A{n odorless} Funk.

Lately I have found myself in a bit of a funk. I have about 4 blog posts started, waiting their turn to be finished. I have had to ask for a lot of help from my parents (the last people that I want to ask for help right now. I find that it sort of takes away from that whole "grown up" feeling I've been trying to cultivate). I have been fighting with my apartment complex for the last month to get them to take responsibility for flooding my apartment and paying for damages (that is one of the posts waiting to get written, BTW).

And each little thing takes a bit of wind out of my sails. Until I'm left floating, feeling alone (even though I'm not), and very unsure about what to do next.

Last night was the worst. I was really upset for no reason at all (oh the joys of being a girl) and then I watched Homeward Bound, which was a bad idea all around because it just made me cry more, and then I wallowed. Oh, there was wallowing and wailing.

Ok, actually, there was not a lot of wallowing or wailing, I just wanted to say them in the same sentence. It's fun.

But I was sad. And so I gave myself 5 minutes to be sad. And then I sat down and made some lists. Because lists are totally awesome.

I wrote down 10 reasons I suck at life. Then I re-read them and was sad. But then I said to myself, "Self, this is silly. You do not suck at life." So then I made a list of 10 reasons why my 10 reasons I suck at life are untrue or completely absurd. And then I re-read that and I laughed a little because really, some of my I suck at life things really were totally crazy pants.

And then, as an exercise in being nice to myself, I wrote down a list of 10 reasons why I am awesome sauce. And that one was a little harder. I think it's mostly because I have always used my ability to put myself down and make fun of myself as a defense mechanism (oh middle school ... you sucked. Alot.) and so saying nice things about myself is ... not normal. But I really did feel better about everything.

The Moral of the Story: Sometimes you just have to get out your crazy so that you can move on with your life in a sane(er-ish) manner than you could have if you just kept the crazy locked up inside you. Just ... don't let anyone read your journal. Then you probably won't have any friends.

If only I had a moon ladder, my life would be complete

I want so much that sometimes it hurts almost. Almost. Ok, maybe a little more than almost. It's the pull of desire for something (even if you have absolutely no idea what it is that you want) that starts in the center of your chest and radiates outward. Out toward the thing, whatever it is: physical, emotional, a specific event, an accomplishment of some sort.

I have decided that I am living a life that is mostly devoid of magic. And I am not like other grown ups who can go around without magic and be perfectly content. I need magic. I crave it. It is what I am radiating towards.

The only thing is I don't know where to start my search for this magic. It makes me feel very small. Like someone is telling me that I can totally make it to the moon, only they don't tell you that you should probably get a spaceship beforehand (ladders that tall just don't exist, I checked).

Sometimes I think that finding the magic will have to do with where I live and how I choose to live there. I imagine a huge back yard with huge, old trees and giant flowering bushes and so much color (green and blue and pink and purple and white and and and) that you might think that your eyes will melt out of your head. And a house that smells like cooking and baking. Warm bread, fabulous meals, cookbooks with broken spines and stained pages from years of being used and loved.

But in order to find the magic house, I have to have money. And in order to have money, I have to have a job. And that, my friends, is where I get lost.

A job that is magical. Something that I am good at and that I love to do all the time. A job that, if I did have to work more than 40 hours at it during the week, wouldn't make me want to find a mountain and throw myself off the very top of it because I am so tired and so stressed I can't stand it.

I have friends who are doing what they love. Writing or designing or what-have-you-ing. They have always known what it was, and even if they didn't know it exactly at the time, they were pretty damn close. I am good at a lot of things. I have jobs that I enjoy (to a degree) but I still manage to have about 1 day a week where my brain literally turns into jello because of the stress in my life and oozes out of my ear holes. And it's draining my will to live.

On the phone with my mother the other day, she told me that "if this was the way [I] choose to life my life then [I] should probably just stop bitching about it and be content that [I] have a job at all." And yes, I agree. I should stop bitching. I should spend more time looking for a job where I can put my college degree to good use (or any use, for that matter), be happy and make some money so that I can find the magic house where I will be able to cook and bake forever and ever, Amen.

But I think about looking for a job and all I want to do is run back into the arms of my 3 (yes, 3) jobs and the 1 day a week of brain flavored stress-jello and hold on as tight as I can and never let go. Resumes make me turn into a blabbering idiot. Looking at Monster or Career Builder makes me wonder if I will ever find anything that makes me want to dance out of bed and into the office.

And yes, I realize that I might be romanticizing this job thing. Maybe there really is not one person in the world who actually dances into their office everyday. Maybe "magical jobs" are like "unicorns" and "dragons" and while they are fun to talk about or star in movies or read about, they don't really exist.

But the thing is, I don't know that I want to live in a world where being a grown up means that you have to wait until 5:00 on the weekdays to feel the magic. In fact, I take that back. I know I don't want to live in that world. In that world, the world where everyone waits until 5:00 to be happy, I will wither and die like a flower that doesn't get enough sunshine.

So I suppose I am putting this out there to see what comes to me. I would love to have words of comfort or maybe a career idea that is something super-fun that you heard of one time because your ex-boyfriend's, step mom's brother-in-law from Texas heard about from a friend one time (maybe). The list of magical jobs that I came up with is sort of small:

• Start my own preschool
• Flight attendant
  
• Character actor at Disneyland (I would like to be Ariel please. Or Belle. Well ... really any princess, really)

Thoughts?

Things I've Learned Thursday

I know that back in the day I said that I would try to keep this thing sort of light even if I was feeling like being a Debbie Downer ... and because of that I would like to apologize to you before you read this.

Things I've Learned Thursday #4
{wah wah wah waaaaaaaah}

1. Not getting accepted into a program you really want too is way more depressing when you realize you don't really have a back up plan.
   
2. I have no one to go to Holiday Mart with this weekend *really sad face*.
3. My dip is not french onion and comes with no chips. LAME.

I'm sorry for being a loser guys. I know I was just complaining about it the other day (see: item 3) but I got a phone call today from Children's Mercy telling me that I did not get into the practicum program (despite the fact that I spent hours on my application and getting ready for the interview) and this call made me realize that I have NO IDEA WHERE TO GO FROM HERE.

I think part of it is that I have no clear idea of "what I want to be when I grow up" and I think the other part is that my mother is pushing me SO HARD in the direction of grad school that I have absolutely no desire to do what she says.

I think that tomorrow I am going to lock the boys I babysit for outside (I'm just kidding - I would never lock a child anywhere, I promise) and take a little time to sit down and think about what my ideal Plan A is. Then I am going to make myself dream up a Plan B and Plan C so that the next time I get rejected I won't be able to sit around and wallow about how I don't know what to do next.

Well wishes and Plan A, B, and C ideas are welcomed and encouraged. I hope you guys had a better week than I did.

I'm going to call it an internet vacation

So you may have noticed (or not, whatever) that I haven't posted here (or anywhere) in last month. A ton of stuff happened in my real life and it was overwhelming to the point that I needed some time to process it and some of the stuff was more "impending" than anything else and I was trying my best to live and enjoy my life in the moment. But now things have settled a little, all impending things have ... impended.

July was a big month. And when I say big, what I really should say is HUGE.

• First off, I quit my job. It was something that I had been alluding too for a while, but I didn't want to mention it on the off chance that somehow my boss found out and decided to cut me lose before I was ready.
• I moved out of my wonderful little apartment. You'd think that 6 months wouldn't feel like 2 months, but it did. Now I'm back at home with mom and dad. Yippee!
• I ran my half marathon. Hilda and I managed to stay together the whole time, which was awesome, and I finished in under 3 hours which was the goal. Hooray me!
• Armini and I went to Disneyland and then he left for China. It was a wonderful and incredibly painful week.

So, like I said, a busy month. And a lot of the stuff that I did was pretty emotionally charged. All in all I am ok but really, really tired.

I find myself at a place now where I don't know what to do with myself. Armini and I made the decision to not try and stay together while he's in China, so now I'm single to boot. It's almost like someone hit the reset button on my life. Which is something that sometimes excites me but also terrifies me.

I am overwhelmed and I don't know how to go about rebuilding my life. It's tough, but I know that I will get through it (although I have to say that I'm a little worried about the amount of chocolate ice cream I feel compelled to eat).

So, I may not be posting much, and when I do it might be kind of sad. I'll try to keep it upbeat and happy, but I'm a girl and it's hard for me not to get my emotions all over everything when I have something huge happening in my life. Be prepared.

The Ebb and Flow

And just like that life comes full circle again.

This weekend my Aunt Beach (name changed for the privacy of my family) passed away. While I would love to tell you all the details, it's not really my story to tell and on the off chance that someone who knows my family finds this post, I don't want them to get all "why would you put that out on the internet for strangers to see??". So please forgive me for being uber-vague about the situation.

Aunt Beach and myself enjoying the open bar at my cousin's wedding last summer. Yes, I am wasted in this picture, thanks for asking.

She was a lovely and super creative lady. I am so very sorry that I didn't take the time to get to know her better or to send her a card or ask her to teach me how to be as awesome an artist as she was. Just the last time we were at her house I realized that we both really like to decorate our houses in a 1950's-esc style and we had roamed around her house admiring her flea market art finds and I gushed about how I loved everything.

It makes me sad that I now have to use the past tense when I talk about my Aunt Beach. She is the first family member that I have known well that I will have to bury. Well, I won't have to bury her, but I'm going to be there when it happens ... you know what I mean. For Pete's sakes, I still have all of my grandparents! It boggles the mind. And while I know that I will never be able to give my Aunt Beach another hug, or hang out with her at the reunions, I still can't wrap my mind around the whole thing. I have never had to deal with death so close and it is confusing and scary and sad that I have to learn with my Aunt who should have been around for a lot longer.

There is a lot of bad in the world these days. This economy and all the doom and gloom from Washington about how "it's going to get worse before it gets better" isn't helping. Not only should you be holding your children close, but now is the time to reach out to your family. Tell them that you love them and then start planning the reunion. Seriously. If there was ever a time to start spending time with the people that you love, now is that time. We need to spread a little love to make all the bad juju in the air not quite so bad.

The Pity Party

Sometimes I wonder how any of us manage to maintain a pleasant demeanor in the world. How to make it from one day to the next without losing our minds? Or our faith? Or our humanity?

Not only have I been reading about the loss of some beautiful babies this week, but I just got a phone call from my co-blogger on Master of my Money and she is in a bad state. I won't go into details because it's not my story to tell. But let's just say that it was the straw the broke the camel's back in a string of crappy goings on.

Plus, Hilda is having troubles out on the west coast. It hurts me that my friends are all so sad and that I can't always be there to hug them, feed them chocolate ice cream, and share in their tears. It just doesn't seem fair.

None of it is any fair.

Tonight I am having a pity party with Ash. Hilda will be joining us on skype. There will be chocolate ice cream and tears and general wallowing in our misery. But we will be doing it together. And maybe tomorrow we can move on to something better. Something happier.

You know ... I think I might move forward with my Pity Party idea. Everyone deserves a moment to vent.

Me? Armini going to China. The panic that it creates in me deep, deep down. Not knowing what I am going to do without him around. The fear that if we stay together, it will destroy our relationship. The fear that if we break up, we will never get back together. And the fact that this is going to happen, whether I want it to or not, in about 3 months.

Now it's your turn ... what do you want to cry (or vent) about?

"I Feel Happy!" - Old Sick Guy from The Search for the Holy Grail

Well blog readers ... if there are any of you at all ... I am feeling much better now thanks. I know you were up all night wondering how I would deal with my issues and worrying that I might spiral out into a deep depression. But never fear, having talked things over with Rose, the BFF, I am feel quite better. That's not to say that I don't have the occasional "Ugh, I look terrible" thought but the thoughts are not as frequent as they were and they're fleeting. Like ... "Ugh, I look terrible. Maybe I'll look better after I shower." or maybe even "Ugh, I look terrible. Maybe I'll spend 5 minutes putting some foundation under my eyes so that it looks like I went to bed last night." You know, the usual girl thoughts that we all have.

And usually it happens in the morning and then I look fine when I leave for work.

And then at about noon when I get really sleepy from my lunch ... I start to dislike my hair so I put it in a pony tail. A PONYTAIL! Yes, yes, a ponytail. My hair has grown to the point that I can pull it back, even though it doesn't all stay back unless I use like 6 bobby pins, but that's beside the point.

All in all, life is good.

Sometimes you just gotta put yourself out there and vent, no matter how other people might look at you afterwards.

Pretty Girl Ugly

You know, in our society, you always hear about those runway super models who look in the mirror at their almost skeletal bodies and say "I could stand to lose another 3 pounds" and those super hott girls who look at themselves and say "If only my hair were [insert color] I would look so much cuter", and if you're anything like me you laugh at these stories and go "Whatever. The skinny chicks know they're skinny and they flaunt it by talking about losing weight so the rest of us feel sorry for them" or "Right. Super hott chick doesn't know she's hott. And I'm the queen of England."

(Did you like my run on sentence? I think it's awesome. Oh yes English minor ... you come in soooo handy in my life.)

But for the first time ever in my life, I know what these girls are talking about. I look in the mirror and all I see are my flaws. The blackheads, zits, how one of my eyes is almond shaped and the other is round, how my eyebrows grow funny , how my short hair makes me look stupid because I don't have the ability to get up early enough to spend 45 to straighten and do it, and the fact that at the ripe age of 23 I have chin hairs. Yup - I hate them.

I feel ugly all the time now ... even when I'm with Boyfriend. And I know he doesn't care about any of that stuff. I know it. But I still wonder sometimes if he thinks that I could stand to lose a few pounds or if he has ever noticed the fact that I have chin hairs. And I worry that if I ever say any of this to his face that he will think I'm crazy and not want to talk to me about it.

And I need to talk about it. I hate wandering around wondering if everyone else is seeing what I see in myself. I feel alone and depressed. Last night I got in bed and cried because I was trying to take a pretty picture of myself, I don't know why, I think it was because I was making sexy faces in the mirror. But every picture I took just made me feel uglier and uglier.

I am rapidly reaching a breaking point. I'm sitting in my cube writing this and I can feel the knot forming in my throat ... I can feel the tears in my eyes. I don't want to cry at work.

I don't want to feel like this anymore.

But I don't know what to do about it.

I used to not give a crap about what I looked like or what people thought about what I looked like. I used to wear costumes to school ... and I had people point and laugh at me as I would walk down the halls. But I didn't care. I liked it, and that's all the matted. It's only been 5 years since I was that girl ... has it really been so long that I can look back and wonder how I was ever like that?

Every few years, for my whole life, I hit a point where I find some things that I don't like about myself and I strive to change them. One year it was to stop hitting my friends (not like beating them, in the 'you're so funny *slap on the back*' sort of way), another year it was to stop complaining. But I've never hit a point where I feel like I need to do a complete overhaul. Feeling like I have to scrap everything and start over.

On top of feeling ugly ... I feel like I'm a failure at everything.

I'm late, I'm not crafty, I'm not as creative as I used to be, I work too much, I don't have enough friends ... I just don't feel like I'm good at much anymore.

Besides being ugly.

I'm really good at that.