she was a water sign

Jay and I were at a dinner party the other night when people started talking about their holiday plans and it was a chorus of “I hate going home for the holidays”. Everybody at the table said this except for us. We just looked at each other and smiled. My family is another story and we haven’t yet experience the stress of holidays with them. But going home to Jay’s neck of the woods is always something we look forward to. I have the best in-laws in the world and I am so grateful for that. They’re always interested in what we’re up to and always wanting to help us out but never intrusive or nosy or demanding. Their house is such a peaceful and comfy place and we know that going there for the holidays means relaxing and being a little pampered. I am a little wistful that Jay is an only child, I always wanted to be part of a big family. But I know that if there were siblings and siblings’ spouses, maybe the holidays there would be a little less Zen.

I am thankful for our families, as different as they are.  They show their love in pretty different ways, but there is plenty of love going around regardless. I am thankful that we have found a new hometown and for all the great people we’ve met so far. I may not love my job but I am glad to have one and coming home to Jay and our kitties and the love that envelops me there makes everything else seem pretty unimportant.

Haven’t died, but I have got a job, which is almost as bad, ha ha. I am grateful to be employed but it’s been a rough few weeks. A big part of that is just getting back into the swing of the 9 to 5 grind after not working for a few months. After getting used to getting up whenever I wanted, getting up at 6 on a cold, dark November morning is tough. Then I gear up for a damn long commute and a day of boring work. I have to give myself a pep talk every morning about how lucky I am to have a decent job right now and what a middle-class problem it is to whine about how I want a fulfilling job that I am passionate about and that I just need to suck it up and be an adult. But even though it’s true that so many people are struggling just to get by and that my problems are pretty trivial in comparison, they’re still my problems and it’s still my happiness at stake.

This job is not what I want to do and it’s not going to get me where I want to be, it’s just a paycheck. And I am just not well-suited to the grind of 40 hours of boring work. It’s soul crushing. So there have been a lot of tears and angst and frustration bubbling around in here the past few weeks. I am trying to make a plan for getting me on a path so someday I can stop wandering around in the wilderness. I don’t want anything handed to me, I just need guidance. A sign, a light in the darkness that says “start here”, a foothold, a first step. That’s all.

I watched the latest Star Trek trailer the other day and it had that cheesy, well-worn bit where one character says to another something like “Maybe you were meant for something different, something bigger”. That feeling of being cut out to do more and be more is something that haunts me every day. Not that I’m remarkable in any way or have latent superpowers festering away in me, but just that I’ve always had big ideas about how I want to be and how I want my life to be. And the way I see it, if I’m meant for nothing more than a life exemplified by mediocrity, then it’s pretty damn cruel to make me want so much more. (Hmm, I hope I’m not verging on sounding like the archetypal homicidal maniac who thinks he’s a genius and some kind of Übermensch. That is really not the case! I just want a fulfilling career, really!)

I don’t want to rule the world, I don’t want to be raking in millions. I just want to be able to make a living as a science writer. That’s all.

The only comfort I take is something Randy Pausch said in his Last Lecture about how brick walls are there for a reason. They’re there to show us how much we want something. I’m hitting nothing but brick walls now but it is deepening my resolve to get to the point where I’m doing what I really want to do.

I have never been prouder to be an American than I am today. The Asian in me has occasionally led me to begin critical statements with "Americans are so…", as if a tiny part of me felt removed from a culture that I am very much part of. The idealist and pessimist in me struggle every day and I worried deeply about how this election was bringing out the worst in us as well as the best. I thought there might be a chance fear and racism would win the day. I have never been so happy to be wrong.

Things are looking less grim these days, as I have found that life never lets us stew in self-pity for too long at a time. I have my very first interview tomorrow. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, but at least it’s something. The other day we went to an Obama rally and got to see James Taylor play. It was a perfectly golden afternoon and standing there with so many people, the enthusiasm and positive energy were contagious. It was a perfect antidote to all the anger that’s been festering in me as I spend too much time reading the news. I have to admit I’ve been focusing much more on my fears of a McCain administration (and all the ugliness that’s rearing its head these days) rather than the possibilities of an Obama administration and how inspiring Obama is to so many people.

Jay and I have been taking the lead in organizing a more active young adult group at our church, which has been really rewarding. We enjoyed our group in SD so much that we wanted to have something similar here. So even though in a way we’re doing this for ourselves, people have been enthusiastic about what we’re doing and hearing “I’m so glad you’re doing this” has felt really damn good.

Unemployment is wearing on both of us. Until last week, I had almost no jobs to apply to, whereas Jay has been submitting applications left and right and not hearing anything back. I don’t know which is worse. But as is always the case, life has been a mix of the good and the bad. North Carolina is really growing on me. I feel like we belong here. There are plenty of things to do and places to check out and nice people we’ve met and even when we’re stressed out, home is a happy place to be.

And I’m officially on a baking kick. I have an incurable sweet tooth and lately I’ve become obsessed with minimizing the amount of preservatives in our food. I had a very odd moment of standing in the cookie aisle at the store and not being able to bring myself to buy anything – even though I’ve happily stuffed my face with Oreos and Mint Milanos and Chips Ahoy all my life, now all I can think about is how far away the cookies were made and the unpronounceable things they’re injected with to keep them edible. So if I want to satisfy my cravings with freshly baked things, I have to either trek to the local bakeries or just make my own goodies. The other night I had the joy of eating warm, moist, spicy pumpkin bread right out of the oven. Yum! I am hooked.

Uh, not dead. Still unemployed. Busy being stressed about being unemployed, trying not tear my hair out over election coverage, but also enjoying gorgeous weather, a bounty of festivals, concerts, and sweet, sweet apples. Saw Andrew Bird and the Old 97s this week (not together, although how crazy would that be?). Andrew Bird is a mad musical genius and he puts on a great and unique show. That whistle is otherworldly and he did an amazing job running around the stage in his bright green socks looping all his sounds on top of each other in a haunting and beautiful cacophony. He’s such an odd duck but he had the audience charmed from the get-go. Such a cool show!

And of course I always love seeing my boys. If it’s possible for a band to feel like one’s home, they are mine. Rhett seemed tired but in all the times I’ve been to their shows, I’ve never once seen them phone it in. I started to feel my age towards the end of the show, though. I’m terribly sad to think I’m starting to get a little old for the jumping, dancing, and screaming. By the time they got to "Four Leaf Clover" in their encore, my knees were about to give out. As if I needed more evidence that I’m not 18 anymore.

Both of these shows had us driving through the UNC campus. Being around college students makes me feel old and a little depressed. It’s not that I want to be back in my college days but I do miss some things about that time and it’s hard not to beat myself up about how far I have or haven’t come since then.

In other news, I have developed a sudden urge to bake. I think I’ve made something from scratch exactly once (these cookies , which are like miracle cookies or clowns coming out of a clown car because they come from basically two egg whites and a few other things) but I think it’s high time I overcame my fear of baking and way past time for me to actually use the beautiful mint green Kitchen Aid my in-laws gave me a while back. I have some apple bran muffins cooling on the counter right now and I’m not optimistic. Something went wrong when I was creaming the butter. And the batter had the most unfortunate resemblance to cat vomit. Betty Crocker I am not. So much for my fantasies of opening up a cupcake shoppe. And yes, I would spell it "shoppe".

Down but not out. This week I’m getting serious about finding job opportunities even in the most unlikely places, I’m going to start up the psychology blog I’ve been talking about starting for months, and try some more baking. Excelsior!

Spent an hour cooking tonight, trying out a new recipe, and the tofu I was cooking just fell apart into this blobby, gelationous, burned cornstarch coated mess. And I just lost it. Jay tried to comfort me and tell me it was just dinner and we could go get burgers. But it wasn’t just the dinner. It was everything. Last week Jay had a cold and this week I had a sinus headache that lasted three days straight, so we’ve been more housebound than usual and it’s been tough. I have all this time on my hands that just gets squandered, I desperately need exercise and with no job, I could work out every day but I don’t. I’m 29 going on 30 and I feel like have so little to show for it. No job, no career, no house, no significant accomplishments. I feel like I’m going nowhere.

I spent six long years in grad school, intending to get a PhD and at the last minute, finally accepted that I both wasn’t cut out for it and didn’t really want it, and left with a Master’s. I spent almost a year at a job that gave me publishing experience, but not in the right department. So trying to figure out how to market myself now is really hard. I have no script, no clearly laid out path, and it’s driving me nuts. Seven years is a really long time to go without feeling fulfilled and without doing something I’m good at and enjoy. I just need to know that I’m good at something and can get paid for it. Is that so much to ask?

No easy answers and no obvious solutions to be had. Jay hugged me and let me cry it out and then we went out for margaritas and tacos.

I’m determined to find my path and just have to accept that it’s going to take a little more digging and clearing of brush than I was expecting. And if I have to drink mojitos a little more often and occasionally sing "Because I have confidence in me" under my breath to get through this, don’t judge me.

I’m feeling pretty lonely these days. I miss our friends and I miss having friends. We’ve been without a group of local friends for over a year now and it’s been tough. I’ve always had school to provide what seems like ready-made friends and in Iowa I had a really great group of brainy, crazy, and fun people to spend time with. We hung out all the time and I miss that so much.

Jay and I hadn’t been in SD for very long before we knew we weren’t going to stay and because of that, we didn’t put much effort into meeting people, there didn’t seem to be a point. And for me, I didn’t want to get attached to anyone when I knew we were leaving. We had some friends we met through church but we never got close to anyone and I regret that. I regret not calling up one of them to go shopping and hang out one-on-one. No matter how brief, a friendship is always worth the effort.

I miss having girlfriends to go shopping with and get coffee with and just having women to talk to. Jay’s awesome and he’s a saint about going shopping with me and we can and do talk about everything. But he’s not a woman and it’s not the same. Adding to my sadness is that in just the past couple of years, I’ve stopped speaking to three girlfriends. One loss I can accept as being the end of one of those temporary friendships. We were friends at a certain point in our lives when we were both dealing with breakups and being single and the friendship served its purpose and then fizzled out. But the other were friendships that had lasted for 15 years and there’s a pretty big hole in my heart where those two women used to be.

And it’s hard not to wonder what the hell I’m doing wrong with an attrition rate like that. But even under the most unforgiving microscope, I can’t see what I could have done better. All I know is that two people who were supposed to care about me both profoundly let me down and completely failed to meet my standards for how a friend should act.

I take heart that I haven’t done anything to screw up my friendship with the wonderful woman who married me and Jay. I didn’t have any bridesmaids but I had her to bring us together on that golden beach. And when I think of the kind of person she is and about the three women I no longer speak to, the old friends do not fare well in the comparison. She’s worth the three of them put together. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know and besides her formidable brain and wit, she is an incredibly warm person. And as different as the three ex-friends were, I can see that each one of them, at their core, was cold. And on some level, I recognized it even while we were friends, that these were not people who would really go the extra mile for me or for anyone, honestly. We had fun and there were moments of support and sisterhood, blah blah blah, but in the end the connections were shallow and it’s pretty clear their affection for me was shallow too.

Even the best of people and friends get pretty busy and don’t always keep in touch and these days logging into Facebook makes me feel lonelier rather than less.

I know we’ll meet new people and we’ll find people we click with. There’ll be shopping and coffee and potluck dinners and grilling in the park and drinking and silliness and friends to pet-sit for us when we’re out of town and friends to pick up from the airport and all the joy that comes with that. It just takes time.

But in the meantime I’m lonely.

It’s hard to deal with stresses big and small on not enough sleep. Between heat, stress, and our damn kitten pawing at the door early in the morning, I have not been sleeping well. Which has left me ill-equipped to deal with the soul-sucking, self-esteem crushing annoyance that is job hunting. I had pinned my hopes on the one big publishing house in town until I finally emailed a former mentor who works at the New York office and she told me that the branch here doesn’t do editorial. Aargh!

So back to the drawing board. But I have some new leads. And tomorrow I start volunteering at an animal shelter, which will get me out of the house for a few hours and I can stop feeling so damn useless.

I had recently cut back on the time I spend at Huff Po/Salon etc. because it was driving me up the wall and I didn’t like the correlation between time spent reading political coverage and my cynicism level. But then Palin came on the scene and I got sucked back in. And blood pressure, it goes through the roof.

Thank God for Jon Stewart. Last night’s Daily Show was just what I needed.

Water sign is…sleep-deprived, unemployed with no good job prospects in sight, and pissed off at the state of the world. Why the hell isn’t the MSM paying any attention to the police brutality in St. Paul? Has there ever been a group of people who could match the Republican party’s level of rank hypocrisy? What kind of country are we living in?

Needless to say, I’m in a foul mood. Will go find way to shake it off.