Caterwauling

Finally had a good weigh-in today. Down 3.5 pounds. And this after eating at Famous Dave’s, Golden Corral (shut up, the breakfast bar is the bomb) and my favorite Indian buffet. And after four beers last night.

What can I say? I let myself enjoy my life a little bit, and a happy Goddess equals a happy Goddess on the scale!

It was another week for the record books. I’d say the Guinness books but it was more like Magic Hat, Purple Haze, Rose Gaarden and Stella than Guinness. This week, anyway.

So, I have been feeling more like myself for the past few days. I rediscovered what it was like to spend time with a man who touches me and acts like he knows me. I got used to being at arm’s length from someone. I stopped craving the affection because I was never going to get it from a certain someone.

Nothing else to add to that. I do want to go back to the de-pudgification success, though.

This week, lifetime members shared their journeys. And the mom of a mother-and-daughter pair I never really liked very much shared her story. And … I suddenly like them. A lot.

Basically the room is full of people who have been on and off the program forever … people who had super success the first time around (like I did) who are having a slow and basically frustrating and horrible time this time around (like I am).

The a-ha moment I got was that I was so damn successful the first time because I was BORING. I ate a Fiber One bar for breakfast every day. I had a salad for lunch every day. I had a Smart Ones meal for dinner every day. I didn’t drink. I didn’t have fun. I didn’t miss a meeting and I didn’t ENJOY it at all.

This time, I didn’t realize what I’m doing till one of the blue-hairs said it. She’s doing this for LIFE now. She’s not saying, OK, I have X number of pounds to take off and I have to DO IT RIGHT THIS SECOND. It has taken her a year to take off 50 pounds and she has 10 more to go to get back to the Lifetime goal she achieved 25 years ago.

She did the same thing I did — made it a MISSION the first time around. And this time, she is basically making life as manageable and as flavorful as possible. At her own rate. In her own way. Mess-ups and all.

I never messed up the first time around. I might have said I did, to excuse a scale fail. But even this time, I would never say I messed up per se … I just have weeks where I’m “better” than others. I might simply choose to have beer for dinner or a plate of burnt ends for lunch instead of a boring salad.

But I found that shocking my system with oils and sauces and OH I DUNNO, FLAVORS helps tremendously. Variety, man. That’s what it’s all about.

Sometimes you gotta move on to move up. Or, in scale world, to move down.

As for moving on, cryptic bullshit ahead: I don’t know if I’m ever going to love or want someone as much as I did him. But that’s the thing about life. Just when you think you’ve run out of chances, you get another opportunity to reinvent yourself. And with the gift of hindsight, you realize God was just trying to help you see what you want … and what you crave … so that you don’t have to compromise and live without it next time around.

BACON.

Other than “I stayed up all night over a week ago to produce this and I’ve been waiting for help/approval on some things and I got busy with even-more-urgent stuff and OMG SQUIRREL,” this should shed some light on A Lot of Things.

Employees who experienced frequent interruptions reported 9% higher rates of exhaustion — almost as big as the 12% increase in fatigue caused by oversize workloads, according to a survey of 252 working adults published recently in the International Journal of Stress Management. Interruptions also sparked a 4% increase in physical ailments such as migraines or backaches, says the study.

Error rates skyrocket after interruptions. Participants in a recent 300-person study were asked to perform a sequence of computer tasks, such as identifying with a keystroke whether a letter was closer to the start or the end of the alphabet. After even a brief interruption of about 2.8 seconds, when they were asked to type two letters, the subjects made twice as many errors, says the study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

“Two seconds is long enough to make people lose the thread,” says Erik Altmann, a psychology professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and the study’s lead author.

To make matters worse, it takes more than 25 minutes, on average, to resume a task after being interrupted. After resuming a complex task such as design or programming, says Tom DeMarco, co-author of “Peopleware,” a book on productivity now in its third edition, it takes an additional 15 minutes to regain the same intense focus or “flow” as before the interruption, based on an 800-employee study for the book.

— The Biggest Office Interruptions Are …

12 years have passed, and what has changed?

Five states, five jobs and five apartments later, in my world you can say a lot has changed.

But after a miserably long commute, doubled in length by accidents I was mercifully not a part of and filled with not-so-sunshiney thoughts, I can’t say much is different.

I still work too hard in hopes of being recognized and rewarded. I still feel absolutely burned out and under-appreciated and unnoticed and expected to just keep giving, giving, giving till it hurts under the assumption that more is going to magically regenerate from within me.

Someone at another company said to me the other day that her team is motivated because they see a possibility of getting a bonus. And I’m like, Jesus Christ. I have been working around the clock and I’m out of steam as we close in on will-we-or-won’t-we on the bonus front.

I left a job I loved after working 100-hour weeks for a year didn’t result in a bonus. I might have stayed had I not had an opportunity to go. But … the company never did end up recovering financially.

The same can be said of the next two companies I joined. I gave gave gave and they took took took.

I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want to reach that level of disengagement that I just can’t do it anymore. I just don’t see an opportunity to gather back my strength without fear of … well, everything.

It could very well be 2001 in my world. I have the same car, same 30 pounds I need to lose, same inability/lack of wanting to hold down a relationship, same … yearning. But for what, I still have no idea.

Every day is That Day. The details of what happened have faded, but the outline of what hasn’t continues to loom large.

I had a near-death experience today. Or, at least, I felt like it.

I finally got some help around these parts. And I was on the phone training this person. And I was stressing, over and over again, to the point of being annoying, to check and double-check and triple-check and please don’t ever think that you can check too often.

I even said it out loud, if there’s even a 1% chance that you could send the right file to the wrong list, triple-check yourself before you hit the “send” button.

And genius here? Sent the right file to the wrong list.

The second I hit the “send” button, I had that horrible gut-wrenching, “I’ve got to go poop all over my worst enemy’s desk” feeling.

Did I say that? Ahem.

Anyway, there are two cancel buttons, and I hit them immediately. Now, I’ve already been told that you can ONLY hit them within 60 seconds and, even then, there’s about a 50/50 chance your mailing will be halted.

Well God willing and the creek don’t rise, but I waited 10 minutes and never got a live broadcast. Success!

I’m all hell-bent on training this poor character because it is all that stands between me getting a vacation day or me coming in with a potato gun and shooting yams at everyone I see. Even though I could hand some of my work over to, oh, people more-qualified than me to do it, I’ve been told no way, no how. Either my person is trained or no vacation for Goddess.

Problem is, I don’t know how to show him nine months’ worth of hard knocks and overcomplicated processes (this is one of about four major ones) before my 21 weekdays of vacation expires. But I am totally willing to die trying.

Anyway, just had to stress-blog. I try not to do that here but today? I earned it.

Of course I went straight into three more things to be published (read: interpreted, re-written, the math completely overhauled and basically breaking the nose to rebuild it) and I have four more waiting. So don’t rule out a yam fit just yet. But it’s a little further away than it was a couple of hours ago.

At least I think I conveyed the point of “How to react with grace.” I hope!

Drove Momma over to Sanibel/Captiva yesterday for her birthday. The trip was only the duration of an average workday, so around 15 hours all told.

I realize I dramatically prefer the West Coast of Florida over the East. The people are nicer, the pace is more-orderly, the world just seems to make more sense over there.

We passed through Fort Myers on the way and Mom’s spidey senses kicked in and she asked me to keep going straight for a while instead of making my turn. And we ended up running into a Famous Dave’s, which we haven’t seen since we lived in Maryland, having her birthday lunch there.

ZOMFG burnt ends, yo. And toes in the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaking of spidey senses, I’ve had two horrid work dreams the past two nights. One, I dreamed one of my superiors and one of our corporate partners moved in with me and I was part of/privy to all their discussions. And I don’t know if, as the child of a psychic, my vivid dreams are prophetic or what, but they were Up to Something and it was … Interesting.

Then last night, I dreamed that a guy on my team was conspiring with the boss to get me out. They called me late one night after I’d left late and said I needed to go back to the office and I said, hey, I work so hard … this is going to wait till morning. And the guy said, “No, you don’t work hard enough. And that’s what I told (boss).”

And dumbass me, who worked 40 hours between Tuesday and Thursday of this week, got dressed and ready to drive back to the prairie where the office resides.

Anyway, my odyssey yesterday made work feel like it was a thousand miles away, but it always comes back. But while it couldn’t afford enough funds to stay over so I didn’t have to do an exhausting driving marathon, it did afford us a couple tanks of gas and a nice lunch. Days like yesterday almost make it all worth it.

I finally blocked the bitch. FREEDOM!

Of course, I admit that anytime I get pee-shy, I picture filling up her wrinkles in the toilet and it WORKS EVERY TIME.

Guess it’s time to find a new target. …

“Running with the rats through the city
Makes you feel like you’re a partner in crime
Girl, once you were young and pretty
Now won’t you stop to watch that little girl die …

I know you want to curse
This place
There’s only one thing
That’s stopping us now is

Fear, fear, fear
Of a new thing
Fear, fear, fear
Of the brass ring.”

— Bon Jovi, “Fear”

I saw one of my friends who had to work today posting their lack of enjoyment of it. I worked a bit too, from home. I’ve got to let a lot of dogs use this hydrant and I’m woefully behind.

I had one of those mini-revelations this weekend. I’m thinking that I don’t like the publishing world anymore. I’m sick of being beholden to constant deadlines. Daily deadlines.

I mean, I usually thrive with them. But I’d give my life to take a week off to meditate (or medicate) and then come back full-force without the entire world having changed without me.

Maybe I need to move fully into marketing. Or management. Or copywriting. I think a combination of each. Even though I love love love editorial more than everything else combined. I just … need to do a job switch for a little while.

Or a life switch. Whichever.

I’ve given up everything in my life to have a great career. I’ve lost hundreds of friends, thousands of hours with people I love, opportunities to go on dates and maybe even get coupled-up, the chance to have a kid … maybe the chance to have kids entirely, and trips and vacations and all kinds of other stuff that could have changed the course of my life.

But it’s OK … I’ve given my heart to my career. I’m now at the point of “What if it wasn’t worth it” or “Maybe I’ve had my priorities fucked up” or “If I just keep going, just push as hard as I can for as long as I can, it’ll all pay off, right?”

The still, small voice in my head said to me today, “You’re afraid of losing all you’ve achieved so far.” And it was right.

I fear that my life, uninspiring though it may be right now, could crumble. And I couldn’t handle waking up to anything less-thrilling than the way things are now.

I guess I just want to know that everything I gave up, everything I continue to GIVE up, isn’t being done in vain. That there will be a nice retirement, a travel fund, good health, and people to love me at the end of all this.

I know there are no guarantees. And I don’t know whether to risk what I’ve got on the shot of getting more, or just keep chugging and hoping that by staying in one place, luck will finally know where to find me.

What would you do, if you didn’t know what to do?

At my last real job (pre-freelance), my mantra was, “Thank God I have a job, even if it’s this one.”

At the one I’m at now, I’ve gotten a little wiser when it comes to God. These days I say, “Thank you for THIS job.”

Last week, someone on “the other side” asked me if I’d ever edited a certain guy in our industry. Since I have edited EVERYBODY in this industry, that was affirmative.

This person said, “There are no words to describe his writing.”

I said, “Sure there are. He writes long and repetitively and talks in circles till he drops you at the end like you just fell out of a house in a hurricane.”

My friend said, “So apparently there ARE words to describe it.”

Some wounds, you just can’t forget. Even if they’re the ones you inflicted on yourself with the express purpose of trying to go all “eternal sunshine” on yourself.

So, my favorite thing about my WeightWatchers app — and the program in general — is that when you log in every day, your sins of the past have been erased and you start with a clean slate.

Your points record from the previous day is gone. You ares shown all the points you’re allowed to eat today, and a blank tracking form to chart them as you consume them.

It’s liberating. It’s a new day, in every sense of the word. I can’t express how appreciative I am to have a visual reminder that I get to start over fresh, every single day.

I wish life had that ability to show us that we can leave yesterday’s problems right where we found them.

***

On the clean-slate theme, something I wrote yesterday bugged me. And probably not the thing that close-attention-payers would think.

I always refer to Whorothy as ugly. And when I speak in my broad terms, like I tend to do, I generalize people who are “uglier” than me.

I feel like I need to erase that. But since I don’t do a lot of erasing around here, I want to explain and even berate myself.

First of all, I ain’t no beauty queen behind this keyboard. I struggle with my weight, extraordinarily poor hair and an absolute inability to confront the right people or control my absolute disappointment or disgust around the wrong ones. First-place prize, I am not.

But I try to be gentle with those who need it. I try to be a cheerleader to those who need some inspiration, those whose chosen ones walk over them with shit-kickers. I really think what I lack in the ability to respond quickly is more than made up for in my ability to pinpoint the best course of action. I work super-hard. And I care. Anything you can say negative about me, you have to also say, “Well, she follows her heart and busts her ass.”

So when I rage against Whorothy, realize A) she inspires absolute lunacy and B) she’s a proxy for all that is unfair in my world.

And so when I say it crushes my soul that men choose those who are uglier than me, I mean inside and out. I watch her absolutely zing a nice person online. Decimate him. And insulting people on their own Facebook page for all their friends to see is unfair. Like, how do you pass off that piece of shit as your girlfriend when everyone is looking at her going, wow, what a cunt?

What my real intention in cleaning my sins today, however, is to point out that I’ve been dumped for many beautiful women in my day. Inside and out. And I am still friends with all my boys and I don’t want a single one of them to think I’m insulting their queens.

I’ve always been the girl to approve their betrotheds. Even if they would have still shacked up with/married them anyway, they always felt better when I said, “You did good.” And they did. They all did.

I think it was easier back then for me, because I was a big believer in not forcing a “meant to be” and that my own meant-to-be was yet to come. Now that they’ve all been married for 10 years, my faith is a little shaken.

And if I’m real honest with myself, maybe some people take up more time than they should in my mind because I wonder if it’s just that I’m not GOOD at separating friends from something more.

In any case, you’ll probably notice that I haven’t talked about Topo Gigio (who hearts Whorothy) for months. That’s because he’s long gone and I have new problems I’m not blogging about. I just continue to wonder why on earth anybody could love her (and not me). IF she were sweet or beautiful or kind or treated him well or was anything but what I perceive her to be, I would be short about three dozen blog entries.

Anyway, to all my guys: Your ladies are beautiful. Because they love you.

Any additional personalities or looks are only icing on the cake.

Alas, my clean slate involves worrying about ME, not worrying about other (good) people’s choices. It’s hard to separate myself when I think I’m being helpful, but I’m not. People need to come to their own conclusions. And if ever he does realize I’m right, I don’t think I’d be the first one he calls.

Maybe he would if I’d reacted differently all along. *shrug* I’m not going to apologize for wanting the best for people. I just have to get better at accepting when I don’t fit their definition of “best.”