Trouble Me

Trouble

(Trouble me) disturb me with all your cares and your worries

(Trouble me) on the days when you feel spent

Why let your shoulders bend

Underneath this burden

When my back is sturdy and strong?

Trouble me

(Speak to me) don't mislead me

The calm I feel means a storm is swelling

(Speak to me) there's no telling where it starts or how it ends

(Speak to me) why are you building this thick brick wall to defend me

(Speak to me) when your silence is my greatest fear?

Why let your shoulders bend

Underneath this burden

When my back is sturdy and strong?

Speak to me

(Let me) have a look inside these eyes while I'm learning

(Let me) please don't hide them just because of tears

(Let me) send you off to sleep with a

"There, there, now stop your turning and tossing"

(Let me) let me know where the hurt is and how to heal

“Trouble Me” by 10,000 Maniacs

Working in Recovery! It’s this new new new thing in my life.

And, when I can completely compartmentalize the shit-storm that is my marriage right now, it’s making me so so happy.

And I bring fun Legos to do together, and I bring aromatherapy and meditation, to help calm and destress. 

Someday soon I will do chair yoga and maybe even bring in massage and acupuncture, if I can get some hours donated. 

I bring my authentic self and my story about how bad it got for me and what I did about it. I get to bring all of me, I love that I don’t have to hide that I’m in recovery, like I feel I have to in the corporate world. 

Mostly though, I bring my warmth and kindness, I bring hope and strength, and hopefully I bring some healing energy into the otherwise bleak world of addiction and hurt where the participants at this sober “respite” house find themselves.

It’s still so new and new things can sometimes be hard and scary, but I’m feeling encouraged because I seem to be catching on pretty quickly. In fact, I got a huge compliment recently, when a fellow staff member and a few of the participants said it seemed like I’d been doing this type of work a lot longer than my short time so far on the job. Hearing this meant the world to me!

Between my normal full-time job and this new part-time job I haven’t had a day off since I got back from the AA Convention I went to in Costa Rica in early May. And I actually don’t have a day off until several more weeks, when I will take one full precious day off both jobs on my birthday in June, but I don’t care because I feel so driven right now to just get the hours and experience. At this pace, I can probably sit the Certified Recovery Peer Specialist exam to get my provisional certification before the end of the year, and then upgrade to full once I’ve finally finished the required 500 hours in early 2026.

It’s a strange and new experience to be so compelled to do something (other than when I used to compulsively drink and self-destruct) and it may sound strange but I really do feel God is leading me. It’s like something has clicked into alignment and it thrills me to think I may have work I can find interesting and meaningful enough to want to do until I reach my full retirement age at 67. 

15 more years of working seemed like a prison sentence if I had to do the same old corporate IT gig, but now I have some hope with this “second career” I’ve already started. Like the very fact of my sobriety, it kind of amazes me! What God and I have been able to do together.

Making the Most of Marvelous March

Starting with new team and role at work, a visit from my younger brother, 5 days of the CRPS (Certified Recovery Peer Specialist) training that I hope will lead into my 2nd career (and provide my way out of corporate job), a fun luau-themed AA banquet with my other brother, 2 half marathon races, and the most marvelous weather imaginable. My life & my heart are full! 

After over 15 years living here, I’ve decided this is my favorite month.

😎

Finally, February

Now that it’s February, there are exactly 19 more work days before I get to move to my new team and back to being a Lead Business Analyst, instead of Manager; fewer if I were to take any impromptu PTO days or become sick. Reader, I have been counting days since DECEMBER!

And that’s all I’ll say about that, just in case of any future readers, especially if I make my blog public again someday (turning it private/invite only, like it used to be for years, was a decision I made after becoming a manager).

So, there is relief on the horizon (and in fact, already felt) in my working life, and things have also improved so much with how my husband and I are getting along. Part of that may be how I’m seeing some old situations and resentments with new eyes, helped along by a fabulous new therapist I’ve been seeing since November. Now there’s just this dumpster fire of our democracy since Trump took office.

It feels like January was the worst month; but I’ve lived long enough to know that even when you think it’s the worst, unfortunately it can always get worse. So, hang on to your hat, goes the outdated expression.

Meanwhile I did the Safety Harbor Best Damn Race this morning for the 9th time, the half-marathon I’ve done the most times since I started running again in 2016. It would have been #10 but - COVID. I improved my time by over 3 minutes from the Lousiana race despite a lot of walking, and I didn’t feel great but I did it! Now onto the next half-marathon, the St.Petersburg Distance Classic, next weekend.

The (Ex)Boyfriend Race, in Baton Rouge, Lousiania!

Many years ago my Mod Vespa-driving drummer boyfriend gave me this poster of a band he was very much into, among others. It hung on the wall of my teenage bedroom, and continued to hang there when the room was gleefully claimed by my younger sister, shortly after I went to college.

Somewhere along the line, she got the poster framed and it moved to Texas with her. Recently she decided she didn’t have space for it on the walls of her new house, and so she became fixated on giving it back to me. Not wanting to ship it as is, or dismantle to send, we concocted a reason to meet half way between our homes: enter the Lousiana Marathon weekend in beautiful Baton Rouge! Although we *only* do the half-marathon. We call it (or I am calling it now) the ex-boyfriend race since we owe it all to him.

We actually did this last year, along with my sister’s husband (his very first half marathon!) and now in a few short days we are doing it again. We had such fun last year and are only hoping we have same or similar relatively good weather this year (it was cold but very sunny, as you can see).

It was a miserable 12 hours driving to Baton Rouge and back by myself last time, so this time I’m flying; also because we have no poster to exchange this year. The whole thing got my sister back into running and my hope is we now regularly start running races like this together. We did the Rock ‘n Roll San Antonio race together in early December and I think I’ve convinced her to come down here to Florida for another half-marathon in March. 

And to think it was all started by a 30+year old poster given to me by an ex-boyfriend! I just can’t help it, this continues to tickle me.

🥸

Formed - And Deformed - By the Same Forces

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

~ Philip Larkin “This Be The Verse”

My fraught relationship with my sister. I’d write at greater length about it, after returning from San Antonio where we stayed with her and her husband at their home, for “Hirning Sibling Xmas 2024!” - but it would surely only get me in trouble. These days I open my mouth and it seems to create more problems for us, so I am learning to shut it.

But all 4 of us sibs are, along with being lots of wonderful things: impatient, hyper-critical, defensive. Sister’s husband offered “too competitive” also! I don’t think that’s one of the main problems but that’s in the toxic mix as well for sure…and I appreciate the contribution to the self-analysis.

🤓

And we have our parents to thank for all of it, of course! Ah well, we will try to do better next year or at least, speaking strictly for myself (which recovery has taught me to do), I can promise that I will. But sometimes it sort of feels like the damage done is too great, the patterns of behaving and reacting, are too deeply entrenched by now, that I will never transcend them.

I do love my siblings so much, and the discord was only a small fraction of the whole week we spent together, it’s just that the blow out argument between me and Stephanie happened right before my older brother and I left town, and slightly filled my head for the two-days drive back. 

It left me ruminating and feeling a little depressed at the familial dysfunction, to be honest. But, I’m guessing it’s probably not much worse than many other families!

And speaking again, just for myself, I feel like I have a lot of work to do to get better. Focus for the new year and I can try to approach it with enthusiasm and self-compassion, taking it one step at at time, which will help with feelings of overwhelm. What are we here on this earth for anyway, if not to learn more about ourselves and the people we love, with whom we so badly want to connect?

The Dress…

…that made it to a million corporate Christmas parties! 

Well, ok at least three. And I have the photos to prove it, starting with the oldest when Erin Riley and I shared a cubicle at NM, where we were both placed on assignment, shortly after completing COBOL programming boot camp (which launched my IT career), and we adored each other so we requested the professional photographer take this photo of us (in addition to the ones we took with our dates) at the Compuware Christmas party.

I remember being so impressed with these parties, at least for the first few years. The decorations, the food, the drinks, the dancing! It was the late 90s and the IT money was flowing for sure.

The first one I recall was held at the fancy-pants Pfister hotel in downtown Milwaukee (and husband, also working for Compuware, attended with me and so we splurged on a room for the night); the second one was at the new Midwest Express convention center also in downtown Milwaukee. I think this first photo is from the second one and so it would have been December of 1999, if I’m not mistaken.

Fast-forward to 2013 when I attended the Catalina holiday party as my friend Danielle’s “plus-one” (being a contractor at the time, not an employee of Catalina, I did not have my own invitation). Danielle to my right, our manager Michelle to my left. At a very cool event space in downtown Tampa that used to be a bank (I think).

And finally, the dress reappears at this most recent party - 

I have no idea what decade the dress is from but it feels very 50s housewife to me. I’m pretty sure I got it at a thrift store or rummage sale in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee in 1995. 

Then there was another dress also bought second hand, I think for $1 at a thrift store in Ormond Beach, FL with my friend who used to live there. I loved it but sadly, it never made an appearance at a holiday party because I could never get skinny enough at the right time and finally I realized it was too threadbare to wear anyway, so I re-donated it. But damn, that would have been a fun dress to wear to a holiday party!

Worth It

Bonus Day! This is always the first Friday in December. It’s also the day our holiday party is held (they want us all in a good mood). So, it’s pretty much the adult equivalent of Christmas morning - Santa comes to town, signified by the extra money we find automatically deposited to our bank accounts.

We’re told it’s never guaranteed but I’m sure I’m not alone in how I’ve come to expect it, as the company has always been profitable and so we’ve gotten a bonus every year, for the 10 years I’ve been employed there now. 

And I’m very grateful. I know I’m paid quite well for the work I do, and I’m also fully aware of how lucky I was to stumble into this IT career, all those years ago. It has made so many things possible for me.

And yet.

Even with those extra dollars showing in my bank balance and the nice party this evening, and the overall comfort and security this job gives me, I’m struggling more and more to feel it is all worth it.

I recently read this book and it made me feel a new urgency to do more with the days and weeks I have left in this one lifetime. I’m 52 years old.

Can I really wait until 60 to break free from this corporate job that feels to me like a prison sometimes? Or do I need to make a move sooner because there is literally no time to waste? I remember hearing the phrase “golden handcuffs” from someone at Northwestern Mutual (NM) in Milwaukee, early on in my career and I think I’m understanding that now in a new way. 

What will our hero do?

😄😎😄

Stay tuned in 2025 to find out!

Making (And Not Unmaking) Another (Big Life) Decision

 

This is what people see on work zoom calls when I have my camera off (which would be every zoom call if it were up to me); a professional headshot taken a couple years after I joined the AML IT team at Raymond James, and the same day I received the service award, given to me by then CEO Paul Reilly and RJ founder Tom James.

Despite appearances such as this, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with my corporate career in Information Technology. With only English degrees and thinking I’d end up being a professor or working for some sort of non-profit, Corporate America is not at all where I expected to find myself and certainly not where I thought I’d stay all these years (by April of 2028 it will have been 30 years!). 

And yet, I felt I had come to some sort of peace with it, upon joining RJ in March of 2015 and then shortly after when I finally quit drinking (it amazes me that this is almost 10 years ago now!). By staying sober for more than a few weeks or a month at a time, I learned that a large part of hating my job was due to the way my active alcoholism sort of poisoned my entire life. 

It seems pretty obvious I know, but what can I say, I’m a slower learner? I could only fully realize this truth for myself by finally doing what I had needed to do for years. I feel like I got sober just in time.

I settled into my role on the IT team for one of the most interesting business areas I’d ever worked in before - Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crime Management. It felt like we were doing something with a higher purpose than just to make the firm money, we were fighting the bad guys! And the focus on patterns in data deemed “suspicious” signifying something nefarious might be going on, and systems used to detect and investigate such situations I also found more interesting than systems at my other jobs.

I became a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and as a Senior, then Lead Business Analyst, I gained the trust and respect of our business partners; not every day was perfect but I was doing interesting work and getting paid well to do it. Life was good!

Fast forward about 8 years when an opportunity came for me to step into management last Fall and I took it. I had some fear that it was going to be way more work and responsibility for not that much more money and well - turns out I was right!

So, after giving it about a year, I’m going to soon transition back to being just “Lead BA” and also moving to another team. I’m making this move to escape a manager I wasn’t wild about reporting to and also the feelings of being sunk and despairing at systems that require so much hand-holding and no resources to truly fix them. Always being asked to do too much with too little and under ridiculous timelines. 

I just don’t want to do it anymore and I actually sort of felt like I would simply leave the firm if they didn’t let me leave the team. Fortunately, RJ is really good about letting employees have some control over their own careers and allowing moves like this one I’m making. 

I feel so much relief thinking about leaving those particular system problems behind and getting a fresh start with a new team, that I know it’s the right decision. Of course there will be new problems with the new team, new projects and less than perfect systems that I will have to learn from scratch. 

But at least they will be new! Sometimes all we want is have something new in our lives. And I’m actually really proud of myself, because I was pretty miserable and I did something about it. I decided not to suffer in silence, I chose to have the uncomfortable conversations that were part of making this change, and I’ll weather any further discomfort of final weeks as manager until they let me make the transition to the new team and back to the BA role. It will all be worth it! 

 

No Words

 Only feelings, of grief, anger, disbelief, fear and shame.

Monsters

It is quite possible that a week from tomorrow, we the American people will re-elect that monstrous man, despite all the best efforts even of mostly apolitical people like me (who at the urging of my very political older brother briefly went knocking on doors last weekend for Amendment 4 and did phone banking for Harris/Walz a couple times), to make it go differently. 

And in the aftermath, if we were to let him and his ilk turn this beautiful flawed country into the fascist far-right state they for some reason want, we would be Monsters then also.

For a thoughtful discussion on “art monsters” who at least have the small redemption of producing great works of art, unlike Trump, see Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which I recently read.