transcended.net

Between my review (which was actually pretty good), the layoffs last week and my little “issue” on Friday, I spent most of the long-weekend staving off work-related anxiety attacks. I didn’t even feel like talking about it with Paul (very unusual) and had to play it off as general crazy-person anxiety.  He was kind of not buying it at first since it literally got to the point where I was practically in tears and begging him to cancel his squash game because the idea of being alone with my thoughts was both terrifying and unbearable, but he did eventually accept it at face value. It is apparently not entirely unbelievable that sometimes I am just plain old Crazy for no reason in particular.

And really, it is partly that too. The Crazy. The whole time I was having panic attacks, the rational part of my brain (which is clearly tiny) was trying to talk me down from the ledge…Honestly, what I did was definitely a big mistake but luckily it was on a relatively small trade (although it still kind of boggles my mind that “small” here means $2mm current face) and the trader is SUPER nice, so part of me kind of knew he was not going to beat me up too bad for it.  Of course, the fact that he is such a good guy made me feel even worse about the whole thing. But I knew my job wasn’t really in jeapordy and that I am still new enough where a rare mistake will be allowed for. I was very much aware that even if I really was about to lose my job, stressing about it over a holiday weekend of all things was not going to make a bit of difference.

I knew that I was simply driving myself nuts.  And torturing my very understanding husband (don’t worry about him though, let’s just say he wasn’t complaining about skipping squash). 

But, as usual, I couldn’t help it.  So I distracted myself as best I could…Paul didn’t mind, if you know what I mean.

So anyway, this morning I woke up and resolved that today I was going to be the best junior sales monkey ev-ah!  Except I got confused and thought it was Monday until after I had been sitting at my desk for five minutes and realized that uh, everyone else was on the Tuesday morning call while I was sitting there waiting for my computer to restart and reorganizing my desk.  Ever so casually I picked up one of my receivers and tried to make it seem like hardware issues (headset out of batteries) was the REAL reason I had been sitting there like a giant boob for five minutes before actually picking up the phone to listen to the call I was already 10 minutes late for!

Sigh.

I’m not who I want to be. But I’m trying.

I feel…crappy. Maybe because I fucked up at work today. Nothing…catastrophic? As long as it’s not something that happens with any frequency, it should be no big deal, but still. I fucking despise messing up at work. It makes me want to crawl into a ditch and hide. I definitely fucked up today (but did not Fuck Up I hope).

Lately I have been dreaming, dreaming incessantly about work. I hate it. It makes me feel like a complete loser. Like being there for literally half the day is not enough, I need to tack in a few more hours during which I should really be flying on a unicorn to Hogwarts to meet Harry and the gang.

Do I really love work that much that I need to let it eat at me even while I sleep? I don’t think so. In fact, I like work sure, but I would be perfectly content not thinking about work for one second while I’m at home.

I’m just over it. I’m over these things replaying in my head like movies on a loop I can’t stop. I’m done.

Where’s the off switch?

I’m afraid I’m running out of steam.  I was really banging it out with the posts for awhile there right?  I would start drafts and then actually go back and finish them, which is something I’ve never done before.  I thought I was turning a corner.

These past few days though, I find myself back in that place where my brain can’t even find a way to translate thoughts into actual words with letters and everything. 

Work has been keeping me deliciously occupied.  It takes everything I have out of me and by the end of the day I can honestly say that my brain?  Just barely functioning. 

Maybe it’s the weather but I’ve been particularly tired this week, which is unfortunate since it’s been a catch up week, as in catching up with people that I’ve either a) postponed on too many times already or b) people from out of town…basically people that I can’t push off.  So far we had Paul’s brother with us this past weekend from Boston, dinner with friends last night, tutoring and then straight to wine-tasting (cause that just screams good role model, dontcha think?) with friends at the Ferry Building tonight, drinks/dinner on Friday with a former coworker (who was becoming hubby’s new bff before he got let go and moved) and then brunch with Helen and Grace on Saturday. 

That might not sound like a lot to most people, but seriously?  I do not like to do anything that prevents me from changing directly into my pajamas after work, and I have been sitting around with my bra still on after 3:30 pm TOO MANY DAYS this week people!

So not cool. 

It has been good though.  It’s definitely nice to see people and get some quality time with them, so I’m not really complaining (a lot). 

And to circle back to work, things there have been really good.  It was a bit scary today though because we found out there was a round of layoffs going on and a couple people from our office were let go yesterday.  No one in my group was affected, but the two people who were let go sat on the desk with us and I was friends with both of them.  We’ve actually all hung out together after work for “girls nights” because there aren’t that many women in the office…and two less now. 

So that was definitely hard today.  And I think it just reminded everyone that we can all be cut at any time.  One of the people who was let go was fairly senior, well-liked and from what we’ve been told the cuts were not performance based so that wasn’t the issue either.  Everyone was pretty shocked to hear that she was gone…I definitely was.  There aren’t a lot of older women in front office roles in finance, just because it was even more of a boys club even as recently as ten years ago, and she was definitely someone who seemed competent and well-respected by her male peers.  I guess I figured I had plenty of time to pick her brain and observe her and it was disappointing to find out that that wasn’t the case.  And of course, I’m upset for her and her family.  Not gonna go into details since they’re not mine to share but this can’t be easy on her on several different levels.

Just got home from wine tasting and it’s 9:30PM.

Yes, I’m totally screwed. And I have a review with both MD’s I report to directly tomorrow morning and I don’t know what any of my future goals are >< Let's repeat in unison: SCREWED!

8pm.  Exhaustion.  Time for bed.

Last January, I heard this message on the Christian XM station which asked, “Do you pursue happiness or do you create it?” 

What it was really asking was, do you pursue your own happiness or do you create happiness in the lives of others?

Thinking about that question is what made me finally quit just talking about volunteering and actually FIND a program to participate in.  Which is how I ended up with Reading Partners. 

But the feeling has been nagging at me again recently.  Despite my health, more and more I feel like God has blessed me beyond belief and I can’t help but wonder if I’m being a bad steward of it all. 

I try not to be, but I can still be a really selfish person and very focused on my own needs and wants.  Especially when I’m not feeling 100% physically.

And, of course, I am also super lazy. 

So that’s a bad combination. 

I think as I’ve gotten older it has actually become easier to tune out the rest of the world. The only reason I can’t check out completely is because I live in a city so I am surrounded by uncomfortable situations. I kind of don’t want to know myself if I can ever walk by another human being living on the street without at least feeling like I should do something. Even if I don’t know what exactly that is.

Still though, I do a pretty good job of ignoring things that I don’t want to think about. Which is one of the reasons I don’t talk about politics anymore. I still follow a few political blogs (although with much less frequency) and I still read a disgusting amount of news for work, but I don’t really let myself think about it too much because I get upset. And I spend enough time being upset over my own life now, I don’t have the energy to be upset about other things even if they are important and impactful.

I go through the motions of caring, I give a dollar or two, I make donations to charity, I tithe (on the rare occassions we actually make it to church), but as I mentioned in my new year post, it feels…cheap.

Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way? Obviously I know money is important, I spend my entire day at work thinking about it…

But I can’t help but think just giving money is the easy way out and that I should be doing more. And anyway, I’ve never given what I couldn’t afford. Or given something that was truly a sacrifice for myself.

The giving has never been hard. And not because I’m such a generous and altruistic person, but because I’ve just never given that much. All the money we donate in a year adds up to a fraction of what we spend on ourselves. It doesn’t help that Paul is a true LA boy and likes the finer things in life (like the $5k watch he is eyeing even though we’re cash poor, house rich right now). And the 45 measly minutes a week that I spend at Reading Partners doesn’t exactly make me feel like I’m going to be winning Volunteer of the Year anytime soon.

Christmastime always seems to be the impetus for me questioning the meaning of MY life. And whether or not it is what it should be. Unfortunately, the answer has always been no.

I feel like maybe God is calling me to do something that requires an actual commitment. There are several possibilities in my head as to what this could be, a few different things that have been tugging on my heart. They don’t all require the same amount of time and effort, but they’d all require a lot more of me than what I’m giving right now.

There is one idea that I find particularly intriguing. But I’m also not sure how realistic it is for me to undertake something that big or whether or not something like what I have in mind actually already exists (although the quick Google searches I did would suggest that if something does exist it doesn’t have much of a presence). I don’t know though, I’m afraid if I start off too ambitious it will be that much easier to just give up when I run into my first roadblock.

Anyway, yesterday as I was driving to my first tutoring session for the semester, I heard another message. This time it was just two words.

Be inspired.

And then they played My Own Little World by Matthew West.

They were the two most perfect words to proceed this song.

I’m still not quite sure what I’m supposed to do. What will quiet this voice in my head?

(Or is that only something crazy people say?)

But I’m looking now, and I think God will point me in the right direction.

I fixed the comments! In that, you can now actually see them without highlighting the page. It only took me seven months. I’m not lazy at all.

Thanks to Lisa for commenting, which is what finally got me to do something about it 🙂

I suppose, now that it’s actually here, that it’s time to dedicate a few words to 2011.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m not really one for new year resolutions.  To be frank, I think they’re bullshit because there’s no need to wait until January 1st to do the things that are important to you.  No one is stopping any of us from making self-improvements on a year-round basis, so why the emphasis on a new year? 

That said, I suppose the act of changing the calendar, replacing twelve months of your past with twelve blank pages, inevitably causes most of us to pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we might be going.

I’ve certainly been putting forth an admirable effort on the whole “looking back”-front, and don’t worry there are still a couple drafts just waiting to be finished, but I do recognize the futility of it all and that it really would be more productive to start thinking about how I can improve my life so that I can actually feel…

Hm.

I don’t really know how to finish that sentence. 

And maybe that is one of the first things I should start trying to figure out in 2011. 

In order to conform to the standards of this holiday – I made a list.

They’re not resolutions.

They’re aspects of my life that I’m going to work on this year.  Areas with some feasible room for improvement, if you will.

1. Exercise: 30 minutes per day during the week on the treadmill.  Nothing strenuous, perhaps a light jog at the most.  My rheumy also recommended some light weight-training (prolonged stero.id treatment is a risk factor for bone-density issue) so maybe I will give that a shot too.
2. Diet-changes:  Completely cut out dairy and red-meat for at least 30-days (and partaking only on rare occassions after that).  After I stopped drinking soda during Lent I stopped wanting it and I’m hoping it will be the same way, but I’m not sure I will ever stop craving cheese…or butter…But if it really does help improve the lupus it will be worth it and the evidence, it seems, is piling up that dairy and red-meat can cause auto-immune related flare ups.  So I have to at least try it right?  I do question my committment to this one as I have never been very good with limiting myself when it comes to food…I have such a naturally fickle appetite that eating anything is usually preferrable to the alternative (me choosing not to eat even if I am hungry, which I have apparently done since toddlerhood).  Figuring out how to avoid certain foods without avoiding food altogether is going to be tricky. 
3. Weight:  Before the stero.ids I was tiny.  Honestly, I was probably a little too skinny, but I didn’t really mind because I knew it wasn’t in a bad way.  Other than right before college when I looked anorexic but was not anorexic…it was merely that my life did seem to be sort of spiraling out of control and so I controlled the only thing I felt I could and stopped being hungry…for months.  This is something that happens when I am stressed, which may explain why I haven’t really had much of an appetite in weeks.  And I suppose it complicates my desire to lose weight in a healthy way when I am currently pretty much just starving myself.  Not in a malicious way, but I simply feel sick when I try to eat.  But anyway, that was not the point of this.  The point is I want to lose 10lbs, which is what I feel my personal healthy weight should be.  I know that I’m not currently overweight, but I also know that I’m not really comfortable with my body as it currently is.  I’ve been pretty lucky with the weight gain (I’ve heard horror stories of people gaining up to 100lbs, even naturally small people…can you imagine??) but still the stero.ids have done what they do overtime…I’m hoping that now that I’m on a fairly low dose that #1 and #2 will make losing it fairly straightforward.  Still unclear how to eat enough to have enough energy for #1 though…I am determined to somehow start doing this in a healthy way though I have unsurprisingly already been starting to see more encouraging numbers when I step on the scale.  Starving yourself (and also that week of fever, nausea and vomiting) is certainly a proven way of losing weight but I do understand how it is counter-productive in the longrun so I need to force myself to eat.  Maybe keep healthy snacks around the house that are “easy” to eat even when you are not exactly hungry.  Fresh, raw veggies and fruits perhaps… 
4. Stop rambling.   Ha, just kidding, that’s never going to happen.
5. Seriously pursue TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) like acupuncture and herbal remedies. 
6. Complete at least one semester of volunteering, even if the kid I’m tutoring doesn’t bother to hide his contempt for reading (and by extension, me).  I contacted the volunteer coordinator and am just waiting for her to let me know which day of the week they need me.  I’m hoping I get a younger student this time (1st/2nd grade) because I think by 5th grade if you hate reading it’s a little too late already…A girl would be nice too, I know it’s cliche, but all the girls really did seem so much more well-behaved than most of the boys.  No matter what the situation ends up being, even if I get another little wise-ass that’s way too smart to be struggling with basic reading, I think I can do better than last time.   
7. Don’t make excuses for avoiding opportunities to help a stranger.  I must admit, this is really hard sometimes.  Sometimes it’s hard to know what you can do, where you can even begin to try to help.  Just before Christmas there was a man sleeping outside of our building.  My first reaction, as a new homeowner, was annoyance, but then I felt bad.  It was cold outside.  He was there two nights in a row, the two right before Christmas Eve and both nights part of me was whispering that this was a chance to do something.  But what?  The only thing I could think of was to perhaps offer him a blanket.  But something held me back.  I kept telling myself, he’s not asking for anything, would I actually be insulting him?  Would it seem trite?  Finally, I told myself that if he was still there on Christmas Eve, I didn’t care, I would give him one of our spare blankets or sleeping bags.  But he was gone.  Part of me was relieved, hoping that he had found somewhere warm to sleep, perhaps permanently (he didn’t look like a bum, I actually almost didn’t notice him at first, I thought he was just waiting for someone to come out of the office next door, it wasn’t until I still saw him hanging around a few hours later and noticed he was setting up camp that I realized he was sleeping there).  San Francisco has good shelters for the homeless, long-term shelters for people who are willing to sign pledges against drug and alcohol use, I was guessing he might be a good candidate for one of those.  But honestly, part of me was also pretty relieved that I didn’t have to actually see if I’d have the guts to go down there and give him the blanket as I promised myself I would.  I never really know what to do in those situations when help is not actually asked for…it was a lot easier, for example, when we were driving back from LA after Christmas and there was an old man with a limp and a clunker of a car at the gas station asking people for gas money.  Money is easy, but sometimes it feels cheap, like I’m trying to buy my salvation.
8. Speaking of salvation, I think with all the recent soul-searching it’s definitely time to get serious about finding a church.  And actually joining a small group.  Finding people who will hold me (and Paul) accountable and actually focus on developing our relationship with God as individuals and as a couple.  2010 was a year of spiritual stagnancy, I don’t want 2011 to be more of the same.  I have been putting this off because the idea of socializing after work is almost unfathomable, but I know that it’s what I need.  That it will undoubtedly make me feel better. 
9. Make more of an effort to keep in touch with people.  It’s so easy to come home after 10-12 hours at a desk where you have ZERO privacy (and I can literally stretch out my arm and touch each of my neighbors shoulders) and just be glad to be completely alone.  I have to look at 300+ bloomberg messages every day, not to mention emails and answering phone calls.  Sometimes I just don’t want to read another message.  Don’t want to respond anymore.  Don’t want to pick up one more call.  At the end of the day, it feels so nice to just be left alone.  But it’s not healthy.  I have awesome friends and I like hanging out with them.  I need to have some sort of life outside of work.
10. Start reading for fun again.  And playing the piano. 

I could go on.  Probably for pages and pages.  But I’ll leave it at that for now because the day is almost over, I’m tired, and honestly the list is starting to get overwhelming as it is. 

The one thing I really want in 2011 is the one thing I will not put on a list because it’s ultimately out of my hands so there’s no point in frustrating myself by seeing it there, never knowing if or when I’ll be able to check it off the list. 

Anyway, hope you all had a happy new year!  Paul and I spent it at home watching Dexter with champagne, caviar and salametti from Molinari’s!  We forgot to celebrate on eastern time and were passed out by midnight pacific time but it was a lot more fun than it sounds.

It feels like just yesterday that we met for the first time, and yet, you’ve already got one foot out the door.

It’s a little bit unnerving how quickly you’ve come and gone, but I can’t exactly say that I’m sorry to see you go.  And now that you’re leaving, I feel like I can finally tell you tell you this…

I’m not sure that I ever really liked you. 

There I said it. 

I mean, let’s face it, you kind of sucked.  In fact, there were times when you Really.  Fucking.  Sucked. 

You know which times I’m talking about. 

And fyi, no, I don’t forgive you.

But…I do have to admit that you weren’t all bad either.  After all, you were the year that we finally found our very own little piece of this beautiful city.  And the year I got the promotion at work that I wanted so badly. 

And because of those things I won’t look back on you with total disdain (just a lot of it). 

Because of them you weren’t just a crappy year, you were a significant one.  

The good doesn’t outweigh the bad.  It can’t, at least not right now.  But still, good things – life-altering good things – did happen and I’m thankful for that.

So I don’t hate you.  If things turn out the way I hope, someday I will probably even look back on you fondly. 

In the meantime, if you could put in a good word for me with 2011, I’d really appreciate it.  If it could succeed where you failed, that would go a long way in me forgiving you.  Just so you know. 

Love,
Joyce

Here goes nothing
Here goes everything
Gotta reach for something 
Or you’ll fall for anything 
Take a breath 
Take a step 
What comes next? 
God only knows 
But here goes 
  
– Here Goes, Bebo Norman

Not exactly a cheerful holiday movie but I’ve been meaning to watch it and it’s just sitting there in my instant queue.