You’re going to carry that weight

15 03 2013

I dunnae understannit.

A month or so ago I was feeling fine—no anxiety, no dread—even though I knew I needed to pick up more work.

And then I picked up more work, so: mo’ better good!

But in the last coupla’ weeks, I’ve had this tight weight pressing down upon and squeezing my sternum.

That’s not what I don’t get: I know exactly why my torso is collapsing, as well as how to heave that ho offa me.

No, what I don’t get is why I don’t do what I need to do. It ain’t much—a bit of paperwork, an e-mail, maybe a phone call—but I don’t do it. Fifteen, thirty minutes, and I’m done. But I don’t do it.

I don’t do it.

Criminy.


Comments : 23 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

And I’ve fucked up so many times in my life

28 05 2012

Is May over yet?

I know: May only leads to June, which leads to July, a month during which I gradually lose my mind until I end up in August hating everything.

Still: May has been a month of half-thought unwritten blog posts, grading, problems with grading, problems with my printer, problems with my computer, and, most importantly, the last month of a job which had me skittering around trying to find my balance.

I never did find it, which is why it was my last month.

C. asked if I still felt bad about quitting, and, yeah, I do. I wonder if I tried hard enough to make it work, if I wasn’t looking to get out long before I actually got out. Did I fuck up—that is the question.

Alas, it’s not a question to which there is any ready answer; more to the point, I don’t know that I could answer the question.

This is how I am able to get off the Neuroses Tilt-A-Whirl: If you can’t know it, let it go. Let it go.

You may have noticed that I repeatedly have to remind myself to Let It Go—which repetition means that I am not so good at Letting It Go—but such reminders do actually work to [warning! metaphor switch ahead!] loosen my fingers from their death-grip on What If? I may manually have to pry each digit from the What If? using various devices (including, most usefully, the This-Is-Out-Of-Your-Hands multi-tool, with, among others, its You-Can’t-Know-It lever), but I am able, finally, to pull my hand away.

Sure, my fingers may wander back over the What If? or Why Did I [Not] Do That?, but a deep breath and a reminder is usually enough for me to set the regret back down and sigh, Let It Go.

Anyway, this was not a big regret, just the most current one. It might stick around for awhile, might recur at odd points far into the future (I still occasionally think about the fan I couldn’t fit into my car when I left Minneapolis and had to leave behind), but it will shrink, and will lose its stickiness.

In the meantime, I’ll remember how much better I feel now that I quit, and remember that fuck-up or not, I’m glad to be done.


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Don’t know why I said goodbye, I say hello

7 05 2012

So it’s been awhile.

There was grading and headaches and a cold and the second job and a shitty mood and oh oh oh so much anxiety about. . . grading and headaches and a cold and the second job and a shitty mood. . . and you can see where this goes.

I was twisting the screw of the vice grips.

C. helped me untwist it and, without a recap of that conversation in which I went over and over what was wrong I can tell you that she said, patiently and firmly and repeatedly: You have to quit that job.

And so I quit that job—well, put in my notice; I’m done at the end of May.

It took almost two days after for me to unwind, for my chest to stopped feeling squeezed and for me to take a breath without having to remind myself to breathe.

It was the right decision, although I feel badly about it; I feel badly about it, although it was the right decision.

It just wasn’t the right job.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

Gotta have money

17 04 2012

I lied. I’m sorry.

I said I was going to put up a new post soon, and while I did compose any number of posts in my head, the words never made the trip from me noggin to the page.

It’s money’s fault.

Last year, as I mentioned once or twenty times, was a rough one for me, financially. I don’t particularly want to get into the details, but things got. . . bad.

Things are better now, which is why I’m able to write this (I find it much easier to write about bad things when using the past tense). Still, there are certain hangovers and shit left to deal with.

(Said shit won’t be discussed until after it’s been dealt with: past tense, remember.)

Anyway, one non-tangential thing to deal with was taxes. Given how low my income was last year, and thus how high the chances were that I would get back rather than pay, it shouldn’t have been a big deal to have taken care of them earlier.

I did not. I finished my taxes two and a-half hours ago. I’m getting money back.

So what does all of this have to do with me being a liar? (Oh, stop with the obvious joke about filing taxes.)Because while my brain and chest were filled with all of this built-up stress about money, I couldn’t quite find the levers with which to release the words from me noggin.

Given the hangover and shit (which I have been evading, ignoring, and otherwise repressing) and the attendant anxiety, it might still be a bit before I can free my mind.

One dread down, two to go.


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Where is the tenderness

28 11 2011

I felt such longing.

What to do with such a feeling, especially since it had been so long since I longed for anything? And why the longing, especially in response to the last, short scene of an uneven television show?

Perhaps it was the tenderness of the moment, made all the more poignant by the unexpectedness of it all.

I don’t expect tenderness, don’t expect longing.

No, I have been frozen in fear of my financial burdens, overcome with debts I cannot and am not paying, triaging my money for rent, first, and everything else, second. My two temporary jobs ease me somewhat, but I can’t remember the last time I felt anything other than anxiety.

So this longing, this unexpected desire for, I don’t know, unexpected tenderness, was all the sweeter for revealing that there is still something more to me, something more to this life.


Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Welcome to the working week

31 07 2011

So I finally got some work. A real job.

Or real-ish job. I’m not sure.

A guy I know got me a job in shipping/receiving on a construction site. I’m fine, more than fine, with that: I’m old school enough to thrill to the sheer bluntness, there-ness, of steel and concrete. I’ve never wanted to be an engineer, but I am fascinated how to make something appear where there was nothing, before.

So the work is real.

And I’ve worked receiving previously, so while I don’t know the specific procedures of this work site, I at least have a grasp of the general process.

Still, there are bits about this offer that are sketchy. I don’t want to go into precisely, but let’s just say I’m a bit skeptical about the promises made.

This skepticism was small, at first; hell, at first I was thrilled at the prospect of replenishing my drought-ridden bank account. But since then my questions have multiplied, and I’m not at all sure I’m going to get good answers to them.

My reaction then swung from thrill to terror: What the hell am I getting myself into? Is the job (i.e., the conditions under which I’d do the work) even real?

I’ve since calmed myself by saying, Well, I’ll find out. I’m slated to start tomorrow, so tomorrow or by the end of the week, I should have some sense of what’s happening. If it’s solid, I’ll stick with it; if not, I won’t.

It sounds dumb, but I really did need to remind myself that this job offer isn’t a prison term: I get to say, No, this isn’t for me.

Once I remembered that I have that option, I was able to shrink my outsized suspicions—this all happened so, even too, quickly and informally—to a reasonable skepticism. Now, instead of being either thrilled or terrified, I am merely uncertain.

I don’t particularly like uncertainty when it comes to the requirements of a job, but, again, I remembered that I am always uncertain when I start something new. I am good at ending, but not so good at beginning.

That’s how it is; that’s how it always is.

So I have questions about this job, some of which I  might not have about other jobs which have been offered after a more considered process, others which attend any new venture. Instead of assuming the answers, however, I’ll show up and find out for real.

That’s how it is; that’s how it always is.


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Tomorrow you just don’t know

3 07 2011

Betwixt and between, once again.

My second summer session course was cancelled, which is officially Very Bad News: I need the money. But I’m also unofficially fine with this (even though I need the money).

I don’t understand my moods. Okay, yes, I get the anxiety about money and the omnipresent dread of my own existence blah blah, but calmness amidst this apparent calamity? Dunna understand, at all.

Perhaps the calm is due to some clearing out of things in my apartment, trying to create more space in my space, and the general satisfaction of wanting to change something and actually being able to do so.

Perhaps it’s knowing that I can earn some of that necessary money through Mechanical Turk. No, it’s not a career and nothing I’d want to do long-term, but it’s an alternative to sitting on my ass waiting for someone to call for an interview.

Perhaps it’s that I had a few things on my mind which have been sorted, at least for the time being. Instead of that head-space being invaded by the always-voracious anxiety, in this instance it’s simply allowed me to breathe.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve started writing—really writing—again. I think that bike ride with C. I mentioned a few posts ago really did signal a shift, which is a hell of a pleasant surprise.

Or perhaps I’m simply in massive denial, and once this delusion fades I’ll be filled with all my usual vexations and perplexations. Could be; probably.

But in the meantime I’m going to go with this.


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

In the meantime. . .

3 02 2011

Hell of a week.

I went from chest-cracking anxiety over finances and work to chest-thrumming over-work.

More later, but, you know, LOLcats in the meantime.

(And welcome back, dmf!)


Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Follow-up

Am I sitting in a tin can

27 10 2010

My sister is not a crier.

Okay, yes, she has a sentimental streak and will tear up at matters involving her daughters or family generally, and she is far more expressive with her [non-angry] emotions than I ever will be. She’s normal, in other words.

But when I say she’s not a crier, I mean: she’s not someone to fall apart if things don’t go well or if there’s any sort of crisis. Instead, she switches into hyper-practical let’s-fix-this-mode, and then gets on with it.

She was crying when she called me.

V. was planning to visit me this weekend, flying in tonight and out on Monday. She’s flown before, but she hates it—really, really, really hates it as only someone who is terrified can hate a thing—so it was a big deal when she decided to fly here alone.

She might have made it, too, had it not been for the 60-80 mph windstorms which streaked across the upper midwest last night, windstorms which, not coincidentally, led to widespread flight delays across the region.

The flight tonight probably would have been delayed, too, but the weather on the ground in NYC has simply been a fizzle of gray and rain. She would have been fine.

But if you’re terrified of flying under even the best of conditions, to hear 24 hours before your flight about how awful the wind is and how much turbulence it’s kicking up, to think all day long at work about that wind and turbulence and having not only to fly into to NYC but back out, well, then, whatever equilibrium you’ve managed to convince yourself you could maintain is likely to dissolve into tears at an exit off the highway.

I’m not thrilled with flying—don’t (surprise!) like the feeling of being trapped—but it doesn’t panic me. Had it been me flying today, I’d have gotten on the plane.

But it wasn’t me, it was my steady, normal, practical, terrorized sister.

I felt so bad for her. She said it was a good thing my number was preprogrammed into her cell phone, because she was shaking so bad she probably couldn’t have dialed it. She said she felt stupid—and my sister never ever shames herself—not least because one daughter flew to Australia for a semester abroad and another to Austria for a series of musical performances, and I can’t even do a two-hour flight.

It’s okay, I told her. I’m not going anywhere, so it’s not like you missed out on your only chance to visit me in NYC. And I wouldn’t want you to spend your entire weekend worried about the flight home.

Let’s chalk it up to the weather, we agreed. Had it not been for the freak tree-bending winds, she could have done it.

So I hope my steady, practical, cheerful sister doesn’t let the anxiety which detoured her from the airport derail a nice, long weekend at home with her husband.

Go out to dinner with D., I suggested. Get the New York Strip.

She laughed. It was a good sign.


Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Prob’ly die in a small town

28 05 2010

What a nightmare.

I was in a room that was sunny and empty, inspecting an empty closet full of my stuff. The place had been packed up and I’d only just started packing. The movers were coming this morning only it was the night before and it was  4:00 in the afternoon and I hadn’t yet reserved a moving company.

I had to move by the next day and I probably wouldn’t get my deposit back because the lease ran through the summer.

It was like the back corner bedroom in my apartment on Madison that I shared with three friends and in which I lived alone.

I was moving back to SmallTown and in with my parents it was normal and I thought I could visit Madison and I sat down and said What am I doing?

. . . . And then the alarm went off.

Jesus.


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

« Previous Entries Next Entries »