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you could paint a beautiful mural over every ugly mural in the world!

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Oh, people. Darling darling people.

When I left corporate america like six months ago, I was this girl: money doesn’t matter! Work is hard and not rewarding! And I’m required to be there for like nine hours a day, doing things I don’t care about! School will be DIFFERENT!

Three weeks ago, I was this girl: I miss my monnnnnnnney.

Apparently I underestimated my appreciation for the finer things in life. Green papery things, to be specific. I allowed that appreciation to lure me into a possible situation where I’d be working, instead of schooling.

Job wise, though, everything got a little wacky today. I had to sign something for school and I’d been dodging commitments that I wasn’t sure I could meet, and everything came to a head. My prospective boss wanted me on board, had my offer letter written and signed by HR, and just needed the signature of the company president. The company president, at literally the last possible second, declined to sign. He cited ‘budget’ concerns.

What about MY budget concerns, buddy?

Ok, I joke. Seriously. Sure, I miss having expendable income, but I’m not actually broke. I’m, essentially, a gigantic baby who is incapable of going for six months without new shoes.

I’m glad to be signed on for another semester, though. I’m surprised by how glad, really. I have a happy relaxed brain.

Not only that, I have four day weekends.

Everyone says ‘you can’t take it with you’, right?

I’m thinking my four day weekends will ease the pain of my smaller paycheck.

Remind me of that during midterms, would ya?

Posted in girl geek, it's all about me, money to burn (apparently), school, work | 3 Comments »

Poooooor me

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

Let me preface this by saying this whole thing is a metaphor. Analogy. Whatever- I have one boyfriend and I like him.

Imagine that you are in love with two men. Or women. One of them is someone you used to be with, awhile ago. You had your problems but when it was good it was fantastic. You broke up, though, because you thought you needed something new. A different direction. Your new (wo)man is good for you. Consistent. Even relaxing.

Then your old love returns, and says ‘I’ve fixed a lot of what you hated- please come back’.

You torture yourself. Did you give your new love a chance? Sure, you don’t really see a future with your new love, but are you just allowing yourself to be blinded by the passion you used to feel?

You decide. You’re going back. It’s what you want… you think.

Then your old love says ‘ok, great – just hold on a couple of days. We’ll totally be together, just let me work a few things out.’

You, being practical, continue to see your new love while you wait – you don’t want to end up alone! – but whatever magic there was is rapidly fading.

SIGH.

In order to understand what the fuck I’m talking about, do this: For ‘old love’, insert ‘work’. For ‘new love’, insert ‘school’. For ‘passion’, insert ‘paycheck’.

For SIGH, insert ‘oh bloody hell, can I please please please just know what I’m doing next week? If I should be doing my homework? If I have money to spend?’

Arg.

Also. I know I’m lucky to have a choice at all, and even luckier that both choices are good. Sadly, that doesn’t make the whole thing less frustrating.

Tags: jesus christ I'm a huge baby
Posted in I'm a cranky brat, really? REALLY?, school, work | 2 Comments »

so there’s that

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

I recently learned two interesting things.

We – we being people in general – are not good at guessing what will make us happy.
We are unable to discern actual happiness from simulated happiness.

#2 doesn’t mean the kind of happiness you get from beer. It means the kind you get from embracing something in your life that isn’t great, from saying over and over again that you don’t mind, from, basically, faking it until you make it.

The upshot of these two things is that agonizing over choices is truly pointless. You suck at knowing which of two things will make you happier, AND you’ll just make your own happiness if you do chose the wrong thing.

Yesterday in the car Crockett and I were talking about some folks we know. Both of these people take their lives very seriously. They’re not without humor, of course – one of them is the funniest dude I know – but they’re incapable of lightheartedness when it comes to their own situations. Crockett and I think we both tend towards the alternative, particularly when it comes to careers. We both have sort of an ‘eh’ attitude when it comes to deciding how we’ll spend 40+ hours a week. “Well, try it. What’s the worst that can happen.” Perhaps it will be hilarious and I’ll get blog fodder. Perhaps it will be so terrible even fake happiness won’t cut it. Won’t know unless you try. Etc. Etc.

This commentary is leading to a specific event.

I’m interviewing for a job.

This afternoon.

I’m not giving up on school, don’t fret. (At least not yet). I don’t have a good sense of what the next six months looks like. This is sort of a out-of-the-blue-left-field opportunity that hey, what the hell, amirite.

The thing is, if I’m going to get real happiness one way and fake happiness the other, and I won’t be able to tell the difference, and I have no good way of knowing which is which, how on earth am I to decide anything?

In general I veer towards new as opposed to old. As in, something I haven’t tried before something I have.

How do you make big decisions?

Tags: no really I want to know
Posted in advice (requested or otherwise), girl geek, school, work | 1 Comment »

it’s math time!!

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Ready?

3 classes. 9 hours/week.
Commute to and from classes. 3 hours/week.
Homework for each class, 15 hours. Total – 45 hours/week.
Internship. 20 hours/week.
Research assistant position. 20 hours/week.
Sleeping, a modest 8 hours per night. 56 hours/week.

Total hours available in a week: 168.

Total hours consumed in a week: 153.

Hours remaining in which I can hang out with Crockett, exercise, walk the dogs, read,blog, watch tv, and try to keep my friends: 15.

Totally reasonable.

I would like to offer a formal ‘hell yeah you are’ to those men and women who work full time and go to school. Especially those that have children. Oddly, I’ve never met or heard of single fathers working and going to school – only mothers. A societal trend or merely a coincidence of my location?

Either way, y’all are stars of the rocking variety.

Tags: hey soul sisters, it's a good thing I have Netflix to help get me through
Posted in school, work | No Comments »

Cotton and Under, sitting in a tree

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Did I mention I’m writing a romance novel? Despite the fact that I have never read one?

This, to me, somehow seems like a practically guaranteed source of income.

Romance Fiction Sales from 2005–2008

(source: Simba Information)

2005: $1.4 billion

2006: $1.37 billion

2007: $1.375 billion

2008: $1.37 billion

See? Someone must be writing a lot of damn books, seeing as how the average romance novel sells for about 50 cents.

Surprisingly, I’m not concerned about the feminist (or otherwise) statement made by such a genre. I think that a large portion of the people who judge such things don’t like that an entire category of books is written for and about women and love, but that in and of itself doesn’t make it a non feminist pursuit.

What I’ve decided is that my book is going to have to pass the Emma test. The Emma test is a variation of the Bechdel test, which gives a movie a thumbs up or down based on the answer to three simple questions.

Are there two women in the movie?
Do they talk to each other?
When they talk, is it about something other than a man?

The Emma test adds a fourth question.

4. Can the same be said for men?

Now that that’s out of the way, all I need to decide is what to name my heroes. At some point I decided that I wanted my female hero to be named Cotton (please don’t ask me to explain, because I have no idea. Perhaps it has to do with Crockett, or the cottonwood tree in his backyard, or what I was wearing that day. My mind boggles … my mind sometimes.) I asked Crockett for non-traditional name suggestions for my male hero, and he suggested….

Under.

Cotton and Under.

He didn’t know I’d chosen Cotton at the time, so there was no subconscious underwear reference on his part. I wasn’t going to use it, but it’s actually sort of growing on me – and what’s the downside of using names that make people think of underclothing in a romance novel?

No downside that I can see.

Cotton and Under it is.

Tags: first comes love then comes marriage
Posted in other people are sometimes funny too, turns out I'm a feminist, whoops, work | 3 Comments »

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