Considering

I'm back from my vacation. Well I've been back a week, but I haven't been able to sit down and coherently put my thoughts on to paper.

Because my vacation was good... great in fact... Considering.

My Grandmother passed away the day we were leaving. Well she actually passed away while we were already there, but the chain of events started that morning when we were getting ready to leave.

This was a family vacation, a return to our family vacation spot to celebrate my parents 35th wedding anniversary. While her death was unexpected in the sense that it happened quickly, she had been deteriorating mentally for a while now and I'm sure the distressed her to no end. We weren't very close, but I'm still harboring guilt because I wasn't very emotional about her passing. I felt worse for my dad who had been looking forward to the vacation since February when we booked the house.

I supposed I delayed any sort of writing or talking about my vacation because I feel awkward proclaiming... "oh my vacation was great, well considering..." I don't take sympathy well, just like I don't take compliments or affection. I suppose it has something do to with being paid attention to when I would rather fade into the background. I've always been that way. Except for sports for some reason, go figure.

I've been back for a week now and the vacation was good, it was nice spending time with my family, especially my nephew. I tried to ignore the fact that it was just me and I was delegated the "kids room" that contained bunk beds and a pull out futon. It's pretty much for the left over guests. I couldn't sleep in that room for some reason and most of the week found me on a random couch somewhere else in the house. That was strange to me because I am usually a good sleeper.

I got a great tan, relaxed, finished some book, cooked and ate great food and laughed a lot. A week was definitely not long enough though.

I've been back at work a week and its SO SLOW! I'm finishing most of my work before 11:00 A.M. Its mind numbingly boring. It was like this last summer, but I was new then, so I was a little more lenient, but this summer I want to pull my hair out from the boredom. Even now this post is boring me. Its also making me feel a little anxious too, so that's never good, especially since I've started thinking about my future (or lack thereof). I get accused of being negative, even though I'm only being realistic.

So it may not happen for me. I've accepted that, do I think that's a definite? No. I haven't given up hope, but I'm also not going to sit there and think that someone is going to come around and rescue me. I have a pretty good feeling I'm going to be taking care of myself for a while and not get the comfort of joint finances.

Yah, I'm hormonal.. so what? You gotta problem with that?

The Future?

"I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this for another 20 or so years?" I was perched on his brown leather sofa, enjoying the coolness seep into my legs after my hot walk from the T.

"Neither did I." He retorted.

He was lying on the love seat, pillow behind his back grimacing every so often. He had already demonstrated how he has to stand crooked and walk with a slight limp.

"Does this happen often?" I asked. He grimaced again and shifted his position.

"No, but it has happened before. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure? You don't look fine!" I start to laugh, I couldn't help it. The more I think of it our encounters become more and more surreal.

Here I am on his couch after a month and he is laid up with his back out. The last time we hooked up, I left and three hours later was half dead on my bathroom floor. I was surprised, sitting there, that I was able to choke down the vodka tonic when the last time it unceremoniously left my body in a not fun way.

"I'm glad you think this is funny!" He growls.

I bite back the smile and try to look sympathetic, but I can't do it. I'm wondering why he thought this would be a good idea in the first place. This day, when he's in pain, after exactly 4 weeks of not talking.

His first text was funny to. "Hey, long time no talk. You get a boyfriend or something, no longer in need of my services? lol!"

Very strange, but there I was, on the couch not exactly sure how to proceed.

"I'll be okay!" He promised. I'll chalk it up to another first for me, but I would feel horrible if he hurt himself more. "We may have to stand up." He muses. I blush.

In the end it worked out well, god knows how he felt the next day, but that's really not my concern. He's a big boy, he knows his limits.

Plus, in his profession he has access to the good drugs.



PS. Off to the Cape for a FULL WEEKS VACATION! HOLY HELL! I can't remember the last time that this has happened while I was employed!

Behind

I came to a realization today while eating lunch with the girls I work with. It was not an epiphany or something I have never realized before, but for some reason this time it is sticking more with me. I feel I have to take some sort of action soon, before I start to feel like a failure.

A woman who works where I work walked into the lunch room, stayed for a bit and contributed to the conversation and then left.

The ensuing comments were. "Doesn't she always look nice and put together?" and "She's always so professional looking."

And she is. She always looks unrumpled, put together, sleek is a good word to describe her. I on the other hand spend 2o minutes ironing my linen skirt only to get to work looking like I stepped out of the wringer. Sigh.

The last question came from me. "How old is she?" They contemplate the question for a few seconds. "28" was the reply.

"Really!?" I'm incredulous. Not that she looks old, or that I look younger than her. I just FEEL younger, but that's not necessarily a good thing.

"Yah, She's making pretty good money for a 28 year old."

I briefly put my head in my hands, silently bemoaning the fact that I am old and completely unaccomplished and definitely NOT making "good money for a 29 year old."

Now I'm wondering where I went wrong. I like my job, but I know I should not be in this position with my education, potential, skill level and age. I think I was so desperate last year to get A job, any job, that I jumped in with out realizing what the position would entail. Not to say that I'm above the position, I most definitely am not, but all the girls I work with have the potential to do more, we're just not given the chance.

Anyway!

I'm not sure what to do. I'm curious as to what the people I work with think. I'm 29 and decidedly below the levels of the other 29 year old's I work with and I feel a little silly at times. I mean I have my master's for goodness sake! What a waste!

I don't have anyone to blame, but myself. Mostly I'm angry with myself for staying so long at my last job. I atrophied there. I had no job growth, no training, no cultivation. What I had to last year when I left was start from scratch, work my way up again. I was entry level.

There is a four year gap now from that other job where I was in a black hole of misery, with my career standing still.

I'm not sure what to do about it now. Maybe I just don't have the potential. Maybe I'm not quick enough or smart enough or savvy enough to get to that level.

I've never had huge career goals. I don't know why, I just never developed them. I just blindly went through the motions of college, job, graduate school and more jobs, but never really working towards somewhere specific.

Now here I am at 29 and it doesn't look like I'm going have much else to focus on anytime soon (i.e. marriage, family) that I should take more interest in my career. I need to discover how I want to spend my days, what will make me happy, what I am good at.

I don't really know where or how to start, but it is something I've been thinking about seriously lately. I just don't know how to focus my energy there because nothing jumps out at me. I can't sit down and think about what I want to do and get a valid response. Yes, I would love to run a cafe/book store, but in reality I have no idea how to run a business, how to cook for masses, and where to even start. Not to mention I have no money! Dreams will stay just that.

I suppose that should be my main goal for my thirtieth year.

I won't say fine my life's purpose. Goodness, how contrived.

What I want to find is what I can to that will make me happy and satisfied and proud. Is it possible? Is it out there? I'm honestly not exactly sure. Maybe, like a relationship, a satisfying career just isn't in the cards for me.

I've described my life as "vanilla" before, (re. mediocre) and the older I get and the more I see how my life is progressing, the more I see that as true. Maybe that's the life that has been laid out for me. Nothing impressive or remarkable. Just a steady, boring, vanilla life.

Everyone wants to be extraordinary and to spectacular things, but there has to be a yin to that yang.

It's quite possible that I am part of the yin.

Confusion

This wasn't the first time I have had to do it, but this was the first time I thought it possible to have different results, the first time my hand was shaking so much I had trouble actually executing it. It would also be the first time the cause would be muddy, confused and actually unknown.

It made me feel a little.... Oh I'll just say it! Dirty, whorish and a little bit of a slut.

Two possible outcomes, two possible contributers to said out come.

Before I was always knew what the result would be, but when ones body is not behaving as it normally should, one would like a little back up proof. It was almost a novelty, the gravety of the situation never quite hitting me. Oh look it me! I have to take a test, how grown up of me.

This time, my hand shook, my stomach clenched and I had trouble sleeping. This time I had screwed up possibly, had not used the proper precautions, not that it was the first time, but this was the first time that I might have to pay for it and deal with the question of who else would pay?

I tried not to think of the consequences of who I would rather be in the mess with, or of what it would mean to be me in this situation. Its been done, but could it be done by me?

I wouldn't want pity, I told myself. I would be able to do this with minimal help. Proud to a fault. I straitened my spine and tried to hold the butterflies at bay. I wouldn't need either one. One might actually go for that rationalization, the other would not. If I could chose I would chose the latter.

As I'm sitting here now spitting out the half thoughts and rationalizations that have plagued me this week, begging to be extricated from my head, it seems silly.

Always a good test taker, I was relieved to have failed this one. Crisis averted, realizations made and resolutions to be more careful set in stone.

Its not the first time my body has played tricks on me, but it was the first time I had reason to believe it might not just be a trick.

Crisis averted, but not forgotten.