I’ve been swamped for the past few days and out of the blogosphere. Seems like all of my friends decided to be free on the same weekend. Made it out to see Hansel & Gretel with zero expectations. It wasn’t horrible but certainly not great. I didn’t fall asleep or demand a refund, so it’s better than some of the crap I’ve seen. Also saw Parker and it was good. Had dinner with a friend at the Olive Garden and we closed the place down, LOL. I kept thinking, “I’m getting sleepy because it’s about bedtime now.” The hostess sat us by High School Musical and I’m like, “We need to move. I hate kids and they don’t need to hear our discussions.” Damn teenagers.
The weather has been so unpredictable and crazy. I had a bad attack of hay fever yesterday and spent a fair amount of time sneezing, itching, blowing my nose, and wiping my eyes. All that said, I actually do hope we get an early spring. I’m tired of the cold weather and the cloudy, dreary days. I’ve thought about getting a light box or a dawn simulator, but they’re so expensive. To me, it seems like it would be terrible to spend $200 on something and discover it doesn’t accomplish what you hoped for. So that’s been an internal debate for me. I think it’s a struggle sometimes to get out of the winter doldrums and resist the urge to hibernate. My anxiety lady told me the story of a patient who described her depression. She made the comment, “When I was depressed, all I wanted to do was lay in bed. When I wasn’t out of the house to work, I was in the bed. Once I got out and forced myself to do more, I realized that the bed was not the friend to me that I thought it was.” I agree with that. The hardest part of momentum is getting started. Truly. Once you get in the habit of doing something—working harder, exercising, getting more sleep, whatever—it is easier to deal with. In my experience, it seems like when you lay around for hours on end, 90%+ of what you do is play a negative record in your head. And the more you play that record, the easier it is for the needle to slip into the same old groove. Part of my current struggle is: when I’m no longer filling my head with everyone else’s dramas and problems, what do I fill the space with? It naturally creates a void when people leave your life, whether you punted them or vice versa. I spent such an inordinate amount of time worrying about others. One of my anxieties, for example, was regarding a friend’s financial situation. Since we were close friends and she was not financially independent or apparently willing to be, I was nervous indeed that if anything ever happened to her support system, she would look to me for either a “loan” (which would never be paid back) or an opportunity to move in rent-free. I couldn’t bear either idea and would sometimes worry about how to deal with that when it happened. It wasn’t a baseless anxiety but it wasn’t really something I should have been obsessing over either. Had that day come when she and I were still friends, all I could have said was, “No. I’m not comfortable with doing that. You are an adult. Figure this out for yourself.” Cut and dry. Nothing to agonize over.
But it’s difficult to find a new tune to play. It’s like the paralysis of choice: when you are bombarded with options, you find it difficult to choose. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html?_r=0) I’ve done a great job of filling up my time productively. I’m back in the saddle with my workouts.*I’ve been stitching and bitching, although the scarf I’m working on is slower going than I would’ve expected. I’m spending time with more friends and am also willing to do things solo. I’ve adopted the attitude that if there’s something I want to do, I go and do it whether I have company or not. I’ve found that life works much better that way. I don’t need a “plan” and I don’t need every free moment to be scheduled. If I want to go do something, I go. But I’m still struggling with the headspace. The more you tell your brain “Don’t think about x,” the bigger the temptation becomes. “You can think about anyone or anything in the world except a, b, c, and d.” So naturally, a, b, c, and d are on your mind too much, LOL. I remember one of my mentors telling me, “It’s ultimately up to you how much headspace you want to give to a person or problem. That’s one area where something negative can hold you hostage for God knows how long.” That’s so true and yet so difficult to get around. When you’re watching your calories or carbs and you can’t have chocolate cake, you think about it and nothing sounds quite as good. That’s just human nature. The story of the Israelites leaving Egypt is something I still go back to. You don’t want to go back to Egypt but you haven’t made any memories yet of the Promised Land, so Egypt is a place you think about more than you should. So that part of it is my biggest battle these days. I’ve left and I don’t want to go back. I know the life I was living making myself a slave to other people and obsessing over stuff outside of my control were not healthy. But I now have to determine what to think about instead.
*UDT ended last week and I was sore as a mutha. I started regular weight training with a 3 day split on Saturday morning and I can definitely say that it was worth the 4 weeks of misery. I’m already stronger than I was and, as I expected, my lats and traps are getting definition already. I managed to irritate a shoulder by doing a barbell shrug with poor form and too much weight, but I’ve recovered from that, thank God. I’m not overly fond of doing cardio on the non-weight days but I know it will help get rid of the fat faster.
Now for more viewer mail.
“ . . . A good friend works in the same office as me. We’re in different departments but we both report to the same boss. Since we’re friends on the job and off, I told her some personal things that I now wish I didn’t. One thing is that I am not satisfied at the company anymore and I am looking at other firms. I thought I could trust her but I found out that she sabotaged me with our boss. She told him that I have been looking and then told me she did that in an effort to make me stay. She said she hopes that he will increase my pay or give me a promotion. I’m not sure if I am being naïve or cynical but I think she is bullshitting me. I feel like I have lost a friend, my job security and the trust of my boss. I’m not sure what to do.”
Ah. The classic “your work friends are not the same as your real life friends” rears its ugly head again. Even though you say this lady is your friend on the job and off, trust me: there ain’t no such thing. It’s OK to hang out with colleagues off the clock if you choose to; you simply must guard yourself and not say or do ANYTHING that you will later regret. Too late in this case since she backstabbed you. Regardless of her true motives, it doesn’t remove the “Et tu, Brute” dagger from your career. Maybe I’m a cynic too, but I kinda doubt that she was hoping she could get you a raise. WTF. I actually had a colleague during my 6 weeks in hell who ratted on me to the folks in another department. When I confronted him, he told me he was hoping I could go to work for another department and stay with the company. Maybe that was his real motive, I dunno, but I was sure pissed off at him for torpedoing me like that. It’s best to leave on your own terms and not be forced out on someone else’s timeline. Right now, you’re probably hurt because of the friend’s betrayal. It’ll smart for a bit, but once you move on from the job, you’ll recover from that. The more distance you put between you and something dysfunctional, the less power it has. You gain clarity and you are able to see the situation more objectively when those raw emotions are subtracted. My guess is that once you leave this job and you are not spending time with her anymore, you will start to “remember” other things about this person and you’ll come to a conclusion about what her motives truly were. In any case, since you haven’t been happy at work and were already looking, I would do damage control as best as possible to avoid being canned and speed up your job search.
