Caterwauling

So, something kind of amazing happened. In my head, anyway.

I stopped being so filled with rage.

Work-wise, anyway.

Maybe it was the team dinner last night with more out-of-towners than townies at the table. Maybe it was the chemistry, the laughter, the collaboration, the respect, the rich history (as we’ve traveled from company to company together).

Maybe it’s the fact that my people generally do leave me alone to do my thing.

Maybe it’s that, after a friend let me down, he has been killing himself to make it up to me.

Maybe it’s that I stopped eye-rolling at everyone’s big (crazy) dreams and started accepting the fact that it’s OK to dream the impossible. I don’t have to believe it, but I do have to be around to see it if it does in fact arrive.

Everything else is still a mess. But maybe this work stuff is all going to turn out OK after all. I’m in it for another day. At least …

Today was one of those rare days where we ventured into civilization and got to eat at a restaurant and see some sun.

A bunch of old colleagues are in town. Sitting at our table at the local veggie-burger joint (I do love South Florida!), I saw familiar faces of boys I used to know, running up and hugging me. I was overjoyed.

I’ve had it beyond up-to-here with certain current colleagues. People who don’t give a fucking shit about how many hours I work and how 40 of those hours are spent dicking around with their impossible processes and another 40 hours are dedicated to doing what I was hired to do.

Like, today I blew a fuse. Tears and all. I don’t know how I can ask for something a month ago that was due last Friday that was requested thanks to MULTIPLE customers writing in, and suddenly it’s all, well, we need 40 hours to do it and BOY WILL IT COST YOUR DEPARTMENT. So I sent the thing live (with my own personal workaround that customers, if they don’t love it, they at least haven’t written in to bitch about it) without fucking with these idiots, and AMAZINGLY five hours later said 40-hour project was DONE I TELL YOU DONE.

This is someone I consider a friend, by the way. Lord help me with those who don’t worship the ground I walk on.

My boss keeps wanting to talk about compensation and other things that I just don’t want to talk about. Yes I want more. But with more “stuff” comes … what? More than 75 hours a week at the office … more weekends … more years of feeling tethered when my sky-high rent and “paying every single one of my mother’s bills in addition to mine” isn’t enough of an electronic leash?

I have had enough. I don’t love this anymore. I need a break. I can’t work with mediocre people who continue to get in my way and I lose days’ worth of time chasing them down so I can do my job. Spending all that time riding THEIR asses means I’m chronically behind. And I am one anxiety attack away from a padded room. I can’t take the pressure anymore. I don’t know what’s going to be left of me but I can assure you it ain’t going to be much.

I’m thinking of seeing the Nutcracker and going to the Met while I’m in New York. And fuck everybody — I am booking that ticket and I will be DAMNED if I wait for certain departments to get their thumbs out of their butts to give my lone staff member the technology to be me for a day.

My grandmother always said that I couldn’t say “shit” even if I had a mouthful. NO MORE. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT. I am so sick of everybody’s SHIT and I will be DAMNED if I keep tiptoeing around that fact.

I was reading a chapter out of James Altucher’s newest book and he asked us to name five people for whom we’re grateful right now. He emphasized, “Not in the past … or in the future … NOW.”

I draw a blank. I have past people and I have people whom I hope won’t totally fuck me over in the future. But right now? I’m hard-pressed. And that’s sad.

Lord, I haven’t talked to you in quite some time. But please, please show me five people for whom I should be grateful. And if there aren’t any (or enough), please reveal them to me so that I can show them my gratitude for being there when the rest of the world gets to go on with their lives while mine slips away unnoticed …

I decided last Saturday that I want to lose 10 pounds by the time I take a vacation in December. So today’s 1.8-pound loss is a Good Thing.

Of course, the lady I sat next to at the meeting today has lost 20 pounds in two months, compared to my 17 pounds in four months. And she says to me, “What are you doing wrong?”

Huh?

She wasn’t being annoying on purpose. I realize she has a good 40 pounds on me and frankly it’s easier to lose weight when you have more to lose. And she’s old. So she gets a pass. 😉

I said I don’t feel I’m doing anything wrong. I explained that when I did WW in D.C., I lived on Fiber One bars, salads and Smart Ones entrees. I had NO ENJOYMENT.

I also had NO IDEA I would leave town. I never DREAMED I wouldn’t get to eat at all my favorite restaurants again. And now here I am in pretty much the world’s worst place for food choices. (Our specialty is the fact that you can eat outdoors. What you eat is usually a disappointment.)

So yeah, I eat what I want, when I want and frankly as much or as little as I want. Whenever I go overboard, I schedule a “vegetarian-only day” to cleanse myself.

It may be slow, but it’s how I’m doing it.

I’m glad I had a good week. I usually have one good week a month so hooray, this was it. My anxiety has been over-the-top lately and that usually fucks with my weight loss.

I was actually PANTING yesterday; I was working so hard and so long. Add two messed-up cars to the mix (I was so busy, I couldn’t even make it to my appointment yesterday for Samantha) and the only thing that stresses me out more than work itself is GETTING THERE.

Alas, the deep-breathing exercises worked. As has getting up once an hour as WW recommended. Four pounds till I get to my 10% weight-loss goal. If the 70-year-old who sat behind me can do it, so can I …

The workplace can’t pay out (in full or in part) or roll over my lost 168 vacation hours because IT WOULDN’T BE FAIR to the exceptionless next to my exceptional ass. Fine.

So when I have to work the second weekend in a row to help Deadline Challenged People not fuck up my (work) life, why can’t I cry THAT’S NOT FAIR and have everyone else work the weekend too?

Befriended one of my boys from years (decades?) past on one of those social-networky thingies. I could link to all the entries from the past (yes, the blog is that old). But then that would mean I’d want to reread them. And we all know Goddess needs to keep her wits about her, especially on the first day of Retrograde.

Oh fuck it. Here’s a 2007 recap.

I had a similarly disparaging name for his then-girlfriend/now-wife along the lines of Whorothy. And the second I saw his photos, that long-forgotten name flew straight out of my mouth. (God, I am such a bitch.)

He’s still hot. Not surprisingly. Because if I have exquisite taste in anything, it’s men. His son looks just like him. His daughter looks like, well, Whorothy’s predecessor. 😉

Funny how it all fades into the background, and funny how one day you find yourself awake half the night having flashes that hadn’t occurred to you since the ’90s.

I blew my chance with him because I couldn’t just lose myself in the moment. I didn’t trust that he was in it for the longer haul and even though I am a short-term gal at heart, I was falling for this guy and really convinced that it was doomed because of A) religion and B) the fact that I wasn’t born into money or successful yet on my own.

Was I wrong? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think the replacement offered the age and security and background that I just couldn’t.

I like to think I was someone new and young and different and exciting. Just like he was intellectual and mysterious and kind and powerful.

Anyway, not to stab at a wound that healed around the time of Y2K. But, still. I just had to take a moment to wonder whether I would have been content never leaving Pittsburgh and living the family life or whether I would have gnawed at the restraints by now and ended up where I am anyway.

The only thing that kept today from being a total experience in frustration was the fact that I got to work in civilization today and was able to pick up dinner on the ride home. Which I don’t get to do when I’m coming in from the sticks.

Today I am going to instead go for the grateful route (rather than saying exactly why someone lit my tampon on fire like it’s a stick of dynamite).

I’m grateful that I managed to get Mom’s car to the mechanic before the brake line exploded. I’m grateful that I’ll get it to the mechanic to replace all the brake lines tomorrow since they’re all shot. I’m grateful my own car has somehow lasted in the meantime and gotten me to the offices even with the engine light on and the turn signals NOT functioning. And today it sounded like the muffler came loose again. So thank you God that I can go another couple of months without adding a car payment.

I got to thinking today, I’ve made so many choices in life that got me to where I am and, yes, in the really ridiculous situations I’m in.

I don’t know that I would change any of them if I could (what with the butterfly effect and all) but I’ve gotten to feeling like I’m never going to stop paying for all those choices.

My boss said I have plenty more choices ahead of me. And I thought, geez, it really doesn’t feel like it. I’ve given up so much. It’s hard to imagine I’ll come to even more crossroads where I’ll be able to choose my way to something better.

My neighbor in the cube farm has a sign up that says, “You can’t do it all in one lifetime.” Shit, I try to do it all in one day … even when everyone is frolicking home when I want nothing more than to be able to leave with them. Maybe he’s right. But I’ve got to be able to do more in this lifetime than what’s happening here in front of me.

Lord, I look forward to the choices coming my way. I know there’s no “Right” choice ever — either choice brings consequences and that’s what you’re supposed to experience. But here’s to choosing the more-rewarding roads at every turn. For a change.

I got to thinking about my departure from Ye Olde Workplace Establishment this morning. It was another “you’re not special” situation. Like, the market crashed and my services were the best performers (and sellers) and we kept adding new services and experts and my workload basically became a bigger bubble than real estate until finally … *poof* … I fizzled out.

Even though I was plugging the holes in the ship with all my phalanges and even my nose and tongue, the fact is that when bonus time rolled around, there was nothing for Goddess. Because, like with the vacation time I lost there, too, there are no exceptions for the exceptional. Because then the exceptionless would want a piece of the action, too.

So, I lost out. And so did they.

I see they went from 30 services back in the day to about as many now as my trusty assistant editor and I fielded just between the two of us. God, we rocked. (And God, I miss her!)

I don’t feel like getting mad anymore. I hated leaving there but the point it ended up proving is not to work your (middle-management) minions to absolute death. And not to work your mid- (to now upper-ish) management self to death going forward either.

I guess we do it for the love of learning, creating, achieving … and affording shit on the weekends to cope.

Sometimes all I want is for everything to change. And then I realize I find a bizarre amount of comfort in everything being so screwed up that I wouldn’t know how to function if it weren’t.

I realize I’m the only person who wears jeans to my Weight Watchers weigh-ins. The leader once made a comment to the group, how she just KNOWS we all have bigger wardrobes than what she sees us in. She referred to some folks having their “lucky” weigh-in outfits.

Frankly I’m sick of looking at the same faces in the same ghastly lightweight tent dresses. I wear jeans on a normal day and that’s what I should be weighted in.

Today’s loss was only 0.2 but that brought me to 15 pounds lost, it gives me my 16-week jewelry and it earns me another five pounds down. Whee. I should have worn denim without so much silver hardware on them. 🙂

So anyway, today was about setting our fall goals. And I realize I “fly by the seat of my pantyhose,” as mom calls it. I don’t plan anything. It’s sheer luck that I’ve made it this far with life, work, weight, car repairs, and every other situation.

My fall goal? Well, I just got a text from a dear friend asking if I could meet her for dinner in New York on Dec. 18. And you know what? I’m going. Flights are $100 one-way to JFK right now. I’ll call my adopted uncle while I’m there and we’ll do it up like we did last year.

And this time I want to get to D.C. The nice thing is, I can take the train everywhere. I’m plotting how to do this. I have to do this. I won’t be able to live if I DON’T do this.

Hmm … Christmas in D.C. or Christmas in Philly? The possibilities are endless. Baltimore, even. Hell, I don’t mind working from there. I have obligations I have to meet, anyway, back here.

And hell, let’s add a 10-pound weight loss goal while we’re at it.

Christmas with people I love. I’ll put on that 10 pounds at the restaurant we’ve picked, I guarantee it. My plan is coming together …

People get cars and vacations and cash yet I can’t even get my vacation days that I earned rolled over.

Had a mini-revelation a minute ago.

So all my friends are having Life Events and I remain in my own little shitshow where the house is literally falling apart (and I have the memo from the management company telling us to stay off the balconies because they are crumbling to prove it) … both cars suck (I live on the edge, going between one car whose brake lines are rusted and one of those lines BROKE Saturday, and the car where the wheel bearings are shot and I just don’t care enough to find the money when Mom’s car is costing me $1,500 THIS MONTH ALONE) … and well, yeah. That Thing I Do All Week is just more fun than words can allow too.

Anyway, an old friend is getting married. I looked up her fiance’s profile today and see they work at the same place. Hmm. I remember her last job, which she loved, and the batshit asshole for whom she worked, who fired her for no real reason. She knew the firing was coming eventually but she was so very loved and so damn competent, she got let go for some fabricated bullshit.

Anyway, she had to be let go to find the new employment situation and, thus, to find her husband-to-be. Mind boggling.

I have been wishing for a long time that I could get back to untouchable status like I had at the job where I spent five years in D.C. I could say or do anything and I felt invincible. Sure, the tip-top brass contained some boneheads, but I had a great department and they worshiped the quicksand I walked on.

And I feel like nothing I can do anywhere else since then gets me back up on that wonderful pedestal where I felt like I was safe. Even though I’m incredibly competent and have about four times the experience I did then, I always wait. For recognition, for people to be in awe of me, for a feeling of comfort that I am so uniquely qualified and suited for my role that I couldn’t get canned if I tried.

Anyway, I’ve been holding on to these shit cars and this shit apartment in the hopes of avoiding something worse. But I look at my friend who was sad to see her job gone, and look at her now. I’m not wishing away my job — just the people who make it more difficult than it needs to be — so that can/should stay.

But if I take one big leap, that can lead to another leap and another, maybe a new home will lead to finding a single/rich/handsome neighbor and having a car that doesn’t worry me during my nutty commute will make me relaxed and friendly when I come home and I’d actually WANT to talk to a hot neighbor and maybe that neighbor is independently wealthy and I won’t WORRY all the goddamned time about being able to afford to take care of mom and me for as long as I need to and …

Yes, so many “ands.” Line ’em up.

Anyway, a giant leap is needed, and I need to be the one to do it instead of having someone else do the pushing.