Tag: life

Lost

I am realizing that I really haven’t built much of a life for myself.

What do I have that I can call a life? I haven’t owned any experience. The things I cared the most about and put the most effort into were all home-oriented. And now my home is gone. I have nothing else. I didn’t create anything elsewhere.

All I seem to want to do is have my own home, and to work to make it mine, and to fill it with children and care for them. I have no interest in anything else except returning to Japan. I don’t care about finding a new job. In fact, the idea of finding a new job just makes me feel like a loser. Can’t get a job, and when I do finally get one, can’t keep it. I don’t really want to go through it all again. Especially since I can’t think of one thing–one thing–that I would even want to do.

I’m just stranded, adrift, with nothing but Sean to cling to. And he’s got his own support structure, which, while it includes me, is not limited to me. He can sit in the bedroom for hours and play his game. Meanwhile, I wander from room to room looking for something to occupy my mind, and finding nothing.

Reflection

As you might expect, I’m going through a period of questioning. Is there something wrong with me? Do I truly have any skills? Is there any job at all that I 1) would be good at and 2) would enjoy? Do I care too much about enjoying my work? Why do I have so much trouble focusing on boring tasks? Do I need to be on medication? Is there any way I can learn better time management skills?

I’m really just shooting in the dark here, because I don’t know why they fired me, but I think it might have been that they were unable to see what I was accomplishing. Part of that is my fault for not showing them, but part of it is their fault for not asking. I was never given deadlines or any indication of expectations, and I (apparently foolishly) assumed this meant I was free to decide for myself what needed to be done and then present my work to them when I was ready for it to be seen. I would have had something ready next week, I believe.

Did they just decide that I must not be the right choice because I hadn’t managed to pull a website out of my ass in three weeks? That’s very possible. I’m sure there’s someone out there who could do it. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of me and find that person.

It’s frustrating that I wasn’t able to finish the project. It’s hard to just walk away from something that’s incomplete. I keep thinking of things to do that might help or make it better, and then remembering that I’m not working on it anymore. Creative projects are like that…inspiration seems to come at inopportune times, when you’re thinking about something else, rather than during normal working hours. I was hoping that if I plugged away at it for long enough something would come out, and I’m pretty sure something good was coming, but now I’ll never know.

At this point I am really turned off by the idea of web design as a career…mainly because I don’t want something like this to happen again. I feel that I’m slow at it because it’s not something I truly enjoy. I like making designs, but doing them all the time is so draining. I feel that I’d like design to be something I do occasionally–and web coding something I do very occasionally–rather than having those things be the primary focus of my job.

To be honest, right now I feel that I would rather have an easy job that doesn’t require much brain power. That makes me feel lame, but it’s true.

My job at 2go-Box spoiled me and made me egotistical. Maybe the purpose of this job was to knock me down about a trillion pegs, so I’d be on the same level as normal people.

I don’t really know what I want to do now.

Trying to look on the bright side

Does anybody know of any office jobs in North Augusta? This could be my chance to, if not move there, at least have some reason to be close to all my friends who live there.

Well, I’ve been fired

I’m not even really sure why, but the job was too good to be true anyway.

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Some sort of meaning

Sean said not too long ago that we were lucky that we weren’t living in Japan when the fire happened, because we wouldn’t have had a support structure to help us get back on our feet. I thought that was a ridiculous statement. If we’d been in Japan, the fire wouldn’t have happened to us at all–we didn’t cause it.

It occurred to me today that if we had been in Japan, the fire probably would have still happened, but to someone else. Would the people living in 09I have been home? Would they have awakened? Would one of them have thought to pull the fire alarm?

When we ran out front, there was a guy standing in the yard just staring at the building. I have no idea who he was or what he was doing there, but he hadn’t pulled the fire alarm. And no one else woke up until the alarm went off and the firemen started beating on doors.

The only casualty in the fire was a gerbil. If we’d been in Japan, would people have died?

This is about the only reason I can think of to be glad that we were there.

Yes, I’m up

I’m on my laptop before work for the first time. Usually I watch TV in the mornings, but today Reid is asleep on the chair in the living room, so I’m back in what used to be Sean’s old bedroom and is now the workout room, my laptop sitting on the head of the treadmill. Well, it’s kind of like a desk.

thanks for helping with the picture, Mom

Have you ever seen Return of the Jedi?

You know the part where the Ewoks start worshipping Threepio as a god?

The mini-fridge in here rumbles in exactly the same pitch progression and timing.

I was thinking just now about how I don’t really feel like going to work, and that reminded me of Shel Silverstein’s “Sick”. This in turn reminded me of The Light in the Attic, the collection of Silverstein’s poems that I gave to Sean while we were dating. I took the time to write in the front of the book why I was giving it to him and which poems meant something to me about my childhood.

That, too, is gone.

I get the feeling that I’m going to just keep thinking of things and listing them here. Maybe that’ll be the “scrapbook” that one commenter mentioned awhile back.

I wanted to mention this dream I had the other night

The day before yesterday, I spent much of my free time catching up on Somewhere on the Masthead. Magazine Man’s posts are nice and long and I usually want to give them my full attention (because they rule), and due to how busy/disconnected I’ve been lately I ended up reading about 12 posts at once.

Because I was lodged firmly in Magazine Man World, he ended up in my dream that night. I dreamed that he found out about our apartment fire, and, to make me feel better, altered his subscriptions to some architectural magazines so that they would come to me instead of him. The thing was, the magazines still had his full name and address printed on them. (For some reason, in my dream he lived in Boston, when all evidence I’ve seen points to him living somewhere near NYC.)

This was monumental to me. Magazine Man is a mystery, as faithful readers know. He’s an editor for a huge national magazine, but he won’t tell us (straight out) who he is. At first this was for dooce reasons, but as time has gone on he’s dropped more and more clues, enough that two people have figured out who he is. At this point I don’t think he cares if people know, but he’s maintaining the mystery for fun.

At any rate, to me, in the dream, his revealing his identity to me was the supreme act of kindness. Sure, the architecture magazines were cool, but it was the fact that he didn’t worry about his secret identity when he decided to help me that really made it special. It was like he was letting me in on his secret.

Of course, I guess there’s something like pity in an action like that, but you know what? I want to be pitied. This is just like when I was recovering from cancer and I went around telling everyone about it. It’s apparently how I deal with trauma.

Don’t worry, I’ll get over it.

In the meantime, if it’s getting too depressing for you all over here, check out Somewhere on the Masthead. It’s always good for either a laugh or happy tears (or both).

Ugh

Feel kinda crappy today. I’ve been eating way too much, and all the wrong foods…and I’ve been drinking a lot of sodas with caffeine in them. Need to stop that.

I’m supposed to get a new bike at the end of the month, and that will help.

Yesterday I found a nice house: 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 2 story, with a fenced-in backyard and a patio. It’s all brick and has carpet, vinyl, and wood flooring. This is all from the ad; I really can’t say anything about the interior or the yard because all I could see was the front. But it’s really pretty; it’s got a wraparound front porch, and the brick is kind of a warm brown/orange color that’s rather comforting. It’s on a cul-de-sac, which means less traffic, and it’s in a subdivision near where Sean’s parents live, which means it’s decently convenient to both our jobs.

I showed the Internet listing to Sean and he said, “I don’t have a problem with that.”

Now I just have to hope that it doesn’t sell before next week, which would be the time we could get a NACA-certified real estate agent to show it to us. (I would ask one of the many agents I’ve been referred to, but I don’t want them to feel used if we go the NACA route. They would make no money and I would feel like a heel.)

I don’t know if it’s the right house, but there’s something very nice about it. I at least want the chance to see the whole thing.

Suddenly I’m falling apart

I guess that “delayed mourning” thing is really kicking in…I left the internship early today so I could be alone in the house for a change, and because I couldn’t concentrate and wasn’t getting anything done. Then I pretty much cried the whole way home.

I stopped at Springhouse. They wouldn’t let me into the apartment, of course. I don’t know what I was thinking. That I’d sneak in? I was told to talk to the apartment manager, so I did. She said they wouldn’t know if they could recover anything until the demolition guys evaluated the situation, and they don’t know when that’ll be because they haven’t even made an appointment with the demolition guys yet. She said they’d call. I don’t know if I trust them to do that, given their history.

I feel like I should try to resign myself to losing all my writing. It’s the writing that really got me, beyond even the pictures. I just want my hard drive. But if they can’t even, like, rake the debris out of the structure and let me sort through it…maybe I should just give up now and stop hoping.

I’m tired of these situations. I’m tired of life telling me to give up on my hopes.

I have a horrible headache right now. Earlier I felt like I was going to throw up. Now I just want to turn off my brain and hide from life.

"Delayed mourning"

That’s what I called it when Cheryl asked me what was wrong. It’s about the stupidest phrase ever, because it makes no sense.

“Mourning? Over what?”

“My apartment burned down,” I said. By this time I was struggling not to cry.

Cheryl launched into a speech about how nobody could do anything about that, and she wished she could but she couldn’t. All I could think was Duh, so you shouldn’t have pressed me about it. Why couldn’t you have just left me alone? But I just nodded and did my best not to start wailing in the middle of the stupid driveway. “Why today? What’s wrong?” she said.

“Yesterday they said that people couldn’t go in and get their stuff because it was too dangerous, and I’d been hoping my hard drive would be in there, and everything I’ve ever written was on it.” I was being brief because I was about to burst into tears, especially there towards the end.

“Nobody’s found anything?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

“Cry, honey, just cry,” Cheryl said. I did not want to cry. She started saying the usual crap about letting it out. Well, that’s great and all, but I want to cry on my own terms. That’s why I was out in the middle of the driveway in the first place. I was trying to move stuff around, to exert control over my environment. I was trying to get rid of the clothes that people had donated that didn’t fit or weren’t quite our style. I had been going to put them in my car, and Cheryl had followed me outside because she’d meant one box for the Abilene Church. And then she’d just sunk her teeth into me until I was struggling to keep from collapsing.

I’m not the type to bawl in front of other people. I’ve done it, but I don’t choose to. I did not want to cry in front of Cheryl. There’s nothing wrong with her, and I love her, but I did not want to cry in front of her. But she kept telling me to.

“I’ll do it later,” I said. She finally backed down and we put the box of clothes in the garage. Then a neighbor appeared and I was able to escape.

I cried a little in the bathroom and in the guest bedroom, but it wasn’t enough. I just can’t cry here. It’s not my space.

Maybe sometime tomorrow I will drive off somewhere private and cry in my car.