2009

With a light, light heart I exit 2o09, the year of the grow-up. I completed my first year of full-time employment at a "real job." I bought my first house with my boyfriend. I got engaged this Christmas morning. I am so excited to see where 2010 leads me and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with the man that I pegged as my future husband before I even knew him.

For When You Think You're Getting Old

"You only have one life."

I never really understood what this meant. I knew that I was only going to be alive once, only go through certain experiences for the "first time" once, but life seemed long. Opportunities seemed endless. I'd do better when I was older, I'd get those grades the second time around. I didn't quite grasp that there isn't any second time. There will be other opportunities that will be similar, but they won't be the same.

I was in the "now," but in the worst way. I couldn't imagine living any longer than next week, next month. I didn't want to plan for the future. What future? I could barely get through the days. I sat down with a calendar on my 13th birthday and mapped the days until freedom. When I was 16, I planned to move out with my boyfriend when I turned 18. By the time I was 17, I had a different boyfriend and a different plan- follow him to college when I was 19. When I turned 19 my plan became to finish school myself. At 24 I did that. Then my plan became to become comfortable with the idea that my college boyfriend was "The One." I tried to force myself into feeling things that weren't there because the timing was right. That fell through, I met Michael, and started my first job out of college.

There are milestones to reach, but when I reach them they don't feel any different. I graduated college, I bought my own house, I still feel the same. I told my friends last night that I expect to see my 16-year-old face looking back at me when I look in the mirror. Who is this older woman? Are those GRAY HAIRS? (Yes.)

I tell myself I'm an adult and I do adult things, but I'm always waiting for the next big move. A puppy, marriage, children. What happens when I pass all the major milestones, how will I feel?

I don't know if I have dreams, I don't know if I'm made that way. I read about people my age pursuing things with reckless abandon because they know that it is what they are supposed to be doing. I don't know what I should be doing, I don't know what I want to do. I think I figure out a path (journalist/fashion editor/writer/criminal investigator/FBI agent/HR person) and I quickly give up; I lose interest. There are things I know I don't want to do, but not things I know I want to do. I used to think that it didn't matter what I did what my working life as long as I was happy in my free life. Now I realize that most of my life is my working life and changes need to be made. I just don't know what I want to do.

Recently Read: How I Became A Famous Novelist

I swear I don't do this on purpose, but I keep stumbling across books where the protagonist is a former English major working at a large (and somewhat shady) corporation. These books are filled with the "everything sucks" Gen Y stereotypes, but portrayed in a clever way. They poke fun at the notion that our generation (people in their 20s) are lackluster, depressed office drones who barely function or keep a job.

How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. This particular comedy is about a man who decides that the ultimate revenge on his college ex would be to show up at her wedding as a famous author. He has less than a year to accomplish this goal so he starts researching the top selling authors of the moment. He stumbles across a man who writes Tuesdays with Morrie-ish schlock and decides to mimic his success by writing a book called "The Tornado Ashes Club." There are many parodies of popular novels tucked within the excerpts in this fictitious work.

I found this book very entertaining and highly amusing. I was surprised by the plot and impressed with the author's ability to keep a coherent storyline while writing a parody.

Nothing to Fear, But Crazy

My second year of college I spent a lot of time driving from my dorm to my ex boyfriend's parents' house. The drive was 45 uninterrupted minutes of country roads, followed by a 10 minute jaunt down a semi-busy highway which ended in my ex boyfriend's driveway. Over the summer I read a book called "The Mothman Prophecies." This book was made into a horrible movie staring Richard Gere that took the book's premise, sliced it up, twisted it around, and crammed into 90 minutes of gar-bage (like the French say). The book itself was a scary tale of alien encounters, supposedly true alien encounters.

This book didn't tell of your standard hillbilly getting beamed out of his cornfield in the middle of the night. No, these stories were about people like you and me. These innocent people were driving in their cars when suddenly they'd look at their clock and two hours would have passed, but they were in the same place on the road- still driving. They couldn't account for the time missing or the men that showed up at their house a few days later asking questions they couldn't answer.

This book scared me so badly that I was convinced that I would be abducted in the middle of a drive (the book said the highest abduction rate was on weekdays between 1:00 and 3:00 am on deserted roads). Every night I would become immensely paranoid as I drove home from my ex's house. I would keep one eye on the sky directly in front of my vehicle and one eye on the road. Not only was I convinced that I would be abducted, but I was convinced that I was drawing it to myself by believing that it could happen.

To top off the crazy, I decided that when (not if) I was abducted, the thing that would drive me insane would be that no one would believe me. I wrote several documents on my home computer stating that "I, of sound body and mind, should be believed if I ever claim to be abducted by aliens."

Needless to say I was never abducted and it seems silly now unless I'm lying in bed thinking about how if I open my eyes I will see a ghost and I will lose my mind.

One Year

In my life, I've always "known" things. I've always gotten a sense of what I should do in most situations. Large life decisions have been easy to figure out. I never weighed my options, never made lists of pros or cons; I always went with my gut. I never second guessed any of my decisions. Most of my choices worked out and if they didn't then I was sure there was a reason. I could always find logic in the chaos, quiet in the storm.

When I first saw Michael several years ago, I knew that I was supposed to know him. The universe dropped him in my path constantly. In a town of almost 40,000 people I kept seeing him in grocery store aisles, movie theatre seats. He was always with a girl, but she was always, always yelling at him. I never heard him talk, never saw him smile. I just saw him staring into space as he was berated, nodding occasionally or ignoring her all together. I didn't understand why I kept seeing him; I thought he was beautiful, but that was not why he was on my radar. During my meditation and prayers I would ask the universe to quit sending him my way or show me what I was supposed to do. I couldn't care about someone I didn't know. I couldn't do anything to help his situation.

On Valentine's Day 2007, after a particularly bad break-up with Carl, I went out to dinner with one of my girl friends. As we sat on a wooden bench in the lobby, waiting to be seated in the dining room, she gasped and grabbed my arm- "That guy!" she said. And there Michael was. He was going to pay his bill and within an arm's length of me. I made some comment about him being gorgeous, most likely too loudly (as I can't always control the volume of my voice when I am excited) and his girlfriend turned around. She gave me the straight-up evil eye for over a minute and then loudly told Mike that her night was ruined and she was going to talk to him in the car.

My mind was made up and I knew that I was supposed to find a way into his life, but I didn't know how.

I made several attempts to get his attention throughout the next three years, but I never quite worked up the nerve to actually talk to him. Once, I pulled some wires out of a computer in the lab he worked in and told him that I didn't know what was wrong, but he quickly figured out the problem and left me sitting there, sweating profusely and cursing myself for not conversing with him while he was mere inches from me.

I had a few more boyfriends before I finished college and in May of 2008, I moved back home. Within two months I was single and spending most of my free time with my friends. I had deleted my Myspace account several years before because I thought I was too old for it and most of my friends were abandoning it for Facebook. A few friends convinced me to get back on Myspace and one day as I searched for friends in DeKalb, I came across Mike's page. He had written a long blog entry about what he had been through in the past year. He wrote about his addiction and his subsequent time in rehab. I reached out to him in a message and told him that I'd seen him around for years and thought that he was very brave and doing a great thing. He messaged me back and told me he recognized me from around town and we began a friendly banter. After two months of emails we started talking on the phone and on November 9th, 2008 we met for coffee.

One year later and we are moving into our first house together. It is so obvious why the universe put him in my path and I am forever grateful.

Eight Hours a Day, Five Days a Week

Last month marked the anniversary of my employment at the place where I work. Before I worked full-time, I had no concept of exactly how much of a person's life is spent at the work place. I held several jobs throughout college, but random days off in the middle of the week made the 30-35 hours I spent there seem less dense. Before working here I had never heard of paid time off. I had no idea that this shit is like GOLD out here in the real world. In the real world you have to plan your sickness and vacations around how much time you get off each year. If you surpass your time off allotment per year, you may be able to take some unpaid time off, but you also may not get a raise that year. It's a complicated system of give and take that I've grown to vaguely understand.

My biggest problem with working is not the exorbitant amount of time it drains from my week because, frankly I don't have anything better to do that earns money. My problem is the attitude in my workplace.

I try to be a fairly positive person and look on the bright side of things. Scratch that, I try to be a fairly present person and stay in the moment. Since the moment is neither positive or negative I am usually neutral which, for me, equals happy. Unfortunately my mojo gets all sorts of fucked up when I come into an office where 3-4/5 of us hate our lives. Now, if I directly asked any of my co-workers if they hated their lives, I'm sure their answer would be a resounding no, however their constant negativity proves otherwise. There are only so many stories about someone's husband/child/parent/friend/neighbor/countryman being a shithead that I can take. I have an uncanny ability due to growing up with three younger brothers to "block out" conversation. I can consciously stop listening to people talking. I typically use this power for good and not evil, but it came in handy during some particularly painful undergrad classes (Medieval Lit- I'm lookin' at you). I spend most of my day in a purposeful haze playing the chorus to random pop music in my head over and over.

Before working full-time, I never understood why people would have problems with anything work related. I thought they could leave the drama at work when they come home, but now I realize that, most of the time, work is home. And you never get to leave.

Hallowhy?

I was big on Halloween as a kid. I loved dressing up and running through my neighborhood with my brothers in tow, begging candy off everyone who had a house bigger than ours. We were always in search of the ever elusive full-size candy bar givers. They were the coveted houses on the block and always ran out of candy early in the evening. Most of the Halloweens of my childhood were cold, rainy, and pitch black. There were no Trick or Treating "hours" in my youth. Trick or Treating ran from nightfall until the neighbors turned off their porch lights, a sure sign that they had ran out of candy. As a pre-teen, I remember Trick or Treating until 9:00 pm. Now, there are stipulations and daylight hours so that everything remains as safe and convenient as possible.

As a teenager I went to my friend's Halloween party every year. I dressed up a Disco Diva one year complete with an afro of curls and tight gold spandex. Another year my stoner boyfriend and I were an angel and the devil. Him being the creature of Heaven- that arrangement got a laugh. Another year, another boyfriend and I went as each other. He used the opportunity to mock me openly and dress in drag. Halloween used to be exciting, costumes were planned weeks in advance.

This year, I decided that I didn't want to celebrate. I couldn't see the rationale in wasting money on costumes for both Michael and I to wear for only a few hours. I also dreaded being in the company of fifteen drunk people for an entire evening. I don't enjoy drinking, but as a recovering addict (18 months sober), Michael cannot drink, ever. I had no problem making this concession when we started dating. I wanted to show my solidarity to his progress by joining in an sober life. I joked that I was waiting for, what my friends would consider, a valid excuse to refrain from their parties.

I don't look down on people who drink and I don't mind being around people who are casually drinking, but there's a huge difference between an event that involves drinking and an event that's centered around it. In my smallish town, Halloween is a booze fest if you are over the age of 21 (and in some cases, over the age of 16). Michael and I are used to being in mixed company (some drinkers, some not), but no one is very sympathetic or respectful of our choice. No matter how funny, quiet, or reasonable someone thinks they are when they are drunk, they are usually annoying to the sober people in the room. Unfortunately my friends cannot have a social event without getting wasted. Michael's friends are not as reliant on alcohol, but we have to travel farther and spend more money to see them. That leaves us at home on Halloween, baking a cake and watching Away We Go. To each his own.