But I’m working on it. I try to take any opportunities that come my way. And just when I was starting to feel blue I wound up with the potential for plans with four different people this weekend. It’s just a little hard for me to seal the deal – that moment when that “casual acquaintance” moves into the realm of “friend who might actually ask you to hang out on a somewhat regular basis.” I think I come off as kind of a loner, which I basically am at this point.
But it just tends to feel like I’m on the outside looking in, and I’m not sure how to change that.

I’m also totally out of practice with just being normal around people. Every time I hang out with someone it feels like some sort of weird first date and I wind up trying to make the case for why I would be a good person to start a relationship with. Only then they never call. I’m sure that makes me pretty attractive as a potential friend.

This all sounds rather pathetic, but I’m not a *total* charity case, because then there’s the element of, is this person right for *me*? That’s actually the toughest thing, because in the absence of a large group of people to fulfill all of your different needs, you wind up looking for the one perfect silver-bullet friend. Someone who likes the bands I like and also likes to do creative stuff (but not *too* creative or then they’re out of my league), and someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Seinfeld and The Simpsons but who also listens to NPR and reads serious books. Oh and maybe doing some outdoorsy kind of stuff. And with a killer sense of humor. No biggie, right?

A lot of time I wind up putting effort into people who turn out to be kind of meh. But I try to remind myself that everyone isn’t going to be my best friend, and sometimes all I really want is just someone to break up the monotony. But I have to admit, it would be nice to have that feeling again that there’s someone out there who truly cares and would go the distance for you, not because they’ve chosen you as a partner for life, or because you’re related, but just because they love you as a friend.

Then I stop, and think, but where *am* I?  Sure, I’ve been happy for a while, but where has this “living in the moment” really taken me?  I haven’t considered my career much.  No big trips on the horizon.  No kids.  No projects that I’ve worked on.  It’s all just been fluff, and hasn’t built up into anything – just a bunch of pleasant but random days strung together.  Too much micro, not enough macro.

I look at something like the video I posted last time, and I think, see, THAT guy has a project.  Sure he’s lived his daily life, but he’s also worked on something that has built up into a tangible body of work that he can look back and and feel good about.  He’s enjoyed the small stuff with an eye on the big stuff.  

I need to work this out, how to enjoy my days but remember to be conscious of the big picture.  And I guess maybe the question then is, what IS the big picture?  Is the big picture general daily happiness, or long-term goals?  I know, I know, I’m sure the answer is “it’s both.”  But with all this attention to detail I’ve lost my ability to multitask.  

I am in a rut.

A coworker showed me this video that her friend made, which is amazing:

Of course, my version of this video would mainly consist of 1 second snippets of watching tv, vacuuming, cooking half-assed dinners, surfing the web, and sitting at a table in the bar down the street. G thinks that means it’s time to have a baby. And I agree with him on a certain level, and yes we need to get going on that whole baby thing. But in general my life feels so small, and I don’t think having a baby is going to fix that. I spend 90% of my time with G, punctuated here and there by dinner with friends and the occasional drink with coworkers. And even then, it’s me who has to do the asking, because I think of myself as the “out of sight, out of mind” type – when you’re with me I’m reasonably fun, but not enough so to remember to ask me to hang out later.

And this is not to say that I don’t enjoy watching Mad Men and going for beers down the street and keeping the house clean and being with my husband, but when I step back from my life, the pieces don’t connect into something bigger. What can I do to break out of this cycle?

I thought maybe starting the blog back up might help a bit, to hash these things out. I know I could hash things out equally well in private, but something about putting these feelings out for some tiny fraction of the world to see makes me feel like I’m doing something.

So look forward to more thought-detangling to come.

hug an elephant
see the northern lights
leave the house on a bike and come back after traveling the country
count everything I own made in china
move to hawaii
learn how to whistle really loud with my fingers

oh Mr. Softee
I can hear your siren song
and your cones, so sweet

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks at work. Actually, I’ve had a rough five months or so. My job is total chaos all the time, and despite being currently understaffed, I still feel like it’s not going to improve much even when my new hire gets up to speed. They don’t really care whether anyone there has a life or not, whether every day is spent at break neck speeds, running around like a chicken with its head cut off just to get the bare minimum done, choking down lunch at your desk, checking emails from home, staying until 7, 8, 9 o’clock. It’s expected, and no one gives a shit. The work needs to get done and that’s that. Every email I get (and I get hundreds a day) starts with, “I know you’re crazy busy, but…” and ends with, “this really can’t wait any longer, it needs to be done now.”

I am totally miss nice guy at work. I am so nice, the sun shines out my ass. I break my ass to get stuff done, even when it’s not even necessarily my job. I cover for everyone else’s mistakes, I spend hours sorting out issues that are the result of other people’s incompetencies. And yet, in the middle of all the current chaos, the two times I have told people that something can’t be done in the time they want it to be done, they get absolutely furious and demand that it get done.

I come home crying several times a week, I cried in the bathroom twice today and outside once, I have headaches all day, I can’t relax at night, all I think about is having to go back to that goddamn place the next morning. Yet whenever I mention to someone that I might have to just get up and leave one of these days, they immediately say, “Whoa, well, you can’t just do that.” Now granted, I know I can’t just do that. I wouldn’t just do that, I’m not that type of person. I know that if I left tomorrow, everyone I work with would be totally screwed because no one knows how to really do my job, and it’s an integral job. I’ve been there for almost nine years, and I’m not a shitty person. But still, why is it so unnacceptable to just hit that point where you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore? Through everything, you’re just expected to keep smiling and being polite, and not complaining too much, and playing nice with everyone. And whenever I mention “just quitting” to anyone, despite the fact that Greg and I have talked about it a hundred times and decided that financially we’d be ok for a while, the solution is immediately, “Well why don’t you look for a new job?” or “Well you have to make sure you have all your ducks in a row first.” What happened to good old fashioned leaping before you look?

You should really read this editorial on the Huffington Post written by a woman who was on the flight with the Jet Blu flight attendant. It pretty much says exactly what I’ve been feeling – that through all the frustration you face in every day life, you’re never allowed to have a meltdown.

So I don’t know, it remains to be seen whether I’ll just storm out. Probably not. But I just hate for people to immediately take that option away from me.