Pride and Prejudice

"Here you've put me in a tough situation. I can't honestly decide whether to say 'duh,' 'uh, doy' or a very sarcastic 'oh really?'" -- Dr. Perry Cox, Scrubs

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I like neither being a lawyer nor looking for employment as one. So, I'm considering whether I should take a new tack with life and just give up on the entire concept.

Yes, that's what I said. Give up.

I went on a couple of interviews with temporary legal placement firms last week (a necessary step before they're willing to send you out on jobs to their clients, probably to weed out any of the obvious lunatics or office supply thieves). In both interviews, I very genuinely told the recruiters that I would work as a temp forever if I could. Then, yesterday, I was on the bus into the city to see Eclipse with my friend and I realized...I probably could. I decided I needed to give this radical notion some thought, which is what brings me to the computer today to write this here post to question my assumptions and challenge them with realities. To wit:

Assumption: I cannot afford to temp forever.
Reality: Since I started temping, I have paid off an enormous credit card bill and have more money in the bank than ever before. When I was a permanent employee at a law firm, not only did I not pay down my credit card debt, I added to it with purchases that I needed to keep up with the other associates or to console myself for working at a hateful job.

Assumption: I will die from lack of health insurance.
Reality: Many temp agencies offer health insurance. The rules of getting on the plans can be Byzantine, but there is also the option of getting an individual policy through an insurance provider. This is not cheap, but it would stave off the possibility of going bankrupt if I have an accident or get really ill. Frankly, I hardly ever go to the doctor anyway, so the most important thing is for me to have a hedge against catastrophe.

Assumption: People will think less of me if I forsake the path of a permanent career at a firm or in-house for the flighty and unpredictable world of temping.
Reality: Some people probably will, but those people are assholes. One thing I have noticed (with the aid of various self-help books) is that when people say, e.g., "Everyone will judge me harshly for leaving the world of permanent employment to become a temp," the "everyone" in that sentence is usually a bunch of jerks. My real friends may or may not understand the decision, but they'll be supportive. I mean, I didn't understand it when my friend decided she wanted to have a baby (life ruining!), but if that's what she wants for herself, then that's what I want for her.

Assumption: If I commit to temping, I won't be able to take back the choice later and pursue a permanent job.
Reality: That one might be true. This is really the main sticking point. I hate closing off options, which is one of the reasons I went to law school in the first place (the utter wrongness of that decision should propel me into making all kinds of door-closing commitments, but it doesn't).

Basically, I like temping because it's flexible, I have unlimited (though unpaid) vacation time, and I don't have to pretend to give a shit about my job after I go home for the day. I also don't have to deal with the politics of an organization, which was always a very weak point for me in my career at various law firms. Besides that, it makes my short attention span into a virtue. I look like a little bit of a job hopper on my resume because (1) I am and (2) I get bored being in the same place doing the same thing with the same people day after day after day. Temping gigs last a few months and then you're on to the next thing.

Ever since I got the no-offer after my 2L summer, I feel like I've been on the back foot in the job search. The no-offer led me to take a clerkship that was beneath me, which led to a law firm that was a step up but still beneath me, and then that led to the law firm I probably should have been at in the first place (from which I was laid off). It took three years of toil to get to dig myself out of a hole I shouldn't have been in to begin with. Now I find myself in a similar situation, and I've spent a year of my life already trying to dig myself out of this hole without success. I don't care to waste another two years just to get myself back to where I was in 2009, especially since I didn't even like where I was in 2009 to begin with. Maybe the no-offer situation way back in 2004 just soured me on the whole prospect of big firm life or maybe I wouldn't have liked it anyway, but it seems foolish to me to spend another two years (or more, or less) trying to get back to doing something I don't even like. This is especially true since most of the permanent employers who want to interview me have fundamental flaws that make me loath to pursue employment with them. One I spoke to last week has interesting-sounding work, but it would involve a hellish multi-hour-each-way commute. The work would probably position me ideally for a great in-house gig in a few years, but I don't even want to be practicing law in a few years, so, frankly my dears, who gives a damn? Not me (and not Rhett Butler either). Another one is a great law firm likely with great work, but it's in Tampa. Tampa is, I'm sure, a fine city, but I don't know a single person there (scratch that -- I know one person, but she was my frenemy in high school and not someone I'm really looking to strike up a friendship with in my 30s) and I suspect its airport has fewer direct international flights than, say, JFK or EWR.

Meanwhile, I've got a job in a city I want to be in paying me enough money and giving me enough flexibility that in the past year, I was able to travel to Peru, Guatemala and Russia while still paying off the aforementioned heinous credit card debt. So, why not just embrace it and ride this shit out as long as I can?

The struggle is ultimately a battle between the person I want to be and the person I think I should be (I think I stole this line from Bella Swan). I think I should be an associate at a major law firm, working toward being either a partner or an in-house counsel. I want to be someone who gets to dabble in the law (a field I find I enjoy when the fun isn't being sucked out of it by some nightmare partner) and also gets to have a life not connected to the umbilical Blackberry cord. I'm fine with working 12 hours a day, but when I'm having my me time, either here or abroad, that's my fucking me time, and I don't want to hear jack shit about work. So, will I allow my life choices to be made based on pride and prejudice (the law firm route) or on what I really want (something else)?

I haven't completely committed yet, but I think it's obvious which way I'm leaning.

And Forevermore That's How You'll Stay

So, I heard back from the guy who must be the real-life inspiration for Drew Barrymore's character in 50 First Dates. His most recent response was much more acceptable than his previous one. He revealed that he meant to say "receipts," not "recipes," which makes more sense since I educated him on the importance of saving receipts for future income tax deductions. I don't know if I'll see him again (I hope I will), but at least now I don't feel like a total piece of garbage.

Unforgettable, That's What You Are

I emailed a friend of mine to ask her what she thought about this business with the guy who totally forgot who I was despite having spent an entire evening of his life three scant days ago talking to me. This was her thought on how he should have responded:

Hi [my name]!! I am so glad you emailed because I wanted to get in touch with you but was mugged immediately upon leaving the meet-up and I lost your card! AAAAhhhhh NY :o) I would love to get together for drinks and chat more - although lets be real, Twitter sucks and between you and me, I was dying to say that at the meet-and-greet but I couldn't because of my job. Now, feeling free to be who I am, I will say that it is obnoxious, egomaniacal and I would have nothing to do with it otherwise. Oh, and did I mention that in my spare time I save puppies and baby seals? How about dinner at Balthazar or someplace else insanely expensive? I would love to treat you like a princess...Say Friday at 8? My driver and I will pick you up in my Rolls. Oh yea...and my dad is a Duke. Look forward to trying to sweep you off your feet! - [his name]

At least the people who do remember me are funny. I think only Blair Waldorf meets guys who turn out to be dukes, and, as we all know, I am Serena van der Woodsen.

I Knew This Much Was True

Last Tuesday, I went to a meet-and-greet for a podcast that I really like. Most of the other people there were podcasters and bloggers, and I spent most of the evening chatting with this really cute blogger. There was a lot of heavy eye contact, he showed me the photos on his digital camera, he shooed away someone who tried to steal my seat next to him and he gave me a big hug when we said good night. I thought, "Hm, this dude is definitely interested, and I am definitely interested. I don't see a big future here since he's only in town for the summer, but I could at least see an exciting present." I held off emailing him for a couple of days to play it cool before sending him the following email last night:

Hi [his name],

It was great to meet you on Tuesday at the [podcast] meet-up. If you're around soon, maybe we can grab a drink and you can teach me how to use Twitter to enhance my life.

[my name]

The Twitter remark was based on the fact that all the other attendees jabbered on about Twitter for much of the evening and, on the subway home, he jokingly inquired if I intended to join because everyone had talked so much about it.

Today, I got the following complete disappointment of a reply:

Hi [my name],

It was a pleasure meeting you as well! I found a ton of recipes that I used over the weekend. I'll be saving them more often. Thanks for all the advice! Might come back for more someday. Though it might seem complicated at first, Tweetdeck is what I use for twitter. Next time I'm in the city, I'll let you know for sure.

See you around,

[his name]

What the eff is that? The advice he refers to is some free legal and tax advice I gave him about his fledgling blog business, but as far as I recall, he and I never talked about recipes or saving recipes. I have no idea what that means apart from probably meaning that he doesn't really remember who I am at all. I can sort of deal with a lack of interest, but how can he just not remember who I am? We spent the entire night hanging out together. I told him exactly where we met, and at any given time, there were not more than 12 people at the event including him and me, and he clearly already knew most of the other attendees quite well and could thus have eliminated them as possibilities if he didn't catch my name at the beginning of the evening and therefore didn't connect the beguiling female he met with the name on the email he received. (Of the attendees, there were four other females, two of whom were married and there with their husbands, one of whom was his business partner, and one of whom was a friend of his business partner's) We never talked about any fucking recipes. What the fuck?

I Know This Much Is True

I was talking to my mom today, and I realized that in my 30 years of living, I have learned only two things about the male of the species:

1) All men like Band of Brothers. If they don't like it, it means they have not seen it.

2) If a guy is interested in you, he will have a sudden and uncontrollable urge to show you the photos on his digital camera.

That's it. That's everything I know. I think this explains why I remain unmarried.

If The Elevator Tries to Break You Down

So, there's this guy at work who may or may not be interested in me. I cannot figure him out.

My workplace is designed to minimize social interactions. Our cubicle-style seats are assigned, and there aren't many common areas where people linger and chat. Most of the people I work with are socially awkward in the extreme, so I don't mind the barriers to friendliness too much. But this fellow always smiles at me when I see him and seems really nice. One day, as I was walking out of our work space to take the elevator downstairs to go eat lunch, he purposely got up as I was walking out and walked with me to the elevator. He told me that he saw I was leaving and decided to go at the same time so he didn't have to wait for the elevator (the elevators in the building are pretty slow and one of them breaks down a lot, so it can be a long wait sometimes). I thought that was kind of odd, and I wondered if maybe he just wanted to talk to me.

After that, I kept more of an eye on him. I noticed he brought his lunch from home and used very nice containers for it. That made me suspect he was either gay or in a relationship because I usually assume single straight guys live like animals and can't imagine any of them investing in high-quality food storage.

I didn't get another chance to talk to him until last week. I usually eat my lunch on the steps of another office building down the block, but I decided to eat in the break room. He came in to rinse out his snazzy Tupperware, and he started chatting with me. I asked him about the Tupperware, and he went into a lengthy explanation about how he bought it because he cooks a lot and the brand is hard to find but it has some kind of special suction. He then demonstrated the suction capabilities for me. He is a bit of a low talker, so I couldn't understand everything he said. He might have mentioned a significant other at some point during his explanation, but I didn't hear it if he did. It has been my experience in the past that when a male goes on and on about something really inane, it's because he likes the girl he's talking to. However, the other possibility, which I cannot ignore, is that he's just massively weird. He also took the time to wipe down the counters in the break room, which our disgusting colleagues had let get covered with coffee stains and spilled sugar. I told him that I just wiped down those same counters that morning, and we agreed that our co-workers are gross.

Since then, I haven't been presented with any further opportunities to talk to this guy, and I haven't sought out any either. He hasn't followed me to the elevator again, and I haven't eaten my lunch in the break room. If he was or is interested in me, I don't know if my efforts to smile at him and make conversation with him sufficed to let him know that I might reciprocate his interest. I haven't chosen to be more aggressive with him because I don't know his situation.

Unfortunately, our job is about to come to an end. I expect an email sometime this week saying it is over -- maybe as early as today -- and then I'll probably never see this guy again. Poop.

Straight Up, With a Twist

I recently read the book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, and he said one thing that really captivated my interest. He said that it is very difficult to imagine the future as anything other than the present with a twist, but that the future tends to be different from the present in ways we couldn't have imagined. He brought up as one example certain advances in science and technology that would have been unthinkable a century ago, but I find it's equally true of my own life.

This time last year, I had just gotten the idea in mind to return to the Big Apple instead of staying in the Bean when I lost my job. In the past year, I've visited three new foreign countries (Peru, Guatemala and Russia) and one new U.S. city (Chicago), met a few new friends, met the man I consider my soul mate, and generally had a host of experiences that I would not have predicted. In fact, if I'd sat down on this date in 2009 and written down what I thought I would be doing today, the only thing I know for sure that I would have said is that I would be working at a permanent job. That's the one thing that hasn't happened to me.

I suppose you could take the view that the future might differ from the present in unexpected ways both good and bad, but I find it comforting nonetheless. Sometimes, it feels like my life will be an endless succession of days spent fruitlessly emailing resumes to job postings that promise secure employment and deliver nothing but rejection. It feels like my life will be spent cobbling together various temporary jobs to be able to pay my expenses and enjoy the kinds of things I like to do, like travel. Don't get me wrong -- I have been more fortunate than many downsized employees to find the work I've had and afford the things I've done, but it's still a tiring, grinding, stressful existence. Permanent jobs offer the illusion of, well, permanence. It is a very comforting illusion.

Gilbert's statement is one I cling to when I am tired and downtrodden. It's exciting to think that the future holds possibilities beyond my imagination.

It's Been a Hard Day's Night

I spent all this weekend in the office, working at my day job. My night job was supposed to generate some work, but it never materialized.

I can't pretend I was thrilled at going into the office, but it wasn't terrible. I was thinking today that I'm glad I left my old job for this one. The financial hit has been bearable, and I don't get that knot of trepidation in my stomach on Sunday nights about going back to work on Monday morning. I'm still nervous about the fact that the job is ending soon and I haven't found its replacement yet, but I'm glad I made the change.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery

The main hazard of keeping an online blog is the same hazard as leaving a diary around where anyone can read it -- people are going to read it. Inevitably, some people will be encouraging and supportive and others will feel the need to tear you down. It has never made sense to me why this latter group exists. After all, while my blog is freely available for anyone to read, it equally freely available for anyone not to read. With so many sites on the internet available for our perusal, why waste time on the musings of someone you disagree with, can't relate to or simply don't like?

Today, I received an email from someone who is or was a reader of the blog. I get occasional comments on posts, but I rarely get emails from people, so I took note and have reproduced it here with my responses. The email is in italics, while my remarks are in plain text.

Did you ever stop to consider that you're being a tad bit negative?

I have a blog whose entire purpose is stopping to consider things. So, in short, yes. A common mistake blog readers make is thinking that blog posts reveal the entire life of the writer. In my case, that isn't true. My blog makes my life sound worse than it is by omitting virtually anything positive because it's not a day-to-day diary of everything I do. Rather, it is where I come to process my feelings or deal with things that have happened to me. I (like most people, I suspect) don't often need to process my feelings about positive things or deal with positive things because I can just enjoy them. Finding a way to be okay with negative things is different and, for me, requires more introspection. Thus, the blog and its slant toward the negative.

Don't get me wrong, I think we've all been there and, more than likely, we'll probably go back. Isn't that just the cyclical nature of life? I really liked reading your blog when I was as pissed of as you are. But, now that things are looking a little better for me, the experience is totally different.

I don't really know what to make of this remark. It sounds like the author of it once enjoyed reading my blog but now does not because her life circumstances have changed for the better. I am happy to hear that, but I don't think it minimizes my own need to deal with my life experiences, which are separate and unrelated from hers. If she no longer finds entertainment or solace in my blog, I invite her to look elsewhere instead of continuing to return to my site, where she no longer finds enjoyment.

In your most recent blog you wrote

It's terrible to go through something like this -- where I am trying my hardest but there is nothing I or anyone else can do to hasten the process.

So, it's pretty simple to "know" that you cant "hasten the process." The hard part is accepting this reality?

Is that a question? That's just exactly what I said in my post.

First of all, a lot of our attitude is a reflection of our own personally imposed mental limitations. And you are bonded to all this 'garbage' ... a dad you can't forgive, an old friend you can't forgive, your position in life, etc. Breaking free! It's mental, which makes doing so difficult, but it's like you're not even trying.

I don't consider myself bonded to garbage. There are things that have happened to me in my life, both positive and negative, that are now part of who I am. I can no more break free from the negative things than I can from the positive things.

I also take issue with the assertion that I'm not "trying." What can this assertion be based on? Writing about my experiences, as I mentioned above, is my way of digesting them and trying to view them in a positive light. For example, if I hadn't lost my job, I would never have met some friends I now cherish or traveled to some amazing countries. Maybe those revelations don't always make it into blog posts, but, this is my blog and not CNN. Not every aspect of my life makes it into these pages because, at some point, I actually have to live it.

Secondly, perspective, my friend, will go a long way. Ultimately, others have it a lot worse than you. I'm not saying this is a reason for you to stop trying to better your self. Rather, suck it up. "It" being this shitty (brief) moment in your life.

This is just being condescending. The author has, by her own admission, come out of an unpleasant period in her life and into a more pleasant one. That's terrific, but it seems to have made her unfeeling toward people who are still going through unpleasant periods.

Obviously, any person on the planet can make a comparison to someone else's experience that is better and someone else's experience that is worse. Valentino Achak Deng can look at a Holocaust survivor and say "Auschwitz was worse," but that doesn't mean that being a Lost Boy of Sudan was a fun day at the rodeo. I'm engaging in wild exaggeration here, since my own struggles obviously pale in comparison to those of either Deng or anyone in the Holocaust, but the fact remains that my struggles are meaningful to me and the fact that other people have struggles too doesn't erase that. If you broke your leg and I broke both legs, does that make your leg hurt less?

Like I said at the beginning, the danger of using a public forum to process feelings is that it is public. It's obvious to me that if you stumble across a point of view you find repugnant, you should avoid it, but it's equally obvious to me that not everyone does that.

I have this uncle who is Facebook friends with one of my cousins (his nephew). My uncle complains ceaselessly about my cousin's Facebook status updates, decrying them as "filth." My uncle has several means available to him to avoid these status updates, but he acts like he's Alex in A Clockwork Orange, strapped down with his eyelids forced open as my cousin's Facebook status updates assault his helpless eyeballs. Some people just like to be annoyed and will deliberately seek out people or situations that irritate them because of it. That says more to me about the annoyed person than the annoying person.

Obviously, it bothers me that someone would send me this email or I wouldn't have dedicated a blog post to it. When I got the email, my first thoughts were: "What the fuck did I do to you?" and "Who are you to give me advice?" Those are still basically my thoughts, but like I said, some people just like to be annoyed, so perhaps I provide a useful service.

I Get So Tired of Working So Hard for Our Survival, I Look to These Times With You to Keep Me Awake and Alive

I'm getting resume fatigue again.

About six months ago, I wrote fifty postcards to a generic address for American military personnel overseas. I didn't entirely understand why I was doing it. I hear that getting mail makes soldiers feel better, but I can't imagine they get much of a morale boost from a generic postcard. Still, I dutifully wrote encouraging messages on the postcards and sent them off into the abyss. Obviously, I never heard from anyone in response because they didn't have my address. I don't know if anyone even saw my postcards.

I'm starting to feel the same way about sending off job applications as I did about those postcards. I no longer associate the sending of a resume with an offer of employment. Even in a prosperous economy, unsolicited resumes yield a low rate of return, but this is ridiculous. There are jobs out there for which I am ideally suited, but I'm not getting calls from the employers. I assume this is because there are so many other unemployed or under-employed people who have the same qualifications I do, and I have to stand in line with all of them to wait for enough jobs to come back to sustain all of us.

I just want to cry. It's so hard not to feel defeated by this job search. It's terrible to go through something like this -- where I am trying my hardest but there is nothing I or anyone else can do to hasten the process.

Don't Call Me Daughter, Not Fit To, the Picture Kept Will Remind Me

Trying to make room for my father in my life again has been both easier and harder than I anticipated.

On the easier side, Dad graciously didn't ask for any explanation as to why I suddenly started talking to him again after so long or why I stopped talking to him in the first place. I appreciated that since I didn't really feel like getting into that with him, at least not at this time.

On the harder side, there are still big portions of my life from which I want to exclude my father. For instance, my mother decided to "help" by emailing him a photo of Teh Doggeh and me titled "your daughter and your grandson." (Side note: Dad didn't realize for several moments that the grandson was the dog and perused the photo for a real baby and got all mad at my brother for not mentioning the entire person I'd given birth to. Ha.) Dad emailed me referring to Teh Doggeh as his grandson, and it made me mad. I thought to myself that my stepfather is Teh Doggeh's grandfather and my dad is just some guy Teh Doggeh would like to bite. I guess it's progress that there are even tiny parts of my life in which I am willing to include my father.

Outside the Cars are Beeping Out a Song Just in Your Honor

Sometimes we bring heartache on ourselves.

I emailed Goose. To be more specific, I included him on a group email with a link to the photos from my most recent vacation. This was a pretty wuss way to contact him, but I thought that a more casual group-type email would be easier on both of us than if I just told him I'm in love with him.

When my mom was here, I told her that when I decided not to go to Las Vegas with Goose, I thought one of two things would happen. I thought either he would come around to what I wanted (breaking up with his girlfriend and at least giving something between him and me a chance) or I would stop missing him. Neither of those things has happened. I don't know if he and his girlfriend are still together, but he hasn't told me that they're not, and I'm still in love with him. Mom told me that you never stop being in love with people you truly love. The best you can hope for is that someday, you meet someone else and can make room for that new person in your heart. This was not exactly what I wanted to hear, but my mom's specialty is "shit you don't want to hear."

I shouldn't have emailed him. I know this. I have no one to blame but myself for the fact that I'm feeling like someone poked my heart-bruise. I know this also. As naive as it may seem, I thought he might be glad to hear from me and maybe we could at least be friends. I think I'd rather have him in my life in some capacity than not in my life at all. Apparently, he does not share that feeling.

Widespread Panic

I think I made a mistake switching jobs.

The temp job I'm at now is only going to last for three weeks. Typically, when a temp job says it will last for three weeks, that means it will last for a year. I started my night job in August 2009 being told it was a three-week project, and I'm still working on it. There are some people who started on it in March 2009 who are still on it. This one has a hard deadline of July 1, and they say that there isn't going to be anything much going on beyond that deadline.

Shit. Shitty shit shit. Shit on a shit cracker.

I hated my old boss, and I complained about him every day. I hated going into that job. But the work wasn't drying up in a matter of weeks. Now I'm freaking out because I traded in a long-term job for one that will last only for the next few weeks. I came home tonight and emailed every legal temp placement agency I could find about jobs starting in July, so I hope to find something else. The good news is that Craig's List shows a lot of document review jobs, all paying about the same rate that I make at this new job.

The Way We Were

In the past week, I feel like I've taken the table that is my life and completely upended it. I've basically taken a few situations that I was manageably unhappy about and taken the risk of changing them. I've already mentioned my job, but wait! There's more!

I also started speaking to my father again after barely talking to him for the past eight years. My father and I had a troubled, tumultuous relationship for most of my childhood and young adulthood, and, as I've said before, I severed contact with him not long after I graduated from college. It doesn't take a psychology degree to know that my flawed skills at choosing suitable male partners stem from my fractured relationship with my dad. A lot of people think I'm attracted to guys with girlfriends, but it's more complex than that. I'm attracted to guys who have something else in their lives that is their number one priority (see, e.g., Goose, who has a girlfriend but whose main priority is his job), like my dad with his work and his money and his hoarding problem. What I continually hope for is the guy choosing me over whatever this other priority is, which will make me feel important and worthy. So far, this hasn't happened.

My mom held the strong opinion that "healing the relationship" (her words, or maybe Dr. Phil's) with my father would allow me to stop the cycle of choosing unavailable men and maybe get, like, a real boyfriend. I'm not so sure. My dad is still who he is. I don't know how to accept him the way he is and not feel disappointed in his lack of fathering skills. I am trying though. I emailed him to wish him a happy birthday the other day, and he sent me a short, pleasant response. I was surprised, since I thought he would send some overwrought email simultaneously praising me for renewing contact with him and lambasting me for freezing him out for so long. He showed admirable self-restraint though, so maybe I don't know him as well as I thought. So, getting back in touch with Dad ended up being anti-climactic, but I hope it's leading toward a positive end.

In the sillier realm of things, I also planned a trip to Asia for September and bought a new couch from a neighbor who is moving away. I know putting a new piece of furniture on par with a new job or a fresh start with my dad is ridiculous, but when all the changes started piling up, I felt overwhelmed.

I'm Starting With the Man in the Mirror

I quit my job!

Yes, that sound you hear is a gospel choir singing "Hallelujah."

I was offered that other temp job today, and I jumped on that shit. I'm taking a pay cut to go there, so I was a little reluctant, but I'm doing it anyway. When I was growing up, my mom used to keep a page from a page-a-day calendar on her office bulletin board with the quote, "Unhappiness can be a great motivator if we don't get too comfortable with it." I normally don't pay any attention to platitudes like that, but that one stuck with me, and it applies in this situation.

I was unhappy at my day job, but it had three things going for it. First and most importantly, it paid better than other temp jobs available to me. Second, it was familiar. I've had a lot of changes in the past year, which has made me cherish the familiar, even if the familiar is also unpleasant. Third, even though I was unhappy, it was usually a manageable level of unhappiness. My supervisor was predictably shitty to me -- he didn't try to get creative with his shitty behavior, probably because he isn't smart enough to innovate. In other words, I became comfortable with my unhappiness and it wasn't motivating me to find something better.

I feel good about making this change. It might not lead to a better employment situation, but I feel empowered because I took action to change a bad situation instead of just complaining about it.

If You Wanna Make the World a Better Place, Take a Look at Yourself and Then Make a Change

It's no secret that I haven't been happy about my employment situation, populated as my workplace is by abusive bullies. I have considered many times whether I ought to quit even before I find another job to replace this one, just to salvage some sanity and self-esteem, especially since I have a second income through my night job.

I have stayed thus far because this job pays significantly more than any other unskilled temporary position I have seen in the marketplace -- almost twice as much, in fact. Financially, staying is the right choice.

Today, I received an email about a temp position that caught my eye. It pays less than my current day job but more than a lot of what I've seen advertised. I think it pays enough that I could make the financial transition with minimal pain. I sent in my materials, and I am now being considered.

My biggest concern about taking this job (if it's offered to me) is whether I'm going from one negative workplace environment to another equally negative one for less money. In other words, am I jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire? Throughout my struggles to deal with my career setback in the economic downturn, I've been trying to learn some recession lessons that I might be able to carry with me during rosier times. One question I'm asking myself right now is whether, when faced with an insupportable situation like the one at my day job, it is a good idea to take a risk even knowing that it might fail.

Taking chances and making changes are both hard. I'm comfortable taking chances in certain areas of my life (witness my love of travel) but not others (witness my constant choice of unavailable men). Based on my selection of law as a profession, I would say that I am uncomfortable taking chances when it comes to my career. Being laid off has made me even more risk-averse because my self-confidence is bruised, making me less likely to believe in my own instincts.

I hope that one day, when I look back on this period of adversity in my life, I see it as a time of tremendous personal growth. I have spent the past year or so outside of my comfort zone more often than ever before, and this instance is another example of that. Normally, when faced with a decision of whether to stay in a shitty job that pays well and is familiar or leave for a different, lower-paying job that might also be shitty, I would stay with the pat hand. Now, I'm at least trying to change jobs in the hope of being happier at work even though there is a chance that I won't be.

It's Always the Same, It's Just a Shame, That's All

When I got home from my vacation on Sunday, I found the rejection letter from the place I interviewed before I left. That was a big let-down.

I had reservations about going to this firm. I wasn't enamored of the idea of moving back to the Bean (though I wasn't strongly opposed to it either) and I heard that this firm treated some of its employees really poorly (though that probably describes every major law firm in this economic climate). I wasn't sure I wanted to be in a job working almost exclusively for one partner, subject entirely to his whims and moods. In other words, given that I need to stay with my next employer for a minimum of three years, it might not have been a great situation for me. That said, I was deeply disappointed to be passed over. Maybe a day will come when I look back and think I dodged a bullet, but today is not that day. I thought I did well at the interview, or at least that I did my best, and it hurts not to be chosen.

Coming back from vacation was really hard today. I don't think anyone is happy on the first day back to work after a fun trip, but I was completely miserable. It was so refreshing to be away from work and away from all the attendant indignities and humiliations that accompany each and every day of this job. People treated me like a human being, worthy of respect.

Sitting at my desk, I contemplated my choices. Basically, I can quit or I can stay. If I quit, all evidence suggests that I won't be able to replace the job with another similarly-paying temp job. I guarantee that after a week of gleeful elation and triumph over quitting my hated job, panic will set in and I will stop remembering the truth of how awful the job is and start regretting that I surrendered a decently-paying temp assignment. If I stay, the job will continue eroding my already-diminished self-esteem. These are not great choices.

The best case scenario is obviously to leave the job under the positive circumstances of finding alternate employment elsewhere. So far, this has not happened. On the positive side, I've been getting more interest from employers in interviewing me lately, which is encouraging. On the negative side, none of these interviews has led to an offer of employment. It's demoralizing to continue sending out resume after resume (usually at least five per day) and going on the occasional interview without anything to show for it. When I talk to other people, I can feel their relief at not being me rolling off of them like a tidal wave. I'm afraid that when I actually do find a job, I won't have anything left to give my employer. I'm even more afraid that I'll never find a job at all.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I had my interview yesterday. I think it went okay. The most interesting part about it was that I switched up my usual interview style for something completely different.

I knew when I applied for this job and was invited for an interview that I didn't have the exact type of experience they were looking for. However, it doesn't say on my resume that I do. Their decision to interview me anyway made me think that they were willing to train a new employee, possibly because no one with a lot of experience applied. The partner who interviewed me asked me about my experience in his practice area, and I told him about one related transaction and a few semi-related transactions, but he didn't seem impressed. I started to feel like the interview wasn't going well. Honestly, it pissed me off a little bit because I paid for expensive train tickets to get to the interview and took a day off without pay to be there. My resume details my experience, and they shouldn't have invited me for an interview if it was insufficient.

At that point in the interview, I had a mini-dialogue with myself that took place in about a millisecond. I decided that I wanted to be offered this job. I hate my current day job (my night job is okay, but it's petering out), and while I'm not so keen on moving, I could wrap my mind around it. I liked the partner I met, and I could see myself being satisfied working with him. So, I had only one real option if I wanted to give myself any chance at getting an offer: sell myself.

I am not good at self-promotion. In the past, I haven't needed to be. My resume and my accomplishments speak for themselves, and employers took note. In this economy, with so many similarly highly-qualified applicants looking for work, my credentials alone will probably not be enough to land me a job. In this situation, I did everything I could to convince the interviewer that my personality is a good fit for the firm's culture and that I am a smart person who will pick up the work quickly to compensate for my lack of experience.

I don't know if it will work. The partner may have mentally checked out of the interview the minute he heard about my experience shortage. But this was the only play available to me, and I tried to make the most of it. I'm proud of myself for trying something new, and I hope the gambit pays off.

I should say that I didn't try the drastic maneuver that Mango advocated, which was to exaggerate my experience. According to his shady ass, my unwillingness to lie means I will not last long in the legal profession. Personally, I'm hoping to get this job, but I'd rather not get it and be honest about my experience than deceive my employer into hiring me. It's not like they won't figure out that I lied, and then I'd probably get fired. I have enough problems without that blot on my escutcheon.

The Tyranny of Evil Men

I learned something yesterday about the corporate culture of my day job that helped me to understand why everyone thinks my temp supervisor is so delightful when he is, in fact, a complete weenis. The managing partner of the firm thinks it's appropriate to scream obscenities at his subordinates (i.e., everyone) until they cry. The Ghost of Christmas Future said that he yells at his secretary when she leaves her desk to go to the bathroom. What is the poor woman supposed to do? Pee in her trash can? Rumor has it that she keeps a journal of everything he says to her, and I hope she uses that information to sue his ass off one day. (I'm not really sure what cause of action she could use. As I understand it, one defense to a claim of hostile work environment is that the defendant was an asshole to everyone. Nice.)

When the leader of the firm sets the example that it is perfectly acceptable to be abusive to underlings, then how can I be surprised that my temp supervisor is horrible to me? When you compare his passive-aggressive pettiness to the cruelty of his ultimate boss, he looks like a sweetie-pie.

Do I Make Your Heart Beat Like an 808 Drum? Is My Love Your Drug?

Mango is a shitty boyfriend. Besides the facts that he moved in with his girlfriend to avoid finding a warm grate on which to make his home and that he has no intention of either marrying her or telling her he doesn't want to marry her (facts that are pretty damning), he is also not thoughtful.

I asked him today if he would get me a cookie when he went out to get his lunch. I started out about halfway kidding about it, but when he humorlessly refused, I got annoyed. He told me that he doesn't even get his girlfriend cookies when she asks for them. At that point, I scratched him right off my list of potential boyfriends.

It's one thing for him to refuse to get me a cookie, even though he was pretty much just being a dick. But his girlfriend asks him for cookies and he doesn't provide them? No. That is breaking the basic code of conduct for being a boyfriend. I don't expect a man to read my mind, but if I ask him to give me something specific, and it is within his power to do so, then I expect him to do it. I think men are hardwired to provide for the women they like. It's embedded into their DNA as hunter-gatherers. In my opinion, if I ask a man to hunt and gather for me and he won't do it, then he's not very interested in me and is kind of a shithead.

Casey Jones, You'd Better Watch Your Speed

Sometimes, I think the only reason my temp supervisor hasn't tried to get me fired yet is because he'd hate to miss out on the chance to be a dick to me. I emailed him this morning to alert him to the fact that I'm going to be out of town on Wednesday. I let him know that I'm going to be spending seven or eight hours on the Acela train, which has wireless internet access (the only thing I need to do my job), and requested permission to work remotely. He sent me a response email just saying, "You cannot work remotely." No explanation, no reason. Just no.

I understand that working remotely is a privilege and not a right. But I have asked to work remotely only once before, and I don't think it's unreasonable to work remotely once every couple months. I'm going to be stuck on a train for the span of a work day, and I thought it would be beneficial both to me and to my employer for me to use that to work. Apparently, he prefers to be petty and vindictive than to make money for the firm by having an employee do billable work. I also think that unless you are a parent telling a child to do something, "no" is not a sufficient response. It needs to be no plus a reason, like, "No, because we're not allowing anyone to work remotely." Right now, I just feel like he's saying no to me because he doesn't like me.

I really don't understand what this guy's problem is. I get the sense that I offended him or pissed him off somehow (as opposed to the possibility that he just doesn't like me because our personalities don't gel) to his petty, unprofessional behavior. Whatever I did, it was unintentional. I hate confronting problems directly, but if I thought it would help, I would ask him what I did to offend him in the hopes of clearing the air and moving on to a more productive relationship. With his personality, I think that would do more harm than good.

I feel so frustrated. I can't really leave this job right now, but I am constantly panicked that he's going to try to find a way to get rid of me. He's the only supervisor-level attorney who works with the temps, so if he bad-mouths me to his superiors, there isn't anyone to stick up for me. Also, everyone else in the firm adores him. Every single day, at least one person tells me how nice he is. It's like I'm living in The Emperor's New Clothes but instead of the emperor being naked, the emperor is a colossal dickweed. I'm putting a lot of unhealthy pressure on myself to knock Wednesday's interview out of the park just because I'm desperate to move on to a new and (one hopes) better position. Until I can find something else, I guess I just have to tolerate him.

Please Come to Boston for the Springtime

The law firm that shadily invited me in for an interview and then canceled almost immediately finally rescheduled with me for this coming Wednesday. I'm going to have to take a day off of work from my day job (or get permission to work remotely, which didn't work out for me very well the last time I did it) and travel to Beantown for the interview.

Since I used to live in the Bean, I have a lot of friends there. I didn't plan on telling any of them that I was coming for the interview. That probably won't seem strange to anyone who was ever done a very long-term job search. When I first started looking for a job, before I realized just how long a haul I was in for, I told my friends about every interview I went on. As the rejections started to pile up, I stopped. It's hard enough to deal with my own cresting hopes and crashing disappointments without also having to tell every well-meaning friend who inquires how a certain interview went that it didn't work out. The response is always the same: something else will come along, hang in there, keep your chin up. There isn't anything else for people to say, and it's not that people intend to be unsupportive (quite the opposite), but it's fucking irritating anyway. So, I just stopped telling people when I have interviews. I feel guilty about it in this instance since I'm traveling to a city I haven't visited since I moved away last June and since I could, theoretically, squeeze in visits to one or two people (though I'll be spending most of the day traveling, and I can't stay overnight because of work), but I'm assuming that people will forgive me if I end up getting the job and moving back.

In this case, I've had to make an exception. A friend of mine currently lives in the Bean but is moving to a foreign country this summer. She has asked me at least three or four times in the past two weeks when I'm coming to see her before she leaves.

What I want to say is, "Um...never?" I don't mean that in the sense that I don't like this woman or don't consider her my friend, but I have learned that I have a very different concept of friendship than other people do.

On the Myers-Briggs scale, I'm an INFJ. Like other introverts, I expend energy in social situations instead of gaining energy like extroverts do. Right now, I use up all my energy between Monday and Friday in sending out resumes and stopping myself from telling my supervisor to go fuck himself. When Saturday and Sunday roll around, I don't even feel like spending time with a friend in my own city. I sure as shit don't feel like hauling myself up to the Bean to run around seeing six different friends in two days. Just the thought of it makes me feel trapped and exhausted. Besides that, money is tight right now since I'm working as a temp, and I would have to put Teh Doggeh in an expensive kennel. Ideally, I would also like to stay in a hotel since that gives me some chance to have privacy and alone time to recharge my batteries, but that's just beyond the realm of consideration. Basically, I don't like to go visit people unless they live somewhere I haven't been before (visiting new places gives me energy, which balances out the energy I lose from the social interactions) or I think I might want to have sex with them (like London Calling). I consider email contact and the occasional phone call to be sufficient friendship maintenance.

My departing friend disagrees. She clearly enjoys spending time in the company of others. I think she's clingy, but that is probably just an introvert's bias toward solitude talking. (I envy extroverts for their ability to be perked up by social situations, but I am glad that I can enjoy being alone.) I'm going to try to have lunch with her when I go to the Bean on Wednesday because I have no intention of trying to make it up there any other time in the few weeks before she moves.

I'm put out about the situation though. I understand that it's fine for me to be an introvert but if I want to have any friends, I need to make an effort to spend time with them, even if it wears me out. I think that they should meet me halfway and be a little understanding about the fact that I'm unlikely to make big trips to see them on short notice or to want to hang out as much as they might want to. It doesn't seem right to me that I'm rewarding her annoying behavior by spending time with her when I'm not even telling my best friend Teeny that I'm going to be in town. It's my choice to do it, obviously, but I feel like the choice is between rewarding the bad behavior and losing the friend entirely. (Based on how much I'm complaining about her, it may sound like I don't care about losing her as a friend, but she actually is a nice person and I'd like to keep her in my life even though she's aggravating me at present.)

I Want to Love You, Pretty Young Thing

There's a new employee at work. He's actually not new in general since he worked there about a year ago, but I wasn't there then, so he is new to me. He's incredibly good-looking, smart, and he seems interested in me. We have tentative plans to grab coffee next week.

He's also 19 years old. He just finished his freshman year of college, and he's back at my office working in the mail room (his high school job) before he starts a prestigious summer internship.

I told two of my friends (one who works with me, one who doesn't) that I'm having coffee with this person, and both of them responded almost the exact same way. They both said, "Girl, you a ho." I took it as a compliment. I had the following conversation with my work colleague:

Me: I'm going out to coffee next week with [Pretty Young Thing].

Him: Oh, you are not.

Me: We talked about it today.

Him: You a ho.

Me: I am a mentor of young people.

Him: Very attractive young people.

Me: He knows how old I am. He probably thinks I'm a nice old lady.

Him: He wants some 30-year-old tail.

I admit that I struggled over whether it was morally right to pursue something with a man eleven years my junior, but I decided it was fine after about five minutes of consideration. First of all, it's not clear at all that he's interested in having romantical sexy time with me. He's an extrovert, and what I (as an introvert) see as flirtatious may just be him being himself. I'm okay with that, because it's still delightful. Second, even if he is interested in me, he's an adult (barely) and it's not like I'm trying to have some big, serious relationship with him.

The most significant reason I decided just to give spending some time with this man a shot is because I think it will be fun. There is a serious shortage of fun in my life right now. I have a micro-managing supervisor, no permanent job, daddy issues, and a string of spectacular relationship catastrophes. The most likely relationship possibility in my current orbit is Mango, which is, as we already know, a terrible idea. This is not to say I have nothing good in my life -- I have many good things going for me (though I tend not to blog about them as much since I use the blog to work out issues, and I usually don't feel the need to work out issues related to positive things in my life). But I have a lot of stuff going on in my life right now, some of it pretty serious, and I have been through a lot of changes in the past year. I could use some fun. I could use some carefree fun with someone I like being around, and I like being around Pretty Young Thing. I don't know him very well yet, but he has good energy. I think I'd like to have coffee with him and get to know him some more, just as friends for the moment.

Of course, if what he wants is 30-year-old tail, I do know where he can get some.

Confusion Never Stops, Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

I loathe my day job. I recognize that I am fortunate to have a job at all in this time of economic despair, and I am grateful not to be living off unemployment or worse. However, there comes a point when I stop being filled with gratitude just to be there and start expecting to be treated like a human being. My temporary status does not give my supervisor the right to treat me disrespectfully.

My supervisor used to be a temp and was hired as a permanent employee based on a groundswell of support. Like many people who climbed out of a lesser status into a greater one, he clearly holds those of us who still hold his former status in contempt. I'm not even sure he knows he's doing it. On top of that, I get the impression that he doesn't like me personally for some reason. In general, I can put up with both his general and specific scorn, but sometimes, he pushes it too far.

Today, he sent me two emails reminding me to keep track of my time and what time I'm spending on what matter. In one of the emails, he suggested I could use the time on the email as a guide for when I switched from one matter to another. I have been a practicing attorney for five years, and I was a summer associate before that. Learning how to keep track of time is Lesson #1 at most legal employers since time is the product they're selling. Time is, as one HR manager explained to me, their inventory. I've been keeping track of my time at this particular employer for going on six months now. If there was a problem with the way I do it, I would have heard about it tout de suite from the accounting department.

I was seriously contemplating giving my notice today. I'm going on vacation in two weeks, and I thought I would just tell them that I'm not coming back afterward. However, I decided that would be a foolish thing to do. I saw this supervisor in person later in the day, and he wisely refrained from bringing up the time issue yet a third time, which is why I didn't sharpen my claws on his face.

You know, it is degrading enough to lose my job and be relegated to temp work. But it is just insupportable to be treated like a child or a moron by someone who isn't as smart as I am and who went to a much, much lower-ranked law school.

Daddy, What'dja Leave Behind for Me? All in All, It Was Just a Brick in the Wall.

The last time I spoke to my father was August 2002. Since I made the decision to stop speaking to him, all manner of people have pressured me to resume contact with him. The most common reason given is "he's your father," which I do not consider valid. (When my mother offers that reason, I respond by saying, "Who's fault is that? Yours." It's a wonder she hasn't slapped the taste out of my mouth yet.)

My mom and I recently discussed my real reasons for severing contact with my father. He's done a lot of shitty things to me over the years, such as spending my entire childhood berating me about my non-existent weight problems until I developed bulimia, but I can get past most of them because I can see them as his issues. My father grew up in a deeply dysfunctional family with an alcoholic, obese father and a mother with obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifested itself as hoarding (classic Southern story). He inherited his mother's mental health issues. I can excuse a lot of his selfishness and critical behavior as manifestations of his own issues that did not have anything to do with me, although they were hurtful and damaging to me as a child. But there are two things he did that I cannot get past.

First, he lied to me about something important. My father worked a lot when I was a child -- every day, usually twelve to fourteen hours per day. I used to ask him why he wasn't home more often, and he snappishly told me that he was putting food on the table and a roof over my head. Since his own father contributed little to the family's financial support, my mother tried to help me understand that it was important to my father to provide for us, but he made me feel like it was my fault that he had to work so much and never had time for us or himself. However, he managed to have an entire affair with the woman who is now my stepmother. Affairs like that are dangerous and hurtful, not just because my father betrayed his wife (my mother) but because he betrayed his children as well. He said he didn't have time for us, but he had time for his mistress. I can't forgive him for making me feel like it was my fault he had to be at work when, in fact, he wasn't at work all the time that he said he was. He was choosing to spend his time with someone more important.

Second, he took a situation that was emphatically and unequivocally about me and made it about him. In 2002, I threatened to kill myself. (It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I was taking some medication that had an unanticipated side effect of making me depressed. I went off of it shortly thereafter and felt much better.) My mother threatened to have me committed, and she took the unusual step of involving my father. My father called me at work and asked me to have lunch with him, but I declined. He left a letter on my windshield in which he droned on for page after page about how ungrateful I am and how awful I am to him and my stepmother (the aforementioned co-affairant). I said I was going to kill myself, and his response was to list my faults.

My father has made various attempts over the years, typically around major holidays, to reestablish some kind of contact. I have always rebuffed those attempts with the exception of the fact that I write him a note of thanks if he sends me a gift (Southern through and through, that's me). My mother did not fully understand my reasons before for avoiding a relationship with my father, and now that she does, she still feels mostly the same way. She thinks my father hurt me very deeply (correct) and that I have built a wall around myself to protect myself from being hurt like that again (correct). However, she thinks that once a wall has been created, I can't decide who it keeps out (my response: "Of course I can. I built it."), and this wall is keeping out too many people (i.e., dudes who aren't loons or duplicitous sleazebags). She urged me to remain open to the possibility of having some kind of relationship with Dad.

What would my relationship with my father look like if I hadn't decided to stop talking to him in 2002? Chances are, it would be perfunctory. My brother and my father talk, but my brother clearly does not treat my father as someone he can rely on emotionally. My mother and I are his primary emotional support network. I imagine my father and I would interact similarly, but probably even less frequently since my brother lives one hour away from our father and I live in another part of the country entirely. Could I handle having even such minimal contact with someone with whom I am so angry? I don't know.

I also don't know whether it is better to build a wall to keep my father out or whether it is better not to have a wall and let him have continued opportunities to hurt me. Much of the pain he inflicted happened when I was much younger (...necessarily, as I stopped talking to him at age 22), and perhaps I would find it easier to stand up to him now. It just seems so exhausting that I would have to do it.

Right now, I'm in sort of a murky middle place on my feelings about it. This represents a dramatic change to how I felt about the situation even a few weeks ago, when I was intractable in my desire to remain estranged from my father. Maybe I just need to stay in this place for a little while to let the pain that he inflicted, the pain that I walled off because it hurt too much, sink in. Maybe I just need to feel raw about things for a little while.

War and Pieces

Yesterday, I read Ethan Brown's non-fiction book Shake the Devil Off, which tells the story of a man named Zackery Bowen who murdered his girlfriend, Addie Hall.

Bowen was a veteran, a military policeman who served in Kosovo and Iraq. He also remained in New Orleans with Hall during Hurricane Katrina. He suffered from self-esteem issues that well pre-dated his military career, and he also had, at the very least, an evolving relationship with his sexuality (despite having been married and having Hall as a girlfriend, he was having affairs with men toward the end of his life). Brown does not make much of the self-esteem or sexuality issues in analyzing Bowen's actions.

Not only did Bowen murder Hall, but he did so in a gruesome fashion. He strangled her in their apartment in the French Quarter (located above a popular voodoo priestess's temple, which I visited on my own trip to New Orleans though I did not know anything about Bowen and Hall at that time). He then butchered her body and attempted to cook parts of her. He went on a bender involving much drinking and snorting of cocaine, spent princely sums at strip clubs, saw his closest friends and then killed himself jumping off the roof of a hotel.

I first heard about this book reading Dave Walker's excellent column in New Orleans's Times-Picayune devoted to the new HBO show Treme. I don't have cable at the moment, let alone HBO, so I'm forced to soak up information about Treme on the internet. Since the show delves so deeply into New Orleans's rich and unique culture, Walker courteously directs readers toward additional resources to find out about topics like Mardi Gras Indians or experiences of Hurricane Katrina.

What struck me most about Shake the Devil Off was not its descriptions of Hurricane Katrina but rather its descriptions of Bowen, both while he served in Kosovo and Iraq and after he returned home. Reprints of emails and letters he sent sounded eerily similar to correspondence I received from The New Guy while he was serving in a war zone in the same role Bowen had. Bowen's behavior when he returned was also chillingly familiar to me. With The New Guy, I experienced the same kind of explosive outbursts and inexplicable anger. During the relationship, my brother counseled me to get away from The New Guy and never have any further contact with him because he was abusive and dangerous. I took his comments to heart, but now I see how my life could conceivably have turned out.

It's not really for me to say whether the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan are just or whether we should have gotten into them in the first place or how we should extricate ourselves. What is clear to me though is that people are going off to these conflicts and coming back broken. Post-traumatic stress disorder, a subject on which I am no expert, seems to make it extremely difficult for even well-adjusted people to transition from combat back to civilian life. If you take someone like Bowen or, I suspect strongly, The New Guy who already has some mental health issues and add PTSD on top of that, you get a broken person. My heart goes out to The New Guy (as it would go out to Bowen, if he were still with us), but I am more convinced now than ever that I made the right decision to cut him out of my life completely. Just because I regret what happened to him and hope that he one day recovers does not mean I want to place myself in harm's way.

She Only Knows If Someone Wants Her

"I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked-up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours." -- Clementine Kruczynski, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I miss Goose. Missing Goose is like having a bruise that never heals. Most of the time, it's just a dull ache, but sometimes, something pokes it into a sharp pain that cannot be ignored.

I haven't had any contact with him in almost three months, since I declined his invitation to meet up with him in Las Vegas. I have used tremendous willpower to resist checking his Facebook page (since this will only lead to further heartache, I am sure) or emailing him. Even so, I find myself trying to come up with any flimsy pretext to email him. No matter how much I churn the problem around in my mind, I can't come up with anything. Given how much I've considered it, even as I hate myself for doing so, I must conclude that there is no pretext for emailing him other than because I want to, which is not so much pretext as...text.

In my mind, Goose is the one who needs to email me first if there is to be any resumption of contact. He may believe the opposite, since I'm the one who refused to go to Las Vegas after he invited me twice, or he may not care. One thing I learned from my recent revelation that Doug Funny got married is that I am capable of thinking that a man has deep, though perhaps complicated, feelings for me when he in fact probably doesn't even remember my last name. That realization feels like shit. When Goose and I were together last summer, there was an intense connection between us. When we parted at the airport and I saw his face for the last time, he was looking at the ground, heartbroken, not wanting to let go of my hand. When we hugged each other good-bye, I let go first, and he pulled me to him a second time, when I again let go first so he wouldn't miss his flight. But now, it seems like he just wanted me for a warm place to park his junk while he was on vacation and I imagined these tempestuous feelings.

When does this get better? I think there are two answers, both equally true: eventually and never. I loved Doug Funny so much that it took me years to get over him, and yet I never really did, as evidenced by the fact that I was just recently looking him up online to see what he's up to. If I keep on keeping on with my plan not to contact Goose, I see no reason why the recovery process will not unfold the same way. And yet, I don't remember still hurting this much over Doug Funny this long after the last time I saw him. Perhaps that's just my mind playing tricks on me, since I met Doug Funny almost six years ago and it is hard to recall the exact color of my emotions. Or perhaps it's because Doug Funny and I had very little contact with each other after we separated in July 2004. In fact, I don't think I spoke with him at all between October 2004 and December 2007, and I communicated with him only three or four times between July and October 2004. Goose and I spoke much more frequently, and there was the invitation to meet him in Las Vegas. Perhaps it's because I love Goose more than I loved Doug Funny.

I'm sure there is also something to the fact that I met Goose at a time when my professional life was in a shambles. This may prolong my grief at our relationship's non-starter status, much as my professional woes compounded with the loss of Doug Funny to make for an exponentially worse time of things. When I find a permanent job, maybe that will lessen the hurt. (I would sure like to test that theory by finding a permanent job.)

Everything about this situation seems to pile on everything else to make it worse and worse. I miss him, but it's made worse by my perception (based on his silence) that he doesn't miss me. I love him, which is made sadder and more poignant by my perception (again, based on his silence as well as his unwillingness to break up with his girlfriend) that he doesn't love me. It all leaves me with the sour feeling that I am not lovable but rather only desirable, that these men want me for what I represent (in my Serena van der Woodsen fashion) and then get tired of me and never think about me again.

This Wheel's On Fire

The Ghost of Christmas Future called me out a week or two ago on liking Mango, not that I admitted to liking him as anything more than a friend. Let's not forget that this dude has a girlfriend, which The Ghost of Christmas Future well knows because she has met the girlfriend. (Maybe she has also heard Mango's heartwarming and romantic tale of how he and his girlfriend ended up moving in together and concluded that Mango's girlfriend is a figurehead that could be easily cast aside in favor of, let's say, me. For the record, I maintain that Mango's relationship will eventually end but probably in a thermonuclear explosion of which I want no part.)

Hilariously, every time Mango comes over to my desk to talk to me, The Ghost of Christmas Future makes herself incredibly scarce. Literally, she will be there one minute and have vanished the next. I'm starting to think there is a trapdoor under her desk or a bookcase that spins around, like we are in Clue. On Friday, Mango entreated us to accompany him to a get-together at work in which we were all forced to eat cake together to honor a colleague leaving to take the bar exam. The Ghost of Christmas Future somehow disappeared from the very hallway we had to take to the conference room where the cake was served. How does she do this?

I assume that The Ghost of Christmas Future wants to avoid being a third wheel. Truly, there are few things more annoying when you are trying to advance your romantic agenda with someone. But I am not trying to set or advance a romantic agenda with Mango. In fact, quite the contrary. A third wheel might be a convenient chaperone to keep things at an appropriately friendly level. Oy.

To the Left, To the Left, Everything You Own in a Box to the Left

Oh, Mango...

Mango hadn't talked to me much in a few days, apart from saying good morning. I was a little disappointed, but I let him have his space. After all, the man has a serious girlfriend, so it's unseemly for me to chase after him. If he wants to talk to me, my desk is six feet away from his, so he knows where to find me.

Today, he came over to chat. We got onto the topic of his girlfriend, and I asked if he plans to ask her to marry him. He laughed and said I was going to get him in trouble. I gave him a confused look and asked him what the story was there. He told me that he isn't ready to get married, and the two of them moved in together under extenuating circumstances (he was graduating from school with no job and nowhere else to go). He flatly told me that sometimes you do things for the wrong reasons that work out for the best, but he sounded like he didn't believe that. I said, "But you're happy you're living with her, right?" He unconvincingly said he was.

There was a time (let's call that time "before I met Goose") when this conversation with Mango would have filled me with hope. Now it just grosses me out. He's three decades old, and he's been living with this woman for a year or two and dating her for some period of time beyond that. When he says, "I'm not ready to get married," what he means is "I don't want to marry this woman." That's fair enough, but then he shouldn't lead her to believe he wants to marry her by living with her.*

From what I've seen, situations like Mango's end very badly. At some point, his girlfriend will press the issue of marriage. He will tell her he doesn't want to marry her either directly or, more likely, by continuing to hem and haw about it. She will then boot him out on his ass. So, all he has really done is delay his homelessness by a few years. I don't want to be anywhere near this situation when the explosion inevitably comes. Frankly, this whole thing makes me think less of Mango.

*I'm assuming his girlfriend wants to marry him and that they haven't discussed his reluctance. These assumptions could be false, I concede.

We Met in a Chat Room, Now Our Love Can Fully Bloom

I've been hitting on this new guy lately. Well, he's not really new. I've known him since August, and he's a supervisor of mine at one of my temp jobs. I normally wouldn't flirt with my boss, but after meeting him twice in person, I haven't seen him again, and I think he was promoted so that he's not my direct report anymore. (This may mean he's now my boss's boss and even worse idea for a flirting companion, but I'm going to think positively.)

The good thing about this fellow is that he doesn't seem to have a girlfriend. The bad thing is that I suspect he doesn't have a girlfriend because he's constantly at work and isn't very social (...says the kettle). He likes to joke around a bit on email, but he doesn't seem to have much interest in taking anything to the next level. I don't necessarily mean the next level romantically -- even just the next level of spending face-to-face time together as friends. Today, I told him I would buy him a cookie if he would leave his office. He probably thought I was kidding. He didn't respond. A friend of mine suggested I should offer to lure him out with my womanly charms, but I thought that might be a bit hasty.

I'm not serious about this guy. He's very cute, and I wish he were more receptive to my awkward internet-based advances, but it's nice to have a guy to talk to who isn't cheating on his girlfriend any time he gives me the Sex Eye. It'd be nice though if he decided he was ready to stop being interpals and drink a beverage together in real life.

And Put One of These Fingers on Each Hand Up

As loyal readers of my blog know, I have been looking for a job actively since April 1, 2009. This process is ongoing and beset with disappointments. I have noticed since the current Great Recession started that legal-related HR departments have become rather shitty, for lack of a better word, in their dealings with candidates. This past week, I had two experiences for which there was no reasonable excuse.

First, a friend of mine recommended me for a job a few months ago at a company where he is an in-house lawyer. I had a promising phone interview in which I felt like I really connected with the HR person. She emphasized the importance of a personality fit because of the small size of the legal department, and I thought I had a big leg up because I came recommended by someone already entrenched there. She implied heavily in the phone interview and a few follow-up phone calls and emails that I would be asked to come in for a full round of in-person interviews. Right after I came back from vacation in March, she told me I would be hearing back in about a week regarding this next round of interviews. Three weeks later, when I still hadn't heard anything, I sent an email inquiring about status. I received no response. Friday night, the friend who recommended me said that they hired someone who, while smart, has the personality of "water-logged cardboard." I knew that I hadn't gotten the job, but getting actual confirmation of it was like finding out my ex-boyfriend got married. I knew I didn't have a chance, but finding out for sure that the opportunity was foreclosed still stung. My friend was incensed that I hadn't even received a rejection letter telling me the company hired someone else. He predicts that ol' Water-Logged Cardboard won't work out and that the company will beg me to come in. From his mouth to God's ears.

There could be a million reasons that the company chose to hire someone other than me. It sounds like they made a bad choice, and my friend says that people in the department are annoyed with the hiring coordinator and don't think she has the know-how to hire a lawyer. (It takes expertise to hire a lawyer because of the special skill sets involved in the practice of law. This is not to say you have to be a lawyer to hire a lawyer, but you have to know your shit.) However, after I took the time to participate in a lengthy interview with this company, there is just no excuse in the world not to send me a rejection letter. That's just common courtesy.

Second, last Thursday, I sent in my application materials to a law firm for a job I was excited about because I am actually qualified to do it. Two hours later (a lightning-fast response, even in a good economy), I received an email asking about my availability to come in for an interview. Yay, right? We set things up for this Wednesday. A few hours after that, I got another email from the coordinator lady saying that the partner who is supposed to talk to me is suddenly out of town every day this week except Friday and we'll have to pick another day to do the interview. So far, no day has been chosen. I sent a follow-up email last Friday, and the coordinator responded to say that nothing has been decided yet and implying that I should sit tight and not bother her anymore.

The whole thing is strange. I'm starting to suspect that I was invited in for an interview in error. Maybe they meant to invite someone else, and they emailed me instead? You would think that if a mistake happened, they would just say so and apologize for the inconvenience, but given how badly HR departments have been treating me during this job search, I have no faith that they would do that. Looking for a job is worse than dating and involves about the same amount of emotional anguish.

You Know Them All, I Know It All, Stay Put and Play Along, 'Cause I'm Looking for My Friend

I have been listening to the audio book of Alison Weir's Innocent Traitor this week. It's a novel about Lady Jane Grey, who was queen of England for nine days before being beheaded since she jumped ahead of Mary Tudor in the succession to claim the throne. Or, rather, she was pushed ahead by her parents and others who thought they would benefit more under Queen Jane's reign than Queen Mary's. Reading biographies of Tudor-period royalty when I know the stories and outcomes already is like watching a horror movie. I constantly want to yell, "Girl, don't go in the basement! They're going to chop off your head!" Lady Jane is so tedious and irritating though that I am rooting for the executioner.

Right now, I'm at the part in the book in which her parents marry her off to Lord Guilford Dudley, the youngest son of the Lord Protector, who was governing England while Edward VI (son of Henry VIII) was busy dying young. It's shocking to hear how young people married in those days; girls all seem to be between 14 and 16. Lady Jane and Lord Guilford don't want to marry each other, though obviously no one gives a hoot about that given the era and their high noble ranks. At their betrothal dinner, Lord Guilford tells Lady Jane that he doesn't care what she does with her free time so long as she is his wife in public and in bed, where he promises to show her a good time. Lady Jane herself admits he was a very tall and handsome man. I was listening to this in utter astonishment. This tall, hot guy just wants to hang out with her in public, sex her up on occasion, and then leave her to her hobbies? Where can I find such a man?

Not at work. Mango spent the first half of the week flirting outrageously with me and the last two days all but ignoring me. Logic tells me that his withdrawal is for the best. He still has a girlfriend, so the flirting is inappropriate and it does not go unnoticed in our office. I don't want to get a reputation in the office for flirting with guys who are taken, no matter how accurate that reputation might be (fish have to swim, birds have to fly, I apparently have to lure men away from their girlfriends). Still, it stings to have him pull away so abruptly. He hasn't been rude to me at all, but I feel a distance there.

Mr. Nice Guy

Every time I talk to Mango, it surprises me how nice a guy he is. Like, he's really just a good, decent person. This is a rarity in the world in general and almost a liability in the legal profession. For example, today we were talking about the poor folks who have been stranded in various airports due to the ash from the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. Mango bemoaned the fact that some of these people are being docked vacation days for these events that are indisputably beyond their control and said he hoped that most companies weren't doing that. He also noted that journalists are doing stories about people who have run out of money and battery life on their cell phones and said he hopes the journalists are doing something to help these people instead of just saying, "I'm going to call my wife on my cell phone and decide if I'm going to have steak or steak for dinner. Maybe I'll have two steaks."

It's Years Since You've Been There and Now You've Disappeared Somewhere, Like Outer Space You've Found Some Better Place

I need to learn (and probably never will) that internet stalking old boyfriends is a terrible idea that only leads to pain and misery.

I don't know why, but I decided today that I absolutely could not continue with my life not knowing what was going on with my old boyfriend Doug Funny. Doug Funny and I had a brief, fraught relationship in the summer of 2004 when we were summer associates together. He got an offer and returned to the firm; I did not and did not.

Doug Funny was the first and only time I've ever fallen in love with someone at first sight. He had a girlfriend at the time (quelle surprise, given my history), but he ended his relationship with her (after much sturm und drang) to be with me. Then he broke up with me to get back with her and ultimately moved in with her. I told him I was in love with him, and he basically told me he didn't know what to say to that. We have barely spoken since. The last time we corresponded was in 2007. I sent him a Christmas card in the hopes of rekindling a friendship with him (an idea that seemed less stupid to me at the time than it does now in retrospect). He emailed me once, but that was it. I took that to mean that he didn't harbor any ill will toward me but neither did he have any interest in resuming regular contact.

To be clear, I loved Doug Funny very much. However, I think a lot of my ongoing attachment to him and my great difficulty in getting over him stemmed from the fact that his rejection of me occurred at virtually the exact instant as our summer employer's rejection of me. As any lawyer can tell you, failing to get an offer from the firm where you summer means that you are pretty much fucked. It's not an exaggeration to say that the course of my whole life would have been different if I had received that offer. If I had gotten an offer, I would not have returned to the firm to torture myself with continued contact with someone I loved who didn't want me. I would have leveraged that offer into an offer of employment at one of many other firms that would have welcomed a graduate of my top-ranked law school. Not having an offer branded me as defective. I was never told why I didn't get the offer, and most employers would not have cared anyway. Law firms are notoriously risk averse, and hiring someone whose summer firm didn't want her is a risky proposition. From this calamity, I went on to a clerkship that was, frankly, beneath me to a law firm that was also beneath me (though not as far beneath me as the clerkship). I escaped from that law firm to a very well-respected firm that ultimately laid me off for not having enough experience -- experience that I would most likely have had if I had progressed straight to a firm from law school as I expected to do.

I have probably gotten over the employment situation as much as I'm ever going to. It's not something I think about on a daily basis, but I haven't forgiven (and don't intend to forgive) the people I consider responsible for causing me not to get an offer. (I don't consider myself to be one of those people. I worked hard that summer, and I got good evaluations, and I deserved the offer.) I also can't deny the fact that my life would have been different (though arguably not necessarily better) if I had received the offer. I believe that not getting that offer was more disastrous to my career than my subsequent misfortune of being laid off and thus was the single biggest event in my career thus far.

All that boring career stuff is my way of saying that when Doug Funny broke my heart, his actions combined with another major disappointment and completely shattered me. It was like a giant meteoric impact, leaving an ugly, empty crater in my soul. It changed me -- in some ways for the worse and perhaps in some ways for the better, but it changed me.

I never thought our relationship changed Doug Funny. He was a self-confessed hater of change, which he proved by rejecting the change he made to the romantic landscape of his life and going back to the familiar, broken relationship with his old girlfriend. (I say their relationship was broken because although they had been together for four years, they had never had sex. This was not for religious reasons. It was basically because they didn't want to. That's not normal.) She apparently forgave him for his summer fling, and they resumed their relationship like I never happened. My response to this was to send her all the emails he sent me over the summer, which I'm ashamed of. I don't think she ever got them though because otherwise, he probably wouldn't have been so cordial when we emailed in 2007. So, that was lucky. It wasn't her fault, and I shouldn't have done it, but I wanted to get his attention.

Anyway, despite that, I still thought that I meant something to Doug Funny. I was convinced that he would contact me when he and his girlfriend broke up. I thought that I must be some unanswered question in his life or maybe even the one that got away.

Well, thanks a lot, Google, for showing me how wrong I was. Doug Funny got married last summer. His wife is a very attractive woman with two best friends who post their entire lives on the internet, including photos. I was able to view several photos of their wedding thanks to the two big-mouths his wife is best friends with. (The big-mouths are scrapbookers, so they probably view their blogs as internet scrapbooks. I'm trying not to be judgmental about the scrapbooking, but I'm mostly not succeeding.) Now I feel like he purged the memory of me from his life as easily as he might clear his throat. I'm not someone he was once in love with. I'm someone he probably never even thinks about anymore. I feel like a giant idiot both for having once loved him so much, for still caring about him at all, and for being stone-stupid enough to go looking for things to upset myself with on the internet. God. Fuck you, Google. My sole consolation here is that his new wife looks quite a bit like me. It's a very small consolation.

I agree with Doug Funny's unstated assertion that he and I would not have worked out in the long run. I know nothing about the specific woman he chose, but he was right to marry someone else. I hope she's a cool lady. That said, I consider Doug Funny to be one of the great loves of my life, right up there with Goose, who I consider to be my soul mate. Since he and I split up, I have kissed only one other person (The New Guy), and that wasn't even until February 2009. It is so hurtful to think that he probably barely remembers me at all.

What Is and What Maybe Could Be Someday But Probably Won't

I talked to Mango yesterday and had the chance to employ the girlfriend-mentioning strategy advocated by Tilty. I think it was pretty effective. I asked whether he and his girlfriend had any plans for the weekend, and I inquired about her job search with numerous follow-up questions. He may now think I'm trying to write an unauthorized biography of his girlfriend, but she was definitely mentioned frequently enough that she could not have been far out of his mind during the entire conversation. Maybe I can make this friendship work after all.

What Is and What Should Never Be

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about guys I've dated or wanted to date who are jerks, but I do have one former love interest who is an awesome guy.

This guy was a friend of mine for a year or so before we dated. A lot of drama went into the decision to try dating, mostly revolving around who was more interested than whom at what point in time. When we finally started dating, we managed to keep it together for only a matter of about two weeks before he called it off. He broke my heart, and I cried every day for a month. It took a lot of time and effort, but we eventually patched things up. By now, I think we've been friends for seven or eight years.

This guy and I have had some major fights during the course of our friendship, some of which involved whether or not to transition to a romantic relationship and some of which involved other things. Every time, we could have let the friendship end, and we usually didn't talk for a few months, but we always found our way back to being friends. I asked myself why that was when I flew to his city to visit him two years ago, and I determined that it was because he and I really love each other.

That realization begs the question: In what way do we love each other? I think the answer is: as good friends.

As I mentioned, this guy is fantastic. He's smart, he's funny, he's handsome, he's kind. He's everything that anyone could ever want. Since we live on opposite coasts now, we see each other rarely, but we keep in touch by phone and email. The past two times I've seen him (the aforementioned visit to his city two years ago and his current visit to my city), I've wondered whether our relationship might take a romantic turn again. After all, we love each other, we each think the other one is awesome, so what's the problem? Why on earth would we not want to be together? I don't know.

I guess I can blame it on chemistry, or maybe on fate. Neither of us seems attracted to each other in a romantic sense. Back when we tried dating, I think we both were trying to convince ourselves that we did, could or should have those feelings, but they weren't there. We're fated to be in each other's lives, but we're not romantically compatible. It's kind of a bummer, really. I mean, it's wonderful to have him as a friend, and I'm glad that our attempts to see if more was possible didn't ruin things, but it's hard to accept that the two of us can care about each other so much and still not be able to make a relationship work.

Boy, You Lookin' Like You Like What You See. Won't You Come Over and Check Up On It?

My work friend (who will henceforth be known as Mango) told me today that he liked my sweater. In my experience, when a heterosexual man compliments a woman on her attire, it's because he wants to sex her up. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are if the man is solicited for his opinion or if it is the woman's wedding day. This is not helping my efforts to be just work friends.

My friend Tilty, herself a girlfriend of many years, told me that the best approach in this situation is for me to bring up Mango's girlfriend as much as possible. Tilty said that Mango's girlfriend needs to be the third person present (in spirit) at all times. That's a good idea in theory, but when a guy walks by your desk in full stride and tosses out a compliment, it's hard to yell after him, "Thanks! Does your girlfriend have a similar sweater?"

The Look of Love

I recently made a new friend at work. This guy is cute, smart and funny, but he's a little socially awkward and is thus kind of an office oddball. I didn't like him when I first met him, but he has grown on me over time. I'm attracted to him, and I get the vibe that he is attracted to me as well.

But.

He has a live-in girlfriend. Even though "romantic attractions to guys with girlfriends" is second on my list of much-loved activities right after "darting to and fro between various foreign countries," I'm trying to reform. Getting interested in guys with girlfriends has led only to tears in the past, and I have no reason to believe it won't continue to lead there in the future. I still think this guy is nice, and I'd like to develop with him a workplace friendship of convenience that makes the day pass more pleasantly for both of us. Win-win!

But.

The dude is giving off serious vibes of being interested. I'm not saying he acts like he's interested in dumping his girlfriend and taking up with me, but he's interested in seeing me in my pajamas for sure. I was in his office today trying to get him to trade my crumpled, ripped dollar bill for a crisper one that the vending machine in our office (a finicky beast) would take, and he gave me total sex daggers when I leaned across his desk to take the money from him. I thought I might have flashed him some boob, but when I leaned over in the bathroom to see what he might have seen, the girls were locked and loaded and not trying to leap into anyone's field of vision. Trouble is brewing here.