The evil hor­ri­ble soul-sucking job is gone. Not really, some other poor schmuck got suck­ered into it, but he only lasted two weeks, which gave me quite a bit of val­i­da­tion.  I helped train him, so I know that he was no LadyG­lut­ter, but he also said it wasn’t an accept­able work envi­ron­ment for him, either. Now they’re on my sec­ond replacement.

I have learned so many things about poor busi­ness mod­els. Lots of it should be sim­ple com­mon sense, but I saw up close and per­sonal dis­as­ter in the mak­ing. Like, get your oper­a­tions straight before you worry about sales. Oth­er­wise, new sales just mean bad press. Pro­mote and uti­lize tal­ent before it leaves you in the lurch, dis­gusted. Lies and secrecy don’t help any­one in the long run. False promises might get you a lit­tle bit more time out of that per­son, but even­tu­ally she’ll wise up.   The list could go on, but I really don’t want to get into a bash ses­sion.  Suf­fice it to say, I hope they wise up before they go under.  My pro­jec­tions in that depart­ment aren’t pretty.

I also learned (and reaf­firmed) some things about me. I am def­i­nitely a sys­tems per­son. I’m all about the big pic­ture and how the small details inte­grate into that. What I am not is an admin­is­tra­tor, despite my tal­ent therein. Also, sit­ting at a desk makes me crawl the walls. I will make everyone’s cof­fee, clean the copy machine, rearrange the fur­ni­ture, go to the bath­room 80 times a day — any­thing to make sure I don’t have to sit freak­ing still!  I am also a valu­able asset and usu­ally get offered a pro­mo­tion when I put in my notice. This time was no excep­tion, and it was good to know that despite my self-confidence issues (I put forth a lot of blus­ter) I really am pretty awe­some to work with. How­ever, lead­ing from the ground up is not my forte and I was just not car­ing anymore.

Now I’m at the reassess stage. I feel like that’s where I live my life.  I will scream at myself that I’m such a flake, but I was truly unhappy and stressed even when I wasn’t there.  Quite frankly, I’d rather have hours than dol­lars, if I have to make a choice.  Where I was, I wasn’t mak­ing a whole lot of dol­lars, any­way.  I want to throw all of my pas­sion into every­thing I touch.  But even fail­ing that, I want to at least not HATE my job so badly I cry on the way to work. Now that I’ve got a chance at that. All it took was accept­ing that isn’t going to hap­pen where I was, and walk­ing away.

Seri­ously — those peo­ple who man­age to “have it all”? The kids and the career and the gym and the social life? How do you do it? When do you sleep? A week into this whole two full time jobs deal, and I’m exhausted and out of my mind. And the apart­ment (that we’re about to move out of in the next week [thank God for Thanks­giv­ing!]) appears to be turn­ing into a land­fill before my very eyes!

Any­hoo — I’m here. Strug­gling to keep afloat finan­cially, though that will turn around post haste, and just in time for Santa, woot! But I don’t know when I’m sup­posed to cook and clean­ing is a joke, and I already was worst house­keeper of the year, thank good­ness for dis­trac­tions (sex) that help some peo­ple over­look my short­com­ings. And exer­cis­ing has gone the way of the dodo since I’ve had the office job, and aaaaah.

In other news, I’ve been offered an oppor­tu­nity at work (which I hate, I know, I know) to make a case to let me out of the admin­is­tra­tive side of things and into the ideas side of things. Which means mar­ket­ing, I think, although “that pro­gram, not Pho­to­shop, where you do pic­tures and stuff.…”

““Adobe Illus­tra­tor?”

““Yeah that’s the one! I think that’s the pro­gram the IT group has, any­way. Well you know the name of it, that’s good! Let’s see what you can come up with in the next two weeks.”

And even though I did have the meet­ing to say I was unful­filled and being uti­lized incor­rectly, I didn’t mean mar­ket­ing but who knows what I ever really mean, and now I have a home­work assign­ment. And I don’t know what the hell I’m sup­posed to use Adobe Illus­tra­tor for! Worse still, I’m pretty sure that what I am doing might be writ­ing up a mar­ket­ing strat­egy for some­one else to imple­ment while I con­tinue at my low level admin­is­tra­tive hell. And let me tell you, if they don’t give me the job, I’d rather they go down in flames most days. Because they’ve lied to me, mis­treated me, taken me for granted, and bored me to tears. I thought I didn’t want to be in the ser­vice indus­try any­more. Maybe I do. At least then I’d walk around and talk to inter­est­ing peo­ple and be done at the end of the night.

No, I’m not at all wor­ried that they are going to read this any­more. I was, now I’m not. In fact, I’m pretty sure if the peo­ple I’m con­cerned about read­ing it could fig­ure out I’m LadyG­lut­ter then they’d be shocked and amazed that I have thoughts at all. I mean, they know I’m intel­li­gent and am the per­son to go to get any­thing done, sure, but do they think I exist when I walk out of the room? Pretty sure nope.

So I don’t know.  Maybe I really do have a chance to make an oppor­tu­nity where I thought there was none before. But things are always inter­est­ing, and never bor­ing, and I wanted to write and I gave myself 10 min­utes, and it has turned into 20. So for­give the ram­ble, but it feels so good to just let flow every now and then. And any­one who has any books to read (yes I still man­age about a book a week, that’s the only thing I’ve not com­pro­mised on too badly) or tricks to fit 36 hours into a 24 hour day, let me know! I’d love to read it.

That’s what life feels like right now. I’m bust­ing my hump just to stay “almost” where I’m not quite good enough. In the last year, I’ve aban­doned dreams, lost hopes, and sur­vived. I’m not want­ing to write on the blog any­more because I’ve bared my soul to the world on here, and I don’t have time to do any­thing like this. It’s not like any­one even gives a crap, and yes that is bit­ter­ness. My own hus­band didn’t even know that I’d made a blog post this whole year, and he helped me restore the thing when it got hacked, he even has posted to it. It’s not about being angry at him, though, it’s anger at my own self for let­ting another thing slide. I had plans. I saw fire­works and sparks and rip­ples in the uni­verse. And now I’m stuck in ratraceville.

I don’t like office jobs. I mean, maybe that’s not true, because I had a lit­tle home office here that I was dig­ging. I have sac­ri­ficed and toiled and every­one keeps telling me that all a per­son can do in this life is just do what you have to do to scrape by, and every­thing in my soul refuses to accept it but then how are those kids gonna eat? I’m 34 and because I screwed up when I was in my 20s I’ve got this path ahead, and I DON’T believe in that b.s.!!! Yet here I am, dead brother and all, pitch­ing a fit and try­ing to sti­fle myself from speak­ing about cer­tain things. I make peanuts at a job I’m too cow­ardly to vent about on the web lest it get back.

I’m a rav­ing lunatic, is what, in my mind, but out­side I’m all smiles and pleas­ant — that’s even a nick­name at the office for me…

I can’t decide if I want to aban­don the blog or not. My renewal comes in July, not that that makes any sort of sense. I thought I had two years. I can’t even find my con­tract. I don’t know where half of my life has gone this past year. I’ve been in a fog, stum­bling from day to day. Sud­denly one day I woke up, and dis­cov­ered I liked sex and the taste of food and had dreams and shit, but guess what? I’ve traded all that in for steady and reli­able. I’m so self-absorbed, too, in this post, and so many fuck­ing oth­ers. This blog was going to be about free­dom and space and nerdi­ness and IDEAS! Instead it’s all emo­tion and vent­ing and wail­ing and bounc­ing and even soar­ing and hap­pi­ness, but no ideas. I hate that, too.

I’m such a mal­con­tent. I’m angry at myself for being depressed, and I’m sti­flingly depressed some days. There are breaks, but I feel like a trapped rat. I haven’t started gnaw­ing my legs off yet.

Any­how, now that I’ve unleashed that at the world, ha, let’s be real­is­tic, T, at my own two eyes and pos­si­bly no one else’s, I’m going to make some promises to myself. Since I kept the promise to write again, even though I think it’s kind of point­less but I haven’t said any of this, though I’ve hinted at it to a few people.

1. I’m going to start work­ing out again.
2. I’m going to get a job that I enjoy. Even if it’s not a per­fect fit, I am going to not find my daily life tor­tur­ous.
3. I’m going to start med­i­tat­ing again.
4. I’m going to start writ­ing again, even if when I write I despise myself when I read the words on the paper.
5. I’m going to quit fuck­ing wal­low­ing and play­ing it so damn safe.

P.S. (sub­set of #5) Yes, I do drop the F bomb. If you find this Mom, you’re going to have to deal. There’s so much worse wrong with me than that.