Caterwauling

The irony is almost delicious.

The same group of people who made my life hell after my job/department/business we were building fell apart …

Are now watching the business THEY were building together crumble …

Because one of the people who championed our demise is leaving

OK, that particular irony isn't so sweet.

But this is …

Collective "They" never understood why I was so sad. They thought this was so much better. Now they are starting to see what it's like when a key player quits and good people get cast aside.

Fucking hurts.

I've been gracious. Sharing my expertise and experiences. Giving them the consolation that it took me three months to find on my own.

I actually do like these people. And I think they realize things have to break to be fixed. And that given the opportunity to fix it or let it implode, well, get ready to live with a lot of uncertainty.

I just hope they get how differently I treated them when it was their world falling apart than they did when it was mine.

Because, my world is imploding again too …

I don’t generally de-friend anyone unless they voted for that orange shitgibbon in the White House.

I unfollow, yes. Keep the friendship, stop seeing the updates. Peek in from time to time, move along when there’s nothing to see.

But apparently I’ve just gotten myself de-friended in grand fashion … across every single platform … which I might have noticed sooner had I not muted their updates in the first place.

I will have more to say on this topic another day. Because I was being nice, just lying low.

I’m sick of being nice.

Better delete this RSS feed from your list, too, then …

I never dreamed this would be the last photo I’d take of Sia. Nor that I’d be posting it in her memory, one year to the day that she left this world.

I’ll always remember us dancing and singing at the top of our lungs. Seems so unfair and yet so fitting that The Killers will be back in Miami on what would have been her next birthday. But this past year has been all about coming to terms with the unfair.

I was sobbing in the car Friday, thinking about her. Wondering what’s out there and where she is now. And a Killers song (“Runaways”) came on a station I had never heard play their music. Was that lyric “A blue-eyed girl playing in the sand” a sign from her to me?

The band was far from our only connection. But at a time when all you have left is the hope of a sign, you hold onto it fiercely.

I don’t expect this living with a Sia-shaped hole in my heart to get any easier. And I don’t know that I believe anything comes after all this. But if there is, I hope she’s able to enjoy all the best of it.

Miss you so damn much, Sia. So much.

“Be still
One day you’ll leave
Fearlessness on your sleeve.
When you come back
Tell me what did you see.
Is there something out there for me?”

— The Killers, “Be Still”

I am my own favorite editor.

Seriously.

I said that to one of my boys today after I edited and broadcast five alerts in the space of 50 minutes. (When everyone else was at lunch, of course. I didn’t get any today. But that’s OK. Am fat.)

I like my editing style. I know my subject matter. I’m better at both than most. And to not have Big Brother sending random IMs that have to be followed up with conversations and/or emails, even better.

Seriously. One-man band. Missed it. Bigly.

Now to be fair, I have one sidekick right now who I do actually like. (Another is traveling. Like that one too.) Excellent editor. Super researcher. Kind of a noodge because of said secluded IM/email/meeting person having seven thousand exceptions to half-assed rules that never should have existed in the first place.

(No exceptions to “Goddess can eat at the same time as everyone else.” Of course, maybe Goddess COULD eat for reasons best left complained about only to her momma. But folks who never miss a meal shouldn’t mess with anyone else’s.)

In any event, the one project I didn’t get to on time just fucking kicked my ass. My helper gave it a great start. And I beat the shit out of it in the end. Could have been better. But, garbage in/garbage out.

And it’s not like I wasn’t doing 799 other things while it sat here waiting. Not like there weren’t four frillion emails/IMs/visits in the midst of it. Or more-urgent things than that flaming pile of flammable things.

In any event, the end is in sight. So is food. Hooray.

I like being busy. Because I like getting paid and using my brain.

But I really worry about layoffs and I wonder, who would do so much in so little time with such high quality?

And does anyone even know that or, now that I have to share credit with the barely credible and the incredible, do they know where the load really falls?

I am grateful for my boys who not only make it worthwhile, but I think they may even wait to make sure they get me as their Goddess. So I ain’t mad at the lunch rush. I take it as a compliment that they know the Goddess’s schedule so well.

I’d just give anything for something to gnaw on to help me come down from my “rush” rush.

So someone totally poisoned me against someone who could have helped me …

And I was so poisoned that I said no thanks …

TWICE …

And for them to chastise ME for my “failure” to hit the second deadline — the one that I had set for myself …

Wow.

I know I’ll regret this flaming bridge someday. But I am not going to feel bad about it now. Because I have a written list of things to explore first that folks failed to address.

I’d say color me surprised. But I’ve been in this world a little too long.

Frog has been picked.

I don't ever want to hear or say another word about it.

Now if I can just stop stress-eating lentil chips by the bag as I come down from this crazy high.

It's been intoxicating, to say the least. Now to get used to living with the decision I never, ever dreamed I would make.

My second frog returned to propose again with a bigger ring.

Admittedly, I had said another carat and I’m yours.

I knew he’d never go for it.

But he did go a half-carat higher.

Well, a half-carat higher … accompanied by a request for daily BJs.

I mean, I guess I figured there’d be an extra string attached, sure. But I also thought I was worth some more sparkle.

And let’s be honest. It was never about the sparkle.

After you give up your would-be affair frog-prince to stay with the belching, farting, sneezing, honking, Lysol-cloud riding, micromanaging funky ass, you can’t really tell him to shove a fly up his froggy butt because you just lit your backup lily pad on fire.

I predicted this. And again, I’m not sure it’s worse than moving into the affair frog/prince’s pad. But it was nice to dream of kicking frogpies across the pond even though you knew you couldn’t base your decision on the joy you would derive from it.

Probably a terrible headline and not very creative.

But after I saw an “expert” take one of my favorite writer’s brilliant headlines two weeks ago and make it sound like fuckin’ “See Spot Run” … and I no longer have override capability because it’s only my monkeys but not my circus … and don’t get me started on the content itself … I’m pretty much dead inside.

In any event, I picked my frog prince. My decision surprised even me.

Maybe “decision” is too definitive here.

At least, I either made it a whole lot easier … or a whole lot harder … to decide, should the decision come around again. Still not sure which.

I don’t know that it will come around again. Nor am I sure I want it to. And don’t think I didn’t immediately regret the decision the second I shared it with my frog prince.

The other started ribbiting instantly. (Literally, three minutes later.) And I’m like damn it, frogpies. Pipe the fuck down before I squash your poisonous ass. Jesus.

In any event, I’ve either opened the door to something bigger or I’ve burned the bridge forever.

And for the fact that I honestly cannot tell is probably confirmation that I did the right thing.

… in the context of taking a screenshot …

… in the subcontext of micromanagement because they don’t believe that people who used to run newsrooms, departments or companies could possibly see a stupid task through to completion …

… One more fucking time …

I’m gonna show folks the real context of that word. 

CIRCUMCISION.