Caterwauling

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Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

Just chugging some coffee so I’m awake for the drive to Key West today.

Palm Beach ain’t so bad, though. I’ve been looking at apartments in various cities, and I realize I’m quite in love with where I am, thank you very much. Screw anyone who tries to take that away.

It’s the losing of the health insurance that has me nuts now. That everyone else can keep buying haircuts and handbags while I am begging CVS to let me fill my prescriptions now and not on Jan. 10 when they’re due again. (No luck. Boo.)

Oh well. I’m going to run away to the Keys and maybe never come back. My idea of a coffeehouse/wine bar/Italian pastry shop may come true yet. Just give me a shack on the beach, and I can make it work from there.

Mom said I should go by myself, since I cannot stand being around her every second of every day. But I wouldn’t have spent the (way too much) money on this trip if it wasn’t a Christmas present for her. I told her, look, I’m used to running away from home at every opportunity. Now we are breathing the same air 24/7 and it’s Day 3 together and I’m ready to blow out my brains. But we are going to have to work together to get through this, so if you can just (for once) respect my space while I’m at home, then that’s the only way this will work. But don’t martyr yourself over a damn vacation.

I’ve decided that the only thing that will make me feel better is to fuck someone else’s husband. I have a very short list. To quote the beautiful Nicole Kidman in “Practical Magic,” “Hang on to your husbands, ladies! I’m back!”

LOL. Not that I want to compromise my karma. But I am allowing myself an evil thought or three to get me through the night. 😉

This truly was the best year of my life. It was also the worst. Next year isn’t starting off the way I wanted it to. But it sure as hell isn’t going to end like this one, either. And that right there is something to toast when the drag queen drops onto Duval Street tonight. …

So, today I:

1. Got my site migrated AND un-fucked up from a recent hacking, thanks to the AMAZING team at Blog Wranglers. Did I mention it was quick and painless and they are the nicest guys around? You should have Blog Wranglers migrate your site. Seriously. They rock. True Web geniuses, I tell you!

2. Updated my resume. And reaffirmed the fact that I managed to achieve a lot in a very short time frame. Or, tried like hell to. 🙂

3. Realized that I have some absolutely amazing friends and mentors who will always have my back. God was extra-good to me in this regard, and I thank Him profusely for it.

4. Got some cool stuff in the mail that I was afraid I would never receive.

5. Do not have a job to go to anymore.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Not sure what else to say about that.

I’d love to say “it’s all good” and believe that I will indeed be thankful someday. (Today is not that day, however.)

But really, when you look at the (very abbreviated) list of what happened today (and that ain’t even the half of it), you see that four out of five items are blessings. And maybe so will the fifth, one day.

All I have to say is that karma pays it back to some people, and pays it forward to others.

And I guess my karma has been pretty pristine, because at a time when I could be freaking the fuck out, I’m OK. The universe has my back. I can not only feel it, but I can see it plain as day.

Better days are coming. Don’t count me out just yet. My success story is still a work in progress. But maybe everyone is right and that this is the kick in the ass I needed to get back on the right track.

Maybe it’s time to write that book. Since I have quite a lot to say. And it deserves the proper forum. Look out, Patrick Lencioni. Your biggest fan is ready to record her own story!

Right after I go to Key West for the New Year, of course. Damn non-refundable trip that I didn’t purchase the “job loss” insurance for. *facepalm* Oh well. Nothing like ringing in the new year from my happy place to ensure that I bring in 2011 with nothing but joy and anticipation.

(I’m hoping this all doesn’t fuck up my Paris trip.)

But mark my words, Lady L and I will be toasting with champagne at this time next year in New Orleans. And laughing at how silly 2010 was and thank God we never have to feel again the way we felt during that crazy year we spent in Florida.

Claws

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

I can just hear Patton Oswalt narrating my life right now.

So, I have kind of been up to something. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. As we all know, desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that jazz.

Naturally, it’s come back to bite me in my sizable ass. Oy vey.

I’d call on God for help with this one, but even He is like, “Yo. I’m waiting to watch you jump the General Lee over the ravine you dug for yourself. Good luck!”

Thanks, Big Guy. 🙂

So, OK, I had 14 meetings between Monday and Tuesday (and one I forgot — story for another day there. Jesus Christ). And exactly one today.

Not only did I get a lot done, but I immersed myself in pure editing. No profit-and-loss statements, or conversion and renewal rates. No promo codes, no reporting software, no five hours of planning a one-hour meeting.

It was glorious.

I think I’ve risen to the level of my own incompetence. I thought I’d be good in administration. And I do love it, but I’m not advancing the learning curve fast enough. And things are falling by the wayside when I focus on things like supervision and, oh, editing.

It occurs to me, do I want a paycheck, do I want to be happy and creative, or do I want both? Because I thought I could have it all. But I really think I need to pick my priorities. And struggling isn’t my style.

I was thumbing through my copy of Peter Drucker’s “Leader of the Future” and my beloved Patrick Lencioni’s “3 Signs of a Miserable Job,” and I started dreaming of the business I want to start that has NOTHING TO DO with my current field.

I’m not mad at the field. It’s been educational and kind of lucrative in recent years. It’s gotten me introduced to the biggest names in the field, and gotten me accustomed to five-diamond accommodations and five-star meals.

I don’t want to start over. I just want to plot my second business and run it until such time that it’s my only business.

And that I went and did something that could rock my entire world, ugh. Seriously. WTF, Goddess? The cure for drama is not MORE DRAMA.

Well, I think God’s still mapping the joke He is playing on me. Santa Claus is my only hope.

Santa, all I want is to be happier than a hog knee-deep in slop. Please bring me whatever it will take to be that way. And take away everything else. Because I don’t have my wits about me enough to know the difference.

Total Lunar Eclipse December 21, 2010

Originally uploaded by bkushner

I only wish I could have taken this photo. I was in bed during the lunar eclipse, of course. I wake up around 5 a.m. because it takes me about three hours to get motivated in the mornings.

I find myself giving Santa the same list I did last year. Only the names have changed.

I have to get back to church. I will return for candlelight services. And then keep going back. Mom even said I say “Die in a Fire!” more than I normally do when I’m not going to church. I’d wager that most of the people I say it about DO deserve to die in one. But that’s not me. I’m nice. Damn it. I pray for people. I don’t root for their demise. Because Karma is a bitch, yo, and she dishes it RIGHT back.

Of course, I’m hoping some people get a triple scoop this holiday season, after the shit sandwich they served me at some point this year!

When you’ve mastered every psychological trick on the planet, it’s almost humorous to see them aimed at you.

Until you’re powerless to them, of course.

I have this one employee. When she makes a boo-boo and you point it out, she gets flustered and makes a hundred more.

I’m starting to become like her. One mistake becomes 30. And there is no digging out from under it at that point.

I’m also like another of my people, who simply refuses to get ruffled. Tomorrow’s a new day, life is short, people will come to their senses, all anyone needs is a satisfying lay and the world will be well again. I completely subscribe to that theory.

And I’m just like another, who really doesn’t get that you have to “show the math” sometimes. To not give pat answers because we can’t be bothered with small talk. We are “cut to the chase” people, and anyone asking us to elaborate would probably fall asleep under the weight of what was really behind the executive summary.

Not many are like me. I want people to shine. I want to do what I can to make them shine. I don’t need credit — I need them to shine, damn it.

I don’t mean to do this at my own expense. But it would really kill me if everyone else had a job and something that I let slide that was on my plate (and my plate alone) would cost me mine.

Especially something downright meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t mean to be “cavalier,” as I was once called. But is it that nobody else “gets” it … or is the joke really on me?

If there’s one thing I forgot to mention in my note to my 18-year-old self, it would be that although I did leave behind the high school bullies, I wasn’t exactly done with them. And no amount of weight lost or skin clearing up or change in the way I dressed could prepare me for the next generation of holier-than-thou assholes who were just jealous that I had FAR more self-assurance than any of them ever would.

Not too long ago, in one of my “lives,” I remember making the case to do something in the marketing. I remember clearly the return e-mail telling me what a stupid fucking idea it was. (I still have that e-mail.) And then I was just going through some new e-mails (I grudgingly read the marketing to see what they’re up to.) And it looks like that company implemented my idea — word for fucking word.

I thought it was the stupidest thing they had ever heard and what was wrong with me for suggesting it?

I could waste time being angry. But it really makes me think about how people are evaluated on their performance. Especially now at year-end when so many of us are doing reviews and raises, it really brings to light that everything is simply based on someone’s judgments of value.

That situation this morning tells me that my old reviewer could evaluate me as having no usable ideas, and therefore unworthy of promotion or an increase in compensation. But no one will ever take back those words when it is suddenly decided that I had a nugget of sense in my brain after all.

Hell, in my experience, historical amnesia tends to set in and the person who was given the idea, is suddenly the author of it anyway. I just happen to be in a field where we don’t miss a trick and can at least pat ourselves on the back for having a good idea after all.

I know that stemming the bullying in our nation’s schools is on Washington’s to-do list right now. As well it should be. Especially with this week’s repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it does a lot for the GLBT population of all ages. And since that’s the group that has been most notably bullied to death (literally), I am glad that we are getting our priorities — er — straight.

It will probably take at least three generations for the bullying problem to truly abate. But what I wish I could be around for is its long-term impact on the workplace. Let’s face it, bullying happens every day … whether it’s a boss to a supervisee, or a supervisee who kicks and screams and threatens upper management.

I remember several mid-level managers who drove staff away by the dozens each year but who made too much money for the company to fire. I always suggested that we calculate the churn for always losing employees (and the actual plus opportunity costs of replacing them) versus what was earned/banked through performance metrics. My bet was always that it came out nearly even.

In any case, I do wonder what the workforce will be like if ever we can stem the childhood bullying problem. I’ve analyzed everyone I’ve ever worked with. I can easily see who was the bossy kid. I can pick out the shrinking violets with my eyes closed. And I can VERY quickly spot the ones who got their asses handed to them as kids … the ones who let 30 years of repressed anger explode at truly the weirdest moments.

Moreover, I see the rest who don’t mean to be bullies, per se, who have the tendency. Mostly it’s because they’re having a tough time at home in one form or another (i.e., a stressful time in their marriage, an uncontrollable kid, a dependent parent, an affair they’re trying to cover up) that causes them to misdirect their emotions.

I ain’t defending it — just trying to rationalize it. We all have our breaking points and woe be the person standing too close.

But to the point when it means that an employee is judged based on factors they don’t — and won’t — ever even KNOW about, well that’s what makes me nuts. Sure, it can always be brought around to the employee. You handled this wrong. You suck at this. You “disappointed” me. You “aren’t who I thought you were.” You “clearly don’t get it.”

It’s those blanket summations that we’ve all heard over the years — when we were truly just trying to figure out what was best for the company, even if it was a colossal mistake based on simply not knowing that we were standing in front of a dam with a pocket knife — that come to define us. If not in our eyes, then in someone else’s. That’s bullying in its purest sense, to me — the bully puts a label on someone and reinforces it so much that they have no other choice but to believe it because they can’t break out of that mold otherwise.

I realize this is quite the tirade for basically what amounts to my idea being validated after the fact. I’m just saying that I didn’t need the whole “you’re an idiot” riot act in the first place when I suggested it. Because while I know better than to let anyone define who I am, their actions and words do have an impact on the person I’m supposed to become. Imagine all the ideas I squelched that day after that little slap in the face … the idea that might have made THAT idiot a million dollars.

Bedfellow in Mexico

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

Dear Self of December 1992,

Congratulations! You’ve just finished your first semester of college. It will become a university in about 15 years, so I’m glad you’re enjoying the very small classes, close relationships with your journalism professors, and friendships that will last, in one form or another, for the next 20 years.

Right now I know you can’t wait to work for The New Yorker and move into the chic loft apartment you plan to buy in SoHo. I can see the stars in your eyes as you dream about writing your trashy romance novels on your Smith-Corona word processor. (Oh, how I wish I could warn you that you will lose all of the data on your disks. Use the Mac lab instead!)

I know you plan to be a high-powered career woman, with lovers all over the world and no one who really holds your heart. Well, maybe you love them all … as deeply as you can, in as many different ways as there are lovers to be loved. In fact, that might be the only expectation you have right now that comes true.

Oh, self. If we could have chatted in that soon-to-open Starbucks on Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh, the things you would have learned. Even if you never would have believed them.

1. Get out of Pittsburgh as soon as you can. You will wait till you’re 28. Better late than never, but you know that there’s no room for a recent college grad — yes, you WILL graduate! late, but you’ll do it — and you will never look back.

You don’t look back too often. You can be a little bit cold and hard in that respect. But it will serve you well in your career.

About that…

2. It will be a mess, it will be all you have and you won’t be doing anything remotely close to what you expected. I wish I could tell you that you will live a glamorous life. It will have its moments of luxury and grandeur. You will work too hard for too many years for too little pay. And then one day you will live in a tropical paradise, making three times what you did when you moved to D.C. (And you will settle for far too little in this world, just FYI.)

You will work on your novels here and there. You’ll stop writing poetry because you stop believing that you’ll find love. You’ll despise being on the computer (yes, you’ll own one. Several, even!) because your mother moves in with you (yep. Sorry about that. Can’t lie to you. Might as well jump off the Smithfield Street Bridge now, Goddess) and hovers constantly.

You’ll still be writing though. Grant applications under CEOs’ names. Cheesy newsletter articles with no byline. Mental health articles under your own byline. Financial articles under everyone’s name but yours. And a whole lot of daily/weekly updates to anal-retentive superiors, time analyses, behavioral documentation of unruly employees, and other butt-kissing maneuvers to save your job. Glad you went to school to become a professional writer — you’ll need everything you learned to make everyone else look good.

3. And for God’s sake, DON’T BLOG. Well, I know you’re rebellious and will have one anyway. 🙂 Just know you’ll get shitcanned for it in 2004 and then be enjoyed for it at your next job. And you’ll rise to executive positions and you probably SHOULD kill it. But it’s your one creative outlet. Until you write those books. Whenever that will be.

4. Trust no one. No, not them. And ESPECIALLY not them. Well, your Ye Olde Workplace Establishment peeps are the shit. God will give you five glorious years with people who worship you and coin your “Goddess” nickname. Everyone else is out there to use and abuse you. You will walk a fine line between being the smartest person in the room with the million-dollar ideas, and the person who does her damndest to get off the radar because those ideas aren’t good enough unless they come out of someone else’s mouth. You will learn to take pleasure in not being yelled at/demeaned/publicly excoriated.

The worst part: You will keep a thousand ideas to yourself because you start to doubt your own abilities. I shudder to think of how much worse off the world is without what you are looking so forward to contributing to it.

People will push you to the edge with a pitchfork. They will make you dance the plank and laugh at your expense. And you will do it, too, in the name of keeping that lifestyle you will come to enjoy. I wish I could say you’ll be rich and that it will all be worth it. But I can’t. You just have to try to rise above it all … forgive yourself when you can’t … and stock up heavily on the red wine you will come to love so much.

Brace yourself now, baby. It ain’t easy.

But it’s not all bad…

5. You will see the world. And love it. OK, so at twice your age now, you still haven’t seen Paris. But you will. Next year, we hope. If we can just keep ourself gainfully employed, we have a plane ticket to Dublin and Paris in March.

You’ll see Canada (twice) and Mexico in a six-month span. You will have visited 20 states in three or four years. Not bad for a girl who was stuck in Pittsburgh for three decades, eh?

And forget those shitty, cheap hotels. Baby, there’s a corporate Amex with your name on it. Use it!

6. It ain’t New York. But a condo on the ocean doesn’t suck, either. You’ll live in five states. Eventually you’ll wake up to a water view that isn’t simply courtesy of an upgraded hotel room. (Although those are nice, too!)

7. Your heart will never be broken if you don’t let it. You probably won’t even have a notion of the concept of “making love” till about 2010. I know you’re being a little ‘ho right now, and you probably won’t ever truly give that up (except for that weird celibate period you go through when you’re too overworked to date). But maybe someday you’ll have both love and lust at the same time.

You’ll meet a guy who wishes he married you instead of someone else. You’ll see him on this crazy new platform called Facebook someday and feel that same old pang that, in his words, he “didn’t meet you first.”

But you’re a gal with a passport who doesn’t have time to mourn. You’ll date millionaires and stay in the poshest of accommodations; you’ll date younger guys and remember why you hated dating that age group when you WERE that age; you’ll have conversations and experiences with people you worship, or who worship you, and maybe a little of both if you’re paying attention.

And on the rare occasion you’re at home, you’ll reconnect with people who had the potential to be special “back then,” who still are and become even more so now.

In any case, you’ll grab life by the balls and do it on YOUR terms.

Your future isn’t anything like you thought it would be, Goddess. Many days, you’ll feel like you’re finished. But I have a sneaking suspicion that your 54-year-old self would tell you that you haven’t even gotten started yet, not even at 36 …

Ahoy, matey!

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

Oh. My. God.

So, if Eleanor Roosevelt was right that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, at some point today I signed the damn permission slip.

Silly Goddess.

“I was listening to the radio
I heard a song reminded me of long ago
Back then I thought that things were never gonna change
It used to be that I never had to feel the pain
I know that things will never be the same now.”

— Eddie Money, “I Wanna Go Back”

I was thinking about my old Easter Seals colleagues today. I remember how we celebrated when each of us left that horrible place … how we’d have special happy hours (in addition to the “regular” ones) to say goodbye and good luck.

Inevitably, one by one, we each got one shitty job after the next. No one came back, but most of us didn’t last a year in our new gigs.

I remember that making me so angry … that we got out of a job that paid nothing — from a place that was depressing at best — and we were all such GOOD PEOPLE who had such CRAP LUCK with jobs.

Every one of us had a “rebound job.” The one I had after that pretty much sucked mightily too. I don’t know what happened to everyone after that — those were the “dark years” when Facebook hadn’t yet been invented. But I haven’t heard of any of us setting the world on fire. Which, for all the heart and soul we gave to our vocations, it’s a damn shame we didn’t.

Back then, though, at least we had each other. And that counted for a lot. While I love being a manager, I miss everyone being on the same level and therefore able to relate and share without a conflict of interest.

I stay in touch with a couple of my friends from that time. They’ve all had kids since I saw them last. I don’t know that any of them found their dream job. I think they’ve learned to find joy in their beautiful families.

I’ve probably had five dream jobs since then. (Wes Craven dreams, but dreams nonetheless.) I wish we could get the old gang back together. I wonder what we’d tell our 20-odd-something selves. Probably not to get married, not to have kids, not to wrap yourself up in your career, and not to trust anyone else the way we trusted each other back then.

I feel like I was wiser then. I was a smartass. But I was a damn good game-player. The older I get, though, the more-real I am. I say things that offend people. I do things that piss them off. I disengage when I’m tired. I avoid what isn’t enjoyable. And I don’t understand why I haven’t yet achieved martyr status from some of the more-miserable years.

I love my people now. But damn, I miss that group from ES. It’s been so long since the mid-’90s when we were all together. I hope they’ve landed their dream jobs or, even better, their dream lives.

More likely, we all still drink just a little bit too much, think a little bit too much about that person we didn’t end up with, and still hold on to the hope that we chose right and that we’ll get it right in the next life, if we run out of chances in this one.

Baltimore’s Washington Monument at Daybreak

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

Well, I hopped back on my Paxil today. I feel extraordinarily better.

In fact, I was having a grand old day for the most part. Talked to my contact at the CME, talked to a potential new editor, got taken to lunch by a potential J.V. partner, talked to Lady L, and talked to my girl T.

All in all, a fucking fabulous day.

Except …

Yeah. There’s always something.

The notes I made in my personal journal were brief. Three sentences, tops. Damn near fictional in nature, if you didn’t know me.

The drugs will help me to remain calm during the shitstorm. But I don’t think my spunk is going away just yet.

As a matter of fact, minus the weather watch for fan-splattering poo, I was feeling pretty damn good about everything.

I’m not giving up hope that it’s possible to feel good permanently. Or at least for more than, oh, one consecutive day. I just realize that in order to have it, I have to claim it.

And I’m pissing a fucking circle around it when I get it.

M&T Stadium and Camden Yards

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

So, we all know how much I abhor meetings. Especially ones I have to run. Because, well, they suck.

For one, either I should just attend meetings all day and just delegate the projects … or else I should have NO meetings and just do the damn work and not have to beg forgiveness when I don’t have shit done because I’m in (or preparing for) … you guessed it — meetings!

I felt like it went well today. But I also got violently sick afterward. Probably from all the planning and anticipating and remembering the pile of failure that they told me my last meeting was.

Anyway, I was kind of proud of myself for taking myself off the mind meds. And today, I think part of the violent sickness is the fact that said medicine is out of my body. Oof.

I’m really pissed off about this. I LOVE the ideas and creativity that have started to once again course through my little brain. The passion is back. I’m ready to pull off the gloves and deck the next person who looks at me funny, instead of saying a prayer that their life gets better and something good happens to them so they can be nice for one goddamned day already.

But …

OMG, the tears. I found myself sobbing before work today. I did that before leaving for the Den of Iniquity. (About the time I decided I HAD to be put on drugs.) I did that before Ye Olde Workplace Establishment, during those final months when they destroyed my beloved department and stuck me with a supervisor who loved to have weekly “Kumbaya”-singing meetings while I still had a SHITPILE of work to do.

I had to decide whether today’s tears were related to my current job, my health or both.

I haven’t decided yet. 😉

And I have this lovely person in my life who is cursing me with an unintended pregnancy, just because I predicted he’d get a parking ticket AND HE DID. Although … he was a doll and said recently that he hopes I DON’T find myself in that condition. I’ll take a compliment wherever I can get it!

So in all my weird emotional havoc today, paranoia set in. Do my boobs hurt? Well, one was kind of itchy. Does my back hurt? Well yeah I sit on a crappy chair all day. I ate a shit-ton of food today … uh, should I be concerned about this?

I actually left work early. If you can call 4:30 p.m. “early.” I felt like ass. I was starting to fall asleep at my desk. Another symptom? Egads!

I do realize that it’s the lack of transition between “happy pill land!” and “absolutely no drugs in my body other than birth control!” that’s got me all kerfuffled.

I still need to find a happy medium between “drugged” and “clear-minded and inspired.” I swear those drugs are the reason I haven’t decked anyone who truly deserved it. And it’s been kind of nice not crying. My friend told me a sad story at lunch and of course I welled up. I haven’t done that in forever. It felt good. At least I may deaden the pain, but I’m not totally dead inside.

Oh, mental state. Why are you so fragile?

I’m definitely going to get back on the drugs before Tuesday, the meeting that is going to be the death of me if I don’t wash down a bottle of Paxil with a bottle of Patron!