Caterwauling

As luck should have it, I got to hear from another colleague from days of yore, also with kind words to say to/about me.

I have to say it’s really starting to smack me in the face that I belong back in Biz Dev. I really, really miss getting to talk to my friends all over the globe and call it work.

Of course, today I got to be a real product manager too. I worked with one of my editors for a good four hours on brainstorming.

I don’t know that we did a great job. But honestly, while it was exhausting, it was GREAT to be in charge of one of my products again.

Generally I’m just trying to plug my fingers and toes and elbows into the holes in the ship while throwing my body over the grenade someone tossed onto the deck I happened to be standing on. So, hooray for feeling somewhat alive again … even if my brain is DEAD after eight meetings today (oh yes, there were more).

In other news, I’m on Day 2 of 14 of medication my doctor gave me. No drinking, she says. For two whole weeks, she says. *bwahahaaahahahaaa*

Side effects of this are great. Not just the “may mess up your immune system further and make you resistant to future treatments,” but apparently “fatal diarrhea” has happened in some patients.

So far, no luck. But I think a poopsplosion is totally the way to go.

Rare
Atypical
Multi-drug resistant
Immuno-compromised
Urgent

You tell me how my day is going to go from here, considering I have a prescription waiting at a pharmacy about an hour away from where I currently am.

At least I finally have a doctor’s note to confirm that my office really might just kill me after all. We cannot move out of this building fast enough.

Drinking in Deerfield Beach

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

My boss asked me last night whether I miss D.C. I burst straight into tears and said I miss my friends there.

I wasn’t certain why I was so emotional. Now I realize it’s my five-year anniversary here in South Florida.

Five years ago today, I pulled into town with a mom, two cats and truck full of crap. Today I’m renewing my lease for another year.

My “last gasp” of D.C. was Grand Mariner french toast at the Boulevard Woodgrill with Tom and Tiff. I’d moved to D.C. with Tiff, and Tom was our first friend there. They are married now and have the most-adorable kid ever.

I’ve missed a lot there. And it’s been a strange trip here, to say the least.

I have stopped trying to figure out whether I *should* have come here, or even whether I’ll stay.

These days, I struggle mightily between “Jesus Christ, is this all there is to life?” and fighting against everything … and just going with the flow a la, “I guess this is the life I was supposed to live.” And back again.

A dear friend said to me recently that she really thought I’d found my fairy tale down here. And it got me to thinking, where might I find my fairy tale, if not here?

I don’t want to think a fairy tale isn’t in the cards for me. I just fear that I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.

My longest-term relationships generally tend to be with cities — Pittsburgh, Arlington, Alexandria, Key Largo, Baltimore, and even places I’ve never been (Paris, Tuscany, Dublin, Seattle). I fall the deepest and long the hardest for their promise.

Florida, I’ve felt kind of detached from. Like, afraid to love it because it’ll just be somewhere else that I’ll miss if I decide to go find myself somewhere else again. Maybe that’s a part of the reason I don’t have many friends here, or that my greatest loves seem to be lighthouses.

I do know one thing. I need to stop blaming myself for not being further along/ahead in life. If this is where God wants me, damn it, this isn’t so bad. I just … wish I could bring all the cool people I used to know into my new life. Now THAT would be a dream come true.

I’ve noticed that when I dwell on negative things, more seem to suddenly appear. Or maybe they were always there, but they become more prominent.

So today I want to focus on something wonderful that happened last week, at a time I needed it most.

What my current crop of colleagues doesn’t realize is how well-connected I am in the field. People’s names they drop, I could tell stories about. Good stories. Which I try to share if asked.

I used to work in business development as my “side job” to editorial, so I know a lot. But these days I work in “work we really need minions to do” as my “side job” at work, and others are starting to meet my old connections.

If I had my way in this universe, I would introduce people to each other. I really would love that. I miss Biz Dev and I hope to get back to it someday. It might have to be in a few years or maybe in another lifetime, but in a moment you’ll see why it has to become a part of my life again.

I was having a Bad Day and a colleague says to me, oh hey I just got to talk to a gal you may know.

She says the name. I smile. Yes, I have good memories of that relationship.

My friend says, “The girl knows you work here now. She said, ‘Oh, you work with Goddess? LOVE HER!'”

My friend goes on to list the compliments the gal paid me.

Most notably, my friend said, “I was on the phone with her, and I could hear her grinning from ear-to-ear as we talked about you.”

My heart swelled. To have someone I respect so much, telling someone else I respect very much, that I rock? Wow.

Just, wow.

Now a part of me shouldn’t be surprised because I try very hard to rock. 🙂

But to have my name out there in the universe — in such a wonderful way — really, really made me happy.

As I said, it was a Bad Day. And this reminded me that I was Somebody before this adventure and I will continue to be Somebody after it, no matter what was said to me that day that broke my spirit.

The moral to the story? Your good deeds will follow you, and catch up with you at just the right time. So keep doing them, even when the easy choice is NOT to do them.

Thank you to the gal who honored me with her praise, and to the gal who shared it with me. Both of you are high atop my gratitude list today.

Dreamed one of our VPs got fired. I walked into their immaculately empty office to make sure of it. (I don’t quite get how said person got, let alone keeps, the job, but they are so far up Corporate’s butt that the dream was a surprise.)

Then I dreamed my boss suspended all meetings until further notice.

Both developments have worse odds than the 9.2 quintillion-to-1 of winning Warren Buffett’s March Madness bracket challenge.

I am tired of killing myself for my jobs.

I’m dodging my doctor, who has biopsy results for me.

After someone pissed me off beyond recognition yesterday, I shut down. Said individual later said they “cut deep.”

What they don’t know about me is I “shoot to kill.” Ergo, I zip it because I promise, what I end up saying or doing will be the last anyone sees or hears from me.

No poking the penguin today, people. Penguin will slap you with a fish.

Another friend quit the Alligator Ranch today.

So now, in addition to the job posting I already have out there to find a Mini Me, I have two other openings folks have sent my way to, “Hey, you know everybody. Can you share the gospel?”

I’ve got my posting on the major sites but if you want to know about the others, you know where to reach me.

The thing is, if you’ve read even one or two of my blogs, tweets or Facebook musings, you probably would choose unemployment rather than replying to one of my job postings.

And that’s OK. We are a special brand of crazy. Think you can out-crazy us? We’d like to see you try!

(Seriously, please try. My inbox is as empty as my heart.)

Like right now I’m waiting on copy that was due three days ago. And a lunch date that never materialized and don’t get me started on why I never managed to leave the house today.

Anyway, regarding the deadline missed, I’d sooner put money on receiving a winged pony and a tooth fairy who pays in hundred-dollar bills.

Who WOULDN’T want to be a part of this glamorous life, I ask you?

Excuse me while I write an article on how the missing author was turned from a rooster to a hen today with just one shot. (Homage to Dolly Parton in “9 to 5.”) Now, wouldn’t YOU want to read that newsletter?

Apply within, folks. I can’t keep all this madness to myself …

I think one of my boys got the hint. Rather, he’s always gotten it, but it seems he’s finally taken it.

I often act like an ass — or myself, depending on who’s telling the story — during the “getting to know you” phase. And I know that it takes just one wrong thing out of your mouth … “wrong” by someone else’s definition than yours … and they immediately blacklist you.

You go over it in your head. What did I say, how could I have said it better, or can I rewind time and have someone chloroform me so no one hears that.

More often, you agonize over conversations seven squillion ways to Sunday, and you still don’t know what you did to repel someone. It could be that your hair fell in your eyes and they thought of an ex. Or you chew your food like his mom does. Or it’s a full moon with Mercury in retrograde.

These are the things that can eat us alive, if we let them.

Anyway, if this one guy ever asks what repelled me … and I have a long list where he’s concerned, but let me tell you a big one.

I drive tiny, shitty Matchbox cars. Just because I floor it, doesn’t mean I’ll go anywhere. Merging in traffic is a nightmare, from the lack of power in the car to not being able to see because I sit so low.

And I hate hate HATE people in big monster trucks who feel the need to ride my ass. And down here, I notice people like to do that on purpose. A lot. Like, you can move out of the way and they will follow you … and be deathly close.

I have many a panic attack in the car because of these assholes. God is familiar with my, “Please don’t let him hurt me” mantra, followed by the deep breathing and crystal-rubbing.

So this one joker tells me, I assume not knowing what I drive, that he’s got a big truck and, for kicks, he enjoys following tiny little sports cars and intimidating them.

He was serious.

Can we say dealbreaker?

I mean, leave my anxiety out of it for a while. What kind of asshole derives joy from terrorizing others at high speeds?

Not any kind of bully I want in my life. That’s for sure.

Anyway, I think I may be rid of this one finally. I can tell he doesn’t know what he did wrong but he does know I can’t even fake it long enough to get through a hi-how-are-you exchange.

Now to get rid of the marrieds who GOD I HOPE stay that way, and I’ll be free I tell you FREE.

My broadcasting system failed me again tonight. And no I didn’t hit any wrong buttons. But hitting the RIGHT buttons repeatedly yielded zero results, and I had to go in a back way.

The very way I learned completely by accident on Friday. Which worked like a charm tonight as my desperate Plan B.

Go figure.

As I was struggling to launch the thing the traditional way, everyone said goodbye and frolicked out. “Hope you figure out how to fix it!”

I fixed it, all right.

And when I fixed it, my colleague was having broadcasting problems of his own.

Now I could have said, “Oh hey, good luck!” like everyone else did.

But that’s not me. Captain and ship and all that jazz.

I hung around and offered help. He tried what he knew. Then he said, OK, since you stayed and might have an idea.

I found the problem quickly.

In any event, even though I’m at about a 47 on the 1-to-10 anxiety scale, I was really glad that A) I didn’t need anybody to help me, and B) I could help someone else in an area that’s inadvertently become an expertise.

It’s an hour of my life I won’t get back, but it sure beat what else I had planned for that hour-ish. Jobs are all about people — that’s what you leave behind, and that’s what you take with you. So, if I measure by that, I’ll call it a good day.

“Got enough guilt to start
my own religion.”

— Tori Amos, “Crucify”

From the “shut up, things could be worse” files, remember I said I ached for the man who accidentally killed my classmate’s teenage daughter as she walked across the street?

A friend from back home landed in the hospital. Her nurse said the guy had recently come in — with a massive heart attack.

She didn’t disclose anything — no name, current condition or whether he pulled through — but damn. This is killing him.

If that doesn’t put life’s little annoyances into perspective, nothing does. I am such a careful driver, and I have super-shitty cars so I am EXTRA nervous at all times, that being his shoes would be the last you see of me. I promise you that.

The nurse, as it happens, knows my classmate. Said she’s quiet, a good mom, hard-working. That she really counted on her older daughter to help with the younger kids.

That saddened me more — the girl was probably racing home to meet their schoolbus. She wasn’t goofing off with friends or going to go smoke behind the building like I used to do at that age. 🙂

And that’s the thanks we get for being good. The second our luck runs out, well, that’s it.

Our driver’s health collapses under his guilt that he never deserved to have to endure. A light goes out in a good family. Thousands of people all over the country hug their kids a little tighter because they can.

And … well, we forget till the next little earthquake erupts and we do it all over again and OMG CRISIS over something stupid like hitting a wrong button.

If this is the worst it gets for me, though, it’s pretty fucking good, wouldn’t you agree?