I am inclined to complain today, because I have to go to a family gathering that I REALLY do not want to go to this weekend, which sort of kills any “looking-forward-to-the-weekend” feelings I may have, but I’ve also had enough therapy to know that I can CHOOSE to let it not kill the positive feeling of anticipating two days of freedom. Allegedly, anyway.

And then there’s my wretched inability to focus, and the fact that I’m stretching for something to write about today, which is a bad sign, given that it’s only Day 4. And the corollary to my lack of focus is that items on my overly ambitious to do list remain uncrossed. (To-do lists are another thing I cannot do with complete sincerity. I don’t know what my problem is, except Charlotte probably knows what I mean, because she is my blogging soul mate, and David would probably know too)

And let’s not even get into my vague melancholy about the five year college reunion that I have no desire to attend, but it’s only because I have no reason to attend, and part of me wishes I had a reason to attend, and that sentence makes no sense.

I am inclined to complain today…but

I couldn’t figure out what to write today (a bad sign, since it’s only Day 4) and so I resorted to trolling through my archives. Amongst the daydream of a dual-degree program and the amusing things my friends say, there was this, what I called a “State of the Rachel”  entry.

I feel like I don’t need one of those now, I’ve been writing often enough that I don’t need to update myself on the fact that I’m frustrated with being marooned in Jersey, that I’m bored, that I’m unfocused. But in that entry, I wondered how the hell I was going to do “this” for another six months.

The “this” that I was referring to ended.

So while I am inclined to complain today…

I must say to myself (grudgingly) that this too shall pass. Even my next post, at this time last year, believed just that. And although the Promised Land Keith speaks of is still far away (and, in fact, may never be, in that iteration, for reasons unrelated to me), this is not the same place that I was last June.

Last June I didn’t have the option to leave work at 3PM on a Friday, let alone apply for a job. (Last June, I was also daydreaming of dual degree programs. A JD + an MA in international relations, because I enjoy collecting advanced degrees. It’s a good thing that as a woman, I reserve the right to change my mind, because there’s two issues with that daydream now. I don’t want to go to law school. And I don’t want to be a lawyer. You can see how this would be a problem) Last June, it was all about getting through the day, and also surviving to November.

And while I am inclined to complain today…

(Because my job sometimes depresses me, and weekends can get lonely, and I miss the city)

I have to force myself (again, grudgingly. I am incapable of doing this with complete sincerity) to acknowledge the good things. Like I came home yesterday to find a box from Starbucks containing bags of my favorite coffee, a gift from my bosses. Because really, I have the best bosses ever. And there’s another job somewhere that I might actually want to work, and so if there’s a posting, and I can get an application together, than at least there’s a chance, however slim the possibility may be. (Although I’m still not sure if it’s even a good idea to think positively of the existence of slim possibilities). And in the midst of depressing days, Message Board of Note can still, on occasion, make me laugh.

And maybe, if I keep telling myself all this, I will start to believe it.

In just a few days, it will have been one year. One year since I finally hit a point low enough to start climbing back out.

The past 360 days don’t erase the approximately 1,095 that came before it. There are still things (many things) that make me cringe. I don’t dwell, and I don’t even obsess, but the thoughts do come up. I suppose the fact that I can deal with it when the thoughts enter my head is proof of progress. At least I hope it is.

I don’t exactly know how to talk about what this year has been like. Are things better? Yes. Absolutely. But am I really that different? Am I better person? I don’t really know. My father said to me, maybe 355 or so days ago, that he knew the real Rachel had to still be there, somewhere. And if that’s true, and this is the real Rachel, then do my parents like her any better? Sometimes I think my mother expected a personality transformation; that I would suddenly embrace my “family” (we have never been at all close to my blood relatives. I have no feelings for them one way or another. There are close friends of the family who I spent far more time with growing up who I consider family before the people related to me by blood) or I don’t know. And then, it frustrates me that she doesn’t see the ways I’ve changed. My anxiety level has dropped. I deal with things like disappointment better than I have in probably my entire life.

You can’t control what other people think of you, but my parent’s opinion still matters to me. I know they love me and they put up with an awful lot of nonsense from me in the 9 months leading up to 360 days ago, but I don’t really know if they’re proud of me, or if that think that I’m better than I was a year ago, or if they will always, in the back of their minds, think I’m hopeless.

I didn’t expect to go into this here; I guess I didn’t realize that it’s on my mind so deeply. Because I’m not sad today; maybe resigned would be a better way to put it? Although that seems too fatalistic. I mean, I feel pretty GOOD today. Yeah, I’m annoyed that I lost one of my favorite earrings somewhere between the convenience store and my car and home (maybe I”ll get lucky and it will turn up in my car), and it’s a little weird at home because my dad has a bad cold and my mom is annoyed at him for acting like a total baby for being sick, but it’s not a BAD day. I don’t feel depressed when I think about all these things that my parents may or may not be thinking/feeling about me.

(I’m sure this raises an obvious question; why don’t you just ask them?” The answer is that because truthfully this does not cross my mind very often, I believe that I cannot control what they think; I know that I’m doing the right thing and at the end of the day that will have to be enough)

Perhaps the fact that, even with this ambiguity, I am able to go about my day, and still feel pretty good about a lot of things (my boys, without whom, this year would mean nothing. my internet-stranger-friend-boys who also were a network I needed. the six months of expenses sitting in my bank account. the pair of jeans I have on, a size smaller than a year ago) is what really speaks for making progress.

At least, I hope so.

Last night, I was re-reading (okay, lets be honest, reading) some articles that I saved from my National Security Policy class from grad school. I was taking some notes, because my crazy brain has decided that if I brush up on International Relations, I’ll have a better shot at Libertarian Fellowship. Anyway, as I said to Keithers “I’m watching Degrassi and color coding my international relations notes. Now what man would not want a girl who color codes her international relation notes?”

This is why I haven’t had a date in about a year. And the “dates” I had were not really dates, properly speaking. On one hand, this means the disaster with O-L-B last Thanksgiving was almost a year ago, as was the mini-debacle with Peace. Apparently the mini-debacle with Peace was so cringeworthy I never wrote about it, but the CliffNotes is, I got drunk and made out with a (Libertarian) Muslim who had never kissed a girl before, because anything other than holding hands before marriage is against his religion. The fact that I’m Jewish probably made it even more of a sin against God.

It’s too bad you can spell “Disaster” without “B-O-Y-S.” Anyway, the point is, except for the one time I went out with The Writer in February, the last time I had anything resembling a date was…way too long ago.

If you were taking notes on the four main approaches to U.S. Foreign Policy (neo-isolationism, selective engagement, cooperative security, & primacy) wouldn’t you use four different colored pens too? For example, I used purple for primacy, because purple = royalty, and primacy is basically a desire to be king of the world.

It annoys me that the phrase “king of the world” still reminds me of that cringeworthy scene in Titanic where Leonardo DiCaprio shouts the phrase from the bow (stern?) of the ship. Yes, that movie made me cry (I was 14, but it had nothing to do with Leonardo DiCaprio, who I never found hot) but I always thought that scene was embarrassingly awful.

I’m sure I should do something like laundry today, or figure out how to prepare for my second phone interview, but the former probably won’t happen, and the latter, I really don’t know what I can do.

Firstly, to continue the theme of “Sometimes, I am not a heartless Libertarian” this project has only one day left and needs $1500+  Having spent one horrible winter in Chicago (and it was actually quite a mild winter – I was just at U Chicago and therefore miserabe by default. Hyde Park is a horrid little place) I will feel guilty if this goes unfunded. And Jewish guilt runs deep.

So I feel obligated to tell you that you should donate, because if I don’t tell you, and it goes unfunded, I’ll feel guilty because I should have done more. It’s like that scene at the end of Schindler’s List, where he’s looking around at all the other stuff that he could have sold, so he would have more money to use as bribes and he could have saved more Jews.

Yes, exactly like that.

This tasteless comment was brought to you my The People That I’ve Known Forever post. Those three boys, Brent especially, have played a huge role in the development of my utterly tasteless sense of humor. I have very little shame, and often very little tact.

 Secondly, I had a moment this morning of “I am so grateful for my job and that I am not at The-Job-That-Wasn’t.” Due to degrees of crankiness, boredom, etc, there have been much fewer of these moments as there were at-this-time-last-year (and ATTLY, I wasn’t even officially hired yet). So it is good (for both my mood and for my ego) to stop and remind myself of how much good this job has contributed to my life.  This is the attitude I need to keep, should the Libertarian-esque fellowship not come through.

And lastly, for all my bitching about deadlines yesterday, I got an unsolicited email today from someone at Libertarian-Fellowship office to hold off submitting until Monday. I’m not sure why, but perhaps there are still technical glitches with the online application.

So now I have no choice but to indulge in another few rounds of overthinking. I believe the research I want to do is relevant and unique, and it builds on the research I did for my MA thesis. (Carl Schmitt has become popular in the past few years; with my MA thesis I was trendy for perhaps the first time in my life) But I’m still afraid that my application is one giant “So what?”

Since fall always feels like a New Beginning to me, moreso than January 1st, it is appropriate that my New Year and Day of Atonement fall in September/October.

I am technically Jewish. When I tell people that I am a Jewish Atheist they usually don’t get it. I don’t believe in God, but I still consider myself a member of the tribe. I don’t have the name and the nose for nothing.

Taking the year from September to September, there are plenty of things for which I owe atonement. This I know. This year is the sum of its mistakes, including one so big that I’m sure David would yell at me for merely giving it the label of ‘mistake.’ So far, I have atoned for it the only way I know how – by one days at a time and by the next right thing, by actions and attitudes I was trying to take at this time last year, and failing miserably.

I’m being purposefully vague. Moving on.

I tried out blogging “for like, the world,” at this time last year, but the idea didn’t quite work in practice. Lack of discipline was one of the reasons, my inability to decide what the space was for was another. I’d written in Livejournal so long, directed those words at audiences that no longer existed, and now with a space where I could create my own audience, I was at a loss for how and what to write in it.

People talk about how blogging has changed their life, the real honest to goodness friends they have made through blogging, and that’s something I’d like to do too. The internet has been a source of friendships to me for nearly a decade now. But, just like I stumble socially in real life, I immediately come up with a half a dozen reasons why blogging won’t do for me what it has for dozens if not hundreds of other people. I’m too late to the party with nothing interesting to say and trying too hard.

But I have to write right now. My life is boring and stuck right now, and for the umpteenth time there is nothing I can do about it at this particular moment, but it’s not always going to be that way. I have to believe that, even when I look back on last September, when I was saying such similar things, even though a year later I’m still stuck, I have to believe that this year I’m going to find a way to change that.

Two years ago today I started The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The casual observer probably finds it ridiculous that I mention The-Job-That-Wasn’t so often. Everyone has had a bad job or a bad boss – usually more than one. What is it about my experience that is any different?

That is, in part, what I have been trying to write about for the better part of the year – because I never wrote about it when it was actually happening.

 The working title of the essay is “The Problem of Replacing [Pamie]” (not her real name) and I’m trying to capture what it was like to try and replace someone, who was, in everyone else’s estimation, perfect. Every single day when I would walk into Important-Boss’s office with the morning report, he would glance up, with withering disappointment that it was me, not her standing there. As if she had disappeared instead of been promoted. 

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Do you know what’s weird? At this time last year (ATTLY) we didn’t know who the next president would be and Sarah Palin still had the potential to be legit.

I haven’t talked much about the Obama presidency, because I’m really not sure what to think of it. My opinion on healthcare is so far off from most people’s that I just keep my mouth shut. (According to my parents, I think that only rich people should get to see doctors). The CliffNotes version of my opinion is that I find the whole notion of “Health Insurance” preposterous in the first place and that it should be completely eliminated. The creation of the health insurance industry and subsequently, the malpractice insurance industry is what has driven up the cost of medical care so that a 10 minute visit to conclude you have strep throat is some $110.

Given that my preference will never happen in a million years, I’m not sure which is a better outcome to hope for. I don’t want Obama-care to fail, because if nothing else, he needs a victory of sorts to solidify his presidency. But I’m not sure which version would be the least…disturbing to my Libertarian sensibilities. Ironically (?) I think that the administration is making a huge mistake by backing down on the Public Option aspect of the plan, due to charges of socialism, etc. The Dems have the majority in the House and Senate. This is no time to be pussyfooting around. If GOPs had the majority, you better believe they’d be pushing through their agenda. (I am also leaving aside for now the fallacies in many of the arguments against the public option. At this point, I don’t believe that the public option will limit “competition” and “choice” in healthcare — at least not anymore than it already is restricted).

I fear that if something doesn’t get passed, if Something (emphasis added) doesn’t happen than the Obama Presidency will forever be marred by the fact that he failed to pass a healthcare plan.

Much as I favor complete inaction by the federal government (the better to leave me alone) on my less cynical days I’d really like to be able to buy into the idea of the potential for hope and change. 

A year ago, I was in the Berkshires with Keithers, enjoying an extended weekend. From his place, we drove to Saratoga Springs, to visit our old campus and go to some old haunts. We watched the DNC, and when that was over, watched McCain annouce Palin as his VP pick.

I was actually on my way up there. I got a call from the staffing agency I’d submitted my resume to and interviewed at the week before. “The Company likes your resume,” the woman told me. “If they want you, would you be available to start next week?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, throwing the phone back onto the passenger seat, and expecting nothing to come of it. In all my job hunting experiences, I’ve never had lot with temp agencies and most of them are scams.

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Saturday night, the anticipation of which garnered so many words here in the past couple weeks, was an unmitigated disaster. It didn’t help that it was At-This-Time-Last-Year, and that David wasn’t there to keep me from being stupid. I should be convincted of first degree “doing-that-thing-where-you’re-nervous-about-seeing-an-ex(of sorts)-but-you-want-to-pretend-you’re-totally-ok.”

The only moment I am proud of is the moment he walked into the bar. I met his eyes and held them and didn’t look away. “You look really good,” he told me.

“Thank you,” I replied, and didn’t break the stare.

The rest of the night is a string of awfulness. It may not have been as bad as Chicago this past summer, but it was bad.

Basically I feel horrible right now. I am so mad at myself, because I was doing a lot better – or so I thought. He is a trigger for me, obviously, just like HWSNBN was.  I don’t know how I’m going to get through this day – I know I will, but right now it seems so unmanageable and so much bigger than me.