avoiding misery lane

It's been a while. Things have changed.  The position that was wonderful ended, as I knew it would, but so far nothing has come after it.

Well, okay, not nothing.  I've done things.  I deep cleaned my bathroom, I went through all my jeans and got rid of half of them.  I have so many boxes of clothes to get rid of, and a porch I haven't yet cleaned.  I mowed and repaired a ton of stuff at my partner's house, and deep cleaned the hell out of it. I put a hand rail on the wall by myself.  I'm pretty proud.  It's about the most I've done in...well, it's been months now.

Nothing has materialized, outside of the dregs of employment.  Oh sure, I had an offer last week--from a sketchy place that was essentially a telemarketing firm that now operated through email a few blocks too far into the bad part of town.  I was sent there by an equally sketchy employment agency who unceremoniously told me, "Well if you don't take this job, I'd hate to see another two months go by and you still aren't working."

Ouch, lady.

What she failed to realize was that I haven't been working because I've been picky. I have to be. I'll be 36 next month and it weighs on me almost constantly.  I started doing mturk this week. Transcription and surveys, through Amazon.  I love typing, I love academia, and I love surveys.  My opinion is needed and willing to be compensated!  Every survey looks the same after a while, the same questions. My last year's salary?  Next to nothing; I was doing a term of service and okay with living in poverty.  

My age.  There's a seemingly infinite number of ways to sort ages demographically, and not all of them are pretty.  The nice ones lump 35 in with the mid 30s.  One I took the other day listed "35-44". Yikes.  Serious numbers, right there.  Heavy numbers.  Burdensome, almost.

So age weighs on me.  My lumbering, silent but lethal giant named "student loan debt" lurks in the background, breathing.  Heavily.  I was fortunate enough to earn an education award at the end of my term of service.  I don't remember exactly how much it is.  I haven't bothered to look because it would be like trying to fill a lake with a thimble.  It's a nice sentiment, but certainly not going to appease the sleeping beast--and why I've tried so hard to cling to staying in non-profit.  Six words are my hopeful savior:

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program forgives the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer. 

To sound, as the parlance of our times would say, like a basic white girl (what even IS that?): I CAN'T EVEN.

Qualifying employment for the PSLF Program is not about the specific job that you do for your employer. Rather, it is about who your employer is. Employment with the following types of organizations qualifies for PSLF:

• Government organizations at any level (federal, state, local, or tribal)
• Not-for-profit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code
• Other types of not-for-profit organizations that provide certain types of qualifying public services

Serving in a full-time AmeriCorps or Peace Corps position also counts as qualifying employment for the PSLF Program.

I mean honestly.  HONESTLY!!  The only thing that will slay that suffocating beast once and for all, since as I have often quipped to people, "I'll be dead twice over before I'd ever be able to pay it off myself."  (It's a lot.)

So no, surly woman from the sketchy temp agency, your idle threats are not enough to get me to cave and work for the pittance your client demands.  I love typing--but sure as hell not that much.Options get a bit limited at this point.  Okay, they are really limited and I am running out of time. I have fought and scratched and kicked and screamed like hell because I absolutely, positively, under no circumstances want to go back to retail.  At all.  Ever.  Period.  Unless I have to.This has brought forth varying well meaning but largely uninformed comments from people who (I know truly do) care about me--and I know they care because when I was in a serious funk the other night and poured it all out, they were there for me.  


Side note--I used to feel bad about talking about my emotions and struggles.  I used to think I should always try to be a model person so as not to make myself stand out from more "normal" people.  Even though I know this to be a foolish and false truth, the stigma is there.  I've taken some inspiration from Daniel P. Finney, who has been sharing his journey with weight loss and the mental health issues that surround it.  He will undoubtedly feel awkward if I tell him about this shout out, but I had to stop and say that if he can write about it for a newspaper with the circulation size of the The Des Moines Register, what's to say I can't get a little blue in a Facebook post?


Anyway, I'm stubbornly trying to stay out of retail for the following very valid reasons:

• I'm getting too old for this shit.  No, really.  Time is fleeting.  I don't just feel that when I fill out surveys.  I feel it in my body more these days, when I can't sit a certain way the same way I used to be able to.  My (amazing, destined for sainthood) partner of ten (up, down, backwards, sideways, crazy) years has frequently told me this.  He's older than me, he always has been, but I see both of us getting older now.  He kept telling me this would happen someday.  He was right. (he usually is)  Time is fleeting.  I'm getting too old for this shit, too old to work somewhere where I get nowhere.

• I got so incredibly far off track the last time I got into retail I'm not even remotely close to getting back to where I started.  I started at Starbucks what seems like an eternity ago, in 2010, after taking what I thought would be a temporary break from my master's work. (helpful note: try to take some time off between undergrad and grad school, lest you burn out at your own risk)  I had only planned on being there a short time; I was there a month shy of FOUR YEARS.  Four years where I got so completely behind and off track from my work that I don't even know if I'm anywhere near finishing my degree now at this point.  I took the job and I got sucked in, and it was okay, for a while.  Then things sort of went to pieces in our relationship, and I moved out of my partner's house. (Yes, we put a lot of work into things and managed to turn the ship around.  I know, we're amazing.)  It then became a way to survive, as I was the only one supporting me--finishing my degree wasn't even possible at that point.  It wasn't possibly logistically, financially, and one more point, probably most importantly...

• Retail made me a terrible person.  An awful, negative, spiteful, angry, vengeful person. I was a person that was Not Fun To Be Around.  I didn't like myself much, which sure didn't help.  It's funny, I ended up being probably the most positive and encouraging person in our Public Allies class because I completely LOVED NOT being that Horrible Person anymore.  That, and I was trying like hell to make sure people didn't make the mistakes I made.  Now that time and panic have set in, I see that person creeping back and that person is not who I want to be.  I was in such dire straits then.  Every minute I wasn't at work I dreaded going and every minute I was there I longed to be anywhere else.  The days I was home were never enough to try to rebuild myself enough to face another work day.  I attempted to cope in productive and non-productive ways and methods, not all of which were good or bad.  I hated life, I hated everything, I hated where my life was going, I hated how truly terrible of a situation I ended up finding myself in. 

My dear partner: "You liked working there!"  To some extent, yes, indeed I did. But ultimately not a large enough extent to make it remotely worth it.  I hesitate to think what might have happened to me had I not been "fortunate" enough to have a complete mental break down at work (oh, and nobody really cared much or showed any compassion to me about it, AND I got written up for it because someone essentially got his "feelings hurt". LOL, okay buddy, try being in my shoes?) and come home fed up enough to comb through Craigslist to find something, ANYTHING that wasn't this dark hole of an existence I was in.  It took six long, agonizing weeks of bothering the lovely person who ultimately became my program manager, but I finally found my ladder out.  Yes. Public service, here I come.

Of course my sadistic manager had not only driven me to the brink, but she had also driven away four other long term partners (what we were called there) away, people who had been there four, five, six, and seven years with the company.  She was silently expecting me to fill their shoes, instead I drop new availability on her--I'm going part-time!  Your punching bag will be here no more to deal with your incompetent BS anymore!

...of course she found a big enough loophole to "separate" me, and two months before most of my stock grants fully vested.  Now THAT, I still have reason to be bitter for...mostly because I'd fully intended to quit December 1st, after that happened.  But anyway.  I did fight it, just because it was BS and because I'd had such a long standing case open with Partner Resources anyway (going back into July, and I was separated on September 5th, one month short of my four year anniversary with the company) because the store was Just That Terrible.  Ultimately, my intended result didn't happen--she's still there, and another person has reached out to me to give me the unsurprising news that she is the new target of my old manager's scorn.  I gave them enough ammo, they should have had plenty to fire with.  I think there are reasons why it didn't happen, I'm uncomfortable with those reasons, but it is what it is.

...given all that, I don't think I can find it in myself to do anything like that again.  Not even so much because of the circumstances, though that was certainly out of the ordinary. No, it's because I know myself, and my predilections and my emotional capability, and because I promised myself if I ever got out of that situation alive, that I would never, ever, EVER let myself get into that situation again.  I don't break promises easily, not even to myself.

Again, my saintly partner (except I don't think he can get sainthood with his actual name, so that might not be an actual option): "I want you to be happy and hate it when you're not."  Which really brings up another point I guess I almost forgot to make.

• I have been an unequal partner in my relationship for most of it.  Yes, I realize relationships are not equal by their very nature.  I get that.  However, it's been pretty lop-sided for a pretty long time.  I want to balance things out.  Not even just in that relationship, but all of mine.  My parents, my brother and his kids, my partner's family...everyone I know!  I want to be doing much, much more than I am right now and that takes time and money, two of which there is very little of in retail.  For the record, there's no pressure from anyone but myself about this issue, just a bunch of old fashioned guilt and humbleness and gratitude and wanting to return the favor, you know?

Anyway...a lot of you wrote very nice things the other day which I haven't read just yet because I was pretty emotional when I posted and I'm not quite ready to read all of them right now.  Thank you for that, though--it means a lot.

I suppose I'm at a point where I have few other options left, but the TL;DR really is: I don't want to, and I have very valid reasons for not doing so, and if I do, it is because I have literally no other options left.  For now, the job search continues, and the HITs do on Mechanical Turk do as well.

a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.

Things are slow for me right now.  As in s-l-o-w.  S.  L.  O.  W.

S.
L.
O.
W.

But I digress.

Truthfully, it isn't so much that things are slow as it is other people are slow...by my standards at least.  In all fairness, I've only got a couple of things on my plate, some of which are growing colder and congealing.  Meanwhile, the people I'm dealing with have seven course buffets to contend with. That's super.

I'm trying to stay busy, but at the same time, I'm super restless.  I really shouldn't complain, but I just want to be doing more than I am.  It will happen eventually...but now would be nice.

my modus operandi from here on out.

I have to get this off my chest.  This is long, but it would do you good to read it through to the end.

When I was at Public Allies training last week, one of the things we did was to create life maps to share our unique life experiences with the rest of the group, and talk about what our future goals and plans were.  It was very enlightening and powerful to hear others share their stories, good and bad, happy and sad.

In the last few days, it has given me much to think about and reflect on about the things I have said, and the choices I have previously made when it comes to relating and interacting and thinking about others.  It deepened and renewed my way of thinking and my commitment to what I am doing with Public Allies, the work that I am doing at Operation Threshold, and the work I hope to do after my placement.  Before I go much further on this path, I feel that I need to say this--and I only want to say this once, so let me be clear.

• I have many friends of both sexes and genders.  
• I have Asian, African-American, Hispanic, Indian friends.  
• I have friends who have been sexually assaulted.  
• I have lesbian, gay, transgender friends.  
• I have friends who are disabled, either physically or mentally, or both.  
• I have Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and atheist friends.  
• I have friends of many different cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities.  
• I have friends from many socioeconomic backgrounds.  

You get the idea.

Not only do I have friends like that...

• I also have co-workers who have some of those characteristics.  
• I work with teenagers who also have some of those characteristics.  
• Some of my fellow Allies also have those characteristics.  
• After my placement and term with Public Allies is over, I hope to keep working with many diverse people and populations who will have those characteristics as well.  

I have found tremendous satisfaction and a renewed sense of purpose in doing this kind of work.  I am a happier, more positive person.  My life has been infinitely changed for the better.

These people I have mentioned, and others like them, have all experienced harassment, prejudice, hatred, and discrimination because of those things that make them unique and make them special, valued people to myself and others.

And so, in that regard, I say this: from this point going forward, I will no longer tolerate nor participate in ANY form of hate speech, action, or thought that comes at their, or anyone else's expense.

It's not humorous, not a joke, not just kidding around.  It perpetuates the problem and ignores the solution.  It shows a lack of humanity and empathy.  It makes you look unintelligent.  It spreads hate and fear and ignorance.  It breaks our society, our community, our world apart when we should be coming together.  It reinforces negative stereotypes that for the most part, I have found simply aren't true. It is degrading, demeaning, dehumanizing, and WRONG.

If you don't understand this, or you don’t think it is a big deal, or don't see how those words and actions are part the problem and not the solution, or you want to give me any number of excuses, I will set you straight--if I didn't, I would be doing a serious disservice to the people I serve and care about. I'm sure the friends I've mentioned can help set you straight as well if need be.

I have largely already lived my life in this way, but there have previously been times where I was negatively influenced by others in this regard.  I now see the power of my words, thoughts, and actions.  I'm not going to dwell on it or live in the past, but I apologize to anyone I have wronged, and I will take it for the learning experience that it is.

Here is where I draw my line in the sand and say "no more".  I'm not going to put up with it--and neither should you.

It's 2015; this shouldn't even be an issue anymore--but it is.  The only way to stop it is to remember this:  We are all human.  We laugh, we cry, we think, we bleed, we feel, we love, we live.

We all are in this together.  Let's act like it, shall we?

out of my mind, back in ten minutes (I hope)

There's no point in being less than forthright and no shame in being honest: this has been a rough 2015 for me already.  Friends, to be real deal Holyfield, I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis, first suspected and researched online, then discussed with and confirmed by my therapist.  I've become insanely, acutely aware of what I have, but mostly what I have not yet done with my life.  I second guess and doubt everything I am going to do or have thought of doing or need to do.  I'm having terrific anxiety about what I'm going to be doing after my placement, which gives me anxiety about what I am doing now, and then I worry about that.  I can't say there isn't any aspect of my life that I have not questioned or second guessed or fruitlessly thought about changing in some way or another.

Coupled with the traditional Iowa winter blues, and a nice healthy dose of "someone f*cked up my prescription renewal so I haven't had some of my medication for almost two weeks now" I am in a weird place.  I don't wish myself any harm or ill-will, but I am about ready to plan a "I've got my meds back and I'm feeling fan-freaking-tastic" party and I feel very much like I am not all there right now.

Food doesn't sound good.  This is not good.  I need to keep eating.  I have been pushing myself to eat for days now.  Hunger as a concept no longer exists.
I am almost constantly sleepy.  I think I could sleep for days.
I am also almost constantly jittery. So laying down to sleep...still not easy.
Yesterday I found myself laughing at something that wasn't even funny.  Literally not funny.  I just couldn't stop laughing at it.
I feel like I am in a constant fog.
If you ever saw the Futurama episode Time Keeps On Slipping, that's also going on.  I feel like I blink and suddenly 20 minutes or so is missing.
I keep getting off and on headaches.

All in all, this is not as a whole terrible.  But I can tell you...it's Not Very Good At All.  I just don't feel like I'm always in my body and that's a very discombobulating feeling.  And a very isolating, panic inducing feeling.  I feel Very Alone, but at the same time, since I do feel so out of it, I don't like to burden others with it.  So I am Very Alone, but for everyone's own good.

I was nice to myself today.  I was going to get up early (after being up far too late, sleep schedule is an issue right now too) and Get Things Done, but even with my most obnoxious captcha necessary to turn off alarm, that didn't happen, and I spent the day mostly in bed, just watching TV and the Internet and basically being a zombie...

No regrets.  Hopefully it makes tomorrow better.

Three meetings on Wednesday, then two days away at training.  Please hope for the best.  I could use it.

Sexism? In my office? In my Internet? It's more likely than you think.

Originally this blog post was going to be a little one dimensional, but I have an interesting new angle on it!  (I've been sitting on this for a while, just hadn't gotten around to writing it.)

I'm also going to throw a content warning here for language, but it's necessary in this case.
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Let's be honest, everyone--we all waste time at work online. (I am right now, writing this!) Sometimes you just need a break, you know?  Clear your head, learn about the world around you, goof off, whatever.  Internet in healthy doses=good.

I'm pretty careful and respectful of what I'm browsing at work.  I'm not really one to look at anything that would land me in any sort of trouble in OR outside of work...well, as far as I was aware of, that is.

A bit of backstory if you aren't aware: Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9, and a whole bunch of other websites are all under the umbrella of the same company.  They all offer something vastly different that I find interesting:
Gawker has news (usually).
Jezebel has women's and feminist news.
Deadspin has sports, with a snarky twist.
Lifehacker has life tips. (duh)
io9 has interesting science-y stuff.

They all typically link to each other (and the other blogs I don't normally read) so usually I'll click on a link from Facebook for an article, but sometimes I will click on something from another site.

A while back, I saw an interesting looking article on Facebook from Jezebel, and I clicked on it. Immediately the page redirected to screen that said the article was blocked because of content.  Okay, I didn't think the article I clicked on was that provocative, but I closed the tab, made a mental note of it, and moved on.  Clicked on a link from Deadspin, and it opened just fine--despite part of the article title using the word "fuck".

Hmmmm.  O...k...interesting.  I read the article, saw a link somewhere in that article to a different link on Jezebel.  Click on that.  Nope, same page.  Now it's getting frustrating.  I open a new tab and try to go straight to Jezebel itself.  Nada.  Blocked.

I thought I'd try another site about women's interests and issues--Jane XO.  Nope.  Blocked too. I thought "okay, I'll just look at it on my phone", but forgot I'd connected IT to the internet, too.  No dice, blocked.

I didn't inquire into the matter further (I'm really not here to be surfing the web for long durations anyway), but REALLY??  Apparently it's perfectly FINE for me to look at a sports website that sprinkles the word "fuck" in its articles like you'd sprinkle pepper on a steak, but an article about relationships or sex or Hollywood, that's apparently NOT okay.  Near as I can tell, the entire website has been blocked just because of SOME of the content.

I'm not necessarily one of those women who is on a tirade or crusade for justice in equality (it's nice, but COME ON.  Really?  REALLY??  There's no good reason for that that I can see.

On the flip side, something that happened to me yesterday reaffirmed the concept of , as James Brown would put it, it's a man's man's man's world--and apparently, especially on the Internet.

Yesterday there was a fairly popular reddit post (by the way, I LOVE reddit) of some pictures taken in downtown Cedar Falls.  One of the people interacting with the original poster mentioned something about how he plows in Waterloo.  I made an off hand joke about "could you plow for a really really broke person?" and he responded and said yeah sure, as long as I talk about his business. Initially, I told him he really didn't need to, because I literally have no driveway, just a parking spot with about six feet between the spot and the street.  Once I remembered that I had almost gotten stuck yesterday morning, I changed my mind.

I gave him my address, and my work phone number (just in case!) and waited.  He called, I answered, and I could tell I COMPLETELY threw him off.  For one, the location of my parking spot in relation to my house is weird--I live on a corner, my address is one street, but I have to use the other street to turn into my spot--and THAT street is a one way street!  Anyway, I gave him enough of a description so he figured it out, but in regards to the phone call, as he was trying to make sense of the call, I said "reddit?" and he said YEAH! and that cleared things up.

BUT.

I got home, he did a great job, and said he plows near there and if it snows again he'll swing by and plow me again. (it really is the smallest plow job ever, but it sure saved me the trouble).  He also sent me this after I thanked him:

You're welcome random reddit lady who I assumed would be a dude because there aren't any girls on the internet.

Hmmmm.  Okay.  Obviously, I'm a girl (woman) on the Internet, but I am also somewhat socially awkward.  I wrote back and said:

Ha! That's comedy. No wonder you were so confused when I answered. We're just as socially awkward as guys!

To which I got back:

Haha yeah I was like um awesome some guy sent me to get robbed with a fake phone number lmao

Uhh...okay.  Interesting.

Now I'm not going to throw this guy under the bus at ALL.  He did a great job, and he TOTALLY didn't have to do that for me at ALL.  It's really nice to know that good people like that are still out there.  But I KNOW he's not the only one that has that mindset, that there aren't any "girls" on the internet.

I can't find demographic breakdowns for the site as a whole, but I know there's a fairly sizeable female population! Two subreddits that I subscribe to have over 250,000 subscribers--and they are makeup subreddits, so odds are pretty good that it's mostly women.

Granted, one of the top subreddits, funny, has over seven million subscribers, but either way...it's not a SMALL population out there.

Apparently James Brown was right...but I sure hope it's not that way forever.

Buckle up, baby! It's s-no-w picnic out there!

It snowed!  I don't mind snow too much, I suppose.  It's the cold that gets me.  Ugh.  I start having vivid daydreams of moving south for the forever when it gets bitterly cold...shudder

But anyway, snow.

I LOVE DRIVING IN SNOW!!

I am crazy, I know.  I am also a bit of a risk taker, it seems. (One of my fellow Allies asked me on the way back from training once--"Are you a thrill seeker?")  By all appearances, I guess I am!

It snowed a good four to six inches here yesterday into last night, and I had no problem driving in it. Well, I won't say "no problem"--obviously driving in snow is no piece of cake, especially when the roads aren't plowed or aren't well plowed.  BUT...unlike most of the other morons out there, I know how to drive in the snow.  I'm not full of myself, but I DID grow up on a farm, and driving in the country in winter is a whole different game than in town.  I also had two parents, and at least one grandparent who had a fairly lengthy commute to work (over a half hour, not quite an hour).  Driving is in my blood at this point.

Why do I like driving in winter?  It's a challenge!  It's kind of fun to drive in the snow because it's the adult version of winter fun.  It's a warmer, albeit more dangerous version of sledding, if you do it right or wrong.  And honestly, it makes me a better driver.  Normal driving conditions are so automatic (especially now that I drive an automatic) so it sharpens my normally dormant super driving skills.

Therein lies the problem with other drivers though...these are not normal driving conditions.  And much like severe weather watches and warnings (that is for a whole OTHER blog entry, I tell you), people don't take that seriously.  Driving is a privilege, not a right.  And I take that seriously.  I think that's another reason I like winter driving--I have earned the privilege to do so, and I'm not gonna screw that up.

For all that is good and holy in this vast world of ours, if you are reading this, I hope you know how to drive in the winter.  But if you don't (and that's okay!), here's some tips to keep in mind from someone who has had some kind of license to operate a motor vehicle FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS. (holy crap, I am old.)

Don't speed.
This SHOULD be a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised at how many people act like the road conditions are fine and pass me like I'm standing still.  I drive slow when it snows.  I like driving slow when it snows and knowing that I'm being safer than the morons.  I'm not an idiot. Sometimes I probably drive slower than might be necessary, but I have NEVER been in a snow accident (ice, but that's not snow) and going under the speed limit helps up those odds.  Again: duh.  This should be common sense.  But...

For the love of God, yield to the plows.
Again, this should be a no-brainer.  If you collide with a plow or cause an accident with a plow, guess who wins?  The plow.  They're a whole lot larger (again, duh) and you're going to come out on the losing end of that stick. (this is not to say that plow drivers are entirely faultless, but size wise, you won't win that fight.) To that end, here's some super helpful tips from the Iowa DOT about mindful winter driving with plows.

http://www.iowadot.gov/maintenance/images/snowplowlg.jpg
http://www.iowadot.gov/maintenance/SafeTravelAroundSnowplows.pdf

TL;DR: plow drivers have big blind spots, and their field of vision is much less than in a car.  They're also traveling at a fairly slow rate of speed compared to other drivers (WHO SHOULD BE GOING SLOWER AS WELL)

Plan ahead: Give yourself extra time.
Get up earlier, leave earlier, whatever--and even if you end up running behind, better to be a little behind than a little bit in the ditch or median.

Always be mindful of your surroundings and what is ahead.
I know, there's a lot to focus on.  But if you are so focused on the road ahead, and you ignore the person in your right lane until you merge right into them, you're gonna have a bad time.  Similarly, pay attention to what is in front of you.  Don't tailgate--and you should be going slowly enough anyway that you wouldn't BE tailgating.  Again, if you are going slow enough, you should be able to anticipate anything up ahead with enough time to do something about it.

Don't gun it.  Slow and steady wins the race.
Especially going up hills and inclines--tempting though it may be, don't accelerate too quickly, or you're just going to spin out.  Now granted--sometimes that's kind of fun if you know how to do it. Whee!  I wouldn't do it if I didn't have all my years of driving under my belt, though.

In the same vein: don't gun it if you DO get stuck.
That's just going to get you MORE stuck.  Even going from forward to reverse repeatedly doesn't always do the trick.  Just try not to get stuck in the first place, and if you do...get help, don't try to push the thing out by yourself.  It is futile to even try!

If you start getting stuck, start gently turning your steering wheel back and forth.
I've gotten up many a slippery slope that way.  Slowly, but I got up there.  It's the steering

The "easier said than done" tip: RELAX.  Don't drive scared.
This one isn't such a no-brainer, and to be honest, it does come with time and practice. (I've only been driving about oh, 20 years or so now?  HOLY COW, I AM OLD.)  But seriously--if you drive white knuckled on the wheel, leaning forward in the seat, looking too quickly around you...you're going to set yourself up for an accident.  Or at the very least, you're really setting yourself up for the potential of an accident.  Now I'm not saying relax to the point where you're careless.  But don't drive scared.  If you are scared, you are tense, and when you are tense, you don't always make good decisions.  Shoot, at this point, I'm so good with driving that I will turn up the radio (when it is safe to do so, obviously) and that, oddly enough, helps keep me focused and grounded. (It's the AD/HD, I'm sure.)

Hopefully this is all old news to you and you're just wondering why I wrote a blog about winter driving--but hey, you read it! :-)  And if it can help anyone, pass it along, why not?

Stay safe out there, people!

"Aren't you worried?"

I won't pull any punches--I live in a reasonably rough neighborhood.  I've never had any trouble personally, but the Dairy Queen a block away got robbed, and the laundromat, liquor store, and Dollar General two blocks away got robbed around the same time.  There's a bullet hole in my living room window.  Let's just call it colorful, shall we?

I work in what would be considered an even rougher neighborhood.  Ironically, once you cross the railroad tracks on the way to my office, the houses get more rundown: porches sagging off of houses like droopy smiles, plastic tacked to windows in a futile (if it's anything like my place, it's futile) attempt to keep the heat from escaping the old windows, cars that have seen better days next to cars that look so good I'd be scared to drive them...

People ask me:
"Aren't you worried?"
"Don't you feel nervous?"
"Don't you get scared?"

In a word: no.

I've never had any trouble myself.  Sure, there was the time last summer when police swarmed the house behind me, shouting at the person who was hiding in there that they had guns drawn and they wanted them to come out. (The windows were open...)  I would suppose that was the closest I've been to "scared" and even then, I wasn't.  The police would be utterly foolish to risk everyone else around that house; they would say something if we were in peril. (at least I'd like to think they would?)

Besides, what would being worried, nervous, scared do?  Not much.  Am I cautious?  Yes, that would be the word for it.  Aware of my surroundings?  Yes.  Prepared to drop things, kick hard, and scream loudly?  Yes, yes, and absolutely.

Frankly, I'd be cautious anywhere I lived or worked.  I'm a woman.  I'm a slender woman.  I'm a fairly easy target for someone who really wanted to do some harm.  So does it matter where I live or work?  No, not really.  Yes, statistics might put me at more risk some places more than others, but what good is living life in fear?

It's easy to look at a place or neighborhood and compare it to what you know, and fear the unknown. And that's where the fear lies--in the unknown.  It's easy to look at the end result of an underlying problem and make a snap judgement.  It's easy to look at a particular part of town and not realize why things are the way they are.  People look at the crime, and the grime and the poverty and don't remember (or know) why.  (two major plants closed in the 80s which laid off hundreds of workers and decimated the town economically--and it's still recovering.)

It's easy to do all those things--and a lot harder to do something to change the way things are.

I kind of enjoy where I live and work--it's a new perspective in my life that I might not have had otherwise.  Instead of looking at it as something to fear, I'm embracing it for what it is--a chance to see things the way others might see them.

You could even say it glows.

I have to admit it: I am a little bit vain.

It's funny, I don't have any body image issues, not really--I guess my teeth could be a little smaller (I got my dad's big teeth), my knees could be less bony, I could be less clumsy...overall, I can't say that there's a whole lot I fuss over.

Except for one thing.  My nose.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I "hate" my nose.  I strongly dislike my nose--at times.  Well, maybe most of the time.  Okay, a lot.  There are a lot of times I look in the mirror and think "Ugh, my nose."

Surprisingly it's not because of the size (though it is a smidge bigger than I think suits my face, but not that drastically).  I don't really have a problem with the size of my nose for the most part.  It's a little pointy, but not drastically so.  Overall, it's a perfectly functional nose.

No, it's not the size or shape of my nose that frustrates me.  I could probably be okay with that.  What frustrates me is the color of my nose.

I can hear you now:
Wait, what?  
Yes, the color of my nose.

Isn't your nose, well...nose colored?
Sometimes...but mostly no.

What other color could your nose be?
How about BRIGHT RED??

...oh.
Yeah.

Most of the time, and without makeup, my nose is RED.  I don't even mean a little bit flush.  I mean bright, noticeable, "I could be Rudolph's understudy" RED.  It's like a giant arrow sticking out of my face that seems to scream "LOOK AT NOTHING ELSE BUT MY NOSE!!" (on the other hand, I guess nobody would look at my cleavage?)

Sometimes it calms down a bit.

But then I get happy/excited/worried/stressed/silly/tipsy/tired/hot/cold and I'm ready to light up the night sky.

Officially, quite a while ago, I got diagnosed with rosacea after years of people saying "What's with your nose?" and my stock response of "I don't know...it just gets red...sometimes..."  I initially got a cream for it, but I was supposed to keep it in the fridge.  I did, but keeping it in the fridge meant I didn't really put it on. Oops. And of course my insurance has changed so there's no way I could afford to do that again, at least not right now.

I'm starting to get better at the art of nose camouflage.  I think I've tried it all--covering it lightly with green face spackle (it seems), covering it a bit heavier with green face spackle (not great) with powder on top...layering powder and cream and concealer on my stupid, stubborn nose.  Oh, and it hates to have anything stick to the end.  There is one spot that just usually refuses to let anything adhere to it.  Of course it is at the very tip of my nose.  Of course. 

Honestly, it isn't even really about vanity at this point.  One of my goals for 2014 was to try to look more professionally, which meant stepping up my makeup game. Success!  I definitely look much more polished and put together and "let's hire her"...able?

The problem with trying to cover my nose is that as of yet, I have figured out how to cover it--but I haven't figured out how to KEEP it covered.  It is very, very easy for me to make one wrong move and suddenly I've got a Rudolph tipped nose.  It screams LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!!

Oh, aren't you overreacting a bit?
No, I'm not.

I've gone in the bathroom several times to see that I have CLEARLY rubbed off the makeup on my nose in a way that is very obvious and very distracting.  Do I suppose anyone would say anything?  No, people aren't impolite.  Am I probably the only one who notices or cares?  Probably.  But I look and feel less put together.  I stop focusing on things I should be focusing on and start focusing on "how can I make my nose look natural again?"

Oh, jeez.  That's not such a big deal.
Well it kind of is, because once I'm done with my placement in June, I gotta find some other job, and I gotta look good doing it.  If I have a bright red nose, it's going to distract people away from how great I am.

Oh.
Yeah.

The upside of this is that, FINALLY, it seems like I have found the right product to get the right amount of coverage for my nose without spackling green stuff all over it.  It Cosmetics Bye Bye Redness.  It's a silly name.  But I'll tell you, it seems to work.  Oh, was I worried about buying it.  I had a coupon, but still, that price tag--$32?!?  That's outrageously overpriced for my budget, coupon or not!

However, the reviews were pretty outstanding, and considering what I had spent on several things that didn't work, I bit the bullet and bought it...and I really couldn't be happier.  For one, a little dab will do you--seriously, I think I'll be using this for all of 2015, if not into 2016, so if that's the case, it's worth every penny.  It covers pretty well with the rest of my face, and if I put too much on accidentally, I can just smooth it into my red cheeks (which are not nearly as bad as my nose!) and everything looks fine.

The only thing I haven't figured out is how to keep the damn thing from smudging.  I did my face this morning, put on my shirt, and there goes part of my nose.  That might be my 2015 goal--find something to lock my nose into place to stay nose colored all day long.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention my night cream.  It seems to be doing a decent job of keeping the redness at bay, as far as I can tell.  I'm not entirely sure, honestly, but I'm not going to stop, either.

Part of me thinks I should just let it rip this time of year and play up my Rudolph inclinations...work with what you've got...but I just can't.  I've worked too hard at covering it up the rest of the year.  It seems a lot of trouble to go to for something that probably seems silly to a lot of people (including you!).  But I can't say enough about how much better I feel about how I look.  I don't catch people looking at my nose, which makes me blush, which makes my nose get redder...

I'm a lot happier looking in the mirror and seeing myself looking back.  So I suppose I've gotten a little vainer--but who wouldn't?  My nose looks like a nose! How could I not look?  It's exciting!  I'm not drawing attention to myself for anything else but how awesome I am!  That's fantastic.  It makes me feel so good!!

Now if I could just figure out how to stop my profuse winter perspiration in time to save myself the trouble of endlessly washing sweaters and freezing with clammy armpits, I would be unstoppable!

...well, at least my nose looks normal. :-)

Death, I barely knew ye.

Two people I knew died yesterday, for completely unrelated reasons, in completely different circumstances.

The first one was a surprise--a high school classmate, out of the blue.  That makes three of us gone from the class of 1998, which I suppose from a statistical standpoint is pretty good; there was about 120 of us.

The second one was, unfortunately, not a surprise in the least.  Someone I worked with about 15 years ago was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer many years back.  It had been a very, long, slow process.  He really gave it all he could, but in the end, the cancer won.

It may sound cold, but here it is--I have no strong feelings either way about either of them.

No, hear me out here.

The classmate--well, we weren't close in the least.  He existed outside of what was even my small circle.  He had that long haired Metallica shirt wearing thing going on, which was a foreign concept to naive me, and which would label him as a loser in some circles, I imagine...I remember being horrified and fascinated with every Metallica (and their ilk) shirt that he wore.  What on earth was all that horrific imagery about?  How was he so mellow, and even cool with wearing that around?  He seemed like a nice enough guy, I just didn't really know him that well.

The former coworker--jeez, that was a hell of a long time ago.  I haven't even seen him for a good ten years or so.  He was a fun guy to work with, I remember.  He had a good sense of humor and was a prankster (though I never really was in on jokes, if I recall).  I was stunned when I found out years ago that he had been diagnosed; he was so young! (he's not much older than me, which is funny because when I knew him he seemed SO much older than me--but then again, I was 19.)  And honestly, there is a great sense of sad relief that he is no longer suffering (trite as that statement is), because he was there at the end.  Cancer is a real bitch.

But I have no strong feelings about either of them.  And that is totally okay.  I am not going to sit here and publicly declare how tragic it is and how much they meant to me and how much I am going to miss them because...I'm not.  I'm sad, yes, absolutely.  The guy I worked with had a baby he and his wife weren't expecting a couple of months ago, so now here is a tiny baby who doesn't get to spend his first Christmas--or any Christmas--with his dad.  And my classmate's family has to cope with this sudden and unexpected loss at what is normally such a happy time of year.  THAT'S what makes me sad.  THAT'S what makes this tragic and unfair.  That's worth being sad over.

I'm not going to make a bigger deal out of this than I feel--because that isn't the right thing to do.  I feel sad for their families, their friends, their colleagues, the people that truly knew them and cared about them and genuinely loved them.  I couldn't piggy back on their very real grief and sadness and great sense of loss because that isn't how I feel.  I have no right to feel that way and it would be very exploitative and navel gazing and selfish to publicly mourn about how lost I was going to feel without them and how they were such an important part of my life and on and on...

So let me be clear: this is sad.  I am sad.  It makes me hard stop and think about my own life in perspective.  My classmate was still too young and my former coworker's tiny son does not deserve to grow up without his dad, and his wife doesn't deserve to suddenly be a single mother.  And their families don't deserve to celebrate the holiday with big pieces of their lives so freshly missing.  I suppose really, that's who to be sad for--not the people who are gone, but the people who are left behind.

On being a jerk as a form of self-reflection.

We had a gift exchange/Secret Santa here at work today.  I won't go into the meat of things, but it ended up being a very lopsided exchange.  I inadvertently directly exchanged with the same person and while I got her some nice stuff, well...it didn't quite go both ways, which was disappointing.  I mean, it's not like I'm hard to buy for.  I like owls.  I like purple.  I like plants.  Boom.  Easy.  But anyway...

At first I was only minorly irritated, but then the more I sat here and thought about it, I got angrier and angrier.  I did something I really wouldn't normally do (or at least I'm trying to make a habit of not doing) and I vented on Facebook. (which I did eventually delete once I figured out the underlying reasons for my feelings.)

I'm really trying to be a more positive person, but in a way, it was not a terrible thing to be a total jerk and have people chew me out.  It helped me pinpoint where the source of my anger was directed--at a situation that came up this time last year, that really hasn't gotten resolved, not truly.  The feelings of feeling unimportant and an afterthought after doing something nice for someone--I thought I had pretty well dealt with that some time ago.  It wasn't remotely the same situation, but somewhere it felt the same.

This happened when I went to training in November too...something completely, and I mean COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual matter triggered something I couldn't quite put my finger on, until everything crumbled around me and I lashed out at someone. (who very graciously accepted my apology once I could explain what happened)  But at the same time, I wouldn't have probably had that thought process, nor really faced the fact that there were unresolved feelings I hadn't paid attention to.

So did I learn from that situation?

• I like rules.  
• Ideally, rules should be followed.  
• If they aren't, that tends to irritate me, especially if others aren't following them.
• Just because I think something is resolved, it probably isn't.
• I really am not a bad person just because someone thought I was--that was about them, not me.
• I should really try to step outside of things if I can tell I'm getting frustrated.

Okay, then.  What can I learn from this situation?

• Sometimes I am too generous and selfless.
• It's not necessarily bad to be that way, but if I am going to do so, I can't go all in or else I'm going to be sorely disappointed.
• I need to know where to draw the line at when it comes to that sort of thing.
• I really shouldn't take it personally.
• Perhaps this situation (Secret Santa) is really just not necessarily my strong suit when it comes to these kinds of things BECAUSE of these inclinations.

But there's a bigger lesson to be learned from both of these situations: breaking negative patterns is HARD.  

I have really 

(really!) 

tried to critically and as objectively as possible evaluate myself and what I do and tried to break negative patterns of thought and action.  For the most part, I'd say I'm not doing too bad about 95% of the time.  I'm definitely in a much better place in life, for sure.

BUT.

Sometimes, and I don't mean it, I'm just a flat out jerk.  I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself--we're all jerks now and then--but considering the negative patterns I'm trying to break out of, when I'm a jerk, I can be a real jerk.

(okay, I'm pretty over the word "jerk"...)

Point is...it would be one thing to be a...that person...and continue to be that kind of a person and never learn or change from it.  And honestly, not all that long ago, I probably would have held on to that feeling and let it simmer and blow up and do it all over again and never learn a thing.  I wouldn't have tried to take a step back and look at the situation and admit any sort of fault whatsoever; I would stubbornly try to keep moving forward the same way without apology--or with an insincere apology.

These days, when I'm...(let's go with "rotten") a rotten person, I certainly initially have those simmer moments which sometimes settle down, and sometimes blow up.  Sometimes they go away on their own, which is SUPER!  But simmer or blow up, either way, at least I can point to myself and say

"Man, I was a real jerk*.  I sure was wrong; how can I avoid doing this again?"

I suppose the lessons worth learning are never learned easily, are they?

*I really had to stick to the theme here, much as I was tired of using the same word over and over again.