Caterwauling

Boss was asking how my 2024 was.

Obviously I lost Mom and Cocoa. And I went from worrying all the time to eating to fill the void.

I said I was stressed out and he said over what. I realized I should probably stop talking. I also realized I really wasn’t stressed. Just empty.

I did say I got to meet a Kennedy. I pointed out “Not the whale juice one. A good one.”

For a moment, I teleported back in time. To being in New York in my best dress, fearless. To everyone thinking I was funny and sweet and treating me like an esteemed guest.

I did say it was so fun to be up there, talking to important people and them thinking I’m not the riff-raff.

I said I know I haven’t been the riff-raff for some time. But still. To be in the presence of a KENNEDY — a good one, Kerry — WOW.

Hindsight being what it is, I hope that registers as I am cool and funny and appreciated and employable.

Like, I know I could volunteer for the charity any old day. But if I wanted or needed a job, is that door open too?

I won’t answer that. I just wish they’d wonder. More importantly, not tell me to pursue it.

I did say that’s what I love most. Being OUT. Being social. Dressing up. Going to jury duty and cornering the energy analyst to ask how he values stocks. Learning and sharing information. Communicating. Being out of the house and with cool people.

Makes me wonder what I’m fighting for, if not that.

I don’t have bad days at work. But I have the occasional weird hour.

I got an email from my pal, chastising me for daring to edit.

Let me be clear. Edit is in my title.

I wrote about this before, of this one giving me something to run that I wrote before. And then some other entity made a bad edit to it.

Well, I made what I thought was a good edit to it (saying where they are based, which was incidentally useful to the next part of the story).

Anyway, today I got a big fat tsk tsk for adding where they are based as they are not actually based there.

OK.

And a big “stop editing their shit.” My words of course.

I said well ok fine but remember that creative/incorrect edit they made that YOU caught?

And I said I’ll remove it on the website.

Email comes back an hour later, “I don’t see it on the website.”

*blink*

I hopefully won’t think about this ever again after I hit publish. But at a time when I’m getting my own performance evaluated, it’s really really hard to keep these hard discussions focused on me when there’s that.