happy snow day!

Yesterday was an adventure.  At 5 PM, my boyfriend and I headed out to celebrate Christmas with friends, and bearing too many gifts to carry in the subway, we were forced to drive.  The roads hadn't been plowed or salted and I kept thinking we'd get stuck on the highway and I've have to get out and push.  Luckily, Jimmy is an excellent driver and he got us to our destination safe and sound.  We decided to leave the car in Manhattan and take the subway home, but unfortunately they suspended service to any station not completely underground and our train got diverted so we had to slip and slide 30 blocks home.


People were abandoning ship left and right.  I feel like those guys had it worse than the people walking.  At least we don't have to worry about digging a car out of a ditch and getting it home.  As much as it sucked, I'll admit it was kind of fun.  How often will we have to walk across Brooklyn to get home?  It's the kind of adventure you wouldn't have often, so you might as well enjoy it!

40 at 23

I'm 40 at 23.


My itinerary for most of my days looks like this:
6:30AM - wake up
8:30AM - leave for work
6:45PM - arrive home from work
7:00PM - make dinner
8:00PM - eat
11:00PM - bed


Aren't people in their 20s supposed to have exciting lives?!


I spent 5 hours cleaning the bathroom on Monday and my whole body hurts like hell. I feel like a modern day June Cleaver--  I cook dinner while my boyfriend labors to fix this apartment and make it into something slightly more inhabitable.


Maybe we can get out and have some fun this weekend.  Yippee!

ride the wave!

When I first started blogging in high school, nearly 10 years ago, I was a pretty frequent blogger.  I wrote almost every day, or at least once a week, and most of it was fluff.


When I blogged in college, I mostly blogged to vent.  There's something about being a reclusive college student that made me morose, or maybe I was a reclusive college student because I was morose.  I feel like I was quite catatonic in college, and only the deepest of woes or highest of emotions could give me any energy to write.  Everything else just wouldn't register.


Now, I'm not quite sure what kind of blogger I am.  An infrequent one for sure, hahaha!  I have more that I want to record and journalize now than I ever did, but it seems like I can hardly find the time anymore!  I know that is not true though, I just find other things to distract me.  I haven't had any proper "alone time" for nearly a month now!  I really should make an effort to prioritize blogging or journalizing.  I'm not very big on taking photographs, so if I want to remember something I'm more likely to write about it than frame it.  There's so much I want to remember right now, and I don't want to it to be like the flood that breaks the dam and then in the end I just won't remember anything!  Or maybe I should just learn to ride the wave!


I'll leave it at that for now, because honestly, I can't figure how to organize everything I want to remember right now, so I'll just ride the wave and it'll take me where it will take me!

workaholic

I had a thought yesterday about whether I'd become the kind of person who is married to their jobs, and then I thought about whether the only kind of people who even have that thought enter their heads are the kind of people who are applicable to become married to their jobs.


I've been staying late for the past few weeks, although I don't think it's unwarranted.  I don't stay late because I don't like to be at home or out on the town, but I do it because I moved into my new position right in the middle of a busy season and I want to learn things quickly.  With the sizeable influx of titles coming in and me trying to learn everything, I spent the first few weeks of my new job just getting the actual work done during my regular hours, and then I'd stay late and go over things I didn't fully understand so I could do it better the next day.  Yesterday was the first time in the past month that I left on time, and I'll probably stop staying so late since I'm more competent now and since everything is starting to wind down a bit.


One of the things I like best about where I work is that they have a health facility downstairs staffed with doctors, nurses, and a gynecologist.  This is just for wellness visits, so they don't replace my primary care physician, but it's still excellent.  This way I don't need to take a day off for general check ups.


I popped in there yesterday for the first time ever to get my flu shot, and was quite pleased at the service.  The doctor who gave me the vaccine was excellent with the syringe.  I've never had a shot done so quickly and painlessly.  I was in such awe that after she finished I embarassingly blurted out, "THAT'S IT?  ARE YOU SURE YOU INJECTED ANYTHING?!"

hank rearden

I've been so busy at work the past few weeks either tying up loose ends at my old position or training for my new position that I feel like I can't shut my brain off and not have some part of me thinking about work.  I'm probably boring Jimmy with all my shop talk, but as it is now, my brain only has two modes; either I'm thinking about work or I'm not thinking about anything.


But here's something not directly related with work:


Earlier this week, I met Hank Rearden-- that is, if Hank Rearden weren't a fictional character.  The president of one of the paper manufacturing plants I visited is an extraordinary example of talent and passion.  He doesn't talk like the president of a successful company and he doesn't walk like the president of a successful company.  When he talks he has a very distinct Boston accent.  His tone was easy and natural, but also extremely passionate.  The way that he walks is not lazy and aimless, but always directed and focused.  It almost looks like a criminal's tense lope, except he does not walk furtively but instead walks confidently.  This is a man who doesn't BS.  This is a man who would never walk aimlessly around the streets.  This is a man who will get things done and who is concerned with real results.  This is a man of ability.


Sometimes I wish I had started off in printing instead of publishing.  I love being part of the process that allows a book to come to existence, but I think it would be completely different experience to actually press a book and be a tangible part of creating the physical product.

fire & water

Once, a long time ago, I felt I belonged to this world.  I felt I belonged to this earth.  I felt Human, and not because I had emotions, because I still have those, but because I had a fire that threatened to burn out of my skin.  It was like wildfire.  I didn't know what I burned for, I just had hot white heat that pushed every nerve ending in my body.  It propelled me forward, but blindly.


I burned and burned, and it felt like that was all I did.  I burned and razed the ground.  I didn't know what kind of human I wanted to be, but I did know what I did not want to be.  Oh sure, I sort of knew-- I knew I wanted to be a good person, but I failed to think about what being a good person really meant to me, so I really didn't know anything at all.


I always knew what I didn't want, so I just kept eliminating those things.  The fire I had wasn't meant to propel me forward, it was meant to to destroy me.  I knew suddenly and violently that I did not want to be the way I was, so I changed and burned it all to ashes and flung it into the wind.


Now, I no longer feel quite Human, just a smoking silhouette of the human I used to be, because somewhere along the way I forgot what human meant to me.  I thought when I graduated college I would know again, and I didn't.  I was fire, and now I want to be water, but instead I've become smoke in the process.  I feel like I was able to think much better before, with all that fire and that feeling of being human, but I know that is not true.  I know I am able to think better now without the insane pulsing hot heat.


I don't know what I'm existing for.  Now, I'm no existentialist-- I don't care about what is the purpose of life, why are we here and to what end when we will just pass away one day.  I know I have a purpose.  I know that as surely as I can feel my own pulse right now.  I can't say what my purpose is anymore, but I'll find it though, because I can feel it there.  It's waiting for me and I will find it.


Finding it will be exhilirating.  My expedition will be painful.

self evaulation

The end of June marked the start of company wide employee evaluations at work.  The first process requires employees to fill out the self evaluation form, which is one slippery fish.  You've got to walk a fine line with those forms because you don't want to make it seem like you're a cocky bastard, but you also don't want to appear like an incompetent idiot.  At the same time, if you just give yourself the medium score for everything, then you're just average Joe/Jane, and if you're just an anybody, well, then you really could be anybody.  Why is it so special that you hold this position or that you should get a raise?


I don't know how many people lie or puff up their self evaluations forms, but I can see why they do.  For me, even though I answer honestly, I always double back and think about whether or not the scores I gave myself are accurate.  Accurate, not true.  As far as the answers go, they are all true because essentially it's the gauge of what I think of the work I did, and since I don't puff the form up, they are true.  What I wonder is, are they accurate?  Basically, I am pondering if my own assessment of myself is on the same page as my manager's assessment of myself.


I don't think I have any reason to worry, perhaps I just need more confidence in my work performance.  I think I need to ease up, huh?


I used to worry a lot more about pointless stuff.  Like after multiple choice exams I'd worry about whether or not I filled out the scantrons correctly.  I'd replay the exam in my head and try to remember if I skipped a question and then accidentally filled it in with a different answer and ended up shifting everything over.


Thankfully, I've stopped being as neurotic.  Life is much more enjoyable this way.

pivotal

I don't blog as much as I used to anymore, even though recently I've felt that I should journalize more often because I'm at a point in my life that I'm probably going to want to remember.


I graduated college last May and couldn't find a job in finance. After job hunting and getting nothing but a couple short term temp jobs, I realized I wanted to work in publishing, and it is for this reason that I feel grateful about not being able to find a job for so long. It gave me the time and space to think about what kind of career I would find fulfilling, and without that I would have went into finance blind to what I was missing and what I needed.


I think all this is pretty pivotal. When all these changes happened, I remember thinking, "I better write this stuff down, because this is going to affect the rest of my life," but I just never got around to it.


In any event, these changes are still fresh, and I don't think this is the kind of thing that I'll ever forget. For me, this is seminal.


The key things I want to remember are:
01. How harrowing job searching was, especially after 6 months of fruitless struggle.
02. How humbling struggling to find a job is.
03. How terrifying it was to change my perception of what my career was going to be, where it was going, and jumping into an industry I had no experience in.
04. How it feels to have fear but not be scared.


Life happens fast.

closer

I decided on a career change and went from finance to publishing.  It wasn't something I spent a lot of time thinking about-- actually I spent almost no time thinking about it at all.  It was the kind of thing that happened in a snap second.  It felt right, and I knew I had to chase it.


At first, I was really lackadaisical about going into publishing.  I wasn't exactly vigorously searching.  I really thought nothing would come of it for a while because I have no prior publishing experience and I had just started a job in finance so I figured I'd give that job the ol' college try first.  It's kind of like going into the water, some people just jump right in, but I thought I'd dip my toes in my first.  Oh, but something was right, the stars aligned or whatever it was, and I got a call back almost immediately after my search began.


The second I accepted that interview, I knew I absolutely had to chase this.  I was nervous as hell, for a whole week I was riddled with anxiety-- the good kind.  I couldn't wait to get to that interview, and not so I could get it over with, but just because I couldn't wait to step into publishing even if that meant just interviewing for a job and not getting it.  At least if I didn't get the job, I would have had a publisher's door slammed in my face.  I would have made contact.  And I know that sounds crazy and kind of intense, but you see, this whole thing is something I feel very intensely about.  I never felt this way about finance.


You see, it's not that I don't like finance anymore.  My affection for finance hasn't changed, it simply has to take a back row to publishing.  What I realized after I came out of college is that I'm not cut out for finance.  Studying economics in college was great and I loved it and I still love to study it, but I just don't fit in that industry.  I had no passion for it and without that I probably would have burned myself out in that industry eventually.  Maybe it would take a year, maybe 10 years, but at some point it was going to catch up to me.


You know how sometimes in an interview you have to lie a little?  You say you really do love this industry, or that you really love this kind of work, and after you say it something in your back of your head nags at you and says, "wait, is that really true?"  I didn't have those nagging thoughts when I went in for my publishing interview, if anything, I had this voice in the back of my head that kept saying, "yes, this is right, keep going!"  I went in there guns blazing and pulled out all the stops, because I had no stops, and really there was no other way I could have done that interview except with guns blazing.  Everything about it felt right.  When I was interviewing for jobs in finance, every time I walked in and they interviewed me I felt like a different person, but this time around I didn't get that, in fact I felt more the same than ever.  I felt closer to myself than I have ever been.


For years everyone said that finance wasn't something they could see me in, and I never considered what that meant.  So they didn't see me in finance, what's that then?  I'm still going to go after finance, it's what I want, it's what I'm going to do.  I never considered that maybe I don't seem like a person who would work in finance because I'm not meant for it.  Now when I tell people I work in publishing they say, "yes, I can totally see that.  That's the perfect industry for you."

it was an ugly wall

There are certain things about a house that make it a home, but which to everyone else it just looks like depreciation.  The stain on a wall-to-wall carpet where you once spilled soda or a hole in the bedroom where you once tried to do a somersault but instead found your foot through the dry wall.  The markings of life that are inevitable, but to all other eyes make a house despicable.


You get to know a house the way you get to know a the fine contours of your hand.  You get to know the heaviness of all the doors in the house to the point where you know the exact amount of force to put behind it to get it to slam exactly the way you want.  You learn which windows stick and which screens have holes.  You learn how to properly jig the bathroom door in a split second in case you ever lock yourself out or someone locks themselves in-- or if you ever, for whatever reason, want to intrude on the person within.  You learn the placement of the furniture so well that you become able to maneuver all of it so that you can race from one end of the house and back so fast that everything in your peripheral becomes a blur-- all without disturbing a single item.


There was this wall at the staircase leading from the basement to the ground floor of my old house that was riddled with markings.  They weren't special markings, just scribbles from the kids in the house.  It was just this one wall at that staircase that was marked all over the place.  All the other walls in the place were relatively clean.  You see, it wasn't a house house, it was actually an apartment building.  A normal cozy Brooklyn apartment building.  The kind you find all over the place where it looks like a regular two floor semi-detached but then you walk inside and find out it's actually 5 apartments hiding behind the facade of twin homes.  The wall was outside any of the apartments, and so it seemed nobody ever thought to paint over it.  It was like that for as long as I remember and the only reason it isn't there anymore is because the whole place got renovated and they tore the thing down.  It was like all the adults were too tired to do anything about it or even yell at us about it.  They might have just thought, "Oh, to hell with it.  If the kids are gonna scribble all over a goddamn wall, at least it's not my wall."


It really wasn't anybody's wall, it was just the house wall that all the kids wrote all over.  It wasn't a particularly important wall, if you get what I mean.  It's not like it was the entrance door wall, or the main hallway wall.  Nobody ever really stopped at that wall and leaned against it, the kids didn't loiter too much by this wall.  I know the only time I, or any of my brothers or cousins, ever took any pause at that staircase was to stop and see if it was safe to visit our cousins in the basement in case they were being yelled at.  It was just a wall that you passed by if you were passing between the basement and the ground floor.  There seemed to be no reason why this wall should have been the one that got marked up all over the place.  Now, I don't know who marked it up first, I just know that's how I remember it being for as long as I can recall and I lived in that place from the day I was born in 1987 and until the day it was renovated in 2005.


Well, what I'm trying to say is that this wall was remarkably ugly.  It wasn't even scribbled in such a way that could have made it possible for it to be passed off as aesthetically pleasing in a child-like whimsical sort of way, but it just looked like maniac children drew all over the thing.  Here's the thing-- every time I passed that ugly wall I knew I was in my house, because only in this house does such a wall as this one exist.

Pre cursors to becoming a better person (in no particular order)

01.  Stare at the ceiling.
02.  Stare at the wall.
03.  Stare out the window.
04.  Listen to the sounds of a hollow house.
05.  Listen to the sounds of life outside.
06.  Spend a lot of free time alone.
07.  Spend a lot of time walking around the streets.
08.  Spend a lot of time on vices and becoming tired of them.
09.  Think about what it is to be human.
10.  Think about what it is to be animal.
11.  Think about good and evil.
12.  Think about the momentum of a life.
13.  Read.
14.  Write.
15.  Think about life before life became a topic of thought.
16.  Sit very still without realizing it.