dealing

Posted in career, cleaning, cooking, depression on Sunday, 4 October 4 2009 by myotherhalf

I thought it had been longer since I last wrote here. I feel like I’ve sat down a hundred times and started to type. But I see it’s been less than a week. Funny.

I’ve been feeling very overwhelmed in my professional life lately. And rather underwhelmed in my personal life. I’ve been processing so much. I’ve had so much to say. But I come home at night and discover that I just can’t deal with it. That I’d rather just tune out for a while. Shoving my problems under the proverbial rug.

I had a little mini heart to heart with a good friend on Friday. We’d both had one of those weeks. She said some stuff that hit home. Nothing I hadn’t told myself already, but hearing it from someone else always feels different.

I’m not happy. I won’t go so far as to say that I am unhappy. But there are definitely things about my life that are not what I want them to be. But there are things that are simply beyond my control. And truthfully, even if they were in my control, I don’t entirely know what I would change.

PF and I have hit a rough patch. Or what feels like a rough patch to me. I’m so out of practice at relationships that I don’t quite know how to deal with it. I can’t remember the last time I had an issue with someone and truly worked through it. Clearly LH and I weren’t good at that. Aaron and I tended to scratch the surface a little and then just ignore things. Or, I would talk and he would ignore.

I feel helpless and I feel lost. I want to fix things but don’t know how. I don’t know which part is the part that needs fixing. I know that I love him. Academically I know that relationships take work and that life has its own system of cycles. I’m officially throwing my hands up on this one. Trusting and hoping like hell that things will sort themselves out.

But it has me feeling much more lost than I’d like to admit.

So.

The only thing I know to do is to take charge of what I can. To do the things that make me happy. Because at the end of the day I am the only one responsible for my happiness.

I miss singing. So I bit the bullet and sent an email that I was asked to send 10 months ago. Requesting an audition for a chorus conducted by a friend and colleague. It’s much smaller than the group I used to sing with and it’s composed primarily of current or former professional musicians and music educators. That’s much more my speed. So we’ll see how that goes.

I cleaned my apartment. Really cleaned. There was bleach involved. And I cleaned out my closet. I have a huge bag of stuff to take to Goodwill. I reorganized what was left. I couldn’t help but snicker a little as all of my black tie gowns and cocktail dresses wound up hanging next to all of my latex and other fetish wear.

I went online and signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) service. Yes PF, you may tease me and call me Californian. I’ll remind you that I’ve been shipping pecans from my hometown ever since leaving there. The CSA box is to serve two purposes. I’m trying to get serious about getting healthy again and part of that is introducing more produce. I could start hitting up the many farmer’s markets but I’m hoping having a box delivered to me will force me out of my culinary rut. And as a chef, I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting outside my box a little as well as increasing awareness of seasonal ingredients.

As for work, I’m just clicking along there. I’m past some big deadlines so I feel breathing room again. My new direct report is coming along exactly as I’d hoped. Better even. It occurred to me that there was the transitional period between my predecessor leaving and a replacement being hired that I did both jobs for 4 and a half months. Then I hired someone who never really caught on and I was still carrying some of that workload. Then her disciplinary action started. And now, finally, after 23 months of carrying all or part of that workload on top of my own, I’m finally seeing the light of having it all handed off to someone else. Which means doing only my own job. Now, my own job is still enough that it could be split into two full-time positions, but still. The load is finally finally lifting.

I could wax on about how life is what we make it and how many things in my life are really something to be proud of, but I’m not there. Not now. Not yet. Where I am is that I’m only one person. And there’s only so much I can do. So I’m going to do the things that make me happy and I’m going to do the best that I can and I’m going to focus on the things that make sense.

And the rest, will either work out or it won’t.

Protected: things left unsaid

Posted in random thoughts on Tuesday, 29 September 29 2009 by myotherhalf

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maybe this time

Posted in relationships on Friday, 25 September 25 2009 by myotherhalf

I feel like I’ve enrolled in relationship 101 without realizing it. Somehow between the failed marriage and the subsequent rebounds and all the sleeping around I’ve completely forgotten how to have a an actual relationship where you have ups and you have downs but you work through them. Together.

I’m trying. I’m really really trying. I just feel like a fuck up. I just hope PF doesn’t think that too.

Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky
Maybe this time, he’ll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won’t hurry away

He will hold me fast
I’ll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time
And the time before

Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loved me;
‘Lady Peaceful,’ ‘Lady Happy,’
That’s what I long to be
All the odds are in my favor
Something’s bound to begin
It’s got to happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time I’ll win

rounding the corner

Posted in day by day, life on Tuesday, 22 September 22 2009 by myotherhalf

When I lived in Germany, every so often that statement would hit me out of nowhere. I live in Germany.

I’d be coming out of the German theater that played movies in English and on a hill in the distance there would be a castle all lit up. I’d be out with friends and realize how accustomed I’d grown to the slower pace of dinner service in German restaurants. Or I’d be at my bank, carrying on a mundane conversation with Herr Schiller and realize that I was no longer translating in my head, I was just speaking.

But primarily it would strike me when I would drive between villages. From home to the base or to a friend’s house. Nothing spectacular, just an ordinary moment. I’d come around a curve in the road and something would just resonate somehow. Occasionally I’d have to stop for a flock of sheep to cross the road and I’d have time to ruminate.

I had one of those moments today. I was driving from work to the train station to catch a train into the city. I’d taken surface streets to avoid rush hour traffic. I’d taken a shortcut to avoid other people avoiding rush hour traffic. I was not in the best of neighborhoods.

I turned right and onto a main street and in the distance there was a line of four palm trees. Standing significantly taller than anything else on the horizon. The sun was at just the right angle to turn them into black shadows against an amber sky.

And it hit me. I live in California.

Not because I have family here. Not because I followed someone here. Because I got a job and picked up my life and I went. And I’ve built a life for myself that more or less makes me happy.

And even though I know that it’s real, for a moment it felt like I was watching myself in a movie. Because it just didn’t seem like my life. If I was able to get through all that stuff, and be that girl, the girl who could just pick up and move and start all over successfully, why is it that all of a sudden I’m second guessing everything I’m doing?

Who knows. The moment was gone by the end of the block.

Protected: fuck you and your horse

Posted in anger management, career on Thursday, 17 September 17 2009 by myotherhalf

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