problem is that you need to give the meds 4-6 weeks to get into your system and begin changing your brain chemistry. Four to six weeks is a pretty long time when you're depressed. And a third problem is that researchers have recently discovered that even while changing your brain chemistry, sometimes the medications pescribed for depression make the patient suicidal. Suicidal thoughts are a SIDE EFFECT. Yikes.

Lest anyone start pushing the panic button: I am NOT suicidal. I do understand how someone suffering from depression can get there, though. With pretty frightening ease.

But I think for me, the meds are making it hard for me to feel much of anything. I'm not sure if this is a side effect or if the depression is progressing and getting worse. I feel obligated to point out that if I truly thought it was getting worse, I would ask my therapist to put me into inpatient psychiatric treatment. I don't really think it is getting worse. It just seems to not be getting better, really, either. I had said a few months ago that feeling nothing at all would be preferable to feeling the way I did, but now I'm not so sure. I'm having a very hard time being excited about anything, and the joy that I have always taken in very simple things is severely lacking. Except for randomly bursting into tears over really stupid stuff (such as television commercials?!) I'm not really feeling any emotion at all. I'm tired, and that's about it.

The emotions that I do end up feeling are like flashes of lightening, intense, bright, and very brief. Visiting a friend a few days ago, her little girl ran up to me and threw her arms around me, which nearly sparked more tears because I felt so good, for just a second. How can you not feel wonderful when confronted with a toddler's enthusiastic greetings?

I called Dr. Hottie's office, looking for some assistance and guidance about the meds. He's changed my dosage, and I'm hoping that helps. Of course, I don't have a medical degree, but the logic in my mind goes something like this; if the small dosage of the anti-d's helped, but wasn't quite the solution, then perhaps a larger dosage might be the ticket. I hope so. My next appointment with the therapist is in two weeks time, and I'm very glad that I have it scheduled.

I spent the whole day on Friday listening to "Stories of a Stranger" over and over, as is an occasional nutty habit, and I'll probably have bits and pieces of all the songs popping up in my head for the next 3 days. Shall I share with you? Yes! Why should I be the only one with it stuck in my head?

From "The Stranger"
I'm a stranger
on the outside
when I'm not right
next to you

From 52-50
fifty two, fifty more
days till I might come back from war
I'm gonna love you up and love ya down

From Program Director
Program director
on the radio
won't play my music
till I call and tell him so

See?! Crunchy, sweet, sticky pop...but you gotta listen to the music for the full effect.

Size ain't nothin' but a number- - - and it is a dumb and irrelevant number, at that.

While there has been quite a bit happening politically that interests me, I've been more in the mood to mostly write personal posts this week. This post will be no exception. But hello, Congress, passing a 100 billion (yep, that's billion with a B) piece of legislation to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Um, Uncle Sam? Where is this money going to come from? Oh, that's right. My tax dollars. Sigh. With such a stellar example from the government, is it any wonder that the average Joe has thousands of dollars in personal credit card debt? Rhetorical questions all. Back to the point of this post.

Last weekend, DH and I popped in to Target after our Sunday morning out-to-breakfast ritual. He loves to cruise through a handful of stores after taking a peek at the Sunday ads (just about the only worthwhile part of our local paper). Personally, I prefer to lounge around and read, or do a few small projects around the house, or do nothing at all on Sundays, but every now and then I tag along with him.

He went off in the direction of whatever he wanted to look at from the ad, and I wandered into the clothing section. I vastly prefer Target to, say, Wal-Mart. The ranting and raving about Wally's will have to wait for another day, but let's just say that I had to study quite a lot about them in business school (my University degree is in business, FYI) and their business practices SUCK! {end rant}

I am pretty fond of Isaac Mizrahi and Target's Merona brand, and the Mossimo line. But I haven't purchased any clothing for myself since around this time last year, when K drug me out looking for something to wear to a work event she had to go to. I don't like looking at my rolls in the mirror, and am disgusted at the size I need to purchase to fit myself. Or, rather, I had been up until Sunday.

Almost nothing in my closet fits me right now. Almost everything is so large that it either needs taken in at the waist or it just billows out around me, making me look pregnant or like I'm a little girl dressing up out of mommy's closet. I can't believe that I'm bitching about this when it is an obvious good sign of progress, but, I'm still annoyed that I haven't lost all the weight that I want to lose. I realize this isn't too rational, but y'know, I'm not entirely sane. Nothing fits, it is all too big, and it irritates the crap out of me. Especially when getting dressed for work in the morning, I'm trying on an average of 3 different outfits every day, attempting to find ANYTHING that fits to wear to work.

Some perverse instinct made me keep a very few of my business suits in smaller sizes when I gained weight, so there are about 2 suits that fit. Both of them wool and heavily lined. Not exactly springtime wear, eh? Since I work in a very professional environment, I can't just wear the sweats and other comfy stuff that does fit, I actually do need clothes that fit to wear to work.

I haven't wanted to go out and buy an all-new wardrobe because I have no intentions of staying this size. And because it would be expensive. My stated goal is to lose about another 30-40 pounds, making the weight loss a grand total of about 70 pounds. That's where I ought to be according to the info on the height/weight charts, but that doesn't really matter to me. My reason for that weight is that's where I felt pretty comfortable, and with the muscle definition I should have by that time, I'll be looking darn fabu. (Ego? Me? Naaaaah.)

But I found a bunch of things in Target that I liked on the clearance racks and I picked up a few things to try on, disappearing into the dressing room for about a half hour. (DH searched the entire store for me during this time, even going out to the car to see if I was waiting there. Which kind of cracks me up.)

I had chosen things in a smaller size than I've worn in years, a 10. Just an idle, and hopeful, guess. Three brands, Merona, Issac, and Mossimo, and don't you know that the 10 in Issac's stuff fit, the Merona did not, and the Mossimo skirt did, but the pants did not. W.T.F.? Why aren't there standards ACROSS THE INDUSTRY for clothing sizes? There are for the guys....a pair of men's trousers that are 32x32 from Levi's are going to be the EXACT SAME SIZE as a pair of trousers from Brooks Brothers.

Ladies, why on EARTH do we put up with this? Think about the collected time that you've WASTED in dressing rooms over the years, agonized that the size {{whatever}} you picked up off the rack didn't fit. Or guessing, when trying on something made by a clothing line that you've never heard of, what size might fit, and having to go back and try 3 or 4 more of whatever it is on to find your size. What a pain!

I'm going to make an attempt to stop giving a damn about that number on the tag. If it fits, wear it. If it doesn't, who cares. But wouldn't it be nice to have some standardization, so that a 10 is a 10 is a 10? I'm just sayin'.

HEY! CLOTHING MANUFACTURERS! I'M TALKING TO YOU! HOW ABOUT MAKING STUFF THAT FITS REAL WOMEN, WHO HAVE HIPS AND THIGHS, WHO AREN'T THE OLSEN TWINS AND STILL WANT TO LOOK GOOD? OH, AND WHAT ABOUT MAKING THINGS THAT ACTUALLY HAVE AN ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF WHAT SIZE IT IS ON THE TAG? WOULD IT KILL YA?

By the way, I ended up buying a black & white sheath dress, a black suit jacket, and a pair of black trousers. With tax, a grand total of about $47. As I said, some of the stuff I took back to try on didn't fit, so I grabbed a larger size of the trousers off the rack on the way home, and ended up having to go back to exchange them, because the pair two sizes larger was huge. When I exchanged the trousers, I picked up a black and white skirt too, ($14) so I ended up with 3 outfits for less than $100. Not bad. Not bad at all.