100 words a day

Maybe it’s true that we are greater than the sum of our parts. But when you are getting to know someone, it’s only the parts that are presented.  It’s those initial pieces that are critical because the whole won’t be revealed for some time.  How much patience should you have? How much time do you invest before you decide to put your money down?

Relationships can be like cars.  Once they’re in motion, they can continue with little effort. Given proper nourishment, they should be able to run indefinitely.

But if there’s no initial spark, the car will never start.

Maybe this time I should just listen to the universe and wait instructions.   I think it’s actually screaming, but from here, safe within my tortoise shell home, I only hear muffled noises.

Someone was handed to me tonight.  Someone shockingly close to what I’ve wanted. Not perfectly, but on the interesting side of close.  So the question is: what’s next? A question easily answered by most.  Something that should be simple for me becomes elusive, complicated. And so the battle of the heart and head begins again.  And I sit on the sidelines, unsure of whose side I am on.

Does optimism imply a certain degree of negativity?  If you say the gas tank is half full are you acknowledging that it could be fuller?  Wouldn’t any description of that gas tank imply some element of wanting? 

Should we be striving for enough? Is “enough” possible to achieve? Is “enough” definable?   What happens when you are truly satisfied?  Do you stop yearning? Stop driving? Stop altogether?

I don’t want to ever be completely satisfied with the status quo.  Does that mean there’s certain degree of self-sabotage in my efforts: a clichéd fear of failure masquerading as a fear of success?

My grandmother has always been a live wire.  Erratic and passionate, she raised a daughter who became her polar opposite.  My mother grew up fast when she saw her own mother douse herself with pure alcohol and then strike a match. 

My mother was a serious, sad, and lonely little girl.  Unbridled emotion was her biggest fear.  She was her mother’s guardian in all but the legal sense.

And me?  My mission is the middle ground. And usually, I fail.  I can’t find the right balance, so I sit upon a pendulum and swing back and forth from both extremes. 

Apparently losing over $100,000 in a contract isn’t enough for these people to figure out I need help. I want help and I want out. But those alongside you in a jungle cannot offer you a way out. If they knew of one, they wouldn’t be there with you.

They’ve learned to tolerate the abuse and the disrespect. But I refuse to be beaten down more than I already have been.

I know that I cannot ask to leave this project right now, but I can leave the company. And that is what I must do, sooner rather than later.

It seems that the universe has decided that it’s time for me to go back to the sea to find another fish.  I lost (threw away?) my fishing rod years ago and have been too lazy (scared?) to retrieve it.   In the meantime, I was enjoying the view.  I convinced myself that I didn’t need fish to satisfy my hunger (though my stomach would violently disagree).

And in one email, the universe nudged me, saying “I think it’s time you tried again.” I guess the universe understands that if I wait until I am ready, I might die of starvation.

A distant cousin whom I hadn’t seen in a while asked me about my dad.  As soon as he said it, he quickly apologized and said I didn’t have to answer.  It was so refreshing.  Not the apology, which I did appreciate, but the question.  

Later, when the conversation drifted towards football, he mentioned, “You’re dad was a big Giants fan.”  Again, I was struck by the casual reference.  There was neither hemming nor hawing.  He was not donning kid gloves.  It was as if he was talking about the weather.

It was casual and blasé and I loved it.    

Secrets sometimes get easier to keep the longer you hold on to them. You almost forget you have them.  But sometimes they become more difficult.   Tonight I finally opened up and let go.

It had been such a long time since I had to share the secret, I had gotten rusty.  For years it was common knowledge. Unfortunately that knowledge doesn’t magically transfer to the newcomers in your life. They remain in the dark until you turn the light on.

My delivery was awkward and slightly spastic.  In the instant the sentence was spoken, the invisible wall between us disappeared.

I refuse to google him.  I know his name and that he’s not a bad email sparring partner. And that’s it.  And I love the mystery of it all: a true clean slate. 

The web has stolen our sense of intrigue.  With just the touch of a button, secrets are exposed, personal information revealed.  Awkward intimacies abound everywhere; dynamics are oddly warped when one person knows more than the other.

I don’t want to be prepared.  I want the learning to be done together, an act of common sharing.  I don’t want to hear his story from a search engine.   

I wonder if he understands exactly what my email said.  My intentions were very specific and calculated.  I wanted the first brush stroke on the blank canvas that would become me to be buoyant, bright, and bold.

It said, don’t expect me to be like everyone else.  It said, please don’t yell at me a year from now saying why can’t you just be normal.  It said, I am warning you now.

He might have thought the note was for him: me, a casual stranger, simply trying to get to know him better.  But truthfully, it was a naked self-portrait.

I caught the last five minutes of an interview on the Today Show with the President of Brown University. She spoke of the importance of failure in one’s life: failure as a vital ingredient to success. I love this idea in theory, but it’s a little too timely for me to appreciate just yet.

I am currently free-falling down the corporate ladder and I am not even trying to reach out to grab a rung.  But once you’ve decided that the ladder placed conveniently before you is no longer attractive, how do you descend with your dignity and ego intact?

She wants me to explain his behavior.  As if I could understand it.  Defend it.   I can’t.  And I can’t bear being asked anymore.  She claims I am trying to silence her, but it’s what’s left unsaid that is the cruelest.  She’ll start with “I just don’t understand…” and then trail off.  But I know how each statement ends:  why he doesn’t talk to you,   why he doesn’t call you, why he has all but forgotten you?

And yet she gets mad at me when I ask her to stop? She’s doesn’t understand that it’s not censorship, it’s self preservation.

My ex-boyfriend always thought the grass was greener on the other side.  After we broke up I wrote “the grass is just fine on this side” in permanent marker on my leather CD holder. To this day whenever I see that holder I smile.

Now I think he may have been onto something. The truth is that the grass on this side is fine because I can always find the (sometimes elusive) silver lining.  But what if the grass could be better? What if it could sparkle?

That’s the thought I rarely have. That’s the seed I need to sow.

Years ago my mom and I got our hair done for my cousin’s wedding. Both hair styles were awful and neither of us said a thing. The salon was only clued in to the situation when my mom almost passed out while paying.

I know there are people who complain when they receive bad service. I never do. I chalk bad service up to the “small stuff” that we’re not supposed to sweat. I never figured out that how I am treated is not small.

It’s not my mom’s fault. How could she teach me a lesson she never learned?

I love getting my hair cut. When I’m there, my vision completely obfuscated by the wet hair in my eyes, there’s nothing else I could be doing. There’s a certain freedom in that. The perpetual voice pestering me about the other things I should be doing is strangely silent. There are no paintings I should be making. No stories to be writing. The silver ball that ricochets in the pinball machine of my mind takes a breather and pauses for a moment.

For those thirty minutes I am no where else. I’m just sitting there. Taking care of my hair.

When I was five my father signed me up to play soccer. I was the only girl in a sea of boys, but that wasn’t why I stood out. I was the one who was always running away from the ball.

My dad supported me when I began playing volleyball. He thought being on a team was an invaluable experience. Everything is shared on a team. No one gets all of the blame or all of the glory. You ask for help, without hesitation, and you get it.

If only help was as easy to ask for off the court.

I’ve never understood why official business documents are so rife with what I call “Crap English.”  It’s as if the arrogant authors feel as though they are above laws of grammar.   Today I was reviewing a functional requirements document when I read this phrase:

“… to support an ease of understanding”

What???  This business babble hurts my brain.  Not only was the statement written but it made it into the final version of the document.

(As a note, I love that Microsoft Word has underlined “to” in green, as if the statement didn’t screech terrible grammar goof all by itself.)

Two weeks ago she was relentless in pursuing me, emphatically describing a bureaucratic utopia never seen before. Unfortunately for her, I am fairly stubborn and have lost the over-the-top impressionability of my teenage years. I turned down the job offer because I have decided that I want more out of a job than a few extra cents.

I saw her tonight at dinner. With just one glass of wine the came the truth. She told me I made the right decision and that I wouldn’t have been treated well. Never trust anything a recruiter says, even when it’s a friend.

I knew the conversation wasn’t going to end well when he started with, “We think it was a bit over-analyzed.” Over-analyzed? We’ve worked together for over six years. You would think that we would work together well. We don’t.

The majority of our professional conversations essentially follow the same format:

Him: Comment
Me: Question?
Him: Backpedal (subtext: she’s defensive)
Me: Stop backpedaling! (subtext: I’m NOT being defensive)

I’ve tried to discuss this pattern with him, but we’re too polite. We clumsily waltz around the topic until we tire of the dance. Misunderstood and frustrated, we end exactly where we began.

There’s no such thing as “wiping the slate clean.” The only clean slates in my life seem to be the ones that haven’t been written on yet.

It’s odd what happens in the presence of familiar faces, especially if they are long-forgotten ones. You can’t help but revert a bit.  Become the person you were when you last knew them. But Time is a tricky and wise fellow. He can illuminate scenes left in shadow with just a flicker of his finger. And you don’t always like what he has to show you or understand why he hasn’t come sooner.

No one can predict the future. And if you could, would you even want to?  What if what you saw was bleak and disappointing, would you have the courage to continue? What if it was full of magical moon pies and powerful pixies, would you have the patience to endure the present.

I spent the night inside of a time capsule. Familiar faces I haven’t seen in five years. Stories I’d lived but since forgotten.  No one would have guessed that this is what would reunite us. We’ve scattered and splintered, but we all returned. For one night.  For them.

I spoke to an old friend today, a mother of three.  Amidst casual conversation, she asked me what I wanted to do next and I had no answer.  She prodded me,  asking me where I wanted to be in three years. Three years. That’s been one of my problems. I never think long term like that.  I never set actual goals that I really care about. Mostly it’s because I fear my true dreams are unachievable.  A huge intimidating chasm lies between where I am now and where I want to be. A chasm, I fear, that I cannot bridge.

Something happened at the Pentagon today. The Metro conductor made a casual announcement that there would be no bus service this afternoon from the Pentagon.  I usually don’t hear these messages because of my inability to read and hear PA announcements at the same time.  However, I heard “Pentagon” and “Bus” two very critical buzz words during my commute home.

I eventually found my bus. The ride home was filled with speculation.  Tomorrow I’L look online to see what happened.  But if I know the Pentagon, there won’t be anything in the news; that is, unless someone blogs about it.

I’m speechless at how well she knows me. I have nothing to say. She points out my tone and refuses to drive the conversation past what I was hoping to be a negligible speed bump. My silence does nothing to dissuade her. She rams into it with the force and grace of a bull. I hadn’t planned on getting into it. I hadn’t planned on caring. I wasn’t sure if I did anymore.

Seriously, how long do we have to hold on the past? I thought I was the one with the sticky fingers. But I’m not so sure anymore.

She didn’t realize that she was giving me such singularly terrible advice.  She told me that I shouldn’t hold out for a great job, I should settle for a semi-mediocre one.  She rationalized that I would enjoy a semi-mediocre job more than the wholly-mediocre job that I currently have.

“Finding your dream job could take months,” she explained. “I command you to settle!”

This last part, she did not say but certainly implied.  After my none-to-subtle topic change, I summoned the waitress for the bill. Within minutes we left the restaurant.

And people wonder why I never ask for advice.

And tomorrow it begins again: the countdown to the weekend. Except this time I’ll be suffering in a suit, and probably heels. I’ve never dreaded work as much as right now and I need to do something about it.

If I search long enough then maybe I can unearth that silver lining that I know must exist. Maybe I needed to hit rock bottom before I actually make some changes. It’s amazing how much you can withstand if you are, by nature, a fairly positive person. When you focus on the bright side, the dark side is always in shadow.

And when exactly was my fate sealed? When I accepted my first real job? When I chose my college? Or maybe it was something that has flown from my memory.

Some may argue that my fate has not been sealed. That it’ organic and fluid. But momentum is an accomplished opponent, sneaky and skilled. And I’m worried that I don’t have the will to fight it.

But right now I need to try. Take back the wheel and stop being at the mercy of the current.
This ship is mine and if I don’t steer it, no one else will.

Why is it that what we need most is the hardest thing to ask for? Not just hard, but near impossible. Are we afraid that once we ask, we’ll be denied? Or are we afraid that we might not be worthy of receiving it.  So you tell yourself that you never needed it and the lights go down in the house and Act I begins.

You are the plucky protagonist dismayed by the base needs of your peers. But this play is poorly written and badly in need of direction.  And the only person who doesn’t see it is you.

A website asks me to describe myself and I pause. I stutter. I freeze. Self-description should not cause such paralysis. I can talk about myself endlessly, yet I’m incapable of reducing my essence into a cute sound byte. Maybe I have too much ego to allow myself to be so utterly simplified. Or maybe I’m just a coward who is scared of being judged.

Any words I choose sound like a half-truth at best. So I’ll use words that scream volumes and whisper nothing all at the same time:

I am complex. I am a dichotomy. I am a pendulum.