Intervals are my favorite mood-altering drug

So I still haven't sorted things out vis-a-vis the trainer situation. After the last junior one, cannon-fodder staff at my gym, disappeared as they do, the manager assigned me to someone more qualified, but he turned out to be a crazy lunatic. And quit as well, like two weeks later. He had spent the whole session with me obsessing about how much he hated the manager guy and disagreed with his training methods, and once he left I'd just had enough of the psycho-drama and stopped going altogether. Also, he pushed me so extremely hard that I would reach "failure" on like the second repetition, rather than like the second-last one which is how you're supposed to do it. But then, I was getting results. All my clothes were too big, and I was certainly feeling stronger.

Then the work stuff blew up - I learned about the opportunity for my new position (see posts below) and was trying to lay groundwork for those projects, while still trying to do my current job, get financial stuff and performance review stuff done for end of year and planning stuff in place for next year, and live with everyone's angst about the uncertainty of our futures.

(As it turns out, I heard about my future on Friday of last week, and immediately everyone went on vacation for Thanksgiving week so I haven't had a chance to debrief about any of it with anyone. I did get the job I wanted, but for a whole different set of brands, in a different building, with all different brand managers. So it's like a whole new job for a different company, nearly, and I'm now thinking it will take me 12 months to get established to this degree again and keep working on the stuff I intended to do right away in the new gig.)

The first day of my vacation I sat very still and watched TV all day - slowed my metabolic system way down like a lizard in the freezer. The next day did not much more. Monday had to do a bunch of work stuff, and Tuesday finished work stuff in the morning and then took a huge nap. Was feeling somewhat unwell - achy everywhere, and stomach ache, and like I might be getting a cold. (And old. I keep trying to look in the mirror and smile or turn my head in a particular way, or think maybe I just need to rest more or eat better, but actually the lush youthful look I'm trying to recreate in the mirror is probably not gonna ever come back. The skin is losing elasticity, the eyes have creases around them, the skin is getting that grey cast that I find so revolting when I notice it on men of a certain age, I'm just getting old, and there's nothing a girl can do about it. Rats.)

Anyway, also during this whole period I have been trying to work out what to do about the exercise stuff. I had too many options:

• Go back to the work gym, in the mornings
• Go to the work gym in the evening
• Find another trainer at the work gym
• Ask for another trainer at the other gym
• Go back to the other gym without a trainer, mornings
• Go back to the other gym without a trainer, evenings
• Just use the little gym at my apartment complex, morning or evening
• Try another gym, other trainers, another sport altogether
• Just run on the road or something

Every weekend I would vow that this week I would absolutely get up early on Monday and Wednesday, at least, and just do something, just some regular routine, just to be doing something, but it never worked.

And so this week, after my reptilian weekend of sitting very still and being achy all over, I was starting to feel truly bad from not exercising properly for so long. Because the last guy was sooo intense, too, it was like bingeing - from ultra-fit, ultra-pushing-myself, rapid-results, to puffed out, weak, sore discouraged sloth. Time for action.

Finally, today, Wednesday of my week off, I got myself to my old gym. There wasn't anyone there I recognized except the sales guy - tells you something, doesn't it, he's successful, it's just that what he's selling is completely unstable and imaginary - and I did a circuit of basic weight machines, but then I did the magic thing that has made everything okay again.

Intervals!

I get on the treadmill and set it to 80 seconds of 3mph and 80 seconds of 5mph (for which I have to run), for 20 minutes. I heard from one of those trainers along the way that this is the best way to burn calories, because you keep burning them for a while after you stop. I made it through my whole 20 minutes - red in the race, breathing hard on the last one, but legs felt strong and I felt really good that I was pushing through and accomplishing something challenging.

The feeling lasted all day when I was out shopping, and is still kind of with me now, although I did fade with tiredness at about 3pm and had to rest at a Starbucks, and now I'm still achy and still have creases and circles (I don't think there's enough resting in the world to rest from the work stuff that's been going on, so I will just have to run resting, for the next few months).

Aerobic exercise is one of the most powerful mood-altering drugs that there is. I hope the optimism that today's long-overdue trip to the gym has instilled will remind me to keep doing it, and get over the block I've had.

Non-sad tears

It's been an emotional few weeks, there's no doubt about it.

• I passed my one-year mark in Appleton, and as if by magic suddenly felt more grounded and on top of the basics and ready to start building on my solid foundation. Something about experiences passing around the second time - pumpkins, the first snow, the lake freezing, the end-of-year financial forecast meeting, multi-raters being due - it makes you feel more committed to and in control of everything.
• Barack Obama was actually elected president.
• I was confronted by the prospect of a new job with a great deal more responsibility, at a more senior level.
• My guitar playing is getting better. In conjunction with:
• I went to a gig by my guitar teacher's band and suddenly had the experience of being a scholar rather than a fan, which is a transformative experience in my relationship with rock and roll generally, and feels like another kind of ascension.
• This morning I watched my DVD of The Devil Wears Prada, which I still find a completely inspirational coming-of-age story about a woman at work.
• And I've been watching too much What Not To Wear and Say Yes To The Dress (about wedding-dress shopping) on the TLC channel on cable.
  

All of these events are associated with a particular kind of crying.

For so many years all my crying was about the shock of abandonment and grief and loss. I just got used to the fact that all tears that might come up in times of relaxing defenses and emotional vulnerability were those tears. And even during Year 1 year, all guard-letting-down tears were from the grief and culture shock of leaving Sydney.

But these are different. You saw them, on the coverage of the people in Grant Park on election night, immediately bursting forth the second the polls closed in California and CNN flashed on a giant screen, "CNN Projection: Barack Obama elected president," and then flowing on and on as he gave his calm and majestic acceptance speech. He was fine, he had been visualizing this moment for years, and also he knew deep inside that it was only the beginning of the very hard work of leading the nation and turning history around to get back on the path of right. But all of us, we just cried.

They're very particular tears - tears of being moved, tears of happiness and joy but something more. Tears of - I don't believe this amazing and good thing is actually happening. Tears of relief and hope? Tears of being moved by beauty? Beauty of the soul, the experience, the grand human sweep of existence that can have such deep meaningfulishness and love and whatever. How to describe it? I've been trying to work out how to really describe the thing that leads to this kind of tears.

For me, they are coming up most from guitar stuff. I was at the gig, it was the second set, I was bopping along with the crowd, lots of good-time Wisconsin girls out at a bar on a Friday night getting in the groove with a great and competent band. It was no problem I was there by myself - I was there with my teacher but also there with the whole industry and discipline and art form of rock and roll. I was there as a scholar. (It wasn't my first gig as a scholar, I also went to Octoberfest in downtown Appleton and was similarly examining all the guitars and how everyone's hands were moving, but I was so new at it then that it wasn't quite the same.) In the peaceful place I found in the midst of all that dark and noise and movement, I was working through a bunch of things in my mind. I felt a new committment and a new, more mature relationship with rock and roll, after all these many years of having strong and exciting other relationships with it - fan, collector, college radio dj, rock journalist. My mind thought, where is this going to take me? And my mind answered back, I don't know.

And that one thought brought on Obama-election-night type of emotions in me, and I nearly stood and wept with tears running down my smiling face. I was moved by the show. "Moved" is the only word I can think of for that weird emotion of pain but relief and hope and beauty and whatever.

I'm glad I have next week off - I can just sit around at home watching movies and listening to guitar songs that I want to learn how to play and make myself cry.

p.s. on the crushee

Remember last week when I was wondering if I should send a Facebook friend request to someone I had an embarassing crush on in college?

I decided to do the grown-up thing and just sent the friend request. But he never accepted.

So. Thanks for the advice though.

post-party blues

Last night was so outstandingly fun that today couldn't help but be a letdown, but I'm still carrying the golden glow of the gig with me inside. And I didn't need to have too much fun today because tomorrow I'm going to my first Green Bay Packers game, with a group of people from work. It will have the advantage that, unlike at the rock show, I won't be watching all the performers and wishing I could be where they were, doing what they are doing. And should be fun hanging out of the work folks outside of work.

Today, all inspired, I decided to practice guitar, and all the things I used to be able to do were awkward and hard and not coming out right. It made me feel like a two-year-old probably feels - I have all these things inside me that I want to express, but I'm not fluent enough in the language to be able to get them out. Wish there was a baby-sign-language equivalent for playing a Fender. Actually, there probably is - I think it's called "Guitar Hero III".

The only cure for lack of experience is more experience. So I'm going to try some more blues patterns, and get the songs under my fingers more effectively, and have a quiet night in, in anticipation of the football game tomorrow.

Going to a show with somebody

Some of the best evenings I had during my last few years in Sydney where when my dear neighbors would score some free tickets to the Woodfire Pizza Restaurant in Double Bay. It was a strange hole-in-the-wall joint with pizza out front, but then a curtained off area with a little stage where they would hold shows that were usually really good. And we never ate pizza, the back side of the menu was a full, page-long, densely typed in small font list of outstanding Hungarian food. I always got the goulash that was a little spicier, with dumplings (nearly unmistakable from gnocchi) and a cucumber and sour cream salad on the side.

We saw some great shows. The first one was Monica Trappaga, who is better known for being a children's TV host, but on this night she was launching her new album of 1930's swing numbers and torch songs. Another really good one was Simon Tedeschi, reknowned classical pianist and the subject of an Archibald-Prize-winning portrait that made the most of his youthful face and intense blue eyes, but on this night he was sitting in with some well-known jazz players and realizing his second passion of playing jazz piano.

The meals were great, the shows were great, and I love my neighbors who used to invite me, but every time, especially at the point I got most transported by the music, I wished I had someone there with me. My heart would go out to whoever I had a crush on at the time and I'd imagine them there with me, being similarly moved by the music and the experience. I never imagined my ex there because this tradition started after he left me, so I didn't miss having him with me, only some new person. It became sort of a mental litmus test - any new boyfriend who was going to hang around with me - to get to the point where we were a social unit - would have to love these nights as much as I did.

Fast forward to Appleton. Last night I went to see my guitar teacher's band play at a big barn-like place called the Rodeo Bar, out Country Road II in the middle of nowhere. I had emailed a work colleague who I once went to another concert with to see if he wanted to come along, but never heard back from him, so this gave the convenient cover that I was waiting for a friend to join me and not that I was some pathetic groupie there by myself. But I wasn't there by myself - I am now not just a music fan, I am a guitar student. I talked to my teacher before the show, after the show, and in the break when he took me up on stage and showed me all their gear and his effects pedals (explained to me the history of all the effects pedals - he's pretty encyclopedic really). During the show I stayed up front, not right at the stage but about two or three bodies back (most of the bodies were Wisconsin girls who are not afraid to dance in public, or a guy Eric whose birthday it was, who was drunk enough that he wasn't afraid either). But I was transfixed on the guitars. I tried to watch their hands as much as I could, to catch them doing things that I know how to do. And there was hardly a favorite song of mine that wasn't in their set list.

I stayed for two sets, until 1:00 in the morning. I was transported by the music in the same way I used to be at the Woodfire Pizza place - more so, because I could dance and so lose myself in the songs more, and have the experience of being part of a crowd having a good time at the front of a stage. I was there with my guitar teacher. And sort of also with my whole history of my relationship to rock and roll - fan, collector, college radio DJ, amateur rock journalist. My new realationship to rock and roll is apprentice. And my future relationship to rock and roll is I hope as a craftswoman. I didn't feel any of that incompleteness or longing that I used to at the Woodfire Pizza place. I was at a show with somebody.

Facebook secrets

You know how on the Facebook homepage it suggests people you might know and might want to become Facebook Friends with? Someone from my past just showed up there - someone I had a crush on in college and pretty much made a fool of myself over. He was in Honors English with me, and was very charming, and had cool friends, and so I starting making invitations. There was a group that year who called themselves The Steering Committee and would hold formal parties that were for all of us Independents, who weren't associated with a fraternity. The frats had semi-formals all the time, so it was great that we had a chance to as well, with all the cool Honors people who we liked to hang out with.

So I invited this boy to one of the dances, and he accepted which amazed me. I wrote home and had my sister mail me a fancy black cocktail dress, I think it was actually hers and she loaned it to me for the evening. The boy came by my room to pick me up, and we went to the VI for a drink first. Then we went to the dance and all the girls who were sort of more in his inner circle were being a bit proprietary, fixing his tie and that kind of thing. I was nervous, and I think it was champagne we were drinking, and you know, I was only like 20, 21, and so I didn't really have a fine virtuosic handle on how much I could drink. I overdid. And back then when I overdid I would usually cry, hysterically and for prolonged periods. Many a poor boy had to deal with the weeping mess of me at the ends of nights like this, and this night I really didn't want that to happen. Drunk and reeling a bit, starting to lose my visual focus, I detached myself from my charming date and his closer friends, went to the periphery and found what I thought was someone safe. Another philosophy major, in my Wittgenstein seminar, a year behind me, and I knew for a fact he intended to become a Catholic priest after graduation. Nice boy. I kind of leaned on him, and averted a messy scene in front of my date, but what happened was I ended up leaving with the safe, kindly Catholic one, and went back to my room, where lo, the kindly Catholic future priest philosophy major professed his own deep lust for me. So, you know, I think I sort of kissed him or whatever, but dear me, the next day I realized what I had done.

Took a while to get rid of the Catholic one and convince him I just wanted to be friends, but I never did get a second chance with the poor jilted charming boy who was my date. I invited him to lunch, I invited him to dinner, I asked him to movies that were showing on campus. I did embarassing, humiliating things like slip notes under his dorm room door saying, "This coupon: GOOD FOR ONE dinner with Ellen!" Oh, my god, I cringe to think of it now. He was very polite. "No thank you," was always the answer. But that incident left me with my first big Regret, and I will carry it to my grave. They say you should live your life without regrets, but I deeply regret ditching J. at the dance and going home with Catholic boy (whose name I have repressed).

But, in the way of Facebook, guess who showed up as someone I might know, just tonight? Charming J. So, do I friend him? Or should I take the hint, from way back 20-some years ago, and just leave him alone?

***

p.s. I actually wrote to another crush who's also a FB friend (and who I know is reading this) and asked his advice, and that made me wonder just how many ghosts from my past are actually on there. (friend might want to stop reading at this point). Among my 114 friends are 12 boys I had crushes on, the one girl ever had a crush on, my First Kiss, my Second Kiss, my Prom Date (who is also my First Kiss), but only one guy I ever actually slept with. Facebook is very strange the way these people come back into your life, but I can't say I mind it, exactly. And I wonder if any among them are boys that ever had a crush on me?

Pre-winter

Most of the leaves are off the trees now, so where there was orange and red and glowing yellow there are the grey stands of the bare branches that are with us for most of the year.

When I leave work in the morning, if the day going to be nice, the sky is all baby blues and pinks. The field across the road is still arranged in lovely stripes, but now they are soft and muted colors, and very early in the morning they're frosted in white. (frosted in...frost. What a poet I can be sometimes, hey?).

Except this morning it was raining, and so it stayed dark all day. Out that window that you can always see out of on my floor, the guy next to Craig who works in some different department so I don't know his name who keeps his door open so you can see out through his office, the sky was dark grey and the trees were black against it and at noon it didn't even look like daytime. Outside the rain was falling in drops but leaving a surround of mist, and the streets were black and slick as running oil, and I kept pulling out in front of people too fast when I was driving, forgetting that everything is different now it's cold, and Wisconsin people should turn overnight from aggressive, reckless hoons to sensible precise and human bearers of responsibility.

***

The other night I dreamt I had a baby girl. She was lovely, pink skin and a little round face and quite a bit of hair, although not long, and just my color. I held her on my hip. I was going around, maybe it was work or shopping? I showed her to people and bragged that she was only born yesterday, and look. She held a book in her hands, and she could talk and say fairly big words. She was very still, and she was very good. I think I even told people that, "She's a very good baby." My heart overflowed with love and pride. I named her - it occurred to me that it was strange that I'd forgotten to name her until her second day, but the name just came to me and I knew it was hers - Emma. She had a pink dress on. She sat very still and concentrated, and was very beautiful and good and just fit on my hip while I went around. Another woman was there - someone I know at work who's a single Mom and regales me with endless stories about her daughter. I felt a real connection - I had a daughter now too. I think I was hoping she would help me. Then we were about to leave, to go someplace, we were getting coats on and getting ready to get in the car. And Emma was suddenly hungry. She was moving, she was agitated. I think she might have grabbed for the breast of my friend, the way babies can do, primitive and not knowing. I thought, "Well, baby, no, you do what we do, and we're not eating now, we're going - you can eat later when we're there." I had her in my arms, but she thrashed her body over away from me, and I marvelled at her strength, and thought, oh, maybe this won't be so easy after all.

It was one of those dreams where the feeling stayed with me all day.

Ascension

Feeling emotionally exhausted and a little freaked out.

Today had meetings all day. A bunch of them I had organized myself because I want to enact my own plans, conduct business for my brands the way I think it should be done. Others were normal weekly meetings, or special planning meetings, or phone calls I had to have with people. Which didn't leave enough time to actually do anything, follow up the action items I had from all the meetings or review emails or do backlog stuff. Or end of year stuff which I'm a bit behind on. And at 5:30 after getting a Diet Coke and surfing for a bit to rest my mind, I decided I need to take care of myself first (fit your own mask before helping others kind of thing), and so just shut the computer down, left it there, and came home. I don't have anything to eat for breakfast tomorrow and nothing obvious to have for dinner tonight, but I didn't care, I just came straight home and watched an episode of Mad Men and am trying to rest.

The meetings in which I'm trying to enact my plans require incredible levels of personal influence, all the more so because I need to go so very, very slowly, to get buy-in from the people I need buy-in from. In some cases I am planning to move on from certain folks but need to respect their knowledge and contribution and want them to help with transition so I can't tell them they're about to be no longer useful to the organization. And maybe it's not my decision anyway, but that's my plan. So those need to be incredibly delicate, because I have forged positive and loyal relationships in the past so as to get what I needed from them back then, and now there really is a bond there but I might have to break it. And then there are other new people who, given the shifting of the organizational continents at work, are suddenly in a position, a much better position, to partner with to enact the things I want to do, and so I'm trying to make initial forays but I really feel like an ambassador from a very foreign culture, and I have already put a few tenderfoot feet wrong and must go very, very cautiously so as not to spook them and to make myself understood.

All day, this. After a day like that, all you want is to meet someone at a bar who doesn't work at work, and over some tall gold schooners tell them all the stories (and not worry about if you sound like a conniving hound or a lying manipulative sales-devil). Someone who is sophisticated enough to understand the work stuff and has been following the story so you don't have to go back to real basics, like what does "DAT" stand for, but who doesn't actually work at work. So they aren't players in the political dramas unfolding, and you can tell them really sensitive confidential things and they won't run into anyone they shouldn't tell about it until it's irrelevant and old news.

Mostly somebody I can just be my whole self with, without spin, without judging all my words, without checking the impression I'm making on them. Someone with whom I can say, "Yeah, when I was in Paris, we..." and you don't have to worry that you're sounding snobby. Someone with whom you can say, "And my sister's at Pole so I can't call her now to talk about it, " and not have to explain what "at Pole" means and answer the 20 standard Antarctica questions that everyone has. You can just skip ahead to the important bit. Or maybe even just drink your schooner and listen to them talk about their day, and you are up to speed on it too because it's a mutual relationship, not like a paid therapist, you care just as much about their job and trials and people in their life and how their day was.

Is a wife what I need? Someone to come home to who is there to support me while I'm trying to to these ambitious business things? Or a husband, someone who with their strong arms and strong back can give me a hug and shore up the edges of my personality? Or just a BFF?

Maybe what I really need is a mentor. Another seniorish woman who is already spending her days doing the high-level things that I'm trying to do (trying to be worthy of doing so they give me the chance to do them). So I can talk through the emotional side of rising up, being senior. Check my mistakes, learn from them, get some encouragement, make sure someone else believes I can actually do this, and that I should be doing it.

I love my job. I love the opportunities it presents. I want to work at that top level where big things happen and big relationships are forged. I want to have interesting projects like my current, rather big one. But you know, tonight driving around the roundabout in the rain home to my grocery-less house, I could see the appeal of having an easy job. Something you just go, and do, and get done, and then you come home and you still have everything left inside you that you left with that morning.

Freaking out a little bit. Needing a beer and a hug.

Prayer Poem

You are like my guitar.
Colors dark and rich, cut to fit my body.
You are a craft, a practice, a creative endeavour.
Except I am already an expert
we can play fluently, I can already express
myself through you without getting
caught up in technique.

You know time.
I dig you and you go "Yessss".
We hop in cars and just go, baby, go.

You are a wrap of warm bear fur
that I take along so I know
at least one of us will be warm.
You are something from home.

Looking at me via you,
Looking at you,
Standing beside you and looking, you and me, at;
They're all as good
You are endless vistas and beautiful art.

You are young and old,
50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's to today
Encyclopedic. We are wikis of each other.
You are a line from a favorite old movie
That nobody saw but we saw
You are the only other native speaker
of my dialect.

Far away there's a planet, black-
no, blue, with blue rings.
It's a long journey, I lead, but once I arrive,
all the inhabitants of this familiar planet
wear black coats and have orange hair.
It is the coolest planet.

Things that are a waste of time: #1 Monopoly

I was at my fave coffee copy on Saturday afternoon and kept getting distracted by a child's voice with that particular demanding tone. A boy aged probably 7 was sitting in one of the booths with his Dad playing Monopoly - the tone usually emerged when he was reading out one of the cards.

I once spent a few days in Boston with a family who were all mad and hotly competitive players of word games, like Scrabble and Jumble and everything else you can think of. Near the table where the games were played was a shelf full of Scrabble dictionaries and other reference books. A girl came over, about my age and the age of the son who I was visiting, and she'd been part of this scene for years and was just as competitive as the others. I was still feeling bad about being completely crap at Scrabble - if you're a writer, if you're good with language, well then why wouldn't you have a huge vocabulary and be good at crosswords and Scrabble and games like this?

I think I'm over it now - spelling is not writing. Crosswords do sharpen the mind but they are a craft that you have to practice and get good at like any other. And Scrabble is more a game of strategy than anything about communication, and I absolutely suck at any game like that. Not just game, anything in life. I'm a good communicator, and I'm good at improvising to make the best of my current situation and environment, but if I have to plan more than two moves in advance I absolutely suck at that.

Monopoly, too. I could see yesterday that it was useful for the boy because he was learning to add and subtract (money) and to read, and maybe a little bit of strategy and sportsmanship and that kind of thing. But I'm not seven. The only way I could see playing a board game of any sort, at this stage in my life, would be if I was at a holiday cabin and it was raining so hard you could neither go out and do outdoorsy things nor drive to the nearest town to do indoorsy things. But even then I would probably have brought a book along. Or my guitar. Or a pen and some paper to do some analog-style blogging. Or perhaps there would be other conversationalists there and we could just talk. I can't imagine hardly any circumstance where a big, rollicking game of Monopoly would be anything for me but a colossal waste of time.

(grumpy old woman)

Why I don't do drugs

I was at the Mall today. I had a very successful trip to Black and White (the store has some other, longer name, but you know the one I mean), picking up just the wardrobe basics I was looking for (in a combination of sizes: Small, 10, and Large, showing that sizing of women's clothing doesn't mean anything and definitely shouldn't be a measure of one's self-esteem).

I then wandered down to the sporting goods store, because I'm going to my first live Green Bay Packers game next weekend and wanted to get some stuff to wear. Among the rows of sweatshirts and baseball caps is where things started to turn. I wasn't finding what I wanted and the store is so huge that you can't easily get your bearings and work out where the right thing would be. I was walking up and down aisles scanning, but what started happening is every time I moved my eyes to the right, the world would keep spinning that direction.

Also people were knocking into me, or moving into my way just at the spot on the shelves where I wanted to have a closer look.

And it was pretty hot, with all those people trussed up in warm coats and scarves all moving around in a small space.

I decided this store didn't have what I was looking for, and I could always come back next Saturday anyway, or one evening during the week, and so I made my way out. The hallways had filled up with bodies while I was in there, some kind of rush of teenagers on a cold, wet day with nothing to do. There was a din coming from the Food Court. I was having trouble seeing out of my right eye.

Walking down the main corridor to the hall where Black and White is and where my car was parked (I didn't want to go out the Food Court doors and walk around, even though I was craving fresh air, because it was getting really cold and had been spitting rain and I didn't have my gloves or my umbrella with me - it's that time of change of season where you don't know quite what you need to bring with you when you leave the house), something was sending a strong perfume all through that hallway - a bath goods cart in the central aisle? A perfume shop? The high school girlies walking in packs with too much makeup and too much hairspray? I don't know. But the dizziness was increasing so that I was having increased trouble seeing, and definitely didn't have the energy to hold my stomach in or hold my face in a poised, beautiful-enough pose which I'd been trying to do. I knew my eyes and nose were red already, from looking at myself in the dressing room mirrors. I knew my hair was fuzzy from walking through the rain, and it needs to be cut as well. I was just trying to get out - wasn't sure I could drive, once I got to the car, but I needed to get out of that mall.

The feeling was exactly like being really drunk. And it had been brought on my pollen in the autumn air, an overly perfumed shop or passerby, temperature difference, and maybe a little bit of claustrophobia. Not from being drunk.

The story has a happy ending - I got to a less crowded hall, sat down for a second, worked out I wasn't going to vomit, went and got a drink from a vending machine, my brain straightened right up when I got outside, and I drove home without incident or worry, listening to Prairie Home Companion on the radio.

But this is why I don't do drugs. In my midwestern childhood I was around all these allergens all the time. My head felt this way all the time, and I couldn't hold my face in a poised pretty-enough pose back when I was a girl so I never learned how to be a pretty girl, I am just a weird girl making strange faces and being quite vague, and slightly scaring everyone. And here I am back like that again. Like all folks of my generation who don't do drugs, I have often been strongly pressured by my friends that I should do them. You have to have a really good, compelling reason for turning them down. And I have always told them, I have spent my whole life struggling every day to feel normal. I absolutely don't need to experiment with brain-altering chemicals. I have enough of those already, inside me.

I went to the shopping mall and got dizzy and got room-spins and couldn't see and thought momentarily that I might vomit. That is absolutely enough chemically-induced excitement for me, thank you very much. This is why I don't do drugs.

40-something

One of the most memorable conversations I ever had with my Dad was when I was about 20 and had a summer job as an office temp in an insurance company. Dad and I were out shopping one day and stopped at a McDonald's in Englewood, over by Cinderella City which is probably where we had been shopping, for some afternoon french fries.

I was complaining about my boring job and the boring full-timers there and burst out (with the typical sensitivity I displayed as a youth), "How could anyone possibly spend 20 years working in a cubicle like that!" And then, "Oh. You actually did, didn't you." And then, "So, how did you do it?"

He said that when you first start at a company as a young man, you think the sky's the limit, and you think you'll be Vice President one day. And you go along in your career but then you hit 40, and you stop getting promotions and you see other people getting promoted instead, and you realize this is pretty much it. And then, he said, "Either you decide to leave it all and move to Tahiti, like Gaugin did," or you decide, like he did, that you like having a house, and a family, and you don't want to leave. And you fill in your life with other things.

I have probably written this story down in a blog before. But right now my thoughts about it are different. Because right now I'm 45, and I haven't hit a glass ceiling, my career has been moving forward in leaps every few years (with a brief time out for post-retrenchment sabbatical and MBA school and protracted unemployment and relationship disaster, but still), mainly because I've been jumping companies into better positions, but there's still quite a ways up I could go, I think.

This week at work we had a big party, one of those forced-fun celebrations where they spend a great deal on very professional decorations and a big cake and party favors, and it's all speeches from senior management and no one really wants to be there but it's not so bad, and in fact those occasions can be useful for communicating a company's culture and galvanizing people into a team. Anyway, there were speeches by the North American President, and the North American Sector President, and the North American Group President. And none of them seem like old men to me. I'm 45 and very senior people sometimes retire at 55, because they can.

So, it's right that I should be moving up into those ranks. I certainly have the experience and expertise and temperament (except for my tendency to engage in snipey gossip in office corridors - but then, you have to seem to be one of the workers in order to gain their trust and extract any helpful information, so I can somewhat rationalize - but I'm still going to try to cut down on it). But maybe I don't have all that much time to reach my whole potential. Am I supposed to accomplish everything in my career in 10 short years? I feel like 30 more is not enough. I feel like I'm on the brink of something, and I'm excited about learning and developing and influencing the organization and moving things forward to excellence. Maybe that's just a factor of my industry, and the fact that it's all new and changing all the time and full of promise and potential, and youth-oriented. So, actually, how lucky am I that I get to work in this field and be excited by new emerging things all the time, and not be in an industry where I would have achieved everything and already burned out.

On the flip side, I heard a news story on the radio while driving home about a sitting US Senator who is 90, and is only just giving up chairmanship of some important committee or other, but he's still an active member of the Senate. So, who says I have to stop at 55? Who says I have to stop contributing, soon. I do have another 30 years! 75 is the new 40!

other transformations

The country changed on Tuesday night, history changed, the future changed. Hope won, people cheered, women wept for joy, our candidate kept his cool and seemed ready for the job ahead.

And also, the whole outlook at work changed. When I heard the first proposal of what they planned to do with us, I recoiled. I didn't like it at all. I started exploration and laying groundwork and barracking for other options, right away, and have kept at it. Fortunately, I had also done a few basic things that brought me to the attention of respected senior management before that - just easy things really, I took control of a conversation, explained things clearly, whacked a few graphs up, and let it show that I think my job is really cool (was), and that was so unusual and unique that I busted through and looked like a rock star.

So, this week, one of my colleagues was in despair and howling that the senior manager who will decide our fates keeps canceling her meeting with him. And I had one that she set, on my calendar, and it stayed. She wanted to talk to me. It turns out everyone listened. They realized the original new plan had some important gaps, and I was able to articulate clearly enough what those were and what I wanted to do to fill them that it looks like they created a position just for me. And I even asked out loud if I had competition for it - the end of the sentence was "then I'd be happy to speak to my qualifications" - but I didn't have to finish my sentence, the job is earmarked for me. And then also I had been jumping up and down and expressing zeal about an organizational change that ought to happen, that did happen a few weeks ago, a whole department reporting up through a whole different part of the business, and so she asked me to comment on the ideal way that all our departments should work together. Like, "Okay, enthusiasm-girl, you're in charge, people's lives and jobs are at stake, you do some research and tell me how to do this." Eep! I sent out about seven emails in about an hour trying to drum up contacts and people to talk to. While seeming low-key because the rest of my department doesn't know I have this assignment and it's not a big deal. But eep! This is how senior managers have to work. This is how you do strategy and business direction, and also, by the way, how a smart girl makes things happen.

So now I'm a bit freaked out. Here are the things freaking me out. No, wait, first here are the things not freaking me out so we can put this in perspective.
- I am smart enough to do this more senior job they want to give me
- I can think clearly and sort through confusion
- I can get different sides to agree, I can formulate and then execute solutions or enthuse other people to want to execute them
- I am really good at my job
- I have more knowledge of my subject area than any other human person who works in that building, maybe any other of the 5000 employees who work in this town, including all my peers, who have up to 15 years seniority on me with the company
- I have life and world experience that also make me perfectly qualified
- I have good judgement and the strength of character to work at a senior level

So here are the things worrying me:
- I'm still trying to grow my hair out so it's a bit of a mess, plus it got humid just this week so it's all fuzzy as well as in my eyes and I don't have the right product. Q: Should I cut my hair back into a Senior VP-style Execu-Bob? (aux. q's: Should I start using a hair straightener, should I colour my hair so it looks redder and deeper and shinier, do I have enough grey yet that it would be a good idea?)
- I've been using the big-girl makeup for a while now, but is the under-eye-circle-covering-stuff right, does it cake up and show, is it a shade of yellow that doesn't match my face, do people talk about me when I'm not there as "yellow-cake-eye" and then snicker?
- My most recent trainer left me to go out on his own and he's a bit crazy so I haven't returned his calls but I don't have a trainer now and I'm not being disciplined about going to the gym. When I was with him, granted I was dizzy and trashed all day and sore for the next 2 or 3, but I felt strong, and I was starting to have a firmish body, firmisher than it is now. Two weeks and I've puffed out again, lost strength and stamina, and am sliding backwards rather than going forwards. This crazy trainer would cost lots of extra money. The work gym is free, the other gym is already paid for. With this last one I could feel the feeling of taking it more seriously and being an athlete. Never felt that ever in my life before, but I knew it was possible with hard work. Do I want to commit? Do I want to do what it takes to make that happen? Or because my job requires charm and my brain, should I keep this middling-level of fitness and make it a secondary priority and concentrate on being rested and not dizzy and not sore, at work?
- Hair question and exercise question are really this question - do I need to put lots of effort into being a traditionally attractive female, i.e. to try to be as extremely sexy as I can be? Which has two subcomponents - is this what it will take to get a new boyfriend, esp. since I'm becoming an old woman, and then, is this how senior executive women are?
- But then, I felt completely myself in the meeting with the VP when talking about the new department and the special project. I realized that when I'm enthusiastic about something it just takes over and I burble over and just am what I am, in the moment. "I can tell you have a passion for that area," she said to me but others say to me all the time. Should I just be me, with hair a mess and lumpy elderly body, and frumpy clothes? (I ordered some non-frumpy clothes online just tonight, so steps are being taken there). Will I be able to rise up and do this more senior job properly (my direct manager said today, about his endorsement of me in this new role, "This is going to have a really high level of visibility." I want to make him proud, I want the poise and image of a senior enough person to make them not doubt giving this gig to me.) "Dress for the job you want," they say. Do I need to smarten up?
- If I get one of these senior jobs - and I'm probably making too big a deal about it, it's not like I'm going to do investor calls or anything - but if I get one, they were created for men who have wives who stay at home. I got nobody at home. I don't even have a friend in town. I would love to have someone close - an intimate, either friend or partner - who I could come home and let my guard down with, but also to help me think these things through. I don't have one of them so I talk to you.

My fantasy is, on days like this trying to process news like this, to call someone on the mobile while walking to the car, saying, "Oh my god, meet me for a beer right now." And then, "So, they think I can do it!" And the intimate says "Of course you can! I know you can!" And I say, "So, seriously, do you think I need the executive hair cut?" and she/he will say, "You always look just fine when you go to work. You're beautiful." And I could ask, "Should I call the crazy trainer back, or get a new trainer at the other gym, or just try to go at work on my own," and the intimate would say, "That's really up to you. Why do you just try (whichever one I seem to be leaning towards)? Try it and see how it goes, you can tell me about it next time we have a beer." "Which is like every week! I'm going to need you as a sounding board even more now, getting used to this new position, and just trying to keep my head around it." And the intimate would just smile, she would raise her glass and have a drink. Or if a he, he would lean over and give me a reassuring kiss.

Well, I have both a devoted boyfriend and a BFF in my head, anyway. That will have to do for the short term, here. Hope somebody's home to call on the weekend, or online to IM with.

I.O.U.

- reflections on the election
- reflections on feeling Not Pretty Enough (shout out to my homie Casey Chambers)

validation, reinforcement, identity

I got a little closer to figure out what it is I'm looking for every night when I return and return to the computer instead of going to bed.

Tonight I stood at the door of the office for a minute and tried to find the feeling, what would satisfy me, what would make me feel like my search had been satisfied?

I couldn't think of a thing, a thing in particular, but I got a sense of a feeling, like I feel when practicing guitar (sometimes), or watching a TV show that wholly absorbs me (Sopranos was the best, although the effect has been lost), or reading a very well-written, smart, funny article on something about which I am passionately interested (when you scan down the table of contents in a new New Yorker and gasp and immediately turn to that page and read it all in one go, wherever you happen to be sitting down). Emails from certain people will satisfy it, or sometimes a new Astrobarry horoscope or excellent comment thread on Cute Overload or certain All Men Are Liars blogs on the Sydney Morning Herald, but usually not a single xkcd cartoon, and since I've read them all I have to enjoy them one at a time now and that won't do. A long IM chat with almost anybody would to it, but some maybe more than others and I hate it when they say goodbye first. YouTube videos usually, although lately it's taking more and more of them for the same effect (I had the first one at a party, the guy just gave it to me....).

The colours of this mysterious thing are lots of black and red, and dark wood grain, with little bits of white to highlight or to provide contrast for text.

What is it? What do they have in common, and what is it they're doing that allows me to go to bed, and the lack of which makes me unable to go to bed?

I think it's some kind of validation of my personality. A mirror, maybe? A member of my tribe, who comes from my same planet and is like me and understands me? The success includes a feeling of absorption - I lose myself, my selfconsciousness, in my experience of the thing, my consciousness is all directed outward for that minute, or 2 minutes fifty, or 48 minutes because the DVD doesn't have ads. I lose myself in the thing and I also find myself in the thing. The thing makes me feel like myself is okay. And it also entertains me - gives me enough to think about, uses language artfully and cleverly, provides insights, or portrays a rich and engaging human character, is funny. There's an emotion to it too - detached and funny, but also melancholy, or something darker than melancholy. Think of Christopher on the Sopranos. The tone of many of his domestic scenes - not the later seasons with the cardboard cutout of a wife, but with Adriana or with Tony or Carmela. Just home from something intense, but dealing with it as a man. Really clever in his use of words, flashing eyes, amped up from some adventure but also a bit doubtful about the meaning of it all. Working, struggling really hard for a goal that's a long way away, full of passion for it but not sure the work is ever going to get him there, and it takes his all.

Yeah.

Compassion for each other

It's Election Eve, and here are some gentle words from Astrobarry, which will be good to keep in mind tomorrow whatever happens.

"Along our way, each of us will meet countless other individuals facing the same fundamental life questions […] though many will approach them from positions in sharp contrast to ours. What inspires our hope may trigger their terror. What represents our liberation may constitute the radical destruction of their near-and-dear values. And what we may do to try and build these fresh freedoms into our reigning social structures, they might seek to undermine or sabotage in righteous refusal to bow down.

"Can't you see? We are both us and them… in different guises, based on the situation. No matter what side of history we find ourselves on, the other players deserve our basic human respect—regardless of whether we feel they've given us the same. Compassion's got to start somewhere."

All the daylight has been spent

On Sunday we went off of Daylight Savings Time, and so today was the first evening we all had to leave work in the real, non-daylight adjusted time. I walked out of the building at 5:37 and it was dark, dark. Streetlights on, stars out, pitch black, no rosy glow in the western sky from the sunset, nothing, dark.

Driving home on streets that I could have seen only last week was fairly creepy. And I think it was for every other commuter as well - a long line of red taillights on the freeway, everyone driving aggressively fast and following too close. I think they all looked up from their desks out the windows and had a sudden panic - "I shouldn't be at work now!" And all jumped in their cars at once and headed for home in a rush - "I shouldn't be out! I have to get home!"

Last year when this happened I comforted myself that the solstice was only a month and a bit away, and then it would get better. Ah, but this year I know, after the solstice is when it actually starts to get cold...

Do youse like the new clock?

I swiped the idea from a "next blog" I found describing the experiences of an exchange student spending a year at a University in Alabama, and got it from a site called ClockLink. It also has a very nice World Clock that's done in Flash and is easy to use.

To Do's and Decisions

Another Saturday and the molasses is starting to take hold of me.

I slept until I woke up, which turned out to be 11. I was having big, complicated leadership dreams I think, because when I did get out of bed to brush my teeth I was having a huge argument in my head with the Messaging Services team at work because two important emails I require with the assets for two different projects, despite being sent three times, did not come through, for no good reason, and even though I raised two job tickets yesterday and they promise a response in four hours, no one called me back at all. So I think in my dreams I was a manager in charge of some complicated projects.

Had a bagel and coffee for breakfast, and scrambled eggs and toast for lunch just now - it's 1:45. I've been reading articles in a new New Yorker which has been making me feel smart and learned. I was reading some reviews in the review section and the writers compared the works under review with other famous works and authors, and while for some of them I wasn't deeply acquainted with the references, I knew them and so felt tapped in and intellectual. But in doing this I have been sitting perfectly still on the main chair in my living room, which is starting to feel like the captain's chair on the bridge of a spaceship - it's the only place to sit to eat any meals, so there are some tea towels permanently on the coffee table to use as a placemat, and it's the key place to watch TV from, so the remote is at hand, and it's where I practice guitar so the guitar is on a stand just to the side, and the amp with the headphones plugged in, and the music is spread out all over the table on top of the placemats (actually for the scrambled egg lunch I just put the New Yorker down on top of the guitar music to form both a new placemat and the thing I was reading while eating - sedimentary layers of leisure activities that all take place in this one chair).

When I first got up and was Facebooking and whatever, the thought did occur to me of just getting dressed and going out of the house like I do on a workday, with streamlined efficiency of actions and purpose. And the thought made me resentful and tired. So no, no pressure to Go Out and Do Things. Which leaves Staying In and Doing The In Things.

What I have been doing, per above, are things that are creative or smart or sort of stimulating of the brain in other ways. What I'm supposed to be doing is cleaning the bathrooms and doing dishes and laundry and then maybe getting on to the boxes and finances and longer-term projects. These are not creative or intellectually stimulating or brain-tickling things in any way. So I'm avoiding them, sitting in the command chair and doing everything else, but I'm feeling guilty. It's a standoff.

My home-based To Do list is like a horrible roommate who I don't get along with, but we're stuck together. I'm not going to move out because my name is on the lease, damn it, but they can't move out because they just lost their job and the car is broken down, and they thought they had a line on a place with their buddy who is coming back from Thailand, but he has ended up somehow taking a side trip through Burma, sorry Myanmar, and there's been no emails or postcards for a few weeks, so, you know, it's not clear when he's thinking of coming back, but once he is, you know, that room should be there and I can move out then, buddy, but in the meantime can I have 40 bucks to pay the late fees at the video store? I used your card, you know, and now they're saying we can't check anything else out. Sorry, man. This horrible roommate is always just here, here, here, a lump in the corner of the living room, taking up psychic space and preventing me from getting on with my life. I sit in the living room to assert my right to be there, agitated, fixated on them to the point where I can't get on with my own stuff, but unable to negotiate or take any action. I can't do anything but be aware of them and fume. Roommate standoff.

One day I'll be more macro-organized and the baseline of my place to live will be such that I can focus on the surface stuff and the infrastructure will be taken care of. But for this weekend, should I not worry about the house, and just focus on having enriching and creative mental experiences? Or should I go out and live in the world? Or what?

p.s. Family mantra, expressing I'm sure the root of this problem: "Don't let the Gemini get bored."