Don't Look Back in Anger

Until recently, I thought of myself as a woman in touch with her emotions. That changed when I realized how much trouble I have expressing the feeling of anger directly or sometimes even acknowledging that I feel it.

I was reminded of this when I was writing yesterday's blog post. I wanted to link to the post in which I wrote about knitting Goose a scarf for his birthday, so I Googled "known associates" and "scarf." That didn't lead me to the post I was looking for; it led me to another post that included an email I received from The New Guy and my response to it.

When I look back on my brief relationship with The New Guy, I remember him being a jerk, but I also have some pleasant memories of sweet things he said to me. When I reread the email from that post (the text of the email is reprinted there completely, changed only to remove people's real names), I was shocked by how much of an asshole he was being. Even more than that, I was shocked by how sweet I was to him in response. I didn't completely let him off the hook for all his shitty behavior, but I largely absolved him of treating me completely like dirt. I should note that The New Guy is not a perfect example of someone I was angry that I failed to confront adequately because I genuinely feared that he might hurt me. The New Guy initially seemed like a kind-hearted, genuine person, but he quickly revealed himself to be emotionally abusive and on the way to being physically abusive. It was not a good situation in which to assert myself because there was a very real possibility of physical retaliation. Even so, when I reread the emails, I felt angry all over again.

Recently, I also thought about a woman I used to be friends with. We were such close friends that I chose the neighborhood I live in and where I bought my house because she and her husband lived here. Then, a few months after I moved into the neighborhood, she became elusive. She responded to emails and phone calls, but she wasn't as receptive to hanging out. On one occasion, I invited her to do something on a weekend, and she told me she couldn't because she would be out of town, but I thought I saw her and her husband leaving a local park. Because I viewed her as such a close friend, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she was busy. I thought things had turned a corner one weekend when we met up with our dogs at the dog park and spent some time together chatting and catching up. About a week after that, she sent me a venomous email in response to a series of posts I wrote on a previous blog I had. That blog, like this one, served as a diary, and I used the posts that offended her to work out some issues I had with family. In other words, none of the posts mentioned her or impacted her directly. I guess she just found whatever I had to say to be self-indulgent, and she thought that she had had a more difficult life, so I had no grounds to complain about my life. She contended that she said these things because she cared about me, but we never pursued the friendship beyond that. I didn't respond to her at all for a week before finally telling her that I was sorry she felt that way and asking her to return some things of mine she had borrowed.

I wish I had told the bitch where to stick it. What kind of person sends a mean email to a friend, calling her names and belittling painful experiences from her life, and claims to do it because she cares so much? I also have no patience for people who say that just because they have suffered something worse than you, you don't have the right to be upset about some misfortune that befell you. If that was a valid argument, nobody could ever be upset about anything because the Holocaust happened. Ridiculous. She also got some facts wrong in the email, such as saying I hadn't done anything for her birthday when I had, in fact, called her and bought her an expensive gift. Anyway, as you can tell, I'm still a little bit angry with this person.

What do you do with this residual anger? After a certain amount of time, it's not really fair to confront people out of the blue. I guess if I ran into this woman and she tried to be nice to me, I could tell her not to bother acting like we're friends, but it would be pretty strange of me to email her now and let rip all the things that pissed me off about what she did.

Obviously, the best thing to do with anger is let it go. But how do you do that? It's the question of how you stop caring what other people think all over again. I don't know how other people work, but I can't just say, "I no longer care about this" and then automatically no longer care about it. Even though I recognize at an intellectual level, the anger does not serve me nor does it hurt the person I'm mad at, I can't just decide to be done with it. So what do people do to let go of their backlog of anger?

"The One That Makes Me Scream," She Said, "The One That Makes Me Laugh."

One of the hardest parts about trying to get over someone is trying not to care what he thinks anymore. When you fall in love with someone, you integrate them into your consciousness in a profound way. You see things that remind you of them or that you want to share with them. After the relationship ends, you might secretly hope that he will find out you're with someone else and be consumed with jealousy. Most of all, you hope that he will realize what a huge mistake he made in pushing you away and will make a grand (or even a petite) gesture leading to reconciliation. (Side note: I have never been on the receiving end of a grand gesture. I don't know anyone who has. I think this very common movie plot device might be entirely fictional.)

My birthday is coming up soon, and since I am not even close to being over Goose, I am already winding myself up about how he'll respond to that date. His birthday was a few months ago, and I knitted him a beautiful scarf out of baby alpaca yarn I bought when we were in Peru, thus giving him something handmade that was also a souvenir of a trip we took together. That was a damn fine gift. There is basically nothing he could do to respond to it that wouldn't be something of a disappointment. But I am guessing that he will not react to my birthday at all. At most, he might post something on my Facebook wall or send me a short "happy birthday, dude," email.

I'm turning 30 this year. It's a big birthday, and I'm not entirely psyched about hitting this milestone. The last thing I want is for this guy to ruin it with his indifference. But it's so hard to disengage from him to the point that I don't care what he thinks. Maybe it's just something that happens over time.

Gypsy, Tramp, Thief

I think I'm going to have to let go of the idea of having a list of places I want to travel. After noting the reader suggestion that I visit Brazil, I remembered that I also want to visit Nicaragua. The list of places I don't want to go is shorter, as it has nothing on it.

He Turned to Me As If to Say, "Hurry, Boy, It's Waiting There for You."

I've been doing two things a lot lately: (1) listening to podcasts and (2) contemplating where my life is going. I have plenty of time for the former because the answer to the latter is "nowhere, for the moment."

I am uncomfortable with stasis. I like progress, change (if it's positive), forward movement. I may not always know what my goals are, but I am nevertheless compelled to move toward something. Many things frustrate me about my current situation of underemployment, but the lack of movement is right up near the top. I feel like the Road Runner when his legs start spinning to get away from Wile E. Coyote, except I can't seem to get to the point where I shoot off down the road. I've papered the universe with my resume, and I haven't gotten a single offer of permanent employment. I've considered a couple of promising-sounding alternative fields of employment, but I can't seem to get any traction there either. At some level, I know that this situation will end either with my moving forward or, less ideally, dying. But it's hard to feel stuck. It makes me feel like my life is being wasted, despite my best efforts.

My podcasts have helped me with this in some small way. I was listening to an Amateur Traveler podcast on Cape Town, South Africa, and I heard that Nelson Mandela spent 18 years imprisoned in the Robben Island penitentiary (of 27 total years in prison). After his release, we all know he went on to lead South Africa and generally be completely amazing all day, every day.

Now, I don't have quite enough hubris to compare myself to Nelson Mandela nor my struggles to find a job to his struggles to be seen as a man equal to any white man in his country. But this historic fact reminded me that a period in which my life is stalled does not mean I will never accomplish anything.

Bank of America Can Bite Me

As devoted readers know, I am trying to pay off my credit cards. The first card I chose to pay off was from Bank of America. I paid the balance in full in January and canceled the card afterward. Today, I got an email from them alerting me to the fact that my current statement was ready. This puzzled me, and I clicked on the link to discover their claim that I owed them $13.61. According to the statement, this was $13.45 in charges plus $0.16 in past due fees.

I immediately called their customer service number. "Bank of America customer service number" is the biggest misnomer since "Pussy Galore." The representative I spoke to informed me in snippy tones that I paid the balance, but not the pay-off amount. I have a pay-off amount on my mortgage and my student loans, but I have no prior experience with credit cards having pay-off amounts other than the balance. In the past, every other credit card I've ever paid off has been paid off when the balance was paid in full. I have a law degree from one of the top five law schools in the United States, and the representative was unable to explain this charge to me in a way that I could grasp. In essence, what she said was that until I had maintained a zero balance for two consecutive months, Bank of America would continue to charge me fees despite my not making any purchases with them nor even having an open account. The representative insisted that Bank of America sent me a bill in the mail, and she was deaf to my assertions that I never received any such bill. I don't know why they would send me a bill in the mail last month and an email bill this month, but I suspect it is because last month's bill was fictional.

The most galling part of the whole situation (out of a choice of many galling parts) was that she told me I would actually have to pay $14 to be entirely done with this account forever. That means that if I had not called and had just paid the $13.61, I would still owe them money and would get another bill next month (or possibly several months from now, after which they would insist they sent me bills during the intervening months).

I have no idea if this little nightmare is over. I demanded Bank of America send me a letter stating in no uncertain terms that our relationship is over. I will be watching my mailbox with hawk-like vigilance for its arrival. In the meantime, I highly discourage anyone else from doing business with them. This isn't the first negative experience I've had with them, but it's the one that is currently pissing me off.

Seize the Day All Over Again

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to make a list of my must-do trips. I have checked off several of the places on the list, but as quickly as I can check off a place, a new place to go comes to my attention. It would have been cheaper to become addicted to heroin than it is to be addicted to travel, though less socially acceptable.


1. Egypt (pyramids)
2. Dubai
3. Jordan
4. Syria (Damascus)
5. Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda/Rwanda (safari(s))
6. Madagascar
7. India (Taj Mahal)
8. Nepal
9. Russia (Moscow/St. Petersburg)
10. Cambodia (Angkor Wat)
11. Bhutan
12. China (Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Hong Kong)
13. Macau
14. Argentina/Uruguay
15. Peru (Machu Picchu)
16. Ecuador (Galapagos Islands)
17. Antarctica
18. Guatemala
19. Oman
20. Thailand
21. Laos
22. Vietnam
23. Israel
24. South Africa (Cape Town)
25. Mexico
26. Panama
27. Colombia

I Am Serena van der Woodsen

I had dinner last night with a friend of mine from school. I hadn't seen her in four or five months, so it was nice to catch up. (She paid, and that was nice also.)

I filled her in on the most recent developments with Goose (the Las Vegas invitation), and she called him the most selfish person she had ever heard of. She took the position that he knows that he's going to hurt me by having me visit him, but he's doing it anyway because it's what he wants. She also advanced the hypothesis that since he has feelings for me (which she believes he does, and I believe he does) and since he knows he can't give me what I want, he should want me to be happy and want what's best for me instead of wanting me to pay attention to him.

My friend made the rather obvious point that I attract a lot of men who are already in relationships. I knew that already, but she added to my existing awareness of the problem by giving her theory on why that is. Relationships are hard work. Everyone I know, even people who are madly in love with their partners, tells me that relationships can be a grind. I assume that if you are not really in love with your partner, the humdrum quality of being in a relationship is even more grueling than it is for someone who has a more deeply-felt reason to slog through the low points. My friend says that I am a free, open spirit, that I am beautiful and joyous and fun and one of the least judgmental people she's ever met, that I am accepting of people as they are, and that I blow into these men's lives like a breath of fresh air to show them how their lives could be if they discarded their tiresome girlfriends or wives. Which they never do, at least not permanently.

I choose to believe what my friend says -- primarily because it's filled with compliments toward me, but secondarily because it makes sense. Goose, for example, may care about and love his girlfriend, but in no way do I believe he is in love with her (nor she with him, to be fair). I don't know why they stay together, but it isn't because they are soul mates. When I came along, I probably felt like a relief to him. It probably didn't hurt that we met during a vacation, which is a situation designed to maximize fun and joyousness. I'm sure he loved the way he felt when he was with me, which is why he stayed in touch and why he invited me to rendezvous with him in Las Vegas. But he's still not discarding the girlfriend.

Maybe these guys don't break up with their girlfriends for me because, at some level, they know that being in a relationship with me would inevitably turn into the same drill they already have. I contend that this could be improved upon if they're in love with me, but that doesn't mean there won't be sad, tedious, frustrating or annoying moments being with me. In 2004, Doug Funny actually did break up with his girlfriend for me for a very short period of time before going back to her. I don't know why he left her for me, only to leave me for her seemingly moments later, but maybe it was because he realized that there is no such thing as a relationship without work. (As a side note, I should say that I don't believe any of the men I've ever been in these situations with has been in love with his girlfriend. I have met a lot of scorching hot, really kind-hearted men who were madly in love with their girlfriends or wives, and I shared no attraction with them beyond friendship.)

Unfortunately, my friend did not offer any suggestions about why my joie de vivre fails to attract available men, but I think I'm further along in understanding my life than I was yesterday.

It's Okay That I Pray That You Will Miss Your Flight and Have to Stay With Me Another Night

And...after all that, Goose didn't have anything else to say. Of course. I shouldn't have let myself get emotionally drawn in.

We're Living in a Powder Keg and Giving Off Sparks

Goose got back in touch. I was writing stuff on our mutual friend's Facebook wall about the mudslides in Peru and my contact with our tour guide. I knew Adam would be able to read it, and I was trying to get his attention. It worked, because he said he was glad to hear our guide was okay and he invited our mutual friend and me to come to Las Vegas, where he will be for the next 3 weekends. I said, "Have fun, [mutual friend]. I already chose to pass on this particular opportunity." Goose wrote back and said, "And I am still emotionally damaged by said rejection." (Sarcasm?) And I said, "Same here."

You've Got to Fight for Your Right to Party

After yesterday's dustup with the assholes at my job, I had a quiet day today. I didn't see either of the morons who decided to fuck me out of 20 percent of my weekly paycheck. I appreciated that, but it didn't mean I had a pleasant day. Fighting with my supervisor yesterday made me tense all day in preparation for a similar confrontation today, and I had a wicked tension headache by the time I left that hasn't completely subsided even after yoga, Advil and a hot shower.

Standing up for myself is a relatively new feat for me. My mom has been on my case for years to be more assertive, but now that I'm taking her advice, I'm not sure I see the benefits. Obviously, my goal in standing up for myself yesterday was to be told they intended to make good on their promise that I could make up the hours I missed due to the blizzard. That didn't happen. My mom insists that there was still a benefit to standing up for myself, but is that true?

I obsess. It's the main reason why I have a blog in the first place. Once everyone I know is tired of listening to me go on and on about something, I can pour out my feelings here. I don't enjoy obsessing. I don't get anything out of it. I do it because I can't not do it. I literally can't make my brain stop thinking about something once I get started. I thought that standing up for myself might provide a release valve for that whirlpool of unwanted thoughts, but it didn't. I'm not obsessing over what I should have said or how I should have insisted they keep their word, but I'm obsessing over my indignation that they didn't, their rudeness, their dishonesty in telling me I could make up the hours and then going back on it, their dishonesty in explaining why they broke their word, and whether I should quit. Rather than curtail the obsessing, standing up for myself just pushed the focus to something else equally unproductive.

I may now be seen as combative or a troublemaker. Had I meekly accepted the cut in hours, I would still have suffered some rudeness from my direct supervisor, but we could have avoided the scene in his office that his office mate witnessed. The fact that my hours (and those of two other temps) were cut this week without warning makes me worried that they will have more temps than work not just this week but going forward. It's shitty of them to hire people they can't keep occupied full-time (a fact I'm sure my recruiter noted, since it deprives him and his agency of money as well), but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. If they have to let someone go, it will be me at the moment since I'm the thorn in their collective paw.

Maybe standing up for yourself is an exercise in finding out who has the upper hand. They can cut my hours without warning, explanation or remorse. They can also fire me. I can complain, and I can quit. Those are the cards we each have to play in this situation. They don't know that I have another full-time job, which gives me some latitude to tell them to go pound sand, even in this terrible economy. I don't know what internal politics are motivating a decision to cut hours that hurts them as well by lowering the number of hours they can bill to their client.

Maybe standing up for yourself is about demanding respect from yourself and others. If I hadn't confronted my two supervisors about this hours bullshit, I would feel bad about myself. Even though I didn't get what I wanted, I feel like I did the right thing. (Unfortunately, I'm concerned that doing the right thing for myself might lead to being fired, but I have to remind myself that my overall self-esteem is worth more than any lame temp job.) I don't think I succeeded in getting the respect I demanded from my supervisors (based on the fact that they have no problem lying to me or breaking promises to me or treating me shabbily), but they know I'm not a pushover.

I guess what my mom is trying to teach me here is that standing up for yourself is about nurturing and improving your overall sense of self-respect and that that self-respect is more valuable than any one job (especially when I will have many jobs in my lifetime and this job is temporary by its very nature). Maybe standing up for yourself is about not always caving in to the hundreds of compromises you're asked to make to your values every day. Maybe there's also an element to it of trusting in the universe (or God, or whatever higher power someone follows) to provide you with another chance to make money that doesn't involve letting someone else shit all over you.

So, that leads me to the question of whether or not it's worth it to quit this job. One thing I can't stop obsessing about right now is going into my supervisor's supervisor's office next week and giving my notice. I keep thinking about what I would say. Truthfully, it's not an opportune time to quit. I do have another job, but the income from working two jobs is giving me the financial freedom to pay off my credit card debt. I'm halfway done with that task right now, which is an achievement I'm proud of, but that still leaves half that I'd like to pay off. Also, this temp job pays significantly more than the going rate at the moment, though that factor is negated if they make a habit of dicking me out of hours. So, at this very moment in time, I don't plan to quit. That said, it's incredibly nice to know I have that option. If I go in next week, and my supervisor gives me the same hateful attitude he gave me yesterday, I have the freedom to tell him to shove his job up his ass. A lot of people don't have that freedom, especially in this economy, and I'm grateful that I do. For now, I'm just going to hold that knowledge close to my heart while I smile and do my job and pretend not to hate them while hoping they don't fire me.

A Winter's Tale

There are five of us temps on my doc review team. Yesterday, because of the snow, the three of us who don't live in the city stayed home. I borrowed a firm laptop to try to work from home because our doc review program won't work on my Mac. The documents weren't loaded into the program, so I couldn't do any work from home yesterday. I left the laptop at home today because I planned to make up the 8 hours I missed tonight and tomorrow night or possibly over the weekend. In the past, it has not been a problem to miss time on one day and make it up on another in the same week.

When we came in today, the associate who supervises us (an ex-temp himself who was made an associate recently) told us the documents had been added to the doc review program and we could resume the online review. I let him know that I hadn't brought the laptop back in and that I planned to talk to the woman who's in charge of the laptops and make sure it was okay to return it on Monday. I talked to her, she had no problem with it. Then, the associate sent me a snippy email saying I needed to return the laptop because it was given to me as a courtesy. I told him the laptop lady said I could keep it, and asked if he still wanted me to return it. He said yes.

I went to his office and asked if I could take it home again if no one else needed to borrow it for the weekend. He gave me the shittiest attitude. I acknowledged that I'm a low priority for laptop borrowing (compared to actual attorneys who actually work here), but if no one else needs it, I don't understand why I can't borrow it. Plus, if I can't use it, then I can't hit my 40 hours for the week. He pretty much told me I can't make up the time.

Later this afternoon, we temps got a weird email from my supervisor's supervisor saying that work is expected to be completed at the office except due to extenuating circumstances (the blizzard was mentioned) on a case-by-case basis. I asked him if I could make up my hours tonight and tomorrow since I had stayed home due to the blizzard, and he said that if I had asked ahead of time, it would be different, but that since I hadn't, the answer was no. I said that I *had* asked ahead of time and gotten permission and asked if that changed his answer (which it should have, since he said it would). He still said no because they didn't have the volume of work to allow people to make up their hours.

Needless to say, I was fucking pissed about all this shit. After my initial confrontation with the snippy associate, my desk neighbor thought I was having an allergic reaction because my neck was red and splotchy. When this project started, there were three of us. In the last few weeks, our ranks have swelled to five, which makes a big difference. If they don't have enough work for five people to do, they shouldn't have added the two new people to the group. If the issue from the get-go was a dearth of work, the snippy associate should have said that instead of berating me about the laptop (a situation that was none of his business and a problem only to him) and his supervisor shouldn't have told me it would be different if I stayed home because of the blizzard or cleared it advance to work from home and then still denied me the chance to make up my hours once I met those two requirements. And how did the simple fact of my wanting to do my work blow up into this tremendous drama?

The temp agency that placed me in this shit-hole has the misfortune of being on my way home, so I stopped by to talk to the recruiter who placed me. That was a good decision. It gave me a chance to vent and get some clarity and perspective. (As a side note, considering the recruiter and the temp agency both make money off my presence at this firm and my number of hours worked, I'm sure the recruiter was very interested to learn both that I was being denied the chance to work 40 hours per week and that the firm has staffed two new people who didn't come through that temp agency on the project.) The recruiter made two points of equal validity: (1) this is a well-paying job in a tough market and there isn't much of anything at a comparable pay scale with which to replace it and (2) it's a temp job, and if I'm miserable, I should quit.

Little Red Corvette

Yesterday, I mentioned the old cliche that when you're thinking of buying a red car, you suddenly see red cars everywhere. But maybe if you want to buy a red car, you should surround yourself with red cars.

I've recently started listening to the Amateur Traveler podcast. Most of the time, host Chris Christensen focuses on one particular travel location like the Marquesas Islands or Wisconsin. My favorite podcasts are the ones when he interviews a person who has spent a protracted period of time tooling around the globe. I listened to one today about a woman who started in Costa Rica, went through South America, New Zealand, Australia, parts of southeast Asia, Turkey, then on to Europe and home. Some of the time, she worked to replenish her financial reserves and extend the amount of time she could travel. When I finished that one, I listened to a podcast about female solo travel in India with Beth Whitman, author of the book Wanderlust and Lipstick. La Whitman counseled prudence and respect for the local customs of modesty, but she basically said it was cool to go travel around India as a woman.

I obviously want to travel, preferably for an extended period of time, preferably including some overseas employment. Is it delusional or positive thinking to surround myself with examples of people who have done that?

Fight or Flight

I read recently that a lot of the tension that people (like me) feel in their neck and shoulders is caused by suppressing the fight or flight response. When a person is confronted by, let's say, a mastodon, the body engages the fight or flight response. (In that case, it would probably be "flight" since humans who chose to fight mastodons probably didn't live long enough to pass their genes on to us.) When the person is out of danger, the body relaxes. However, in our modern, largely mastodon-free world, the fight or flight response kicks in at a lot of times when it isn't appropriate. Like, when someone yells at me at work, I can't very well punch them in the eye or run away, even if that would be fun. So, the adrenaline or energy or whatever it is from the fight or flight response stays in the body and keeps the muscles tense.

Maybe the solution is to be more honest. I can't punch people in the face or run away from them at top speed, but I coudl be more up front.

With Goose, my options were literally fight or flight. I could fight with him or for him, or I could fly to him or from him. I chose to walk away from him. I still think it was the best choice of my available options, but I have been struggling with it. Lately, it has felt worse, probably because he'll be in Las Vegas in the next week or so, and I keep thinking about how I could be seeing him in a week or two instead of sitting around here on my ass by myself wishing I was with him.

I thought that maybe he would email me, but he didn't. It sucks. It's bad enough to miss him and love him and want to be with him, but the hardest part is knowing he doesn't feel any of those things.

Good Luck Chuck

There's a cliche that says when you are thinking of buying a red car, suddenly you see red cars everywhere. Now that I'm trying to start a new phase of my life out of a big pile of rubble, I see people doing that everywhere. While I've been working to pay off my credit card debt (halfway there!), I've been watching every TV show that ever sounded remotely interesting. I watched The Shield, Saving Grace, and now Chuck. The basic premise of Chuck is that the guy used to be a promising student at Stanford until his roommate ruined his life by getting him kicked out and stealing his girlfriend. When the show begins, he works repairing electronics at a Best Buy-type store. Witness the following exchange between Chuck and Sarah, his spy handler.

Sarah: The idea with a cover is to keep it as simple as possible without revealing true personal detail. Any thoughts on a name?

Chuck: Charles Carmichael? Simple, dignified– Sarah: Easy to remember, and not far off from– Chuck: Graduated with honors from Stanford, runs a hugely successful software company, semi-retired, and is considering entering America’s Cup.

Sarah: You done this before?

Chuck: Let’s just say Mr. Carmichael and I share a small kinship.

Sarah: How’s that?

Chuck: When I first entered Stanford it’s kinda where I envisioned myself being…by now. Except for the sailing part; I don’t really know where that came from.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be involuntarily recruited to be a spy any time soon, but you never know. In all seriousness, I think that anything that promotes a feeling of positivity and optimism is worth celebrating.

Cowboy Up

Watching DVDs of Saving Grace makes me think I should fulfill my destiny as a Southern girl by finding myself a sexy cowboy/redneck and getting hitched.

If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me

Wow, I will just never get any smoother. I got a phone call today from a phone number not in my contact list. I recognized the area code as local. Since my area code is not local, I assumed the call must have come from someone I know. Based on the area code, I thought the call came from The Only Living Boy in New York. I emailed a mutual friend of ours and asked for The Only Living Boy in New York's phone number to compare it against my missed call. I'm sure the mutual friend blabbed this to The Only Living Boy in New York, and it turned out it wasn't even his number. So, I stepped on my proverbial dick with that one.