Working Girl

I got a job!

Finally, after the last year and a half of being overworked, underpaid, and just plain out of a job I finally got a real one.

I'm working at the promotions company I was a spokes model for since June of '09. Both of my bosses quit in the matter of a few weeks. I put in my resume and came out with one of the positions!

I work in Greentree. My hours are 10-6, Monday through Friday. My title is Program Manager and I basically do payroll, scheduling, and other administrative tasks for the spokes models.

Today is day 3 of my first week, but I'm in the office alone for now. The new hire and our trainer will be coming in next Monday, so then the real work starts. I'm just kind of bumming around, organizing the office and taking calls from my superiors in Baltimore until then.

This is truly the greatest thing to happen to me in the past year. Now, all I need is to get healthy to have a little bit of peace in my life.

It's funny though. There really always is the next thing. High school was really the last time I enjoyed the here and now and wasn't looking forward to the next big change. I was excited for college and moving on, but loved each day I had in high school, particularly my Junior and Senior years. From undergrad onward it's just always been a constant longing for the next step, or just for the current struggle to be over. I remember being so thrilled at the end of graduate school, only to be met with illness and unemployment. Now, here I am with a real job and on the brink of being cured, but I can't help but ask the question, "What's next?" What new hurdle will there be to overcome? Hopefully things will just calm down for a little while. I can work and focus and enjoy the present for what it is. But, the greater accomplishment would be to be able to feel like that even if another hurdle presents itself...

I know that life is a journey, but I've never been much of a process oriented person. I'd like a little destination now, please.

Who's Excited for the Next 5 Years?

This girl.

I don't really know what the deal is. Even though we're coming down to the end of the semester, I'm swimming (eh, drowning more like) in work, and have absolutely NO CLUE what the future holds for me after graduation, I am just super-stoked for everything that's to come.

Right now it's 4:40pm and it's dark outside. (You think you East-coasters have it bad...try having the Rocky mountains 3 feet to the West. It gets dark hella early here.) But, no matter. Who needs daylight? Most of my favorite places in the world have 3 months of darkness per year. And I can't wait to get back to them!

Looking into Italy as a spring break destination. Scandinavia in June. I know, I know...crazy, reckless, hectic, even manic. That's about where I am right now. It feels good though. Something about life's fragility, the utter softness to it all. Life is for the strong, no question. But the essence of life itself is like a ham sandwich, tasty, satisfying, rich, and meaty...but don't go tossing it around carelessly or waiting 20 years to dig in. The time to bite into that pigly wigly is now!

You do not know what is around the corner. You do not know how many chances you'll get. And living everyday like it's your last may seem a little rash, but hey, one day you'll be right.

And then won't that feel good.

The Hard Truth

Life is not fair.

There is no plan.

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you had a nice comforting one going for you. I welcome well-thought out responses. I'd honestly like to believe in at least the second one. But really, I'm just past it now.

Home

Being home is nothing more than a tease. It's certainly an exaggeration to say that I dread going back to Boulder...but I'm certainly not relishing the thought. My first day back there's a Steelers and Pens game, both win, it snows, I get to drive into the city through the Fort Pitt tunnels (the only city with an entrance, baby!), and go to Mad Mex with Julz...c'mon now. How could I want to leave all this?!

A pretty uneventful time home. I do realize, however, how excited yet anxious I am to finish school in May and begin the job search. That's just, quite literally, a position I had never seen myself in. I mean, the intention was to go through the PhD and get an academic job...no Monster.com in that equation. Now, I am almost a little fearful of the job market and all that jazz, especially seeing the situation my mom is in and listening to my dad talk about retirement, 401ks, and how much he'll "need to live on." But there is undeniably a lot of excitement coupled with the anxiety. I can't wait to be free to embark on some new journey--whatever it may be. I want to provide for myself, have an apartment that I can actually settle into (and not have to tell myself, oh, well, you're leaving here in x number of months anyway. Don't get too comfortable.), and start a "lifestyle" (I hate that word, but it's meaning really fits here) that I decide for myself and can sustain for longer than the length of a semester.

I have other worries on my mind--both important, warranted ones and silly, selfish, irrelevant ones. Of course the latter are the one occupying my mind most of the time and are taking away from comfortable slumber. Alas, living and learning is one of the greatest highs and most despicable endeavors one could ever think to deal with.

One year ago

I went to church this morning. It was my first day back since leaving Boulder for the summer. Our pastor, Marty, began her sermon talking about how much has happened over the course of a year in our congregation. It was a year ago today that First Cong moved into its new sanctuary, and so there was much to reflect upon.

And so, as I sat there in the choir, I reflected on my past 365 days and thought of all the things that had changed in that time. And I marveled at how such an arbitrary unit of measure can mean so much to a life.

A year ago I was in my first September of graduate school. I had Communication Research and Theory, Qualitative Research Methods, and Reading and Rhetoric to grapple with for the semester--all three on Thursdays. I was teaching for the very first time, and took some pretty lame (but well meaning) advice which got me off to a bad start. I hated Boudler, but found a friend in a young man named Ethan who came from familiar parts. I struggled to show people what a positive and upbeat person I naturally was while falling into my habitual sarcasm--my comfort and technique for getting through things I don't so much enjoy. I was engaged a year ago. My god, so much happens in such a short time. My mom was married a year ago. I had hopes and dreams of attending Iowa's PhD Comm program and making a life for myself as a tenured professor someday. I feared moving from my temporary apartment into a more permanent one becacuse I hadn't yet become comfortable enough with the people around me to ask for help moving. I initially hated some people in my department, and was underwhelmed with the caliber of, well, everything CU's Comm program had to offer.

I grew up fast. And over the course of this past year I have nothing short of changed who I am entirely as far as what I beleive and how I see the world, the people in it, and what each of them makes of it. But, through all of the growing, changing, and mistakes I have made I would not change one thing, because, life is not about a destination. And I hestitate to call life a journey either, because that suggests the ultimate goal to be a destination. I think that life is simply an ongoing and constant adventure. There is no forseeable end, and why would you want there to be one?

And what that means is that, you should not wish to trade life's difficulties, because they make you appreciate more the glory that it holds as well. And, you should not desire to simply be born wise in order to avoid the pain that comes with lesson learning. If I was simpy born with a heart for the poor, but had never survived on welfare myself I would really not know what the experience was like. I could sympathise, but not empathise.

Understanding, experiencing, living is what it's all about.

Don't take the Cliff's Notes version. Feel it for yourself and you will be better for it.

What have you lived in a year?

Miracle of life?

It's nearing the 23rd anniversary of the day of my birth. Something to celebrate, for certain. Except, is it? If you know me, you should already know this, but I am not a big "It's my birthday!" person. And for good reason--many of them. Namely, those people are so fucking obnoxious.

"Hey, I'm always a douche bag when I'm drunk, but, goddammit, tonight I have an excuse and I'm gonna use it. Not only am I slated to be the world's biggest tool for 24 hours (usually it seeps long into the wee hours of the following morning as well), but I'm will surely be taking extra advantage to get everything I want, including all of the attention available. Because, normally, I am so pathetic that I can't win any on my own merit."

I am irked by said individuals.

However, there is another, perhaps less bitchy and more profound, reason for my lax attitude towards my own birthday. (I know what you're thinking. Oh great, here goes another one of Shannon's "I'm so obsessed with time passing" attention pleas. Well, you're wrong. Ha. I do have depth, and many dimensions. No one trick pony here.) I avoid the celebratory atmosphere surrounding the memorializing of someone's coming to be, because, well, I'm not so convinced it's anything that exceptional to begin with.

Ok, hear me out. Or, try, because, honestly, I am working this out as I go, myself. But, really now. Life is in no way proven to have meaning. People believe a lot of different things surrounding it, sure, but, for a being that seems to find so many reasons to disagree, we sure do all like the idea that life is good, or at least valuable, and is something to be celebrated.

Well, I'll go with you on that to a certain extent. Once people are alive they are valuable and what not. Because, let's face it, what we have is all that we have and if there is such a concept as value itself then existence, in some sense, must accomplish that. Follow? Eh, don't worry about it.

The point is, birthdays, to me, signify this unattended to detail that I haven't come to accept: the creation of life is something special, good, and "miraculous."

I stole the title of this post from that old sex ed video we were like all made victim to somewhere in our public schooling. The Miracle of Life. Good flick. Groundbreaking cinematography. Did the job. But that title, really?!

I think of that whole episode. Yes, you know of what I speak. Conception. Consider the circumstances surrounding the conception of a child. A couple trying for years to create their little miracle. A broken condom in the back of a pick-up. Costly in vitro fertilization. The pregnant "man". Are we going to label this with the term "miracle"?

I don't get it. Where did that cliche get its start? I'm blaming the Christians again. It just all seems to haphazard. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's wanted; sometimes it's dreaded. I mean, come on. Everything reproduces.

Seriously, though. I think that what happens after conception is where a miracle can be found. My parents adopted me when I was three days old. All of a sudden, in that act I went from broken condom to miracle. What people do with the circumstances in which they're found (or created, let's be fair) is where all of those things--miracles, love, grace, faith--can really be found.

I'm tired of celebrating a whirlwind of mindless, unexplained cliches tied up in smoke and mirrors and tradition. Let's be responsible and discover that which is really miraculous and deserving of celebration in the thoughts and actions of people, not happenstance.

Technically taken after midnight last night, so counts as today. Ha.

Frustrated

I am really down. And really frustrated. I hate people in general. Why are they all so mean? Why do people want to be negative all the time? Why can't they relax? Why is everyone always looking for a reason to get offended? Why can't people be supportive? Why are people jealous? Why are they cruel? Why are most of them ignorant and so pathetic that there is simply no good argument for why they should be allowed to speak?

I don't know if you can tell, but I am really, really feeling angry about the state of the world right now. And the attitudes of people--particularly young people, I think. But really, most of them.

Grrr.

Just do your own thing and be nice and be positive and smile and don't talk shit. Quit talking shit! For the love of God and all that is holy, quit talking shit!

And enjoy life. It's here and then it's gone and you never even saw it.

This made me smile. Everything in the city pretty much says this.

My god, I love Pittsburgh. Too much. Everything you love like that will let you down.

Whatever. When I'm 90 and senile, these romanticized images of Pittsburgh will serve me well.

2 days' posts--cause i screwed up, aight?

DMB. 'Nuff said.

You can find us in the club

Late posting. This is the post for Thursday, the 29th.

Went out in the 'burgh for the first time in a loooooooong time with Julz. We got all dolled up (cause girls do those things) and made a night of it.

This picture was taken at Town Tavern, a complete shit hole in the South Side, but really the only bar where you can dance (without going to an all out "club"). Nobody knows who that guy is in the photo with us, but he was really nice and offered to take a picture of just me and Julz. ;)

Before we arrived at the yinzer convention (not a hater, just calling it like it is), we stopped off at Harris'. Harris' became my bar before I left for Colorado, and it caught fire on the day that I moved there. They got it back up and operating a month or so ago. The bar was really me and Eric's place, and now he even works there (though he wasn't last night). Walking through the door I was immediately greeted by Christina, the friend largely responsible for talking Eric through the idea of proposing. She was always so delightful to both me and him; I adore her.

But I was very, very nervous at first sight. I didn't know how she, or anyone else, would be towards me. I hadn't seen anyone since Eric and I had broken up. To my surprise (and relief) she was just, well, as she always was. And excited to see me. We chatted and caught up. She was working, so our interaction was brief.

Julie and I saw several other people that night, and I got the same reaction from all of them. Kevin, Caleb, Rick, and Matt all hung around for a while. It was nice. I missed Eric a lot. So strange how I can go away for 9 months and completely change my life and then walk back into a place (that had burned and been rebuilt) in the city I'd been missing, and just have everything feel like old times.

What a strange thing this life is.

Some people really know how to have a good time.

We know how to live; that's all I can say. Mom and I picked up Carolyn and Marita in Bethel Park and then drove up to Carolyn's brother-in-law's 15 acre wonderland a few miles outside of Seven Springs. We did the mountains PA style.

We spent the day sipping wine, gin, whiskey, and martinis, talking about politics and old times (the average age not including me was round 75, so "old time" talk was a spectator sport for some of us), feeding the fish in Al's pond, and whispering to the trees in the forest.

What a joy.

Carolyn and Marita know how to live. They know how to laugh and spend and talk and do. We always get together and have the loveliest of times. I want my whole life to be like that, and, you know, it really is.

Sex and the Country

As we go on, we remember...

I walked through campus today around 9 in the morning, going to print and turn in my final paper of the semester. CU is lucky to be located in Boulder; all graduation ceremonies can be scheduled in outdoor venues because it's sunny everyday.

I had forgotten that it was graduation day, and the major university-wide ceremony happened to begin at 9 o'clock. It was held at the stadium, which I pass on the way to my building. I watched all of the people hustling and bustling. Merchants were selling flowers and fresh leis. Students in full garb were running madly to their gates. Colorado Avenue looked as though it were hosting a yacht club convention (CU is known for its white privilege).

Pomp and circumstance was echoing from the stadium sound system. The sun was shining, but it was still cool. The morning chill had not yet burned off.

Life is forever passing. Milestones are reached every single day. It goes by rapidly. How did I end up here? I remember so well my first day of middle school, not so well my first day of elementary school. I didn't go to kindergarten. Here I am at nearly 23. My god, a quarter of my life--the slowest passing one at that--has gone by. There is no stopping, or even slowing it. And so, as incredibly cheesy as this is about to get, I really am reminded of that wise sage, Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings when he says "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." And that is something we all share.