I was in good spirits on the way to work this morning, but somewhere between my iced coffee and my inability to compose a blog post it became a very blah day. I am really tired, there’s a huge balance on both my credit cards, and my suit jacket is just going to have to make itself useful even without the dry cleaning.

There is a reason for all this, of course. I hope it’s worth it. That’s all I’ll say right now.

Why is today going so slow, and why am I so tired? I got a decent night’s sleep! I suppose one good night can’t make up for the past 10 days, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

There are no words for how insane next week is going to be. I’m trying not to think about it, because it’s going to be miserable, but if I can keep myself from thinking about it, and keep myself from dreading all the anxiety producing events, maybe it won’t be as bad.

One day at a time?

Nah! (I just emailed Brent: “I am going to hate the world until approximately this time next week.” And it’s true!

“Why stop there?” he asked.

Also a valid point. But I do like my dose of new age-y optimism that I am sometimes able to maintain. I just can’t fake it till I make it in the next seven days. I’m already exhausted.

Why fight it? Some days, it’s just not worth the effort.

E-mail sent. Let the obsessing over whether he will reply commence. Actually, it began 12 hours ago.

The Smoker that I went out with over a week ago sent me a barrage of text messages on Saturday night, in which he did not identify himself, but I knew it was him based on what he said, and the fact that the number he was texting from has the same first 6 digits as his phone number. (So probably another phone on a family plan, or something). They were a little bit creepy and definitely, I thought, over dramatic.

And now, I’m hiding out on “invisible” mode on gchat, because Polite Boy has been irritating me, even though I get the impression that he does not like me. As I mentioned, he has never been on a job interview (gotten jobs via nepotism) yet he feels that he is qualified to offer lots of advice, and question my methods. He also told me that he is “not used to girls who have political opinions.”  This partially supports my arrogant suspicion that he was intimidated by me. Whatever.

And, speaking of job interview, (or job hunting) David is currently lamenting his rejection from a Perfect Job, and his description of the pain and uncomfortableness of this particular rejection hits way too close to home. I know it well. Both of us are, on paper, completely fucking useless. It’s a hard thing to be reminded of, time and time again, because even when you get over the initial sting of the rejection, it isn’t something you have the ability to change much. It isn’t possible to go back in time, and mold ourselves into something different on paper.

And, so it is Monday. Time to go compose more cover letters for jobs I don’t have a chance from hearing from. I don’t mean to be all gloomy and pessimistic, but it’s fairly easy to be this morning.

You wouldn’t know it from my entries but I start each day with optimism. I wake up, brew a travel mug of coffee, and I drive to work with a good attitude about my hours in front of me. By now, I recognize that this optimism is unsustainable; despite my better efforts, it’s often gone by 11 AM.

Today was no different, except I’m writing this at 9:20 am, and won’t be able to post until later because OUR INTERNET IS DOWN. I don’t know what the issue is; internal stuff is working fine.

(this happened once at PLI and I wrote this post about how I wanted time to slow down anyway. I know it is terribly unhealthy the way I envy the girl who wrote that, but I do)

I don’t understand how our IT department cannot solve this, as it has been down for 90+ minutes.

[ok. Internet is back. Thank god]

And apparently, my optimism is crushed once I check my email and find no response from jobs or boys.  I don’t understand boys. I really don’t.  I mean, I would never describe myself as “hot.” But I’ve always been confident in the fact that I’m quite passably cute. But with this online dating thing, are they fleeing based on my Facebook photos? Evidence seems to suggest this is possible. Evidence also seems to suggest I am neurotic and over think things. However, given that NOTHING has worked out in the past 7+ months, maybe I have even more flaws than I realized, and I’ve just been walking around in this haze of self-deception.

At this point, anything thing is possible.

Every single morning, I wake up, believing that this could be the day. The job offer might come (which now has dissolved to “maybe I’ll get an interview…” and finally “maybe they’ll be something worth applying to posted.” Or, I might actually hear back from someone in my (admittedly small) network. Or maybe just SOMETHING good, something that is going to move my life forward will happen. Today could be the day.

I think this every single morning. It’s in my head from the minute I wake up. It’s in every song I skip or linger on my iPod shuffle. Every single day, there is a part of me that genuinely believe today is when it will finally happen.

 And every single day, for the past 6+ months, I’ve been wrong.

I’ve tried really hard to be happy (or at least “okay”) with the seemingly neverending string of disappointments. I really do try. I constantly remind myself of the good in my life and how things are not as bad as they could be. But those mind tricks are becomming less and less effective every day. I could give it a rest, sure. I could stop looking for the summer, try to relax and have fun, but what good will that do me? I will still be HERE in September, a place that I started to put together an escape plan from almost ten months ago.

And June is already half over. Time is moving at a ridiculous pace; and it’s such a valuable resource, and despite all my efforts, I’m losing it.

My head aches. I’m home sick and didn’t get out of bed until 1:30, so clearly I needed the sleep. But I just made the mistake of checking work email and now I’m all worried because someone can’t find a file, and it’s true my system is still a mess since the move and so its definitely my fault that she can’t find the file.

Head. Hurts.

I hate waiting and time bidding and all the other things I’ve been doing in excess. Do you know what the fastest way to get a job in DC would be? For me to meet a guy around here, who I actually liked. And for me to start dating him. And for things to be going well. Then I bet I’d get a job offer in DC within six weeks. Unfortunately for this course of action, meeting a guy is even harder than finding a job.

I thought I would have a super introspectively depressing post around my birthday. It’s all still there; the inadequecy I feel from being a glorified secretary. And now it’s Wednesday, and this week has been more of the same in terms of work, job hunt, and boredom.

But it was a good few days; I practically got a weekend of mini-celebration. Thursday was trivia night, which we won. The final question was in regards to the Wizard of Oz, so I maintain that it is still following me. Somewhere, pictures exist of me in a  pink tutu and frilly pink leotard from when I part of the “Lullabye League.” I am sure they will surface should I decide to run for public office.

On Sunday, I met up with Ben, another Libertarian-Internet-Stranger-Friend in Philly, where I had never been. We wandered around and I babbled a lot and it was good conversation. It’s weird; I’d never met Ben, just talked on Message Board of Note and gchat, and on Sunday I felt completely comfortable around him. We talked politics, libertarian job applications, history, and I filled him in on the details of my libertarian boy drama. Or rather, the libertarian boy drama that I used to have.

Message Board of Note has been less and less a part of my daily routine, but days like Sunday remind me that once upon a time MBON saved my life. Indirectly speaking, of course.

I was definitely in need of the warm fuzzy feeling I had driving home on Sunday, especially since my crankiness ran so deep that even the trivia night victory barely shook me out of it. I’m not so much cranky now as I am dulled.  I have to get up ridiculously early to bring my car in for repairs. I hate Wednesday nights.  It seems like an awful long time between paychecks lately.

Time drags, but its the end of May, I’m officially in my late 20s, and no better off than the 22 year old on her first job and apartment hunt.

I have a few not-even-half written posts sitting in my draft folder. It’s been a weird week. After the latest rejection, I combated my wallowing with my version of Damage Control. This translated into my first fledgling attempts at networking and a revised (again) resume. Joe did say that the new one is “impressive,” so I guess something good has come from the rejection. However, the thought that immediately follows is along the lines of “So what? It isn’t doing me any good NOW.”

I am impatient, etc, etc. I’ve expressed that here a thousand times. Nothing new to see here. Intellectually I know that, theoretically, this super-improved resume could make a difference, but the job post pickings have been slim all of April.  I’m so sick of thinking about this.

And I also don’t have anything else to write about. It’s like I can’t wrap my brain around any other subject. The only activities I’ve been doing are reading YA/kids books (I can’t concentrate on anything ‘real’) and online window shopping. I find myself keeping the TV on in the background but not actually watching it, so low is my concentration level.

Things keeping me sane, or at least keeping me from being too insane: Joe, various random e-mail conversations, the fact that I’ve been managing to keep my room in order, and that in some outfits, it certainly seems as if I’ve lost weight. I don’t weighmyself, so I don’t really know if that’s accurate, but my clothes have been fitting slightly differently.

Things making me insane: Impending office move (and the need to pack/archive/sort through literally thousands of files, the lack of job postings, and online application systems – I hate them.

It’s the elephant in the room, even though I’m alone. All day, I compose posts of half thoughts and boring randomosities, as if to say “Look! Look at me NOT write about job hunting.”

Because there’s not much to tell. But then, there is. There’s this place that I had a first, and then a very good second interview (via phone). And then I heard from HR they wanted to schedule a third! And then there was a week of frustration where HR wasn’t communicating with me, and I was stressing and reloading my email and trying to figure out what was going on. But I didn’t write about it. I didn’t want to indulge my anxiety, because it was out of my control, and I kept telling myself that they already said they wanted to interview me, they’ll get in touch.

Finally, today I had the third phone interview. Since it was scheduled on Tuesday, I’ve been preparing. And not writing about it, because I haven’t written about the first two, and I didn’t want to get all excited in writing and then have to write about NOT getting it.  After all my talk and obsessing and waiting over the Libertarian Fellowship, it was really hard to come here and write about NOT getting it. And really, I didn’t even write about it; I just mentioned it, as in, “this is what happened.’

Silly I know; another psychological trick I play on myself.

The third phone interview did not go well. Too much inanity on my part. I don’t think my tone was what I wanted it to be. It didn’t “click’ with the interviewers (I had two seperate phone calls). I didn’t feel it clicked. Whereas my 2nd phone interview made me feel energized about the job, and like it was some place that I actually wanted to work, these two interviews left me thinking that maybe it was for the better that they were going poorly because the job and team and company sounded boring and awful.

So that’s that. I don’t have anything of note to say on the subject. I know that my optimism and projecting were definitely ramped up since I scheduled the interview and that I should know better (and kept catching myself and telling myself not to project). Nothing else to do but go on to the next application, but I’m so sick of writing cover letters and getting no response and this was the only interview(s) I’ve had since the Libertarian Fellowship.

I don’t want to write about this. I am so sick of writing entries about job hunting and the frustration and disappointment and anxiety that surrounds them. And part of me knows that really, it still hasn’t been that bad (especially given that I’m employed), I haven’t been looking for that long. I know what I’m trying to do, too. I’m trynig to contruct a point of utter frustration, where I throw in the towel and that’s when the magic job appears. That’s what happened with The First Great NYC Job Hunt, and so I can help half-hoping that that’s all it will take.

I know that’s silly. But that’s where my thought process goes, even when I reign it in and try to pretend I haven’t considered it.

I don’t mean to go on blogging breaks, but work has been insane, and then, what do I have to say, really? I am still stuck. Oh, and it’s Saturday night, and I have no plans besides picking up some sushi, doing some laundry, and the SVU marathon.

I have basically become ok with the fact that my weekends are like this. I have gotten past judging them as “pathetic” and making self deprecating comments about them. I would just rather be spending my weekends doing nothing in DC (or NYC) and then I would have the option to do something that wasn’t nothing.

I think I might want DC like the way I wanted New York when I got out of college. Back then, I was also craving independence and the opportunity for a social life, to be sure, but I wanted New York because of HWSNBN. I think I want DC, and there’s not even a boy there. I suppose my therapist would say this is progress. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I have just forced myself to not want NYC, because I know that career wise, DC is the only place that makes sense right now. And, given that, there’s no use wanting what you can’t have, or torturing yourself with what cannot be.

HWSNBN still texts me very occasionally. He asked back in September when I’d be in the city next. I said December. He told me to let him know when, but I never did. I didn’t see the point, really, and also all the vain, shallow reasons like I want to be nothing but 100% together if I ever see him again.

So for now, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. I have a phone interview on Monday for an organization that pays probably half of what my current job does, and who’s political orientation is possibly opposite of my own. Still, they do some interesting work in the security/foreign policy realm, so I’ll give it a chance to see what happens. Already, in my head I’m making excuses for why this is a terrible idea to even consider, and of course this is mere projection, because the phone interview hasn’t even happened yet.

When I moved to New York, I was actually pretty gutsy. Despite growing up 30 minutes away, I didn’t know the city, and I certainly didn’t know the boroughs. I spent the first half of the summer of 2005 job hunting and apartment hunting in the sweltering heat. I learned the neighborhoods of Brooklyn (where I never wound up living) by google map directions and walking. I learned the subway by following the colored lines on the map with my finger. HWSNBN and I were long over, and I didn’t have any friends in the city. I just did it.

“You have to take a step before you’re ready. Because if you wait to be ready, you’ll never take that step. “

Perhaps I would do well to remember this.

You know.

After all these months of planning out how I’m getting to/from work every day; after all the weeks where my stress level was through the roof because I didn’t quite know how I was getting back and forth; after all the days of waiting around, leaving early, and last minute rushes because my schedule was not truly my own.

You’d think that the last thing that would bother me would be the logistics of getting to the DMV, getting my paperwork in order, and getting to work.  And yet, I’m stressed as hell about Tuesday. I suppose it is always the little things that manage to torture me.

So it’s Thursday, and this means the worst part of the week is behind me. For some reason though, waking up on Friday mornings has been especially difficult. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it. It’s just the alarm startles me out of a deep sleep on Friday mornings and I so don’t want to get out of bed.

I’m ready for Thanksgiving Break.

I suppose that I am attempting NaBloPoMo (hence why I have posted hurried things all week) but now that I’ve said that I will likely FAIL. I know it’s NaNoWriMo, but I don’t write fiction, so it’s not really my thing. I HAVE participated in NaNoWriMo in varying capacities before, but those are some long-ish stories and had very little to do with the writing. (Read: they had to do with a boy, usually)

For whatever reason I am not particularly concerned at this moment with the fact that I have not heard from the Libertarians (I’m pretty much resigned…this doesn’t change the fact that I will cry at official rejection, but at this particular moment I’m in a “life will go on” sort of mindset) or from the State of New Jersey. Maybe someone has been slipping Xanax into my Red Bull.

The Yankee Parade is today. The only reasons I wanted the Yankees to win over the Phillies was North Jersey pride (South Jersey, which is a different country, goes for Philly) and because of how much Red Sox fans hate the Yankees.

Almost the weekend. I have no plans, although perhaps I will watch more of the West Wing. I never watched it in the original run and have no idea about what happens throughout the series (AND DON’T TELL ME) so its like an entirely new show for me. I’m only about half way through the first season, and it’s amusing how dated some of it is – it’s very, very Clintonian.

The roads really were fine this morning, so I can’t complain, although I worry they will be worse by the evening’s commute.

I didn’t go to sleep until 1 AM, partially because I slept late on Sunday, and partially because a tiny part of me was hoping against hope for a snow day.

Woke up at 4am to see that the plows had already been by, and that it had stopped snowing, which completely killed any possibility.  Fell back asleep with a gnawing in my stomach.

Bleh. I feel like a 12 year old wishing for a snow day. Once you hit high school, snow days become a lot less fun.

I am one of two people in my office. Actually, there are a few more people here, based on cars in the parking lot, but I don’t see them anywhere. I’m walking around with no shoes, but I do that fairly frequently, so I can’t claim it’s because no one is here.

I used to like days in the office where no one was here, but now I”m just getting bored and cabin fever-y. I should be using this time productively, like to write, or to create the elaborate file system I’ve been planning on creating, or something other than mindlessly clicking through the same half a dozen websites, but motivation, I do not have it.

I’m going to get some lunch in a few minutes, because even though I have an extremely well stocked fridge at home, and even though I took my time this morning because I knew no one would be here, I still managed to not pack lunch. So hopefully the cafeteria in our office complex is open, because I really don’t feel like driving anywhere.

After a break to regain my health and sanity, the job hunt has begun in earnest and omg, and it is SO MUCH WORSE than it was last summer. There is NOTHING.

There’s nothing in development or research in non-profits, anywhere, not that I expected to stumble upon my ideal job, but there’s NOTHING.

And all the legal assistant/paralegal stuff I’m thinking of reverting to is all 3-5 years experience or listed by an agency, most of which are scams.

I’m already discouraged

I’m terribly bored at work, so I’m going through my alternate email accounts, the one that are supposed to be for junk mail and such. I found all these emails that I forwarded from my Skidmore account before it was deleted; they’re all from HWSNBN.

When I look back on my drama with HWSNBN, I’m usually quick to blame myself for being so idiotic. But when I saw these emails, I was reminded of just why it was always so ambiguous. “Please don’t go away,” he begs in one email. Another he signs with “Yours, somehow.” One simply has the subject “Thinking of you” and the body is “That’s all.” And “I could never be with a woman who is even remotely religious, which is part of why I’m so happy with you.” And oh God, the conversations on AIM from Spring Break.

I need to stop reading now, because now it’s just getting scary and kind of depressing. Because I wasn’t so idiotic for seeing potential and chasing it, not when he made me believe it was there so bluntly. And that was all four years ago, another terrifying little tidbit.

I wasn’t in love with him, but I sure as hell thought I was. It’s weird to have such a black and white reminder of what played out, and weirder still that it was so long ago, and even weirder that it did not quite go as I force myself to remember it went.

And for some reason, this all manages to depress the hell out of me. I have no idea why.

The Dar Williams song “Mercy of the Fallen” makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry because in that song it is too palpitably Summer 2004. I hear that song and I’m driving up Glen Ave and it’s dark, and there’s an Iced Skim Caramel Machiatto in my cup holder, because I stopped by work that evening, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was sitting on my roof (my new favorite place) and that song came on over my shuffle and I wanted to throw my laptop off the roof.

Then I put on JBJ’s “Welcome to Whereever you Are” and it’s October of 2005 on the promenade in JC, where I was feeling pretty much the way I am now. Sitting on a bench, looking across the river. I still look across the river now, it’s just from the other side.

It’s growing pains. That’s what it is; or has to be. I was pretty firmly entrenched in growing up, but then I had to be all intellectual and go off to grad school and now I have to start over. There’s this expression in the last of the Jessica Darling books about how NYC lets you NOT grow up because instead of cooking, you get take-out, and instead of doing laundry, you can send it out, and you can take a cab if you get too drunk, and you never buy, you rent, etc, etc and despite the fact that its chick-lit its some pretty accurate truth.

Michael called me this morning and we talked about this phenomenon of impatience and frustration and waiting. Michael will occasiaonally frustrate me due to his inherent optimism/faith etc, but lately, he’s been my rock. I tell him things I can’t imagine telling anyone else. Despite the fact that we have seen each other IRL a small number of times since I transferred out of Hampshire we have apparently had a big influence on each other.

A Dashboard Confessional song comes on. It’s April 2004 and I’m floundering. I just dumped my boyfriend. I’m trying to find love with my crush of 2 years who is suddenly interested in hooking up with me. I am being profoundly stupid, generally, and getting my heart broken because seriously Rachel, hooking up with no strings is what people DO in college, and HWSNBN never indicated anything but.

So there are a lot of songs that there to remind of stupidity, and sadness, and ickiness and blah. And when I’m missing a piece I can always go to iTunes and download. Curse and bless technology!

Right now, I hope I’m just having the problem Michael diagnosed: that I’m in a weird place in the growing up process and nothing is settled and that’s why I’m all on edge and nonsense.

But then, it’s 6:30 on a Saturday, and I should be getting ready to go out or whatever, but instead I’m wearing a hoody and underwear, and I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even have an appetite. And all I’m going to do is maybe have some crackers and watch TV.

I am proud of myself, because I recognized a “Something-That-Could-Be-a-Problem!!!!!!” 3 weeks before it would be a problem, and now I am the hero of the department for pointing it out. So yay on the work related front, especially because I’m slowly starting to feel things click.

Everything else, meh, just meh. I hate that it is October and I can’t even wear my cute fall clothes because it’s still all hot and humid and icky out. I want cool, crisp weather. I love cardigans over collared shirts and it is way, way too hot for that.

So basically, right now I’m just accepting that things are kind of meh right now. They aren’t going to be like this forever, especially because I will make an effort to make them all not meh. Right now I’ll strike a balance. Accept that I might be a little anti-social right now, but I’m going to do xyz differently. Blah blah blah psychobabble.

This too shall pass (Emily, come visit me in NYC and I’ll get my second tattoo officially) and feeling meh is certainly no death sentence and such.

I’ve traditionally called March-April “this time of year,” and in doing so may have missed the fact that it’s actually October that finds me in a funk. I don’t know if “Seasonal depression” is an accurate description, (or if there is a danger of seasonal depression becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.) but man, what the fuck, self? Have you not you usually spend October all cranky and on edge and meh for usually no good reason?

Sure there’s been a lot of good in my life lately, enough to cause lots of moments of giddiness and self-affirmation bullshit.

But finding myself wanting to crawl out of my own skin for the fourth morning in a row, and remembering I felt this way last October, and the October before that. And hm. Because I’m self-absorbed, I’m reading over the Octobers, in my archive, and I found this  written one year ago today.

It’s incredibly frustrating to me to just not feel like doing anything. I’m back in Astoria, back where I belong, have a great job, great apartment, etc, etc and all I want to do is curl up and watch Saved! For the millionth time.

I want to force myself to be social to see if I snap out of this. but on the other hand, the absolute last thing I want to do is be social after work. I think about the little things I have to go home and do like clean up and pick up all the change on my floor and thinking about how I have to do little things like that makes me squirm and want to scream.

This is also frustrating, because NaNo is coming up, and I really want to participate full-on this year, and actually go to the meet-ups and write-ins. I want to write the story that’s been following me around for so many years, even though it may be ridden with cliches and horribly maudlin. Basically, I want to tell the story of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, and what happens when you get out of bed. But it would help me out a lot if lately, I wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Not that I’m horribly depressed or anything, because I’m not. I don’t know what I am.

So maybe it’s time to do what I did after I wrote that entry. Get back into therapy. I have good health insurance starting November 1st. And past experiences with therapy prove that I am indeed one of those schmucks for whom therapy works. Part of me hates that I “need” therapy to stay at an even keel, but…if it helps, I’m going to do it. I like myself too damn much when I’m happy, and healthy, and productive, and peaceful to deny it to myself just because I’m a little hung up on the stigma of therapy.

The $12 a week a pay for it is way cheaper than alcohol as self-medication. That G-d for my amazing benefits package

I was so close, less than 36 hours away from leaving Hyde Park when…car troubles.

I’m not getting out of here until Wednesday. I have to call Grad Student Housing first thing on Monday and find out how much I’m going to be fined for moving out late. I have to cancel my job interview for Tuesday.

And I’m going to pout, because I reallly just want to go home.