And life rolls merrily along….

First off, let me ease your minds/give you the worst news of your life…I still live. Yes, I’m still kicking, and even a little harder, so go bite your aunt’s asphalt. The question that still seems unanswered is this: will my life EVER have any semblance of normalcy?

Let me start off replaying this escapade by saying I have a new job (again). Interestingly enough, it’s for the same company where I had my first job. As my best friend so aptly put it “Welcome to three years ago!” Things are a bit different though, I was hired directly into a supervisor position. Not out of the ordinary, but let me tell you how it happened. When I found out about the position, I didn’t immediately apply. Instead, I talked with my former supervisor, asking her honestly if I could do it. She seemed confident, and had, in fact, been speaking with the district manager a few days prior about me, so I put in a web application. I few days later I got a phone call from someone saying she’d like to talk to me about the position. So I called…and she had NO idea what my qualifications were for the job! It baffled me why she even called me if she had no data. So I briefly went into the standard sunshine-blowing-up-the-ass maneuver, and she decided to have me come in for an interview. Apparently the district manager remembered me, and put in a good word, so after a second interview with the district manager herself, as well as the DM for the rest of the departments in the store, I got the job. Fun.

Then there are my finances. I finally have a fair job, so I’m getting things paid, which is nice. I finally even am able to buy certain things that will make my life easier, such as food, and things. So I decided to give a fair sum to a charity that I believe is doing a lot for society, even though I can’t necessarily afford it. I decided that it was worth the few meager weeks I would have to spend as a result of it, so I just went for it. Well, a little while later, I found out that my high school boyfriend decided to bequeath his entire estate to me. It’s not impressive, but thoughtful, and slightly more than makes up for my donation. Go figure.

Lastly is my love life, or lack thereof. I’m still the kind of guy who doesn’t need someone there to make him whole. Lately though I feel like I’ve been neglecting an entire dynamic of my existence. While the rest of my life is improving, bit by bit, I have this one area that is naught but a chasm. There are two fronts that have appeared in the battle against the nothing. (Amusing side note: I got a kitten and named him Sebastien. If you need me to explain why that’s funny, you need to stay out from under your rock a little while longer.) There’s this guy that I had a class with a few terms ago. Great guy, funny, smart, drop dead gorgeous, you know, perfect. He even likes me, too. One problem…he says he’s not looking for anything. He’s totally giving me indicators that he wants to start something, then he acts uninterested. He flip-flops between the two worse than Bush and Kerry in the last election. It’s totally driving me crazy. Lately though, his interested phases seem more earnest, so I don’t really know how to take it.

Then, there’s my ex. Even after we broke up, we remained amicable. We’ve gone to get coffee together, and even had dinner once. Recently though, we’ve been a lot closer. That has a lot to do with both of us coming to terms and taking responsibility for the events of our relationship. So not long ago we went to a movie together. One of those kinda cheesy flicks by a director we both like. Ok, so it was Corpse Bride (which rocks, by the way.) Afterwards, we went to Johnny Carinos, and had dinner. He mentioned during this that I should come over to the house (which looks great since I moved out, all redecorated and nice, except the kitchen ^_~ ) and watch some episodes of the West Wing (which I know now is a great show) that he has on DVD. So a couple weeks later, I do just that. To start with, he suggests we go out to eat. I’m hungry, and I’m not very picky about what or where I eat, so we agree on a restaurant that we both love, but are generally too poor to go to as often as we’d like. So we’re sitting at Hapa (a yummy little Sushi and Sake bar on Pearl Street in Boulder) having a good time, and we’re joking around, and I insist on paying for dinner. Yes, bitch, it’s my turn!!! He’ll learn eventually…then we go back to the house. After several episodes, a couple cups of tea, several smoke breaks, a deep discussion, and pausing our joking to clear the definition of a word, it’s four AM. It’s decided that I will stay, and I’m ready to curl up on the couch and pass out, but we end up in the bedroom. Now don’t get too excited, nothing happens, except we fall asleep together for the first time in more than a year. The following weekend, we did nearly the same thing. Then again the weekend before Thanksgiving. We still haven’t done anything more than fall asleep together. Not that I would be terribly opposed to anything else happening, but seriously, how much more bizarre a relationship can two people have?! NOTHING in my life is normal anymore!

There’s a song that creeps into my thoughts every time I think about the twists my life has taken. One verse particularly: “There’s a moment that we all come to in our own time and our own space, where all that we’ve done, we can undo, if our heart’s in the right place.” Well it must be! I keep getting these chances to make right the things that I’ve done and not done. People whom I’ve not seen in a decade hire private investigators to find me, and I have a chance to heal 15 year old wounds. I’m talking about mistakes that are old enough to drive! I’m not just reconciling these within myself; I’m getting to fix them with those people. I’m not sure if someone up there likes me, or that being’s masochism is being satisfied at my expense. I have to say I’m enjoying the irony.

Emotional sleight of hand

Deception…now that’s a jagged little pill. I feel like people thought genuine are now in a constant state of propitiation. I feel like I’m being tested, to see how long it will take for me to break and become subservient. I’m no bronc. Little do they know I’m extremely difficult to break, mostly because I have a strong mind, good heart, and a very low tolerance for bullshit. I will choose to end the association long before I get close to breaking. I find myself being put in a tough position, pitted against someone I’ve known for eons, though it seems more to me like I’m being forced to choose sides, forced to give up close friends. I sense that he’s scared of me, of what I can become, and of being below me. That’s where things are headed quickly, but he also knows he’s ignorant of many aspects of how life works, and his past, and he knowingly wishes to remain so. He cannot possibly keep up to par with me if he doesn’t learn. It’s funny, he tells me things he senses, he explains how he views aspects of his life, and all of it is misinterpreted. He’s not nearly as perceptive as he imagines, and what perception he does have is not super accurate. He’d better realize soon that I’m not one to be bridled, and if his attempts persist he’ll be purged just like anyone else who has tried. I do not need him, I want him…if he were gone tomorrow I’d be just fine, I did well before, I’ll do well again.

Friends will be friends...

A few people meet, a clique forms, and one, invariably, is the unspoken leader. It’s not done outright, or even overtly, but somehow one becomes the backbone.

I have only one really close group, and somehow or another I seem to have become the hub, the one they come to with problems about the others, neighbors or just life in general. This used to put a huge strain on me, but after m recent spiritual growth spurt, it makes me proud and happy that I can handle them without upsetting them.

One is well on her way, and only needs a gentle boot up her ass occasionally. Sometimes her life starts to get to her, and I have to pull her aside and help her pull her head out of her ass (usually with a satisfying *POP!*). Quick, clean, and effective.

Another stands well on his own. Usually my walks with him entail me gaining another perspective on covert happenings of the group. He’s very strong willed, and a good friend, and I trust his judgment. It’s nice that he and I are at angled ends of the spectrum, I tend to have a fiery passion about things and he is earthy and well grounded.

Which brings us to our fourth. She’s the one who seems to need the most maintenance. When she falls, she ends up flat on her face, and it takes me a couple hours to get her composed and pushing in the right direction. Thankfully that doesn’t happen often. Mostly she is just misemotional. I sometimes am leery about saying much to her, for fear it will be taken wrong. She seems easily offended, which upsets me. She can feel like we’re picking on her, but we’re trying to point out one thing or another to her. I, and the others, want so desperately to tell her how proud we are of her, and how much we truly care about her, but we don’t want to precipitate a massive boast session. She has so much potential but she still needs to do the work. I’ve even sensed an urge to leave the group from her, and I don’t know how to tell her how heartbroken we’d be.

Still, I know day by day I’m doing the right thing, helping everyone, giving them tools to better handle their lives. I only hope they use them before it’s too late…

Start, change, stop.

It’s funny how time can fly, then without warning, slow to a crawl. I started this semester off strong, in control, and then it seemed to gain momentum from nowhere, and quickly I lost control. Weeks seemed to fly by with me standing, bewildered. In my mind I seem to have misplaced the happenings of the term. How my life has evolved before my eyes, without me knowing. At the beginning I was stagnated. Stuck in a poisoned relationship, my progression spiritually was stifled, and I was suffocating as a student, to say nothing of my hectic, and unpleasant work life. As these things weighed on my consciousness I grew more and more frustrated, felt more and more apprehensive of something elusive. I knew I had to take my life back, reorder the pieces and begin again.

I dumped my suppressive boyfriend, though it took weeks for him to stop affecting me. Even now when I catch a bit of gossip about him I can’t help but wonder what it must be like to be that caught up in misemotion. As awful as our relationship was, breaking up with him seems to have completely shattered him, as I knew it would. A friend idly complimented me, he didn’t even manage to drive his ex out of the school, and I was able to push mine out of the state (nearly the country). I didn’t realize what a profound effect I have on people.

Interestingly, the breakup handled the lack of spiritual progress. I shouldn’t be surprised; there are data in my religion that state clearly what I’ve just learned the hard way. During the entire time that my ex and I were together I made no progress on a cycle that should have take two weeks. It instead took me nearly a year. Now I’m moving along at a decent clip, finding it easier to handle life, day by day. I’m even finding that situations that would upset me before now get handled smoothly without a second thought. Native abilities are returning to me, and I find myself more and more aware of my surroundings.

My first two terms here at school were fairly successful. Then, I met the man who would later be my ex. Since meeting him my grades have dropped steadily until finally I was kicked out of school for a term. This was my first term back, and now I had to prove myself. I broke up with him in the beginning, and I scheduled my classes. One was a class that I feel is truly beneath me, and the other is one that I had failed three times prior, because I let my life get in the way. I decided to take only two classes, to ease back into the groove of being a student. Things started off well, with me disagreeing with nearly everything one professor said, and being utterly bored, and unimpressed with the other. I kept up rather well, and despite three consecutive nights of being up until three or four in the morning I passed both classes. One of them I was really nervous about, I was taking it for the fourth time, and my Dean had gone up to bat for me to get permission to take it again, because school policy dictated that I take it at a different school now. I had two tests to make up, and the final to take, and I did them all on four hours of sleep, on the last day possible to take them. I had to get permission from my boss to take the tests while I was on the clock, as it was the only time I had to take them, and I passed them all better than I expected.

Work was an area for me that I preferred not to talk about. I don’t like speaking ill of people, and I just saw no way around it regarding work. I worked in customer service, and had some of the most inane conversations with people I could imagine. Imagine my relief when I found that they weren’t willing to work around my school schedule and I had to quit. I walked out on Monday, had an interview Tuesday, and was hired Wednesday. I now work in a place that’s pretty calm most of the time, and where I can develop my natural talents. I have plenty of time while at work to do homework, catch up on reading, or even exercise my writing abilities. I even found out that after a year they will start helping me pay for school. Score!

In scheduling my classes for next term I decided it’s time to break down my self-imposed barriers. Anyone who knows me knows how incredibly shy I used to be. They also know how I used to loath writing. Both seem to have dissipated, so I decided to prove to myself that I can do them. I’m taking a speech class with my best friend, woman_of_heart, and a professional writing class. I apparently have the same professor for both, and I’ve heard great things about her. I’m definitely looking forward to them. Since speech is with woman_of_heart, I know that we can both keep each other on track, and encourage and keep in check the other.

Last but definitely worth the wait, I have a new boyfriend. I had originally planned after the breakup to just make my way through life until I got to a stable place before I started a relationship. Then out of nowhere comes this guy. Now, I have several tests that I put people through. First is the email test, if it’s online. If you don’t have something more interesting and intelligent to say to me than “uh..ur hot” then I’m going to delete the email and not bother with a response. Then there’s the second email test. This is where I figure out if you can hold a conversation, and whether or not you’re willing to listen too. Next comes the first date test. This is yet another chance I have to be nit-picky and decide you’re an ass and won’t survive me and subsequently purge you from the ranking. Then there is the roommates test. Few if any make it this far. This is where you’re held to the most unimaginable scrutiny, a panel consisting of woman_of_heart, enveloped nescience, and black wyvern. Not only did this new guy pass these, the final test included woman_of_heart’s mom, the alpha bitch. He not only won approval, but woman_of_heart keeps offering to do a hand fasting. It’s truly an odd thing to go from dating someone far beneath you, to dating your equal. I find myself keeping up with habits from my last relationship, only to be told I don’t have to do those things. I’m actually with someone who has his head together, who knows the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’, and who knows that I need personal time away from him too. I really think I don’t just ‘like’ him. He even willingly went to church with us, and that was only after being together for little over a week. The second week, he went to church and even paid money to attend a seminar with us, and afterwards bought the basic book of my religion. The best part about it is I know that he’s not doing it just because he thinks it will make me happy. Like me, he hates being placated.

I don’t think my life has ever changed this much in the course of 15 weeks, but all I can say is I’m looking forward to the future for the first time in my life without fear, and without worrying about the present.

I'm not stupid, asshat!

So, to bring everyone up to snuff, I worked for a year in a professional copy center. I have a pretty good idea of how to run things. In fact the only reason I wasn’t supervisor there is I went to college, and couldn’t be there during the day. So then I come here. The management reminds me of a child running a lemonade stand, and indeed it’s treated as such. Ever see a kid in a lemonade stand? All you have to do is act sad, and say you don’t have any money and I bet you’d get a free glass. Same idea here, we don’t even charge for black and white copies!!! There is NO communication between shifts, NO access to the work anyone else has done, the full time chick has all jobs emailed to her personal email account, rather than the one set up specifically for the copy center, and NO ONE other than me has any copy experience! Because no one else has experience, the copy center student workers are treated with such condescendence that it makes my blood boil thinking about it. I got an email today for color copies (one of the few things we actually DO charge for. It went like this: “Can I please get a color copy of these two banners? Please open the files in paint. Then do a page setup and set it up for 8.5 x 14 legal paper, portrait. Thank you.” The files sent over were both in JPEG format. First off…if you want a good quality color copy, you NEVER use Microsoft Paint! Second…8.5 x 14 legal paper? I’m sorry, is there more than one kind of 8.5 x 14 paper? It IS legal paper don’t be redundant. I’m not completely inept, thank me very much!