I fell into a deep chasm in the last week - the chasm called "trying to decide if I should leave my job". Over the past month I have been going through the interview/job process with two companies. They are very different places of employment who essentially offer the same services. One is a small start-uppy company that is doing really well and one is a massive corporation that is doing really well. Both were looking to hire me as a non-travelling SharePoint consultant. Meaning I would go to clients in the Chicagoland area and develop on the SharePoints for them.

So now I have two job offers. I've turned the smaller company down. Their benefits weren't that great and loml and I are talking about trying to start a family at some point in the nearish future (near being relative). And I was about to accept big company's offer today - when my organization pretty shockingly decided to counteroffer. 

All this is just to say, I haven't fallen off of the plan to write a blog post twice a week. I'm still committed to keeping this up, as soon as my life is in order again. I hope that means that regular posting will resume next week.

In the meantime, I'll be deciding where I want to spend my future employment.

One of the things that has really been hitting home for me in the past year or more is how often something I believe about myself or about my relationships turns out to be not all that true. Sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way. Alright fine, more often in a bad way. It's not that I'm delusional or anything, I just think I'm a sugar-coater sometimes and overly optimistic.

An example from today: I was explaining my relationship with someone to a third party, explaining their life, etc. And I slowly realized that everything I was saying sounded pretty terrible. I don't want to go into specifics here, but it kind of became clear that I have very little in common with this person and that a part of me doesn't respect their choices. A few years ago I probably would have talked myself out of this or come down really hard on myself for not being kind or charitable or empathetic. But today I just thought, wow, our lives really are that different and I really don't know about those choices. And I didn't accuse myself of bitchiness, I just let it sink in that this relationship, like many, might not be what I thought it was of what I want it to be.

Ah realism. Being friends as we get older just gets harder. It's about common threads and there are a billion different threads out there - the probability of finding a match just seems so low. I used to be hard on myself for not having a lot of friends, but at this point, I feel fortunate to have the close friends that I do.

Oh...

I wish that people had a marquee on their forehead (shirt?) that broadcast their intentions.

• I want to just be your friend.
• I want to be more than your friend.
• I want you.
  
• I want to just be your friend.

I think this would solve some confusion (and many awkward situations) without ruining the story. Because what you intend is not often what you actually get.

• My intention is to kiss you.
  
• My intention is to get out of here as quickly as possible.
  
• My intention is to manipulate you into helping me do x, y, z.
• My intention is to have some fun.

I wish. And at the same time, I don't.

A year ago...

Yesterday, as friend Alex was looking through all her stuff (preparation for a move), she found a letter from me. It was from approximately a year ago. In it I had listed some goals for this coming year...

1. Graduate. I accomplished that.
2. Buy a condo (or prepare my finances to buy a condo). I'm maybe inching closer to that? My problem is of my own making because I want something above any acceptable price range for someone with my income. I'm saving more now than I was a year ago. So I am slowly working my way there...
3. Maintain. I think this one had to do with working out. At this time last year I was working out 4 times a week. Yeah, that died pretty quickly. But I do have plans to get back to the gym. And I also have a WiiFit. So i think the plan will be:
   • Cardio at the gym (if I can manage it, 3-4 times a week). Likely the elliptical but I've heard good things about some of the classes.
   • WiiFit every day. I think I'll try for every day, but I'll be happy to average 6 times a week. The yoga already has my muscles aching.
   It also had a bit to do with happiness. I think, since November of 2005 (wow, three years) I've been slowly climbing back into a happy place. And I do think I've mainly maintained my happiness. I can't say I'm perfectly happy (ahem, and who is?). But in general? On average? Mostly happy.
   

I wonder where I'll be in a year.

The presence and absence of...

Quite a while ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend about hope. She wasn't in the best place or mood...and she was wondering if hope was a good idea at all. Because in her mindset - doesn't hope just lead to disappointment? If you hope and hope for something, and then you don't get it...well, isn't that worse than never hoping at all?

My response was that her approach required the death of hope - only when you give up hope will you see the disappointment (in other words, you won't notice that you haven't gotten what you want until you stop hoping for that thing).

I've been thinking about it more...and I think my hope is a general kind of hope - which makes it possible to imagine that my hope will never die. I don't hope for a certain boyfriend or even really a boyfriend or for a moment where birds sing, the sun beams down, eyes meet, he twirls me around. That's silly. I hope in more general terms. I hope to meet people, to find love, to love myself. And, if the love thing never happens for me, to be happy single. My hope isn't mutually exclusive.

I was thinking about hope yesterday because I did a silly and hopeful thing: I clipped a coupon for something no single girl would need. In the hopes that I might need it before it expires....

Wobble...

OK all, so this weekend I get my hair chopped off...and I have no plan. No plan. It's actually a little scary now that it's so close.

I don't have much to blog about, but I did want to outline my "build up your horrible body image/self-esteem" plan. Two of my friends were bothered by the last bachelorette party blog post. And after chatting, I realize I have some self-esteem issues. So, my short-term plan is to artificially inflate my body image/self-esteem through...artificial means. This plan involves:

• Hopefully hot new hair cut. I don't think it's going to be as short as I'm willing to go, so even if I hate the first cut, there will always be somewhere to go with it...right? Right.
  
• Wearing a full face of makeup (for me that just means foundation + mascara) a few times a week. At least once a week to work, if not way more. I need, need, need to look in the mirror under those hideous fluorescent lights and not think "Oh, you look skeletal and dead tired today. Pretty awful really".
• Starting to gain muscle. See below for lengthy discourse on how I hate that I want to do this, but feel for my sake, I have to right now.

My sister wrote a lovely post about a book she read and about how awful it is that there is a societal pressure to be thin...and one of the comments said exactly how I feel (and yes, I'm going to quote a comment):

the saddest part is that I see my friends and think about what amazing, intelligent, truly beautiful women they are, but I can't see that in myself, because all I can see is the many ways that I don't measure up to the standard of beauty set by magazines

And I'm not sure how to fix that. So I'm going for the artificial ways. I'm not going to diet. I'm tired of dieting. But I do desire muscle. I would very much like my arms to have tone instead of being entirely like gelatinous blobs of spotty fat (spotty because of that pesky skin condition, keratosis pilarsis, which won't go away...and the only way to make it better is to use gross ointments and lotion. Not worth it).

So I'm joining the gym that is right around the corner from work and that is discounted for me. The only time I ever enjoyed...moving...was when I was using an elliptical. So, I'm hoping I can get back into the swing of hitting the gym...for 30 minutes or so. I also have high hopes for classes. I would very much like to try "Cardio Party" or spinning. Yes. Spinning.

That's the plan kids. And it starts Monday.

Harry and hairy...

Two unrelated mini-posts today.

Harry as horcrux?

For a while now I've been convinced that Harry will die in book 7. I hold the belief that in order for Voldemort to be be destroyed, Harry will have to be destroyed as well. In other words: Harry is one of the horcruxes (per JK Rowling's site, this is the correct spelling). Proof o' Horcrux-iness (from Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 18):
Harry: Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?
Dumbledore: It certainly seems so.

Hairy blogging issues...

I've discussed this with more than one person over the last few days...but sometimes the whole public blogging thing can sort of hamper the point of a blog. If everyone you know and love knows where your blog is, you can't exactly be talking smack about these people (ok, the truth is that I wouldn't talk smack, I'd more talk about my frustrations with these people).

So what do you do? Sometimes you just can't make a situation hypothetical enough for the people not to know that you're talking about them. Do you hope that their feelings won't be hurt by some possibly uncomfortable talk about them and just blog about it? Go elsewhere and get a private blog? Or just keep it out of the blogosphere all together? It just feels like this blog suffers from my lack of complete honesty/forthrightness with who I am/who the people I love are. And since this is a personal blog...it not reflecting me feels a little...short?

Dips toe into murky waters...

I'm about to talk about religion. Be warned. I know there are people who read this site who have completely opposite beliefs to mine and I absolutely hope to not offend anyone...

I just finished reading a really short "pro-atheism" book called Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Basically I decided I needed to read an "atheist manifesto" (my words, not a description of the book) to learn about what intelligent, learned atheists have to say.

For part of the book (mostly the beginning) I had a bit of a hard time - I guess it felt like an attack on Christian morality and I personally, am very much of the non-confrontational, what you believe is what you believe nature. I think a lot of my problem with it was that, while I do find it incredulous that intelligent people can take the word of the Bible to be the be-all, end-all of moral teachings, I can't judge a Christians morality based on a silly belief. Yes - if they act out some of the more ridiculous teachings, then they would be immoral (kill your wife if she's not a virgin on your wedding night, etc). But I think a lot of morality is based on action rather than words. (I do want to state though, that I found it interesting that Harris used abortion/stem-cell research as an example of skewed morality. Believable to me).

The questionability of the prophecy stuff was totally interesting (why didn't God specifically predict that major tsunami? The internet? Katrina? If he's omniscient/omnipotent, he should have known upon creation of the Bible that these things were going to happen...so where is mention of them?).

And then he got into the science stuff. The proof that God exists. And this is where I really agreed with the whole thing. Not believing in evolution? The fact that our country is one of the only developed countries that has a contingent of people rallying to put creationism/intelligent design in science books? The fact that our country is sort of stunting itself with all this religious stuff? SCARY. Makes me love the UK all that much more...

I actually would sort of recommend this book to anyone - believers and non. It's only 91 pages, so a quick read. I'll probably read more this summer, so watch out. And, if any of you have read a book about where atheism has gone askew, I'd be interested in reading the other side too...

A quick random note: I agree that it is sort of random to have the term atheist at all. Sam said something like: We don't have a word for other nons. You don't have a term for a non-astronomer, for a non-biologist..so why have a word for a non-theist?

I'm lame...

I didn't go to class. I just couldn't do it. Ok, fine, I could. But I'm a wuss, I didn't want to go...so I didn't.

Have you ever had a conversation or moment where someone makes you feel completely uninteresting? And then, 10 minutes later after the conversation is over, while you're still feeling totally uninteresting, you look back and cannot for the life of you figure out why you feel that way. Nothing was said, done, implied that made you get to this point. So what the hell is going on?

The only conclusion I came to is that I actually sort of like the two people who I spent loads of time chatting with today. So maybe I wanted to seem interesting, but since I was mostly listening I couldn't impress upon them the utter coolness that I embody. OK. That's a stretch. But I know that I'm interesting. I'm not a boring person (although some of you may argue that I tend towards boring in my social choices). But personality wise I think I'm interesting. It was weird today to feel that...maybe that's what it's like to feel like you are hopefully making new friends and want them to like you? It's been so long...I'm rusty here...

And on a mostly unrelated note, I was jokingly called a cat lady today (no offense was taken, context was key). And suddenly, it hit me that if I had two dogs, I'd be a kick-ass chick. But two cats? Oh, cat lady...watch out! For me, it's about living with animals. Someday I'll have a dog. I don't know if I'll have more than one at a time, but I'll probably have a cat too. And I bet if I had a dog (although I think white fluffy dogs are still "cat lady" material - but I'll never have one of those. I think my first dog will be a rescued greyhound) I would never hear that cat lady crap - even if I had a dog and 3 cats. Why is that?? Dogs add cool factor?

Red Hot Box o' Questions...the third...

in order of importance, how would you rank love, spirituality, freedom and happiness?

I like this one more than the others so far. I do have to say, I think this would be far more interesting (in fact SUPER interesting) if I were a religious person. Thinking about some of the people I knew in high school I think that their ranking would be amazingly interesting.

In my case, it goes as follows (with some explanation attached):

Happiness first. For me I think happiness encapsulates love and freedom. I think there is no happiness without love and freedom. So, in this sense I feel like I am putting those things first as well.

Love second. I think that if I had the people I loved around me, freedom wouldn't seem so important (although to be honest, I might change my mind in that situation). But thinking about a free life, in any sense of the word, without the people I love...well, isn't much of a life at all.

Freedom third. I value my freedom highly...and for a few moments I did consider putting it second. But...freedom alone isn't enough to fulfill or make me happy.

And of course...spirituality last. Because this isn't really a part of my life.

An easier one to take part in, bloggers?