transcended.net

Griping today.  Because I can.

Gripe #1:  Why, why, why if you are requesting that people send you documents, would you NOT include an email address?  Fax or snail mail only?  Do you also use a stone and chisel instead of a computer?  Can anyone please explain to me the business reason for operating this way?  I really can’t think of one, but maybe I’m just missing something super obvious.  Yet another reason BofA sucks major balls.  I’m not even going to go into the fact that their fax line appeared to be busy the whole damn day.

Gripe #2:  It was literally 80 degrees or hotter in my office for the bulk of the day.  And my day lasted 11hrs so that was awesome.

Gripe #3:  I haven’t paid much attention to politics for years now and certainly haven’t written about it.  I follow it to the extent that I need to for work, but I’ve attempted to ignore it as best I can mainly because I’m devoid of all the youthful optimism I used to have and am now jaded and cynical and don’t think my vote or opinion really matters (let’s face it, it doesn’t, I live in the district that elected Nancy Pelosi after all).  But this whole Solyndra thing?  Super irritating.  Everyone should stop for a moment and play the game, What If Bush Did It?  But of course, this won’t hurt Obama, the man is made of teflon (or the media has coated him in it, whatever).  I’ll probably be reported to AttackWatch.com for that.  Can’t say anything bad about our Dear Leader these days, you know.  (Seriously though that website is really creepy and awfully 1984, no?  Whatever happened to dissent being the highest form of patriotism?).

Gripe #4:  I spaced on my acupuncture appointment today.  Wow.  It was in my calendar.  They called me yesterday and left me a voicemail – which I only listened to the first two seconds of.  Because I am a jackass.

Gripe #5:  Boys avert your eyes.  I had a little accident of the period-related sort on work last Friday.  The only person who MAY have noticed (as far as I can tell) is the most important person in the office.  Because such is my luck.  On the brightside, it could have been much, much worse (it was mostly hideable) and my awesome hubby went to buy me pants on his lunch break so I didn’t have to spend my whole day scuttling around with my back to the wall.

Well, I feel better!

I had gone to bed after the planes had already hit.  But I didn’t know.  I was awake chatting with my online buddies, a few weeks before my sophomore year in college was to begin.  I went to sleep around 6am and I had no idea what was happening.

An hour and a half later my mom burst into my room, jolting me awake with yelling about towers falling down, something about how it all felt like a movie, and needing to reach my cousin G (who worked at the World Financial Center next to the Twin Towers at that time).

I was confused, I wasn’t really awake, and I was a groggy mess, but I followed her down (she had run back downstairs without much more explanation beyond that) but the moment I saw the TV screen I knew I wasn’t going back to bed anytime soon.  I watched as they replayed images of the towers burning against that clear blue sky, as they came crashing down, as people wandered around disoriented, shocked, covered in dust.

Somehow, miraculously, we reached my cousin G on his cell phone (I still don’t know how this happened).  He told us he’d seen the second plane hit, he was right about to enter his office building when he looked up into the sky and watched as it flew into the second tower.  He had stood there in horror, he told me, “And then people were jumping out of the building.  They all died.” and the WAY he said it will stay with me forever.  It was like this complete shock, I wrote at the time that the way he said it felt like he was saying it out loud to confirm that this was all real.  He was one of those covered in dust from the building after they collapsed, he was one of those who had run and by the time he stopped running he was at 20th street and figured he could just walk the remaining 50 blocks home.

Speaking with him in the midst of all that, it made it all the more real to me.  I was terrified, I felt sick (probably also due to lack of sleep), and I was angry.

I was also really irritated by some of the obnoxious, inevitable, illogical racist reaction that seemed to be going on around the web.  But my worldview did change forever that day.  For better or for worse, it was the day that opened up my eyes to exactly what kind of world we live in and the need and importance of fighting to preserve a way of life we take for granted.   I was no longer as innocent as I had been.

So he went ahead and applied.  He was sort of running out of time to throw his name into the running and although he would really hope not to be in a position where he would have to turn down an offer (he has a lot of ties to the company and would be afraid to burn bridges) he said that if it came down to it and I/we still felt like it just wasn’t the right thing, he would turn it down.

At the very least his ambivalence may help with the salary negotiation right?  (If he gets that far that is).

I’m still so torn, not even sure what I should be sharing with him.  I’m afraid I won’t know how to walk the line between lashing out in anger because I don’t want to go and voicing honest concerns that could be hurtful even though they are valid.  I’m afraid that if I bring up valid concerns and he writes them off that will make me angry and more resentful if we do end up moving and the things I’m afraid of come to pass.

I hope I don’t react that way, I haven’t so far about the condo.  I think I’ve actually been pretty fair about putting the “blame” for that on both of us (his pushing and not thinking about these possibilities and my lack of pushing to think about these things) but somehow I think moving to LA will be an entirely different story.  I was torn about buying a place, part of me did want to, part of me did think it was a great opportunity and a great time to do it.  Part of me knew I would love living here (and I really do).

But when it comes to LA, every fiber in my being is screaming NO, NO, NO.  I could be wrong, but everything I feel tells me I won’t love living there.  I feel like I will be miserable there.  I feel like I will become bitter and resentful about being forced to be there.  I don’t want to tell him that though, for the obvious reasons.  But maybe I should?  I’m afraid that the stress of having to figure out what to do with this condo, of living apart for at least six months or more, of knowing I have to move to LA and figure things out there, will just destroy me healthwise.  I don’t want to put it like that to him, but I’m also somewhat confident it will set me back greatly.  He thinks maybe not working will help with the stress, but the fact of the matter is if I’m not working then I’m just waiting for him to get home and that stresses me out too.  Particularly if he’s working longer hours.

He wants to go, he wants to do this.  I know he wants what’s best for us but I know how he gets tunnel vision too.  He can convince himself this is the right thing just as much as I’ve convinced myself it’s the wrong thing.  And I know that to some extent these are the moments that marriage is all about, but I’m really afraid about either of us feeling held hostage at the end of the day.  There doesn’t feel like there is a compromise between what either of us wants in that case and I hate that.  In the past whenever we’ve come up against situations like this, one of us has always felt more strongly than the other and the compromise has been to go with whoever cared more about that particular issue.  I think both of us really want things to go our way this time.

Should I just sit quietly?  Wait and see how this all plays out?  There’s a decent chance that he will not get the position anyway, and at this point his name is already out there, so I guess that’s all I can do anyway.

Once again I’m just rambling, trying to make myself feel better.  I feel terribly alone right now. I wish I could just crawl up under my blankets and sleep until things are decided one way or another.

I wish I could let go.

Gripping on so tight
With the security I have inside
Knowing what is right
Holding on to my pride

– Letting Go by Jeremy Camp

How incredibly fucking whiny and ungrateful I sound.  Boohoo, my husband might have a great job opportunity.  Talk about first-world problems.

So yes, I do feel guilty that these are the things I stress about.

And yet…these are the things I struggle with.

On a related note, last week I found myself on the cab ride home feeling very frustrated and annoyed with my job and how obnoxious it can be and when I stepped out of the cab there at the public garbage can in front of the condo was an old lady who looked like she was my (living) grandmother’s age, perhaps a few years younger but not much, sifting through it for cans.  And I thought to myself, wow, God must be telling me to STFU you whiny little princess.

I know seeing things like that should make me feel “better” about where I am, but usually I just end up feeling like a terrible person and guilty and not really any “better” about the crap I deal with.

I need to make a change in my life, I really do.  But I’m just afraid I’ll never be happy doing anything.  That I’m just a horrible, negative pessimist incapable of being grateful or happy for anything.  I don’t know why.

I’m really good at talking myself out of things, talking myself in circles, and never really doing anything about anything.  I’ve found that I’m the type of person that just lets things happen to me, and I don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing at this point.

Whatever happens, hopefully it will spur me into action.  Soon.

I did pretty much nothing over the weekend.  A couple meals out, church, netflix, dvr-ed shows and lots and lots of rest.  I do feel better but it wasn’t a completely restful weekend because…

There were also a lot of talks with the hubs and a lot of praying and a lot of hand-wringing.

Last week in the middle of my meltdown over my health the hubs sprung this on me, one of his buddy’s told him about a great opportunity at his company, a company hubby is sort of desperate to get into because it’s basically one of the top names in the industry and will probably really explode once a certain pending matter is resolved (which seems like it will be done soon).

The catch?  It’s in LA.  Because, OF COURSE IT IS.

This would be fine given that I’ve recently concluded I’m probably not long for my job one way or another…

Except that I really hate LA.  After close to seven years in the westside I was completely done with it.  Done with the horrendous traffic, the frustrating parking, the shallowness of the people, just done with all of it.  I told Paul the other day that it just feels like a hollow, empty, soul-less city to me.  I know I was probably just in the wrong area, but to me that’s just how it feels down there.  It is night and day living in SF vs LA.  The people up here are kooky weirdos, but they’re NICE kooky weirdos.  And anyway, I like that they’re kooky weirdos.  This city has a soul.  This city has a heartbeat.  This city is unique and off-beat and so, so special to me.  You wouldn’t think it given my politics, but oddly enough I love so much of what makes this city tick.  I can barely even think about moving back to LA, away from my family….The truth is I’ve never ONCE missed it or wanted to go back.  Whenever people ask me how I liked it or if I would go back I’ve always said the only way I’d even consider it would be if there was a career opportunity for one of us that we just couldn’t say no to.  This could be that, but it’s not as clear cut as I’d hoped it would be to make a decision like this.

And then of course, another big issue is this condo.  At first it really upset me to think about this because this is one of the things that made me hesitant about buying this place in the first place and Paul was so sure that we were here to stay and didn’t need to worry about something like this happening, at least not anytime in the near future.  It really bugs me that barely a year later this is what we’re facing.  It bothers me that sometimes it feels like he just wants what he wants and gets tunnel vision and doesn’t REALLY weigh out all the possibilities.  I’m probably to the opposite extreme so I guess we can balance each other out to some extent, but the truth is I was also quite upset with myself.  Because I feel like I let the fact that I want him to be happy win out against my better judgement and knowing what I know about him I should have made a bigger fuss and forced us to examine this possibility more than we did.  Let’s face it, it was pretty obvious given that the bottomline is that there are more opportunities for him doing what he’s doing in LA as opposed to up here.

We’d have to pay back the tax credits we got, we’d have to be apart for several months (at least) and we’d have to put any plans to have kids whether naturally or by adoption on hold.  Because we’d probably have to live in a studio down there for a couple years at least until the “opportunity” put hubby into a higher paying job.  He seems to think that it’d be a given but I don’t know.  What if it’s not?

I’m afraid to push the fact that I don’t want to go because I don’t want him to resent me for not seizing this opportunity.  But I’m also afraid that we will move down there and I’ll resent him for being in a place I really dislike.  Particularly if he is working long hours and I don’t have much of a support system down there because my parents are up here.  I feel like we’re between a rock and a hard place and I know I shouldn’t have said this to him but I did say to him that maybe it would have been better for him if we’d never gotten married.  Not that I want him to leave me or want us to get divorced, that’s SO not what I want, but I have to admit that a lot of the times I feel so guilty about this marriage.  I feel so guilty that I can’t be a real partner to him in a lot of ways because of my health, he is always taking care of me, of the house, I hate that it’s because of me that he has to worry about having kids and adoption and all of that…

Basically, I hate feeling like his mom was right (hence the reason she refused to come to our wedding).  But I guess that is a whole other can of worms separate from this possible job opportunity/moving thing…

I don’t know what the final conclusion is, he is very torn because he knows how unhappy I am in general with the idea of living in LA for any reason and being apart from my family in particular, but he wants this job so badly.  I’m torn because I want him to be happy with what he’s doing, especially since I’m not and I think ultimately it makes more sense for him to be the primary breadwinner (as opposed to now when I am actually making more and the potential is all with me).  I told him I’d actually even prefer it if the job was in a different state, like Colorado or Texas or NY because I’d know with any of those places neither of us would feel comfortable putting down roots and staying but I know in LA it would be so easy for us to just stay forever and the idea of raising my family away from my family is so unimaginable to me.  Especially if we ever did end up doing a transracial adoption I think it would be so much better to be near my parents as opposed to his.  We are not close to his parents, he is not really close to them, they are old school.  We are super close to my parents, they see Paul as a son and they are so not old school Asian parents.  They have told me that they would love any child we bring into this family as their grandchild and I know they would.

I guess I’m just rambling at this point.  I don’t really know what to say or do.  I just want a clear sign from God.  At this point it feels like he will probably just apply and we’ll just have to pray that an open or closed door is God’s sign.  I’m just not sure it always works that way since I’m sure there are sometimes opportunities that we should not take that appear in front of us like the tree in the Garden of Eden, but I guess we’ll just have to pray to recognize that if it’s the case.

I really wish it was like Bible times when God would just speak out loud to you with a clear message.  Go to LA, don’t go to LA, c’mon I just want to hear three to four words.  Please?