Running Thoughts (2)

So I am giving up meat for Lent. Just red meat. I was going to give up coffee, as I normally do, but with starting a new job, the coffee-deprivation might not be terribly wise. B is giving up red meat (instead of alcohol, the other option for him) and really, when you think about it, it would be impossible for me to not end up giving up red meat also.

The new job has its moments. I can see that, when things are actually going strong, I am going to enjoy being here. But for the time being, it's quite awkward. There's not a great deal for me to do yet; I am sharing an office with two people when I am used to a degree of privacy. (One of my office-mates obviously is also...she seems to be having some problems with that. It's not easy to be told you have to share an office when you've had your own space for several years.)

I am antsy. Ready to get working on something productive. I have a task; was just given something sort of big to take care of. I doubt it will keep me busy for a full 8 hours a day but we have training tomorrow and furniture shopping Friday, so I guess it doesn't have to.

Okee dokee...in 30 minutes I'll be starting my new job.

I'm nervous. (Why wouldn't I be?) It's been a long time since I started a new job. My stomach is doing weird flipfloppy things and I am debating how wise it was for me to eat Cheerios this morning. (I love Cheerios, I do, but sometimes they make my stomach do weird flipfloppy things.)

The main emotion I feel right now is hesitation. There's the chasm, right in front of me, and a narrow, tiny, warbly bridge is swinging over it. And I have to GET ON THE BRIDGE. And it's a long way down to the River of Failure.

Plunge time. Wish me well.

If you ever have a reason to go to the Social Security Administration, don't. I got there before the windows opened and there were about 15 people ahead of me. I waited an HOUR. Some guy (first in line, in fact), was at one window for forty, I kid you not, forty minutes. Something about having two SSNs and his kids' numbers not being correct and other misinformation in the system.

I got to my window and it took her two minutes to type in my information. And the numbers of people who got up there with documents that weren't acceptable, or didn't have the right documents...so glad mine was straightforward.

My boss sent the nicest email to my whole department about my imminent departure; another went out shortly after inviting everyone to a going-away party (and mentioning a good-bye gift). So I guess I am going to be missed.

It's this limbo that proves the most difficult. I'll be gone in a week; I've gone through "training" with my co-workers to get them through the next few months—and to explain new duties in some cases. My plate is nearly clean. But I am still here, riding out my two weeks. Oddly, I wish I had more complex issues to address. But the lion's share of my work must be experienced, not explained. I don't do much that others couldn't do just as well—I just seem to do them more quickly and efficiently. My co-workers know how to do the things I do, they simply lack the repetitive experience at them I have. Give them a few months, and the machine will be running smoothly again.

And there's another reminder of why I am leaving. The challenge of a job that requires me and my unique skills to complete it is irresistable. I am unsatisfied chipping away at administrative tasks that someone else can do.

Have you heard the Patsy Cline song Crazy?

I set my iTunes to randomly select music and up it came. I love this song. It's the song I sing when I am forced to perform Kareoke. It's such a poignant, lovely, melodic piece of music.

But this morning, the first few lines struck a different chord in me. "Crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely....I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue." See, that's how I am feeling lately. I feel lonely, sort of; I feel blue. And it makes no sense.

I was married 3 weeks ago—200 of my closest family and friends joined together to celebrate me and my new husband. They came because they love us. Relatives from thousands of miles away traveled in the middle of the winter because of me.

So why do I feel sort of disconnected? I have this sense that I don't belong anywhere. I belong with my husband, sure, but we can't be a little island in the middle of the tossing waves.

And I am changing jobs. You'd think that my leaving would afford an opportunity for me to feel appreciated where I currently am—with going away parties, and congratulations and such. But no one seems to have bothered to spread the word. I've told three or four people personally but they don't seem to think it matters enough to gossip about.

I know, I know, this is a silly thing to be sort of upset about. But one of my coworkers had a baby a couple of months ago and the entire department pitched in to get her lovely baby gifts, and throw a beautiful shower for her. I didn't get a party for getting married. I am beginning to doubt that I am going to get any sort of celebration for my going-away—even though every other person who's ever left the department has gotten a party. So I feel that even in my work, which I thought I did well, whether or not I liked it, I am an outsider.

No, I am not overly social with the people in my department—it's hard to be when there are such large differences in age, background, and interests. But I am always friendly and nice to everyone. We don't have happy hours, but most everyone else has kids, so that's only logical.

I guess it's just disappointing to feel as if my years here are going unnoticed; as if no one cares that I am leaving. I feel lonely. I am ready to get a new start in a new place where other young people will work with me. Even if I will have to share an office.

I sent an email to all my friends and family telling them about my new job -- sort of, "Look, I got married AND I got a new job!"

One of my dear, breeding cousins replied that good things come in threes, and so perhaps I'd be expecting a baby next!

Help me think of other good things that could be on their way that AREN'T babies. I want babies, but not so soon, you know? I need a little time to enjoy my husband and our home and my new job and new life first.

I will mention a quote I heard yesterday on NPR—in a piece about sexual assault by football players in college, and how some colleges recruit players with the promise of easy sex. And someone was bitching about this particular college's president, who happens to be a woman, and saying, "As a woman, she should be ashamed of herself for not doing more before now to curb this kind of behavior."

Excuse me, but why is her gender pertinent? Why shouldn't men be as culpable? Why don't you hear the über-feminists saying, "As a father to daughters" or "As a husband to a woman" about male college presidents and other male authority figures who presumably also haven't done anything about the problem of sexual assault of college women?

Why does having a penis make it sort-of OK for men not to be as concerned about women's sexual assault? Because they can't be victims of the same kind of sexual assault, it's okay that they are not as ferocious? And women who haven't been victims, or don't have a personal experience with sexual assault, are somehow less morally upright because they also haven't been as ferocious?

It's just absurd to me that sexual assault is still a "woman's" problem, rather than a societal one! These über-feminists are basically saying, "Men don't give a shit, but women should and when they don't, they disgrace their womanhood." Bullshit. They should be saying, "Every human being comes from a woman, so when men and women alike overlook or underestimate the problem of sexual assault, we all disgrace ourselves as human beings." Instead of saying, "As a woman, she should know better," I should have heard, "As an authority figure, and as a human being, she should have done more."

I think that quote is right -- IMDb does not have it at all. It's that scene in Father of the Bride where Steve Martin is looking at his daughter who has become a very small girl, and that very small girl is saying the cutest voice imaginable that she has met the man of her dreams and they are engaged.

I always thought sitting down to dinner WITHOUT said man of her dreams and announcing—before his existence is even known to the parents—that she is going to MARRY him was a little odd. But, hey, who am I to judge?

So, yeah, I got married! And it was beautiful and lovely and perfect and I can't even imagine what it must be like to be one of those people who complain about little snags at their weddings. I am sure there were little snags at ours, but I certainly wasn't aware of them. I was in a blissful daze—and I only had 2 glasses of wine all night! (Okay, and some champagne, but you can't really drink lots of champagne or you get that nasty champagne hangover.)

And then we went to Italy. Italy is beautiful and historic and quaint and very romantic. The food is incredible (but all the same, mostly...I don't see how anyone could live there forever and only eat the same stuff all the time), the wine is amazing, and the weather even held up for us a bit.

And now, back to the grindstone.