Shut Up Already

Aloha from the Big Island of Masochism, and a Farewell to Blogging

Well, I took the job.  I could outline for your the painful process I underwent to arrive at this decision, but I've already re-lived it for so many people that I just can't.

Work is going to take up every waking minute of my life and every iota of my brain power for at least the next six months.  I'm trying to think of it as a trial by fire, from which I will emerge transformed and cleansed, but from this vantage point it just looks terrifying.  I just now taped a teeny-tine reminder on my phone handset: You asked for it.

But the real problem with continuing this blog is that people in this office know about it.  Only a few, and I don't think they check it, but they could.  I already feel a little constrained because so many of the people I know in real life read this and are subsequently aware of what a lunatic I really am; if I can't even obliquely refer to work for fear of being dooced I'll really be constrained.

And this place is a lunatic asylum, honestly, so not writing about it in any way will be extremely difficult.

But this is where I need to be right now, so here I am.  It's my journey, as my boss and mentor told me when I accepted their offer.  The announcement of my triumphant return will go out this morning, and I will endure several hours of snide remarks about how I swore I would never come back, while I try to negotiate a mountain of backlogged work that would kill an ordinary mortal.  So it begins.

This blog will reappear in some form, at some point.  I'll keep this page up for a while before I archive these posts somewhere, and then start a new one at a secret undisclosed location.  If you would like to be informed when the new site kicks off, after I get my feet wet here, please comment below or shoot me an email (lendmesomesugar AT yahoo. c o m). 

I have really loved writing this thing, and I've appreciated every one of you who has read it.  Thank you so much.

Aloha from the Big Island of Masochism

Set Sail on the S.S. Self-Hatred

Well.

I still haven't heard anything.  But after spending all day yesterday reassuring people that yes, I did want the job, and yes, I'd thought about it long and hard, and yes, I was sure, I've sort of decided that...maybe I don't want the job.

But is that fear of failure and rejection talking, or the real, true me?  News flash:  the real Cara is nothing but a seething roil of fear of rejection and failure.  That's my shtick!  I've been kind of trying to overcome it lately, but old habits die hard and all that.  Any way, in this case I think my fears are justified.  They need someone who can jump in with both feet and take a load off the meetings manager immediately.  If I were hired, it would be because they like me, not because I'm qualified to do a mid-level meeting planning job.  The advantage I do have is that I know the culture of the place; most new hires don't last a year because the atmosphere is rather...special, in the Amityville Horror sense of the word. 

Actually, I think it's that aspect that I kinid of miss.  It's like a battlefield, and your colleagues get to be like war buddies.  But I can't negotiate the mine-laden terrain and learn how to march and fire and whatever else people in the army do at the same time.  Never mind the guy above me who was counting on artillery support and instead is being peppered with questions like How do you load this thing?

Good metaphor.  And a small example of why many new hires don't last.

So now I have about an hour to be sure that I'm sure that I don't want this job.  As sure, or more sure, than I was yesterday that I did want this job.  Then I have to figure out how to tell a bunch of people who spent a big chunk of yesterday wrestling with the decision of whether or not to hire me and conferring on the merits and drawbacks of The Cara Package that, Oops.  I changed my mind.

Do you hate me yet?  Because I do.

And worst of all, I still think I want some kind of job there but that possibility seems especially remote now.

I am fucking DYING for a cigarette.

Captain Codependent, Reporting for Duty

I should know in a couplemof hours whether or not I have a job here again.  Careful what you wish for, and all that.

The immediate benefit is that I'll have health insurance again, because I clearly need to be in therapy on a regular basis.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I was just asked to attend an interview today at 4.  Do I have to go home and change into a suit?

So Freaking Tired

I'm back from Philly, but I am not at all recovered.  I worked over 60 hours in 4 days, much of it spent on the move. 

My feet hurt.

But I loved it, really.  Maybe meeting planning is where it's at for me.  Who knows?

I'm having a hard time knowing what to blog about lately.  I'm spinning my wheels a little bit, and while I think that's what I need to be doing right now, it isn't excellent blog fodder.  I'm a little stymied by how many people are reading this thing lately, too; on the one hand, I'm glad because it keeps me from spilling undiluted angst all over the interweb, but on the other hand...hello, I have a lot of angst, as an unemployed, single, 30 year old woman who has no idea what she wants to do with her life.  I find myself wishing that this blog was a secret, so that I could be less circumspect about what I say here. 

But then I'd have to be more circumspect about the existence of this blog--or at least a little circumspect--and that would kind of suck, too.  Readership is, at the end of the day, how I measure the success of this thing I spend so much time on.  I wish that weren't true, but it is (well, level of readership and number of comments).   But, true to every other experience I've ever had, the more successful this project becomes the more dissatisfied I am.  I wish I'd done it all differently, want to start over, etc.  I am my own worst enemy that way, and even recognizing what's happening doesn't stop the process.

So, I'm so tired I can't sort out my thoughts.   I feel restless and anxious lately, and bored with my whole life.  Every day, I become convinced that what I need and want is something totally different than what I needed and wanted yesterday.  On the one hand, I kind of think that restlessness is my lot in life, and that a certain level of unhealthy anxiety is my genetic legacy, so I just have to learn to adapt and use it (them) to my advantage.  But I get so tired of second-guessing myself all the time. 

I have a whole other entry stewing about work-related stuff that I've realized since I've been back here, but I'm too tired to post it now.  Later, dudes.