Campfyre Stories

One year ago was about as horrible as things can get.  My father had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and from there it all went so fast that it really was a complete blur.  For the past few days I’ve been kind of trying to make sense of some of it and just to slow down the blur of memory and trauma that I currently have.

The beginning of 2007 was saying good bye and grieving, but it was also reconnecting with people who were lost or forgotten.  Seeing the love directed toward another person, unabashed, out in the open, without the restrictions that we (and sometimes society) places on us.  It was remembering to not take for granted the people who I love and the people who are there to support me when I am about to fall down.

What I find interesting, though, is that in some ways you would expect that to be indicative of what my year would bring, but it didn’t.  Instead of an increased amount of time with friends and family, I found that it was actually less.  I allowed people to drift away in a natural progression and turned to more of an internal growth.  I believe this had a lot to do with the grief process.

So I fixed the problems that had developed in my career and I worked hard to have a better relationship with my kid and to teach him responsibility.  I turned to making my apartment a home and trying to expand my social circle, to some degree successfully.

I know that I could go back through my blog and find all of the petty annoyances that I’ve dealt with (like warring with UPS and CDTA), but the truth is that after the heart wrenching start to my year and adjusting to having lost my father, everything else really does fall into the category of petty.

I’ve had some victories, though.  Not the least of which is to have been employed for the full calendar year.  It’s one of those things that oughtn’t be a victory, but after the run that I’ve had for longer than I’m willing to count, it’s certainly a nice change of pace.  And a very welcome one.

The one thing, though, that makes me exceptionally sad about this year has been the loss…  the lack of humor.  My father always had a bad joke…  one of the worst you’d ever heard…  and I don’t hear those anymore, from anyone.  It really hit me a few weeks ago when I was riding with one of the cabbies who knew my dad and he asked if I had any bad jokes to share.  It was at that point that I realized how little jokes were told…  at least that I heard; how few people have the ability to turn it into an art without it also being a stage act.  No one tells me jokes anymore…  certainly not the ones that are in exceptionally poor taste or are simply such bad puns that they probably shouldn’t have been told at all.  It takes a special kind of person to do that…  and the only one I know, maybe have ever known is gone.

So I move on.  This year with a little less laughter, a little more stability, a lot more clarity in where I want to go from here.  I move on because what other choice do we have?  I move on, away from the accomplishments and disappointments in the hopes of maybe getting a slightly better balance in the year to come.

Two resolutions for 2008:

1) Be a better ninja to the point where people acknowledge it.  Possibly make IT Ninja an accepted term.

2) Figure out how to reclaim the butterfly mojo and meet new people.

I am really ready for the year to be just over already.  The countdown is becoming painful.

My list is complete, although, I will admit that some things were pushed onto more of a resolution-type list.  NOT because I ran out of time, but because of the sheer size of the projects or the logistics of it.  For example, I easy-ed out on recaulking the bathtub and bought the caulk tape stuff and boy am I glad I did, since the previous caulk was silicone and NOT applied correctly and ridiculously difficult to remove.  Not only did I have to get all the existing caulk off the tub, I realized that I am going to have to recaulk the WHOLE thing, including the vinyl shower wall things.  For now the caulk tape suffices, but as big a a job as that is looking to be, there’s no way I would have gotten it done now.  So it’s both a check mark and a move to the other list.

Cleaning and sorting the storage room is a logistics problem.  I really need to borrow or rent a car for that weekend, so that I can take things to the Goodwill/Salvation Army.  I also intend for Spawn to help me get all the work in there done, since we’ve both just kind of tossed things in and shut the door.  That particular job was never going to happen before the new year.

So all of that is pretty good, especially how much work I accomplished and how it really did feel like more than I could possibly get done, but I did it!

My reward is only the sense of accomplishment.  I probably won’t even be going out on New Year’s Eve, since Spawn is with me that night and thinks that "New Year’s is highly overrated".  Even though I want to find something for the two of us to do, he’s insisting that he doesn’t want to do anything at all.  Which essentially means that he’ll be sitting around the house miserable and I’ll be lamenting the fact that I have nothing at all to do on my favorite holiday of the year.  That kind of sucks, so I really need to come up with some kind of a plan to make it better than "Stuck with the kid who refuses to do anything."

But, really, at this point, I’m over the whole 2007 thing.  I was telling my step-sister about the year that was and, while some good things did happen, and quite a few bad things did NOT, the culmination of it all was not positive.  So let’s move on already…  I don’t want to wait anymore.

It was a good holiday, but I’m glad it’s over.  We started our festivities on Friday (Winter Solstice) with the immediate extended family – Mom and her partner, two step-siblings (and one step-sibling-in-law?), me, Spawn, Dragonmaker, his fiancée, their son, my brother Chaos, his daughter, my other brother RC2, his girlfriend and a friend of the family.  Whew!  Food and singing and presents and more food and conversations and just a whole lot.  It was pure chaos, but not in a bad way, just a little overwhelming.

Spawn and I spend the rest of the weekend finishing up the list of things that need to be done before the end of the year (don’t talk to ME about caulk!) and playing our new video games.  On Monday, I attempted to mail a package to an imaginary friend of mine.  I figured, since we were going to the movies anyway, it would be easy to stop at the post office at the same time.  Not so much, really, since we got off the bus at 12:15 and the PO closed at noon. 

Oh well, Sweeney Todd was phenomenal.  If vast amounts of blood is okay with you, then GO GO GO, right now, to see it.  It was that good.  I convinced Chaos to come with us, but didn’t tell him it was a musical (although, really, more of an operetta).  It was good because he wouldn’t have come if he knew there was as much singing as there is, but he really enjoyed the movie.

Tuesday was, of course, Christmas Day, but also my niece’s birthday, which is always hard.  We went out to my grandparents’ house for feasting and presents.  It was a really nice time.  Spawn came with me, which is unusual, and ate with us before Dragonmaker picked him up and took him to their (other) celebration (Dragonmaker’s in-laws-to-be).  Can you imagine?  14 years old and he gets two feasts in a span of only a few hours.  He seemed pretty pleased about it.  I know that my family was glad to have him there, since he usually winds up with his father on Christmas.

And now, back to work.  Four days in a row is nice to have, but any more would have been too much, I think.  Getting back to my regular routine is almost like getting a chance to catch my breath.  There was all just so much going on, I’m ready for a break.

I met a man today who said that it seemed like no one was interested in politics anymore.  My immediate reply was "Well, we DO exist," and from there we had one of the best political discussions that I’ve had in a very long time.

It wasn’t about who we liked or didn’t like, it wasn’t about where we stand on any issue at hand; it was about researching candidates, the superficiality of the mainstream press, how far too few people are interested in history and the ramifications of past actions on the present…  and the future.

We stood in the cold for at least a half hour just talking about all the things that we both often think, but don’t have enough people to discuss it with.  We talked about all the candidates – pros and cons.  We talked about the economy and delved deep into how it affects peoples’ perception of the political sphere.  We talked about history repeating itself and what lessons we believe "the administration" (not necessarily THIS ONE, but ALL the administrations) have taken away from past actions and decisions.  We talked about partisan politics and the phenomenon of opposing branches (in the majority of terms) causing a stagnation of change under the guise of checks and balances.  We talked about the frog in boiling water.  We talked and talked and talked and both got more and more excited as the other spoke because we both had FINALLY found someone willing to, not debate, but really DISCUSS the country, and the world around us.

He’s a good 15 years older than me and has had a much different life experience than I, but we both came away from it feeling refreshed and relieved.  There was no argument because there was nothing to argue about.  Neither one of us had an agenda that we felt we needed to push on the other.  We were simply sharing our views on the world.  I wasn’t expecting that someone who spent almost 20 years in the USAF would see quite as eye-to-eye as someone raised by traveling street musicians as we did, but whatever path we each had taken, it led us to close to the same assessment of the world we live in.

Both of us found our jaws dropping when the other would make a point that hadn’t yet been considered.  We danced around everything that could possibly fall under the umbrella of "politics" and, if you’re really up on politics, it’s not hard to see that it touches almost every aspect of (our) society.  We pointed out interesting tidbits that the other might not know and I do believe we were both enriched for it.

I often feel isolated, especially at work.  I know that I’m perceived as "weird" because, try as I might, I don’t fit well into categories.  I don’t usually allow myself to discuss politics at work because you never know what negatives that could bring from peers or superiors, especially in the corporate environment where I work, but something made me let that particular wall come down and I feel a little less isolated now. 

If you’re anything like me, you search a LOT.  Probably you’re not anything like me, but most people search from time to time, so here’s a thing I want to share.

http://www.goodsearch.com/

This is a charitable search engine.  Whenever you search, it donates $.01 to the charity of your choice.  I’ve been using it exclusively since my mother sent it to me because my brother’s school (Harriet Tubman Free School – Albany, NY) is on the list.

It uses the Yahoo! search engine, so it’s pretty reliable in terms of results, but it’s also an excellent way to help out small organizations that can use your support.

Now, I certainly recommend donating to my brother’s school and supporting alternative school choices, but the list is extensive and you may find that’s there’s another worthy cause that you believe in.  Or, maybe you’re involved with a non-profit organization that could benefit from this neat and useful website.

In any case, I wanted to share this with all of you.

If I wanted a latte, I would order a latte.  As such, when I order a cappuccino, I expect to get a cappuccino.

Maybe I’m just a snob about this, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the baristas to know how to make the drinks they’re supposed to be selling and serving.

Coffee Drinks Illustrated

This is not the best illustration ever, since it’s hard to see exactly, but a cappuccino is equal parts espresso, steamed milk and milk foam.  Equal parts!  (That’s actually a lie, there is slightly more foam than anything else in a cappuccino, but I would settle for equal damned parts.)  A latte has more milk with a little bit of foam on top.

I know what I’m ordering.  *I* actually know how to make it, but I don’t (nor would it be a good idea for me to) own an espresso machine.

If I’m paying YOU to make me a $5 cup of coffee, you damn well ought to get it right.  I wonder if they make a pocket-sized, laminated card that I can take into the coffee shops with me.  Either that or I’m going to have to start being a hard ass and if there’s not foam, have them make it AGAIN, only this time the drink that I actually ordered.

And before anyone says it, I would agree that I am being unreasonable if it weren’t for the problem that out of the past 10 cappuccinos that I have ordered 7 of them have actually been lattes.

It’s always just been easy for me.  I enjoy talking to strangers.  When I was 4 I asked my mother why we shouldn’t talk to strangers because if we never talk to strangers, how are we ever going to make new friends?

So I meet new people on a regular basis and I make new friends fairly easily, but lately I’ve been finding that it’s not as easy as it used to be.  People are not as receptive and I don’t know if my radar is off or if I’m doing something wrong or if the butterfly mojo is simply gone.  Whatever it is, I don’t like it one bit.

Not that anyone does, but I don’t do well with rejection.  That’s an understatement.  I take rejection incredibly personally and wind up obsessing on everything that I’ve said and done that caused me to be rejected in the first place.  It causes me to put up a wall and retreat inside myself to lick my wounds, but the real problem is that it’s been happening so often lately that I find myself becoming more and more cocooned and reluctant to put myself out.

Thankfully I have some really good friends who not only get me, but get the whole thing.  The psychic tendencies that they display are also helpful as they wind up filling in the missing pieces…  the pieces I’m forgetting and remind me that those are the more important parts.

But, you know, I thrive on human contact.  I really enjoy talking to random people and having a passing conversation – on any topic, really.  (Except sports, I don’t really watch any sports enough to be well-versed.)  I talk to the guys at the bus stop, or the bus driver, or to the person ahead of or behind me in line in a store.  I talk to clerks and to people I pass in hallways, I talk to people in the laundromat and to the the people who say hello passing on the street.  I MAKE the effort.

And I can’t even blame it on the holiday season, because this has been going on for a while now.  The problem is that *now* it’s starting to affect me, to make me question my inner butterfly and that nagging feeling has started pestering me that it’s not worth the feelings of rejection and I should just give up.

Not only do I not want to give up, I honestly don’t know if it’s even possible for me.

But I don’t know how this can be reconciled.  I find myself thinking in stereotypes about men and women and, while it’s almost all based on personal past experiences, all it really does is continue the cycle and make me less interesting in seeking out the interesting stories of people I haven’t yet met.

I feel like I’ve lost something, but something intangible.  Grace or charm or any one of those things that is either there or it isn’t.  I don’t think that charisma is something you can learn to have, then again, had you asked me three months ago I would have said that I didn’t think it was something you could lose, either.  At least not without a good reason.

So is there some kind of resolution to end this on?  Is there some bright spot or hidden answer that has come about from tackling the challenge of saying all these things out loud?  I’m afraid that the answer to that is no, but at least I’ve gone ahead and written about it, because it really is plaguing me.

Let me start off by saying this is not an accurate title.  My life, at the moment, is not a mess, nor is my house at the point where it *needs* to be cleaned, but this is a mindset that I often find myself in.  It’s a Virgo thing. 

I was talking to Girl last night (or was it the night before?) and we were discussing that we, once again, find ourselves in a very similar point in our lives.  Most things are going well except for one minor(ish) point and one big gaping hole in the "What I need to be truly happy" list.  And, no, I’m not going to tell you what either of those, specifically are.  And for both of us, it’s the same thing in both instances.

But I came up with a plan some weeks ago.  I’m not going to actually obsess on this lack of whatever.  That just leads to Very Bad Things happening in my head.  Instead, I’m actively working to take care of ALL the little things that I keep putting off for whatever reason, and I intend to do it before the end of 2007 (which makes the countdown all the more important).

In my mind, this takes care of a couple of issues.  The first is that all those things will (finally) get done.  The second is that I will not be able to obsess over those two pieces because I’m too focused (theoretically) on those smaller goals.  The third is that, once everything is all put together and taken care of, if the missing pieces haven’t presented a solution without my interference or filled themselves in, I will be able to come at them from a fresh direction and without any niggling distractions or lingering "to dos".

Does this make sense?  In my mind it does.

So I wrote two lists, neither of which, I believe, is fully complete.  I discovered that most of the things I’ve been putting off can be resolved by something as simple as borrowing a stepladder.

And in the past two days I have cleaned and scrubbed and pulled all the furniture from the walls.  I have hung posters and things that have been waiting around to become decor.  I have pulled everything off of surfaces and cleaned the woodwork and washed the glass that’s readily visible.  And it’s stupid things like dusting the top of the refrigerator (which is above my head…  I can’t even SEE up there) and emptying out the medicine cabinet, throwing away the things that need to go and reorganizing everything.  It’s all the things that you don’t think about, or you don’t see or…  you know, the things that just don’t get DONE.

There are no more excuses.  I have been living in this apartment for over a year and I still have boxes of books that haven’t even been sorted.  Some of the books that are on the available shelves are ones I don’t use, it’s time to cycle them.  My storage room has EXPLODED and I’m done with the dismissive phrase of "When I have time" because, you know, if we’re being honest here, I HAVE the time, it’s the motivation that’s been missing.  I don’t have better things to do, I have more desirable things to do, less productive things to do, things that only allow me to procrastinate further and not to see the things I don’t want to think about.  No more excuses.

So far, I am thinking about it LESS.  The things that I have dwelt upon for much of the year, I’ll be honest, I’m still dwelling on a bit, but not as much because I have all these other things I need to do and I keep thinking of new things that I should have put on my list.  All of this provides a good distraction.  I find that if you focus too hard on the things you wish you had, the things that are missing, you wind up getting too wrapped up.

So when Girl was venting about all the same problems I’ve been feeling I told her, "I’m going to give you the advice that I have given myself and that I am trying to follow."  And she thought about it and started listing out all the things that she had been putting off and fell right into the "my life is a mess, I need to clean my house" mentality, which we both understand.  I don’t know if she’s planning to follow it, but for my part, it seems to be working.

88%DRUNKARD

Because if she hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have ever even seen it.

I was overdressed.  Or maybe everyone else was underdressed.  Probably some combination of the two.  Either way, there I was, all dolled up, surrounded by a couple of guys in suits but mostly folks in varying degrees of business casual.  My very good friend said I wasn’t "overdressed" because I simply looked stunning.  My even better friend followed that up that I would have looked stunning no matter what I wore.  It’s a good thing I don’t rank my friends

So we had this meeting… and a pretty good dinner.  I had a minute to reconnect with an old coworker who I always really liked, but hadn’t seen in two years.  He’s coming to work for my company now and I couldn’t be more pleased about it.  I love getting the chance to catch up with people.  His reaction was "I thought it was you, but then I saw the [*indicates dress, hose, heels, makeup, etc.*] and I thought, nah, that can’t be her."  Heh.

Our manager sat down at our table and I had the whole thing all planned out…  what I was going to say, how I was going to explain about what I want to do, where I see my career going, etc, etc…  And how it actually came out was, "I want to be an IT ninja." 

"You want to what?"

Now, you have to understand, I’ve been saying this for years.  That what I really want to be is the IT ninja, and be able to skirt around processes if necessary, to do what needs to be done in the quickest way possible.  However, I have kind of revised the idea of what being an IT ninja means.  So I explained that, since I have already proven both to my company and to the company I am contracted to that I can do whatever they put in front of me (whether or not I actually have any experience doing it) , that they should utilize me as the person who can fill those roles as needed with a short learning curve.  I want to be involved in special, short term projects and I’m willing to travel, as long as I get to come back here for a little while when I’m done.

I want to be the IT ninja.  I’ll make the transitions with very little visible blood.  They’ll never see me coming and never notice that I’ve gone.

It was a good time, overall.  I wouldn’t really call it a party, but I’ve been calling it the "holiday thing", which seems pretty accurate.  The new company guy sat down and decided to get to know us, which led to him asking me "Where are you from?" and then claiming that it’s not a difficult question.  Well, I assume that’s true for most people…  it’s a one to three word answer, but for me the easiest answer is "I was raised in a VW bus by traveling street musicians."  And then I have to explain.

I gained some measure of infamy.  Apparently people talk about me (and I guess, in a good way).  In fact, I found myself sitting with people who are almost all relatively infamous within our company.  We have earned our reputations and we are acknowledged for it.  It’s nice, but a little strange.  I’m not used to it, but I think I could *get* used to it.

I am a magnet for good-natured teasing, even from the president of the company and people I have only just met.  I don’t mind, as long as they don’t mind me giving it back.  Everyone in the room learned my name and my meal choice for dinner…  in fact, when I introduced myself to a new person she said, "Oh I know who you are, [the president] pointed you out to…  well…  everyone.  Didn’t you have the salmon?"  Heh.

I think that I pulled out enough credibility and the handful of connections I already had there to bring a measure of uncertainty to some of the people that I wasn’t, actually overdressed, they hadn’t risen to the occasion.  For my part, I mostly forgot about it, except for the stiffness of my hair.  Let me just say, after having been producted into submission, the snakes are incredibly well behaved (and soft, and manageable) today.

And we stayed until the END.  If it was a bar, we would have closed it.  As it was, we were the last to leave…  and then hung around in the lobby gossiping in ways that would help the business, putting out a good word here and there for a person, trying to make that memorable impression a little bit harder to forget.  I think we succeeded.

It was good enough.  I think I’ve never felt like I mattered as a person to anyone I’ve worked for.  It’s a really nice feeling to have and, as long as they make me a ninja, I can’t imagine ever doing anything else.

I mean, really, how often can you tell your boss that you want to be a ninja and not have them question your mental health?  I would suggest that other people try it to see what happens, but I think that, for most of you, it would probably not be a very good career move.