Boring Blog Post

It recently occurred to me that I'd best NOT post all my attempts at witty remarks and life updates on FaceBook or else I'll never write another blog post again.

Because I'm back at work doing a professional IT job not that wildly different from what I did in Milwaukee and - let's face it - while I'm still enjoying it, the routine is boring. 9am-5pm (with lunch eaten at desk, invariably), Monday through Friday I'm expected to be a specific somewhere, doing a specific something. And, although I'm embracing the sense of purpose re-instilled in my life, the resurrection of structure I was sadly, sorely missing (and loving the resumption of regular, decent-sized paychecks, quite frankly), it is a little less exciting when you wake up in the morning knowing basically what shape the day will take. But, it's also largely reassuring. That not knowing can cause anxiety, especially for one as already-prone to it as me.

I had a realization on my 18.2-mile, mundane drive home from work this evening, somewhere between filling the car with gas and stopping to get a take-out pizza for dinner: I'm a full-blown suburban commuter now. I drive from a smaller community to a larger one for work, and back again. Just like a lot of people I used to mildly disdain, when we lived in the city and only drove 3 miles along the lovely Milwaukee lakeshore to get to the place where we made the money to support our lives.

I used to wonder what made it worth it to them. I genuinely wanted to know if these people who faced all kinds of ridiculous Interstate traffic on a daily basis, had ever really counted the cost of gas (and all that time! Quality of Life, for heaven's sake!) versus lower housing costs (real or perceived), increased safety (again, real or merely perceived), and more space for the kids. Or was it just habit, what they grew up with and were used to? Having been raised in an urban environment and choosing to live urban for most of my adult life so far, I had all kinds of opinions and judgments about this. To my mind at that time, a commute like that just wasn't worth it and I fundamentally couldn't relate to those who made that choice for themselves.

Granted I don't have to drive Interstate now (not like I did during my brief tenure at Fucking-ClickBooth - but that's another story, of bitterness, that I unfortunately don't have enough personal growth to let go of yet). I don't do the kind of drive that those nice suburban people at NM still undertake, on a daily basis. But, because I literally breathe a sigh of relief when leaving the densest part of the drive on Highway 41 and tonight while rounding the corner of Laurel onto Bayshore drive and seeing the greater expanses of green and palm trees, I felt myself relaxing further, I think that I may finally get it. It's this feeling of retreat from so much hectic-ness and the understanding that increased space really does have benefits, that I never would have been able to grasp if I wasn't in this position now.

But the best part of the realization is a reminder of the revolutionary thought I had ages ago, that I think I already blogged about, but which I'm not even sure where it came from - "maybe all my ideas are wrong?!" - in full, real-life illustration. That you can challenge even the most dearly-regarded assumptions or long-held beliefs about what's right or wrong, and thereby expand your thinking and perspective. It's a fantastic lesson, that jibes with the fantastic books I've been reading lately (and listening to on CD*, during my "long" commute). It's a lesson that I apparently have to keep learning, in new and ever more evocative ways.

Now, I'm not suddenly converted to commuter-ism and endorsing a lifestyle that involves burning even more fossil fuels than is necessary (hello BP oil spill!), really I'm not. I'm newly appreciating our original choice to live away from the city of Sarasota, even while I'm struggling with the distance and talking with David on a daily basis about moving closer to my work. Sometimes that simply involves me complaining about how much driving I'm doing these days (I figure if logic doesn't work, I'll just wear him down with whining).

I even looked at an apartment that's walking distance to my job, which would leave our one car for him, who admittedly still has a sort-of-kind-of-job just a couple miles away from where we currently live, which he's been green-biking to ever since I started. We're in that painful process of negotiation (shall I do the commute or should he? maybe he can soon arrange to tele-commute most days?) and who knows what will happen. But we know that it doesn't make sense to move until I'm past my 3-month "probationary period" at the new job (ends August 18th), even though it's going so well I'd be willing to risk it, especially if we found a great place.

And then today I tried an alternate route recommended by David's friend Ed, the guy who brought us down to this particular part of Florida, with whom we had dinner last Saturday. We took him to his favorite Thai restaurant in the southern part of Sarasota county (not Sarasota city proper, which is quite small, actually), to thank him again for housing us when we first arrived in FL - how much it meant to us, to have a safe place to land. He's very knowledgeable about all things Sarasota, including some neighborhoods closer to my work (sort of half way inbetween), of which I wasn't aware. And all the neighborhoods to avoid, of course.

The recommended shortcut was pure magic...gone were the endless billboards and fast-food establishments that scream at you to stop and buy something, gone were the masses of cars to contend with, and the non-stop concrete and traffic lights. Instead it was houses on either side of the still 45-mile an hour two-lane road, and lots of green space, including palm trees! Genius, as I told my husband upon returning home. It just might save my soul, until we move to Sarasota.

My final thought about my newly employed status, what I miss most about not-working, or even the Census job I did for two or three whole weeks, is the flexibility. Now I have to figure out where in my schedule I can fit a yoga class, or meditation, and I'm still pondering when in the hell I can start back up with jogging, given the near-constant heat. And dinner is always a challenge (witness the take-out dinner mentioned above). But it's worth it, and I'm grateful. We'll save money and get to Panama eventually, and in the meantime we'll see what else I can make of it.

*For a great read that's all about "seeing things anew" read (or listen to) Emotional Alchemy by Tara Bennett-Goleman. I just sent a copy to my older brother for his birthday, pray God he reads it, cuz it's good!

Word-Girl (Where Have U Been?)

I was Word-Girl at my old job. This meant that, among the techy-geeks and businessy-folks with whom I worked at Northwestern Mutual (NM), I was at least sometimes acknowledged as the resident, self-appointed language expert. Or, to put it more realistically, I was known to my friends and co-workers as a person who cared deeply about things like spelling, grammar, literature and just generally finding the right word for any particular situation. The kind of person who would stop the conversation to say "oooh that's a good word" as they came up, and who relished the chance to spell a word for someone or - better yet - edit an email or entire document.

My husband still routinely asks me for help with spelling words, and I was tacit Word-Girl again for a milli-second at my last job as an Executive Recruiter, where I was asked how to spell - no joke - words like "informational" and "situation." Not a lot of PhDs at the Executive Recruiting gig, god love 'em, those salesy people.

Not the longer, more complicated words that I learned to love, while studying for the GRE, during and after college, the words that roll off the tongue with so much pleasure and more precise meaning than the shorter, more general versions. Words like "recalcitrant," "languorous," "mitigate," "anomaly" or even "in toto" (for you Latin-lovers and mentioned in homage of my equally literate ex-boss Rich).
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/recalcitrant
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/languorous
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mitigate
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anomaly
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in+toto

Words I used (use) not to puff myself up or put anyone else down, not to intimidate or act like I'm-so-much-smarter, but just because I enjoy them. Does anyone else out there who loves words like me understand?!? I admit to still having trouble with the word "occasional" (I always want to spell it with TWO Ss) and one other word with double consonants that I can't remember off-hand, and I'm sure there's more than one mis-spelling in my blog posts ("mea culpa" for the Latin-lovers among my readers).

And then there's those words that can be spelled two different ways, and both are correct, such as the word mis-spelling itself - is it misspelling or mis-spelling - to hyphen or to not?! Dictionary.com isn't conclusive. (And don't even get me started on the English versions of words, like "realised," "favourite, " and "colour" etc.).

But I love it all, and I know that this is what I should be doing with my life, because they say when you're doing something and you lose track of time, it is your calling, no longer just a job. Now if only someone would pay me to spell words for them or critique their emails, I'd be set....

I aspire to become Word-Girl again, at the job I will hopefully get, as a QA Analyst at Jackson Hewitt. A place that, as I wrote to an old co-worker, and after my traumatic experience at Fucking ClickBooth (the only way I can think of it, from now on, almost like its own acronym! FCB) - "reminded me so much of NM I could have wept."

Just because (as I went on to write her) "I felt like I could fit in there, the atmosphere was so familiar" and since I am resigned to the fact that I have to work in Florida for a while, I am seeking a place to call work-home again, and I so hope that place could be it.

My final thoughts on the subject, in the email to my dear old co-worker/friend: "I guess I miss the familiar, at least when it comes to having to go to work again. I love the Florida Flip-Flop lifestyle but in terms of working, it sucks and I miss NM. It sounds crazy, when I always wanted to leave that place, but does that make any kind of sense?! I don't really expect u to understand, I'm just venting, or something. I never knew how good I had it, is what it comes down to."

And ah, there's the lesson again. There are words and there are Words, but there is no word quite like Regret. Or Hindsight. And no one (usually) needs any help to spell them.

The Beautiful, The Bizarre and The Awful

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.
~ John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

"But, umm, I don't know, you know, something's, like, crossed over in me and I can't go back, I mean I just couldn't live."
~ Thelma, from the movie "Thelma & Louise"

Life is such a strange combination of beautiful, bizarre and awful that it seems to have forced me awake at 5am on a Sunday morning and I can't figure out what else to do but write about it, so here I am.

It's bizarre to be living in a house with no furniture. It's beautiful to be up early to see the summer sun rise, but bizarre how I can't sleep lately and also am not eating properly. Quitting my job appears to have been a great diet plan, because I finally hit my Weight Watchers "Goal Weight" (hey, I am BMI-compliant for the first time in years! see hyperlink below), will now do 6 weeks of "Maintenance" and then become a "Lifetime Member," at which time I can finally stop paying the monthly fee, which will be great cuz we really can't afford it any longer.
http://www.findmybmi.com/

And I don't get much out of Weight Watchers meetings anymore anyway, since so many attendees apparently eat the highly-processed plastic Weight Watchers "food" that I just can't do, and seem to not know much about organic/natural options. But it was a little bizarre, after years of being overweight, to go to lunch on Friday with a friend who weighs about 80 pounds and be lectured about eating more, as I picked at my chicken ceasar salad.

It's awful to be giving up my cat, but beautiful to feel all this love for him, rising up even more as I let go. It's awful that an ex-boyfriend appeared in my dream last night but I refuse to feel guilty, since I didn't have any control over it! He was actually in a bit part of a play that was being put on in a park in Portland, Oregon which is somewhat bizarre because he is not an actor (so far as I know), and lives in Seattle (again, so far as I know). But it was scary and awful to worry that my husband would see him, realize who the bit-part actor was (still in the dream), and it would trigger feelings of insecurity in him and we'd fight (again). Brings to mind a great song by the LemonHeads - http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/lemonheads/bit_part.html

But I think I know why I dreamt it, which is kind of beautiful, how the mind can piece things together, synthesize random thoughts we have during the day into some whole new story we didn't even realize we were capable of telling: the bizarre insight I had about the "work world" while meeting my friend downtown for lunch, that all the people rushing off to their important meetings, and taking themselves and the work so seriously were really just actors on a stage in the most ridiculous and boring play ever. (No offense to any old co-workers reading this, but I just found most of it really boring.) I probably also dreamt it cuz I've had the song "Endless Love" on a loop in my head ever since my last post, and that's a song I associate with my beautiful-and-awful first love.

It's beautiful that I get to go to Seattle in August and all the siblings will be in town at the same time, to celebrate my mother's 65th birthday. But it's awful that David and I have about five business days to set up a whole new relationship with a property management company IF we don't go with renting to a friend who can only take the place in September if she can sub-lease her current apartment, an iffy prospect in what looks like a bad rental market.

And it's a bit bizarre and awful how this has changed our friendship already, is causing tensions I should have foreseen but didn't or thought we could rise above, if they happened. But to be more honest, there's tensions also because I've been giving her and her boyfriend WAY too much advice about their relationship, because I think I "know" something, because David and I did so much couples-counseling in the past.

I think there's a quote that I, of course, can't locate now, about how that's one of the most dangerous things: someone who thinks they know something. Someone who is so sure, and therefore a little bit blinded to those pieces of information she is missing for a decent view of the "whole picture." (See my other post "Robert S. McNamara's Death and The Evil of War" and maybe I should take my own advice huh?)

When I get too excited about sharing my "widsom" I sometimes cross boundaries and step on toes and this is maybe also why I'm up with anxiety at 5am, because I have to fix things with her today, as well as give away my cat. Oh my god, this is hard, have I mentioned that yet?

But David and I are still full-steam ahead with this project and we will get there, one way or another. Because in fact, when asked the question would I really turn this ship around now (if I even could), my reply was that it feels like there is no "there" to return to, it's been obliterated for me somehow. And so I keep thinking of that Thelma & Louise quote, which doesn't mean we are driving off a cliff, don't worry! Although it certainly feels like we are some days, and with weightier decisions like who the hell is going to rent from us in September, and how we'll manage the property long-distance.

I just have to believe that something is going to work out for us, but it's so awful not knowing what that will be exactly...and so I'm dwelling on the beautiful, the bizarre and the awful and it's still not even 7am, too early to wake my husband for him to distract me from my crazy thoughts, this monkey-mind that is acting up a lot lately. So maybe it's OK for me to stop being all intense and angst-ridden and go do something mundane like make a pot of coffee and sit on our balcony to listen to the birds' cacophony. Which is kind of beautiful actually. :)