Networking

I'm stealing the internet.

I bought a wireless card on Sunday, and now, as a result, I'm able to pick up all kinds of networks to hop on and surf. Fast and furiously, too. Pictures load in a second, and I'm excited to try downloading some audio clips or something. It's a whole new world!

And, of course, the new job started today. It was good. Weird, because it's a new job and it feels strange to go there instead of to my old office, but, because it's a writing job, I could get started right away. There was still a lot of information to take in, but I know enough about writing, and about the company, that I can just kind of start doing small things. And that's a big change from the last job (and an improvement).

And co-workers! I talked, in person, to more than fifteen people today! I went to lunch with people, and took a break with Mike. And that's a giant improvement over the last job, too.

What will stay?

Baby Temp worked out fine today. She didn't quit mid-afternoon, and I really ought to know better than to believe my own stereotypes. What do people think when they hear that I'm Mennonite, for heaven's sake? She was dressed very trendily, with square glasses and a hip haircut, and when I came back from lunch I found tons of myspace and xanga addresses in our web browser. Which I could've guessed. But she was checking out Denison Witmer on myspace, and although I've never heard his music, I know that I'd like it.

In other news, I'm done. I handed in my keys and walked out at 4:30 this afternoon. I felt like singing and dancing in the street. I felt like calling everyone I know and shrieking with excitement. Good times.

Since I announced that I'm leaving, and why, everyone's said basically the same thing. "You have to do what's right for you." The temp yesterday said that, and she obviously followed her own advice. Plenty of other people have said the same thing. And I think they're right. I do have to do what's best for me.

But how do I know what's best for me? Seriously, I think that this new job is the right step, but I have no idea if it's a good choice in the long run. And there are so many cases when this statement doesn't ring true . . . as a parent, as a spouse, as a church member. So many times when you have to do what is right for someone else, even if it's not "right" for you (making you happy, your first choice, etc.) I don't think that as long as it makes me happy, it's OK.

So, by quitting my job, I make life difficult for a bunch of people, and possibly hurt the mission of my organization. I don't feel guilty about this. At all. And I'm not guilty about not feeling guilty. Plus, I'm going to help another organization, and the people there.

But the question I'm left with is this: what do I owe my co-workers? My family? My church community? The country? The world? Do I owe them any more than doing what makes me personally happy?

I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. But what more do I owe them? I don't know.

Temporary Insanity

Today at 9:00 AM I met our temp. She was an older woman, semi-retired, probably about sixty. I showed her my organizational system, I gave her a small job to do, I explained the computer and the phone and anything else I could think of. She nodded along and asked questions and seemed interested.

She left at 12:30, and I went to run errands and eat lunch.

At 1:30 I came back to the office. "You aren't going to believe this," my boss said. "The temp quit."

She quit. She left the office, went home, and called her agency to tell them that she 1) didn't like the office atmosphere, 2) there was nothing for her to do. At least those are the reasons I got third-hand.

I felt really bad about this. Did I do something? Had I said things I shouldn't have? I made a couple of comments, but said nothing too negative. The job isn't bad . . . certainly not for a temp to do for a month. And there's more than enough work to fill the time she'd put in.

So, tomorrow we get Baby Temp. She's fresh out of her freshman year at a Very Conservative Christian college. She was homeschooled from age five up until she left for said VCC college. Her jobs have been a) working for her dad's contracting company, and b) working in the VCC college library. Right now, I picture Laura Ingalls. Braids and all. Only quieter.

Tomorrow, I will say only good things about the job. I will promote the fun, the flexibility, the new skills one can learn.

I will not say anything about lack of office organization, conflict, ditzy people, or the soul-crushing loneliness that comes with working by oneself.

A Prose Poem

This day is a nightmare.

All work-related.

I want to quit and never come back.

Oh, wait. I am doing that. Tomorrow.

Thank you, God.

Que Sera, Sera

I'm not really worried about my new job. I never like starting new jobs, of course. All that being taken around the office and given all kinds of information and not understanding any of it. I have to train a temp here starting Thursday, and I don't even know what I'm going to say. Because none of it makes sense until you're actually doing it. I'll try my best to impart the need-to-know stuff.

But, I think things will be OK with me once I'm underway at the new place, and start understanding how things work. At least that's how it's always been in the past. And I think I'll do a good job.

However, a quote from the book I'm currently reading:

"I've been working as a copywriter long enough to know that I'm not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I'm about to turn twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two."

I agree with the last part. I'll be twenty-eight in September. I just hope the first part isn't prophetic.

Friday Night I'm Going Nowhere

As much as I talk about getting old, and dreading it, there are times when I’m so glad that I’m not a teenager anymore.

Like tonight. I went to the mall. It was all teenagers, girls who must spend hours on their hair, their makeup, their fake orange tans. They travel in packs, carrying their tiny purses, and within each pack you just know that there’s a hierarchy of popularity . . . the cool girls, who do all the talking and decide what is interesting, and the girls who just go along because they feel like they have to.

Tonight I was wearing jeans and a hand-me-down hooded sweatshirt. This morning I just threw my wet hair up into a ponytail, so it was all kinky tonight when I took it down. I left it. I’m not going to go through another shower just to go to the mall. No makeup, no jewelry, comfortable shoes. No girl-pack full of relationship dramas to negotiate. Thank God.

I went to Borders then, to read Anne Tyler’s new book, and Joy showed up. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and she’d just come from work. I was surprised to see her, and happy, and we sat there and talked until the store closed.

We briefly discussed going out, but we were all exhausted. And wearing hoodies.

Sometimes, we do still care.

Simple Minds

Maybe it’s because I haven’t been in a philosophy class in five years, but I find myself lately being struck by really simple, somewhat cliché kinds of things. Tonight at yoga the instructor was talking about being strong while being flexible . . . like bamboo. Like the lyric from that Carpenters’ song: “like the tall trees in the wintertime/I’ll learn how to bend.” Later, she was talking about something else, equally simple, and yet seemingly (to me) profound. "Yes, we need to be strong AND flexible. Yes, attitude IS everything." I find myself nodding along.

In college, I would’ve written off most of this stuff as irrelevant, boring, and cliché. I would have been much more interested in discussing something deeper, something I’d never heard before, something that would twist my brain into knots. And I still love that stuff. But maybe, for where I am now, this simple stuff is actually relevant. Or maybe I studied the complicated stuff already, and now I’m going back to the basics. Or maybe I’m still just hormonal. Sometimes that just makes everything MORE.

But despite finding profundity in simple things, I still haven’t been able to get much out of the series of books that I’m currently reading. Sometimes, when I want a break, or want to read mindless stuff, I go back to the Christian fiction that I adored in middle and high school. I have a couple of books that I’ve probably read twenty or thirty times. When I open them up, it’s like my mind slips into a familiar, well-worn groove and I just let myself be taken along for the happily-ending, non-disturbing ride.

So, I decided I was ready to try something new on the Christian fiction front, and I’m reading a series called Redemption. There are five books, I started the first on Sunday night and tonight I’ll probably finish number five. Light reading. But the simple, and quite irritating thing about these books is how absolutely black-and-white (and how ridiculous) they are. They are entertaining, because they’re basically a long series of soap opera drama, but they annoy me at the same time.

Every instance of sex outside of marriage in these books results in death or pregnancy. Or both. One girl got pregnant by a bisexual Frenchman and for a whole book thought she was HIV-positive. Apparently no one in early 21st century Indiana has ever heard of condoms. Another young couple was in the process of getting carried away when her father called to say hi. She didn’t pick up the phone, being caught up in illicit passion, and the next day her father was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. And she got pregnant, too.

The father of her baby was so shaken by September 11 that he completely lost his faith, grew his hair and a goatee, became a humanist (the horror), moved into an open relationship with his hippy girlfriend (who got pregnant by another man, had an abortion, and developed a raging infection that nearly killed her), and started hanging out with members of the ACLU. He was cut off from his friends and social life because apparently freethinkers refuse to play basketball and pool because sports are just preparation for war, and only male chauvinists play pool. He refused to attend his sister’s wedding because he “didn’t believe in marriage.” He did eventually see the light and cut his hair and shave his raggedy goatee when he came back to the faith of his family.

That’s just the beginning. Within the horror that is the Baxter family there’s also pain killer addiction reminiscent of Jessie Spano’s addiction to caffeine pills, alcoholism, murder, near-drowning of a four-year-old child that results in her mental retardation, a movie star son given up for adoption long ago (because even the godly parents of this family had sex before they were married and ended up pregnant), end-stage breast cancer, and infertility (this couple just should’ve had sex before they were married, and no doubt would’ve ended up with child).

I know that the author of these books is coming from a different place than I am, but it’s just SO unrealistic and ridiculous. And very melodramatic. Short haired male=good Christian. Long haired, goateed male=hippy lunatic who’s not allowed to play basketball. Liberal=bad. Conservative=good. And any time you cross any kind of line, you’ll end up pregnant or dead or both. Still, I have to keep reading. Because Dayne the super-famous movie star is about to find out that he’s the long-lost son of Elizabeth and John, brother of Luke and all the girls, and I just know that he’s going to leave Hollywood for the simple life and end up with that 27-year-old girl who just moved to Indiana to start a Christian theater program.

I hope they wait until they’re married to have sex, though, because the Baxter family can’t handle another tragedy when Elizabeth is dying of breast cancer and Hayley’s still in the wheelchair.

Florida: Land of Terror

From 1982 until I left for college in 1997, I lived in Florida. It was a fine place to grow up, although we missed out on things like leaf piles and snow days, we got to go to the beach regularly and swim in our backyard pool for seven months of the year.

Of course there were alligators in Florida. For a few weeks when I was about five, one lived in the tiny pond behind our house. This was a source of fear for our mother, and a point of pride and interest with me. I remember that once, in Sunday School, we discussed how to escape them, because they’re fast runners. I always pictured them as fast as cheetahs, easily catching their human prey, miles from any body of water. Now that I think of it, though, I never saw an alligator further than a few feet from a body of water, and I never saw one run anywhere. They seem pretty sluggish. But whatever. You’re supposed to run in a zig-zag pattern, because their stubby legs don’t allow them to change course very easily. (Later I heard this was a myth).

Anyway, we lived with the threat of alligators the same way we lived with the threat of hurricanes or coral snakes. Sort of always there, but not really scary. One of those background threats that come with living in a sub-tropical state.

Now I hear that alligators are eating people down there on a regular basis. Someone referred to this as Land Shark!, which is a terrifying idea to me. Sharks can be avoided by staying out of the ocean, but a Land Shark! cannot be escaped.

Fifteen I'm alright with you

I suppose you could blame it on the rain, but it’s actually hormones making me seriously annoyed with people right now. Gah! Why do they keep asking me to DO THINGS? You mean I actually have to go and look up that information for you?

(*rolls eyes and sighes loudly*)

You can also blame it on the fact that I only have nine days and about an hour more at this job, so I just find it really hard to care that this letter might go out a few days later than you want it to. It all be fine. It doesn’t matter. Really.

(*breathes heavily through nose in exasperation*)

Wait. You expect me to do WHAT before I leave? Are you kidding me? What do you people want from me? I am so out of here! I don’t need this!

(*runs up stairs and slams door*)

You just don’t understand!

(*bursts into fit of hysterical weeping*)

Clean Sweep

On Saturday, for lack of something better to do, I went through all my drawers and my closet and pulled out all the clothes I don't wear anymore or that I wear but really don't want to wear, or that have rips or buttons missing (Because if a button falls off, I'm pretty much done. I have no way to fix this).

After an hour of sorting into Keep vs. Toss, and then sorting Keep into Winter vs. Summer, I ended up with two big trash bags full of clothes, and a Gap bag full of shoes. It was cleansing to shed all that stuff, not to mention that it freed up a lot of room. I have a lot of trouble getting rid of inanimate objects, though, especially things that have memories attached.

Like the burgundy shirt and gray pants that I bought Labor Day weekend '01; my first "professional" outfit to wear to the office. Or the charcoal skirt and black shirt that I got from Old Navy the same weekend in November of '98 that my grandmother died, and that I wore to her funeral. The red skirt I wore to my cousin's wedding in May of '03, the thin blue flowered skirt I used to wear to church when I was in college. All gone.


It's so haaaard to say good-bye . . . to yesterdayyyyyy.

But I happily shed the long white sweater that I occasionally used to wear to my old job. Once, when I was wearing it, a tiny blond teacher told me that she liked my sweater, but she could never wear anything like that because it would make her butt look too big. I looked at her. She weighed about one hundred pounds. "Oh, no, it looks fine on you," she said.

I never wore it again.

Walkin' on Sunshine

Yeah, it’s been a good day.

Nevermind that I have a meeting tonight that’s going to take way too much time.

Nevermind that this job is just making me cranky, and today I had to sit down with my boss and make up a list of all the stuff that I need to do before I leave.

(What would happen if I didn’t get it all done? I’m just sayin’.)

No, what made it a good day was going to a tiny dress shop downtown and finding not one, but two great dresses for the upcoming wedding. I only bought one, but I have the other as a backup. The dress I bought is turquoise (bright blue!) with white lace overlaying the whole thing. It’s knee-length, and strapless, and totally cute. And the dress size . . . well, let’s just say it’s a good one. A size that makes me happy. I absolutely cannot gain weight before this wedding, unless it’s the kind that results in more cleavage.

I also ended up with a necklace, earrings, and shoes. The women in that shop are damn good salespeople. I didn’t feel like they were trying to sell me anything, they just kept bringing cute shoes to try on, and then hunting for jewelry that might match, and made it seem as though all they cared about was helping me outfit myself. Which was probably the case, but at the same time they were convincing me to spend more money. Although I can’t complain. I got the entire outfit for less than $200.

So, then I got a frozen mocha and flirted (kind of, it counts as flirting for me) with the coffee guy, and then an old man on the street doffed his cap and said “good afternoon” to me, and instead of being creeped-out, I was charmed. And coming out of the post office, with the afternoon sun shining through the trees and making shifting shadows, I suddenly felt as though I were in a movie, near the beginning credits, and standing on the brink of everything transitional and momentous . . . in a good way.

Yeah, it was a good day.

Sharing Grievances

Two things that annoy me (and there are many more, but I'll refrain):

Over the years, there have been a few times when I've dropped my credit card on the ground and not seen it immediately. Obviously this is bad, and irresponsible, etc. But why is it that whenever someone sees the card, they're all like "who's card is this?" "Someone's credit card is ON THE GROUND." "is this your card?" . . . all in a scolding, angry tone.

Dude, chill. Yes, it's mine, thanks for pointing it out. I'll pick it up now.

And wRItiNg lIkE tHiS. i CaN bArEly eVen dO iT, iT'S sO aNnoyIng. WHY RANDOM CAPITALS? Who decided this was acceptable in any way? It's hardly even legible.

Now I've made myself angry.

What annoys you?

Every Move I Make, I Make in You?

Well, this post won't be raving. It's too hard for me to get cynical when I'm alone, at twilight, outdoors on a spring night, with music all around me. Even if it is praise and worship music at a youth rally.

And I'm now up-to-date on the latest music. Nobody ever does retro praise music. Once it's gone, it's gone. Like a top-40 radio station. Churches might do well to have a service of hits from the 80s and 90s. Shine, Jesus, Shine anyone?

All my attempts at cynicism would have been foiled anyway, because a girl named Sarah came over and asked if I wanted to pray with her, during the praying part of the rally. She was there to support her boyfriend, Nate, who was singing in the band, and she felt out of place among all the high school kids (she's a college sophomore). I couldn't really say no. So we prayed. And when you're praying, outloud, to God, with another person, it's really hard to be sarcastic and cynical (by myself I can be sarcastic and cynical all day long, praying or not).

(The weirdest thing about this: two years ago I wrote a very cynical story about a girl named Sarah, an evangelical Christian who's "losing her religion" while her boyfriend, Nate, remains devout and sings in a Christian praise band. And tonight, I met Sarah and Nate IN THE FLESH. Although I don't think this girl was having the same problems that my story Sarah was. But still. Weird).

I was trying to decide tonight what exactly my problem is with this stuff. A big part of it is the patriotism that's all tied in, but it's also because it seems so appearance based. As long as you raise your hands and close your eyes while you're singing, that means that you're "Christian" and have a great spiritual life. And if the feelings aren't there, well, there's something wrong with you. That messed me up in high school, because I was this big bundle of doubts and questions, and all I felt while singing praise and worship music was confused.

Then, in college, the people that led this kind of music seemed more interested in how they appeared, and how well they prayed onstage than in anything else. The "show" aspect of it still annoys me.

But I think what it comes down to in the end is: If you are a Christian, and believe in God, and believe that should affect how you live . . . what should it look like? Raised hands and closed eyes on Sunday morning? Starting a bible study at school? Abstaining from alcohol? Not watching R-rated movies? Voting Republican? Voting Democrat? Protesting abortion? Protesting the death penalty? Buying organic food? Giving up a car? Going to another country to convert natives? Or to help after a tsunami? Running for public office? Working against gay marriage? Working against global warming?

For me: no, no, no, yes, no, yes, yes, maybe, no, yes, no, no, yes, no, no.

For most of the people at that rally tonight: yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes.

I don't like how most of their positions line up so neatly with the political right. But should I be concerned how neatly mine line up with the left?

As you can see, we've got conflicts.

Still Standing

So, I turned in my resignation and the mountains did not fall into the heart of the sea. Nor did my boss curse me, or start screaming, or order me out of the office immediately.

What was I so afraid of?

The dread is always much worse than the actual experience. I escaped unharmed, except for a few snarky comments. And most people were happy for me, and wished me well.

And now it's time for the closure. The sad realization (in some cases sad) that I won't work with, and will possibly never see, these people again. And I'll miss that. Tonight we met to talk about some stuff that will happen this summer, and I realized I won't be around to see it. But I do love to wallow in poignant nostalgia, so it's all good.

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So what is going on in the blogosphere? At least three of the blogs I read are not working at the moment. And those were the ones I checked first tonight. It was kind of like the rapture . . . I felt as though I might have been left behind. That mine might be the only blog left on earth!

But it wasn't. Many blogs still exist.

And, speaking of eschatology (ok, not really, but I like to use that word), tomorrow night I have to go sit at the National Day of Prayer Youth Rally. Ugh. That's going to suck. I have serious issues with anything National related to Christianity, and I have serious baggage re: youth rallies. This may provoke a raving entry tomorrow night. Stay tuned!