Confounded

I have become one of Them: the loathed person that always whines about his/her shit lives but never seems to do anything about it, already. An inordinate amount of energy is expended in a) justifying whatever sloth/unhappiness I’m in and/or b) convincing myself its not so bad. Some examples:
I’m not good at my job but make only half-hearted attempts to figure out where I’d rather be. I feel like I settled into this position in desperation after 4 months of unemployment, telling myself it was a good opportunity to get more direct service experience (it is) and front-end work. It was a quick slide into doing the bare minimum, and sometimes not even that, regularly churning up ye old pit of self-loathing. Time away from work is spent on distraction, self-medication, and circular wool-gathering expeditions. And most recently reading hell aka the cheesy romance novel. I am so ashamed.

A lovely, half-stripped chest of drawers has been gathering dust in my room for nearly a year while I dither about color and live out of suitcases. Subsequent inconvenience only partly redeemed by the fact that this bugs the boyfriend so so much. Heh. But seriously- get on that. Except for the whole dresser thing,I like my room a lot- good light, great bed, lamp and rug and yadda yadda. Its now my refuge from the abject squalor that is the rest of my apartment. My roommate, a very good person (if a bit pedantic and suffering mightily from morning volume control issues) cannot throw anything away. Ever. Half of what could be a very cute living room is taken over by his office, not in itself a problem (its hidden behind the piano), except for the avalanche of old coffee cups, dirty dishes, christmas lights, 3! terrariums, dusty photos and stacks of books, magazines, and unopened mail that creep around the edges of the “office” and infect the rest of the space. And I don’t do much about it really, I just let myself get overwhelmed and retreat to the relative cleanliness of my room. I am a study in conflict avoidance, except when I’m the poster child for red-eyed foaming rage. My decorating fantasies have taken an ugly turn from “what if I could rip up the burgundy wall-to-wall and rearrange the furniture?” to “If R. died in a car accident, how long could I wait before throwing this Everest of crap in the street and lighting it on fire?”

Stripped down to its basics, a happy life consists of a satisfying job/career, an apartment you look forward to coming home to, and a partner that makes you laugh, makes you come, and makes you think. Despite my best imitation of a slavering harpy, I have the last one. Now to climb out of this morass and get the other two in line.

Furry Little Hermit

Bindi in the Wild
Originally uploaded by Morally Suspect.

grrrrr....

Babies and shit.

Sorry it’s been a while since I rapped atcha, but heavy shit has been going down over here and le blog bore the brunt of neglect. It was either that or stop feeding/walking /acknowledging the dog, turning her into a furry little hermit. But I am finally fully caffeinated and freshly motivated, so let me bring my legions of readers up to date. (God, I love writing for and referring to “legions of readers” with only the thinnest veneer of irony- don’t have to scratch too hard to reveal that suppurating needy wound.)

Yeah- 2 paragraphs in and we’ve gone all meta AND vague mixed metaphor! I’m focused like a camera, baby. Back to the aforementioned issues!

My Dad embarked on his three-month cross-country bike journey this past Sunday. We threw a surprise party for him Friday, so there were Evites to send, RSVPS to manage, acres of food to prepare, and mothers to assuage. Party was excellent- he was surprised (amazingly, considering our ham-handed deceptions); people danced and loved the food and mingled well. Thanks in part to my mom, I’m a damn good hostess. I can do the meet-and-greet, get the wallflowers on the dance floor, make sure there are enough drinks and plates and empty trashcans. It gives me a chance to talk to everyone and feel like I’m taking care of them. Of course, it always helps when everyone is already delighted to be fêting such a terrific guy.

Party prep, send-off and mom buttressing filled Wednesday through Sunday afternoon. I may also have been cheating on M. Suspect with Wellspoken, which I set up for my dad’s trip. Feel free to check in and watch in horror as his already trim frame gets whittled down to bones draped in spandex. By the time I join him in Minneapolis I fully expect him to weigh less than me and to insist on towing my sorry ass by the end of the first day so we don’t end up in Fargo in mid-November.

Having recently focused my paranoia rays on my love life (which miraculously escaped incineration! Holy shit, what does this mean? Maybe we should be having babies!), last week they cycled round again to my job, or as I call it, “the life I’ve created which I steadfastly refuse to call a career choice because that would imply forethought and maybe control and my god we can’t be having that now, can we?”. Ahh, my job. Even now I warm this chair violating every known rule about responsibility, teamwork, and human decency. And, working at a non-profit, I can’t even slack off in half-hearted defiance of the Man: I am the Man - I literally write my own paycheck and work with little supervision. Yay, employment heaven! Um, no. I have unhappily discovered I SUCK ROYALLY at the whole “works independently thing,” as little accountability translates to absolute minimum output. Add to this a 35-minute commute (against rush hour traffic, true, but I’d still rather be biking or taking the T) and I am not the happiest camper. I have sunk to considering having a god dammed baby, to you know, distract myself, a line of reasoning akin to driving my car off a bridge in hopes of silencing the engine rattle.

The ugly truth is I need to wallow around in the slimy (but warm! and familiar!) ooze of rock bottom before the suffocating need for change becomes too urgent to ignore. I’m getting there, though. Idealist.org sent me a very tempting job opening today, one that’s right up my alley of both experience and interest, and would pay more. There’s also grad school in nonprofit management and the Peace Corps, two options I’ve been talking about for a few years but have yet to take any real steps towards. But I feel hopeful about the possibility of change, which is acres closer than I felt this fall and winter. I believe I’m finished with passively accepting an unhappy situation. Now to convert the paranoia ray to an anti-procrastination laser.

the default insult

The experiment is over. I ended it two days early in a flood of near hysteria and blind panic that left me walking down the street in front of Star Market tilting my head up to keep the tears from spilling down my cheeks. I had convinced myself that this raging vulnerability didn’t matter, that I was strong by showing weakness, but in the end it comes down to still defining this outpouring of emotion as a weakness, a fatal flaw.

The past helps me not at all. Throw your cards on the table, pull your heart out of your chest and offer it to me and I’ll disguise the shudder of pity in a display of appreciation and understanding, but suddenly all my clothes feel too tight and everything looks shabby and I’m out the door and halfway across the country before I breathe again. Knowing I can break something means it’s halfway to broken already.

Gah. I can’t read the above with cringing at the award naked seriousness. This is how rambling moony paragraphs become.... neatly enumerated Lists of Issues! Watch! As she romanticizes and hypes her ordinary plight! Stare! Into the middle distance as she sinks into apathy for months on end! Marvel! At the depth of navel-gazing! Despair! As a satisfying conclusion is narrowly averted!

Drama dictates I end it there, but I promised everyone a List of Issues.

1. Sometimes telling me to relax is like telling a depressive to cheer up, already.
2. I still find you hard to read, though I think I’m getting better.
3. Things with you are so terrifically easy that I‘m forever whipping up a little drama just to feel on familiar ground.
4. your butt
5. your face
6. no, you’re a buttface.