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.)

Here is My Heart, Here is My Song, There Are Too Many Prophets Here

I watched the season finale of How I Met Your Mother yesterday, and it affected me unusually deeply. I daresay it affected me even more profoundly than Chuck's declaration of love to Blair -- an event that caused Teh Doggeh to kiss both Teeny and me. Specifically, I was moved by Lily's speech to Ted that he needed to stop trying to be an architect when the universe was clearly telling him that it wasn't going to work out and take a leap into doing something else. Lily urged Ted to forget about his rigid plan to be an architect and let his life unfold the way it is going to unfold without worrying about what is supposed to happen.

I am a total Ted, which is probably why I find that character a little dull and annoying. The Ted Show is playing all the time in my head. The main difference is that, unlike Ted, I occasionally do suit up. In this instance, I am married to my belief that I have to be a lawyer and, not only that, but a highly-compensated lawyer. (Frankly, I do not enjoy the law enough to be any other kind. The money is the only thing making this job worthwhile.) I feel like the universe (or whatever) keeps telling me that I'm not meant to do this, much like Ted with architecture. If I was meant to be a lawyer, would it be so hard? I went to a top five law school and yet this is the second time in my short career that I've faced a difficult employment search. I'm not saying that there are not other people out there who have encountered similar or more daunting obstacles, but what I am saying is (1) most of them didn't go to the school I went to and (2) maybe those people aren't meant to be lawyers either.

Where my life diverges from Ted's -- probably mostly because I'm not the main character on a hilarious sitcom -- is in the fact that the universe hasn't presented any obvious alternative path to me. In Ted's case, he had an offer to be a professor at Columbia. The dolt didn't want to take it because of the old saw that "those who can't do, teach." (It occurs to me that a professor of architecture might still be able to design the occasional structure and might, in fact, have enhanced credibility because of his professorial status.) I don't know what else to do or what else I would want to do.

My mom thinks I should be a writer. Obviously, I enjoy writing since I spend a lot of my free time writing a blog that is read by a maximum of two people. But I really only enjoy writing my little blog. I've tried to write fiction, and it never goes well. I have no gift for dialogue, pacing, plot or any of the other things I so enjoy in the fiction I read. My friend Teeny encourages me to go into the travel industry, but I think working in the industry would suck all the joy out of it for me. I have no desire to shepherd a revolving cast of drunk twentysomethings through a foreign country, trying to discourage them from raping the locals or each other, and most of the other jobs in the travel industry are analogous to jobs in any other industry.

I wish someone had left me at the altar so the person for whom he left me could come back to offer me a sweet teaching gig at an Ivy League university. What should I do next? Universe?

Who Do You, Who Do You, Who Do You Think You Are? Ha Ha Ha, Bless Your Soul.

The latest email missive from the new guy:

I added you to Facebook again. I'm actually quite surprised you forgave me. Maybe as friends we can work on it, and besides I still want to show you what I am doing with myself these days. I don't think cutting you out completely is really the best thing to do.

My friend Teeny analyzed his email thusly, and I find I cannot improve upon what she said:

Selfish. Selfish. Selfish. Me. Me. Me. I. I. I.

Nuts!!

Big Girl, You Are Beautiful

In a big surprise to no one, the new guy and I fought today. Today's fight was over my eating and exercise habits.

As a bit of back story, I am very defensive about my eating habits and somewhat defensive about my exercise habits. My dad spent my entire childhood micro-managing my food intake until he gave me an eating disorder and ruined our relationship. So, when the new guy starts in about what I should and shouldn't be eating and how much I need to demonstrate discipline by exercising, I am quick to take umbrage.

I'm not even sure what set him off. At some point in the past, maybe about a month ago, he and I talked about maybe going to a sporting event together. I don't care a whit for sports, so I said I would go only if there were snacks. On Sunday, he asked what I planned to do all day, and I said I was having brunch with Teeny and then demolishing the contents of my Easter basket. (I was not actually doing this because I had already decimated the contents on Saturday and saved only one delicious Reese's Peanut Butter Cup egg for Sunday.) Then we were texting today, and he asked if I plan to work out with him (doing cardio and weights, he specified) while he's here, and I told him I did not foresee that.

His response was to send me a lengthy text message as follows:

"Can you at least make a concious [sic] effort to be a little active for me? Im [sic] sorry if this comes across so harsh but I really did not appreciate how you spent all day eating candy and chocolate the other day, just because it was easter [sic]. To me that tells a lot about you, how you dont [sic] care about your health and you're very careless with your body. If you want to be with me, please for god's sake, take care of yourself. You could potentially put yourself into serious danger. And what tears me up inside is you dont [sic] take it seriously. You know I like you and you know I care about you. But if you continue to act like this without some health discipline, then I dont [sic] know if I can pursue a relationship with you."

He then proceeded to call me and lambaste me for fifteen minutes on this same theme. During the phone conversation, I asked him several times to lower his voice and stop yelling at me, and he apologized for shouting.

Many things piss me off about his attitude here. First, and I pointed this out to him, he isn't here and he really has no idea how much I exercise or what my eating habits are. I am certain that I do not care about exercise and diet as much as he does, and I have never pretended otherwise. But I do take pretty decent care of myself. I don't like to run or go to the gym, but I do a lot of walking and I do yoga. Back when I still had a job, I also did Pilates, but I can't really afford that at the moment. As for eating, I have lost 40 pounds in the past year, and I think my eating habits are pretty healthy overall. I would not deny that there is room for improvement, but I find that if I eat really unhealthy food, it makes me feel nauseous, so I don't do it very much. Lately, my eating habits have been worse because I'm stress eating because of my job situation, but that is temporary.

Second, even if I were eating as if my one goal in life was to emulate the physique of the mom from What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, I don't think it's his business. Either be with me or don't, but don't try to control me by dictating what I should eat. If I want to spend the entire day eating candy and chocolate, the only person who suffers for that is me.

Third, he keeps telling me he likes me, but it rings false. I think he likes some modified version of me. Like, me but with a gym membership. Or me but with a fondness for long-distance running. In other words, not me. It makes me feel like he's more interested in controlling me or turning me into the person he wants me to be than just enjoying my company. Frankly, if I wanted some asshole in my life to control my food intake and disparage my exercise routine, I would reconcile with my father and maybe at least secure my place in his will.

Fourth, he treats diet and exercise like born-agains treat Christianity. He recently got into working out and eating healthy and lost a substantial amount of weight, and I commend him for that. I'm happy that he is healthier and feeling better about himself. That doesn't mean that I need to convert to his religion or that I need to subscribe to it with the same level of zeal. Personally, I think that an overall healthy diet is the best way to go, but it is not going to hurt anyone to have nachos once a year at a hockey game. It is not going to hurt anyone to have a cookie now and then or order dessert in a restaurant. To me, to cut all junk food or baked goods out of my life would be to greatly diminish the amount of joy I can experience. I love crappy food and I love sugary food. I don't want to eat it all the time because that would make me both sick and morbidly obese, but life would be pretty joyless with no cupcakes in it. If he doesn't feel that way, that's perfectly fine, but he needs to understand that that's his choice, and I'm allowed to make my own choices. I told him that he needs to understand that I have this covered ("this" meaning "staying healthy") and treat me like an adult, but I don't think he was even listening to me at that point in the "conversation."

I'm at the point now where I'm about ready to tell him to fuck off. (In other words, "Tuesday.") I don't know why I feel more resigned about the fate of our relationship after this conversation than I did after his scathing email of a few weeks ago, but I do. I just can't see spending the rest of my life with him giving me a dirty look every time I eat a cookie. That sounds miserable.

I Get So Tired of Working So Hard for Our Survival. I Look to the Time With You to Keep Me Awake and Alive.

My morale is higher today than it was yesterday.

I had brunch with Teeny this morning, and we had a good chat. We didn't set out to sort out my life, but in the course of our discussion, I organized some thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain since I found out I'm losing my job. I guess that's one of the reasons Teeny is such a cherished friend -- she helps me to understand myself better.

As a smart, ambitious young lady, I have focused on clearly measurable markers of success. Specifically, I attended fancy-pants schools and scratched and clawed to practice at a fancy-pants law firm. Being able to say I went to a certain school or that I practice at a certain firm is like the grown-up equivalent of SAT scores -- it's a clear indicator of aptitude. Yet it is like the SATs in another way -- it is largely meaningless bullshit. I enjoy the law, but I don't love it. It's a means to an end, a way that I can pass the time and fund the things in my life that really matter to me.

What really matters to me? That's an easy question. My family, Teh Doggeh, my friends, yoga, baking, cooking, travel and writing. I need to find a job that will pay me enough money and give me enough time to pursue those interests.

Oh, and the new guy texted me this morning. He's coming to visit. He wanted to come today, but I think he might come next weekend instead.