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Life or something like it

Yesterday Was Monday, Right?

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I’m feeling overwhelmed the last few days… too many people tugging at me. Yesterday was an exercise in self-control from start to finish and I’m not convinced I made it through without failing a couple of times. I tossed it up to the fact that I was tired (my weekend was jam-packed and went by entirely too fast) and it was Monday. I have at least four people trying to tell me what to do on any given work day and, at this point, it’s just too much. None of them have any respect for my time or my schedule and most of them are completely incompetent and lack the mental capacity to direct themselves in their daily activities… much less direct me. Continue reading Yesterday Was Monday, Right? →

Life or something like it

Walking Uphill

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At what point do I stop feeling like I’m walking uphill every minute of every day? My body is exhausted and my soul is beaten down. You’d think as much as I work that I’d be getting rich. But I’m not — I’m just getting old.

I try to make adjustments, to do new things, talk to new people, change my routine… but nothing ever really changes. I’m in such a funk that all I really want to do is stay home where there is no one else and just be myself. Everything I do and say has to be filtered or edited to make it “appropriate” for the person I’m talking to or the situation I’m in and I’m sick of it. I just want to be myself. If I feel like shit today, I just want to be able to feel like shit and not have to justify it to fourteen different people.

I want to wake up in the morning with something to look forward to. I want something to be excited about. I wrap myself up in this blanket of work and busy-ness and it’s nothing more than insulation. And it’s not working nearly as well as it used to.

1:00pm. Time to put on my blanket…

Life or something like it, Relationships

Too many “takers”

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Most of the time lately I feel like one (or both) of these two things. What is up with so many people in the world being “takers”? Is there no one left who actually enjoys doing things for those they care about? Or, are there others out there, I am just unfortunate in that I don’t know any of them?

For example, my co-worker (there are only two of us who run the store here) has been out of town for two weeks. Which means, I’ve had the store on my own for that amount of time. This means I have to think of every possible situation that could arise and prepare for it before I open the store each day. If I run out of ones in the register, I’m screwed… folks are getting quarters back for change. If I miss the mailman with our outgoing packages, I have to lock up the store for 10 minutes while I run them to the post office. If I don’t buy food, I have to be hungry. So one day last week, the mailman ran early and I had a ton of packages to ship out. And these eBay folks take their auctions seriously so there’s not putting it off til the next day. A very close friend of mine is here at the store as I package everything up and complain about having to lock up to take them to the post office. He leaves for work (where he only works 3 hours a day, btw) and proceeds to call me around 15 minutes later asking if I’ve gone yet because if I haven’t he wants me to go to the store to pick him up a pack of smokes! Nevermind that he could have offered to drop those packages off for me. Nevermind that I was having to close my store in the middle of the day to do it. Nevermind that he only has to work 3 hours a day.

Or, for another example, the guy I’m seeing (who shall, from this point forward, be known as KB) had a birthday last weekend. He’d asked for a special gift (there was an “outfit” involved) and I was happy to oblige. I went to LOTS of trouble to find the perfect outfit with all the right accessories and details. We had planned to get together to celebrate on Saturday night (the day before his birthday) for several reasons, none of which are all that interesting so I’ll skip that part. Anyway, at the last minute on Saturday night, he gets invited to a bachelor party, says he feels “obligated” to go, so he blows me off to go get really drunk and get multiple lapdances from the stripper. Which I get to hear about IN DETAIL when he gets back as the guys who went share their stories with those who didn’t go. First of all, I don’t enjoy being around people who are really drunk unless I am too. It’s just irritating. Second, our relationship is strained right now because of circumstances that make me less than confident so I really don’t want to be hearing about any stripper. Third, I went to A LOT of trouble for this birthday thing and to just be blown off as if it was nothing really hurt me. I know it was his birthday but I could go my whole life without knowing he’d drop me like that. Anyway, I sucked it up and got together with him after the party and it was great fun (of course it was fun; how can it not be fun when there are outfits?) but I can’t deny that the whole thing left me feeling used.

And I guess that’s the point of this post. I’m not a user. I don’t take people for granted. I appreciate even the smallest gestures made by others. So what the hell is wrong with everyone else? I’m pretty sure it’s my turn now.

Life or something like it

Hauntings

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I’ve been playing the “what if” game a lot lately. I keep trying to figure out how my life got so off track. I’m second-guessing every decision I ever made — big ones, little ones, in-between ones. But mostly, it’s the big ones. For example…

What if I’d gone away to college rather than attending university right here at home?

Well, the downside would be the inevitable negative impact on my relationship with my parents and my brother. We’ve grown really close, as adults, these past few years and I know I wouldn’t have that. On the upside, I most likely would have had many more career opportunities upon graduation and would have thought a little “bigger”.

What if I’d never gotten married?

Wow. Now this one I could go on about forever. So I’ll try and just stick to the one aspect of this question that’s haunting me right now. If I had never gotten married, even if I’d gone to college locally, I so would have moved far, far away from here when I graduated. I would be in the big city somewhere with a completely different life. And the thought of that is very appealing to me right now. Very appealing.

What if I’d never gotten divorced?

Maybe that should read “What if I’d never had reason to get divorced?”. What if we’d met later in life? Or what if he’d meant his vows as much as I meant mine? Or what if I’d been the right girl? We’d be happy. In the traditional sense like my parents are happy. We’d work these ridiculously long hours like we work now, but it wouldn’t matter because at the end of the day, we’d go home together. We’d spend Sundays sleeping late and seeing a double feature at the movies. We’d take trips and talk about taking other trips. We’d make plans.

I haven’t written much lately because I’ve been in such a negative mood and I didn’t want to depress everybody else with my little pity party. It’s just that, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a planner. And it’s so hard to sit back and look at my life now and realize that absolutely nothing is as I thought it would be. And even worse, very little is as I think it should be.

So I struggle now with decisions that should be simple ones because I’m afraid. I don’t trust my own judgment and I’m terrified that one more wrong turn will take me even further into this place I really don’t want to be in. But I know that I have to keep making the choices and taking the chances, because, one of these days, I’m going to get it right.

Life or something like it, Relationships

Circle of Friends

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It seems I’ve gotten into a habit of ranting lately, so here’s a post on the positive side. I’ve realized lately that the absolute best times in my life have been those time when I had a “circle of friends.” By circle of friends, I don’t mean cool ceramic nick-nack (left), I’m talking about a group of friends who hang out together, talk together, laugh (A LOT) together, even cry together. It may sound a little on the hokey side, but if you’ve ever experienced this, you know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been blessed to have two such circles in my life. My first experience with a dynamic like this began my freshman year of college. I went to a university in my hometown and we commuters had a tendency to bond just as the residents did. I met a girl in one of my very first college classes who had gone to a rival high school in my county. We were fast friends… before I knew it we were best friends. She was maid of honor at my wedding a few years later. Anyway, I swear to this day that I had the idea for the TV show “Friends” based on my interaction with our little group. There were 3 girls and 3 guys (weird, huh?). We were all very much individuals but seemed to just click when we were together. I took my first on-my-own out-of-town trips with this bunch — including my first Spring Break in Panama City! We went to concerts. We partied. We crashed. We crammed. We recovered. All together. My best friend had a huge house really close to campus, an exceptionally cool mother we affectionately called “Aunt Martha”, and a dad who was out of town really often for work. So her house became our house. Some of my best stories are from this time in my life. Now, I’m sure this has a lot to do with the actual “time in my life” — my first year in college, first time out on my own, my first job, etc. But even so, these are people I would have done anything for and I know they felt the same about me. These are the people I was with when Kurt Kobain died. The people I couldn’t wait to tell when I got engaged. The people who played a huge part in shaping the person I am today.

My second circle has just recently broken up and I suppose that’s part of the reason for this topic. It’s so much harder to maintain friendships as we get older and even harder still to make new ones. This group was actually a group of co-workers which should tell you right there what kind of people they all are. If we’re willing to spend time together outside of work after spending 10 hours a day together, we must all be a little on the cool side. 😉 This group was different because these were “grown up” friends. Not boring. Not old. Just grown up in that they were all working at “real” jobs, trying to establish themselves (or possibly even having already established themselves) and even still trying to figure out who they were. And let me tell you, I was right there with them. Spending time together outside of work was a much-needed release from our high-pressure jobs at the newspaper and we all came to rely on our monthly get-togethers. But as all good things do, this circle of mine has pretty much come to an end. Two got married, two moved away, and I ran away (from the job, anyway). We still keep in touch, but our real time together has clearly passed.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a cirlce of friends at this very moment, take a minute right now to tell each and every one of them how fabulous they are! And I’m gonna go get a tissue, all this walking down memory lane has me a little misty.