putting the pieces back together

i was hanging out in my old neighborhood with a close friend the other day, and the commute home depressed me, and was just a reminder that my life has changed so much and so quickly. sometimes i feel like i broke my life or my life was broken and i'm struggling to put the pieces back together. it just made me miss the days when i felt like i was in control, and everything was transpiring as it was supposed to. but i guess, in retrospect, everything wasn't proceeding along because then it would still be like that. i really do believe that everything in life happens for a reason so i can't, in good conscience, disavow that now because i don't like where my life is. but in a way, i keep trying to tell myself that my life isn't that bad, and that it could be worse. i'm not homeless so that's a plus. and i was miserable at my last job; every day was just another in a string of gray, boring days and i felt like a zombie going through the motions. i was unhappy from day one, which was sad and depressing because on paper, it was supposed to be my dream job. so at least i don't have to go to the bad place, although going to the bad place guaranteed me a paycheck, which i don't have at the moment, and sorely miss. but i keep telling myself that i will enjoy my next job, that going there every day won't be painful, that just thinking about going there every day won't set me on edge or tie my stomach in knots, that i won't dislike most of the people i work with, but instead respect and like my coworkers. i keep telling myself that that's how things will happen, and that they will happen soon.

the pursuit of happiness...

i was hanging out with an old friend from high school the other night--the wonders of facebook--and we got into this deep, technically three-or-four-glasses-of-wine-deep, discussion of happiness. and he said he doesn't think he'd ever been really and truly happy. now, CP is probably one of the most sweet and loving people you will ever meet, and though i remember next to nothing about high school (and i didnt drink or do drugs so clearly another example of a time warp or something), i do remember thinking, i like that kid, he always seems so happy. at the time, i was listening to the smiths and morrissey almost exclusively, and pondering where i thought my life would or wouldn't go, and how i couldn't wait to get the hell out of brooklyn. i didn't have anywhere specific in mind, but like that natalie portman movie, anywhere but here was the perfect destination. even now when i hang out with CP, i think to myself, i like that kid, he always seems so happy so when he said it, i was completely dumbfounded. so i told him that he seemed like one of the happiest people i knew, and then asked if he was faking it. then he said he finds joy in the small moments and the simple things in life, but on the whole, isn't always happy. i don't know. i am confused. part of me struggles with what happiness is; i always thought you're supposed to find joy in the small moments and the simple things. extract the sweetness where you can, wring it out and hold on tight. but on the other hand, i know what he is saying because i feel the same way. i am not a morose or depressed kind of person (i don't listen to the smiths or morrissey that much anymore) and i always find myself laughing and enjoying myself, but i don't know that i am consistently and constantly happy. so i am not sure what definition of happy is right. are they both right? is it an individual personality thing? are some people just hardwired to feel happiness more often or more consistently than others? do some people just "get it" and know it's fleeting so they hold on tighter?

my brain is turning to mush

lately everything is exhausting, and i mean everything. people, daily errands, my mother. especially my mother. plus, it seems like everything takes me longer. it's like i am living in a vortex where time speeds up, but i slow down. i am in a weird time warp where i feel like i am either moving backwards or losing time.

i feel like in the amount of time that i have been unemployed i've gotten slower and stupider. or dumber. or both. words escape me. the other day i was writing something and i couldn't think of the word i wanted to use. it wasn't austere or severe, and it still escapes me. that was two days ago. i really have gotten dumber. so i am struggling with that. i feel like my brain is atrophying. maybe this is some weird darwinian-like experiment where only the smartest of the species survive.

i am trying to read more so that i can keep my brain engaged, hoping that someone else's words and brilliance, depending on the author, can act as a life preserver for my intellect.

pretty words on paper

"The insularity of their concerns made them strangely self centered, which in turn left them strangely immune to compassion."

i read that in A FORTUNATE AGE by joanna smith rackoff. great book. completely devoured it in a few days. loved, loved, loved. and that line definitely struck a chord with me because of what i am going through now. i'm learning a lot of things that i thought i already knew. i'm learning who my real friends are, and i'm learning that people can surprise you in both good ways and bad. i thought i was long-past being surprised by people; i'm a pretty good judge of character, and i've always been able to size a person up in seconds and KNOW them. i don't have time for people that i don't like (who does?) and i don't have time for fake friendships. i don't really do casual friendships. if you're my friend, you're my friend and we're family (but not in a mafia kind of way or anything). so it's been pretty enlightening to see who has been there for me, and who hasn't. it's amazing because it fills my heart up and breaks it at the same time. someone who i didn't think that i could count on has been the most amazing friend to me. and i am surprised by that, but i am also grateful. because right now, i don't know how i would get along without her. maybe sometimes i think she is the only one that gets "it" or gets me right now. and someone that i thought mattered really just doesn't anymore.

maybe that's the silver lining? maybe that's one of the lessons that i needed to learn. i am convinced that if i am going through this then it's because i need to learn a lesson; i think everything happens for a reason, and i can't disavow that now because i don't like the thing that is happening to me.

i've been told that i see things pretty black and white. maybe it's true. i think i just see them as they are, for me in my world. and i guess my world is black and white. i don't think people are bad; i think they sometimes don't care about anything but themselves. and not in selfish way, but in a self-absorbed, this-is-my-world kind of way. i was like that too. it's not that i didn't care about people; it's that i wasn't always affected by other people's concerns. but now it's my concern, and i am more than affected.

i hate you, cablevision.

i lost my job. i moved out of my apartment. i am back at home. i feel like a loser. i feel like a failure. i feel like i am less than i am. and on top of it all, i had to lose my DVR. seriously. broke my heart into a tiny million pieces. i had like 6 years of TV on there including 13 going on 30, which is one of my favorite movies ever. my girl crush on jennifer garner lives on. i am telling you, if she met me, she'd like me and we'd be best friends. (i'm not as delusional as i sound.) countless episodes of supernatural because dean winchester and i are going to happen, and stuff i hadn't even had a chance to watch.

so between packing up my apartment, throwing myself countless pity parties and drinking enough wine to kill any number of large buffalo, i watched as much as i could before i had to take that sucker back to time warner cable. i never thought i'd say this, but i loved time warner cable. i didn't know it then, but i know it now. and the reason i know it now is because i am back in brooklyn and i have cablevision, which is an oxymoron because i couldn't think of a cable company with less of a vision. now cablevision just sucks. i wish i could put together a prettier phrase to tell you the extent of how much cablevision sucks, but i can't because it sucks so much that i am dumfounded. i've had the triple play package for almost two weeks now, and this week is the first time where everything works in conjunction.

first the phone didn't work. like why do i even need a landline if it's not going to work? the whole point of having a landline is for emergencies when you're cellphone doesn't work. thanks for nothing, cablevision. i've fallen and i can't get up, and my phone doesn't work. i had to reboot the box at least three times a day because the guide didn't work. now everyone knows that rebooting the box is annoying, but the cablevision box is a fresh kind of hell because it takes about 7 minutes for it to come to life and another 7 minutes to stop flashing "boot." 15 minutes every time, at least three times a day. it's a good thing that i don't have a job, cablevision, because that could get in the way of my life.

don't even get me started on the DVR. it's especially painful. i came home the other night and it was filled 100%--and this isn't even prime tv time. are you kidding me with this? i have at least 6 shows a night, not to mention my small NCIS-reruns-on-USA addiction. so 100% when all my shows aren't even on? well, it's a joke. it has practically no memory. it didn't even tape my shows yesterday because it was FULL. that never happened with my old DVR. sigh. my old DVR, which right now i am fondly referring to as the love of my life had at least 20 shows saved on it and was only 40 or 50% full. it's horrific. but i guess it could be worse...

this is me

i never thought i'd be 34, unemployed, and living back at home with my mom. it's not even that i had a whole life plan where i'd be married with 2.5 kids and a range rover. i don't even have a driver's license (i grew up in brooklyn, and never needed one. and since i made my life in nyc, i never even thought to try and get one). my plan was always about me and my career; i figured the husband and kid thing would work itself out later, when i was ready, when the right guy showed up, blah blah blah, when it was meant to be. clearly that hasn't happened yet.

i'm a working girl in the best sense of the phrase, not in the hooker on 42nd street sense. i'm smart, talented and creative. i'm a good worker. i get things done. a lot of my identity came from that; i'm not proud of it, and i never thought i would be that person who got their identity from a job. and i am not even sure that i got mine from my job persay, but just the fact that i was making a living writing, when the whole time growing up, everyone always told me to play it safe and become a teacher. and let's face it, children never want to settle for second best. they shouldn't have to. don't kill a dream before you get to plant the seeds and watch them flourish. adults are great at that; maybe it's fear or foresight, i don't know. what i do know is that i never wanted to teach, but apparently the whole summers off thing was something adults dreamed of. i didn't know what i wanted to do except write. doctor, lawyer, teacher were not for me. so i got my english degree, went into publishing, realized working on someone else's dream was slowly killing my soul and became a copywriter. it was a perfect fit. it couldn't have worked better if i'd actually planned on becoming a copywriter in the first place.

i did at stint at macys.com for about 5-1/2 years, and then headed over to avon products because i have been obsessed with beauty products ever since i can remember. basically since birth. i was there for about a year and a half until the day i was sitting at my desk and my creative director's assistant came over to me and said DL wants to see you. so i knew i was out because in the entire time i'd been there DL hadn't said anything more than hi to me, and you could tell that trifling salutation caused her physical pain. there was nothing that DL had to say to me except get out. it wasn't that simple; there was a whole HR thing, a package to discuss, blah blah blah, this is us telling you you're life as you know it is over. at least that's what it felt like.

i don't even know what to say. i thought about blogging about my unemployed/moving back home/slowly going insane experience, but resisted it because i always thought that people who blog about their daily lives are narcissistic a-holes. get a journal and get a life. i keep a journal--morning pages actually, thank you, julia cameron--and that's where i let my stuff out. then i was having dinner with my friend R and she was like you should blog about it. you're a writer, it could help. so we will see.