I’m writing this post and I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, and if it does, I don’t know how long it will stay posted before I snatch it down because it’s just Too Much.

One word is reverberating through my brain (I hate that word — reverberating — it’s just Too Much, but it’s the first word I put down): Act.

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By noon today, I’d finished two loads of laundry and two cups of coffee. One would think that I could sustain this productivity, but instead I’ve mostly just thought about all the things I have to do at work tomorrow, and then told myself to stop obsessing because whenever I worry about the one million things I have to do, I’m always able to complete them by noon.

My most constant internal conflict as of late is whether to resign myself to the misery of defeat or indulge my slightly new age-y belief in the universe.  While I never realized it in my earlier years the choice IS entirely up to me. And why, you might wonder, would I consciously choose the former? It seemingly condemns myself to more despair.

There’s something to be said for resignation. It’s realistic. I’m 27 years old and all I’ve ever been is a glorified secretary. In eight months of job hunting I’ve had a few phone interviews and a few in person interviews, none of which have gone very well. I don’t have internship experience, connections, and I suck at networking (and don’t try as hard as I should.) The odds stack up and demotivate me further. What’s the point? Why should I do what feels so unnnatural?

There is an insanity in me though, one that nags at me when I’m blindly clicking through job listings and not applying to one of them. There is still the wily brand of hope that I have written about so many times here. It seems to be purely irrational to indulge in it. There is no reason at all to believe that things will get better, just because. The universe has proved itself to be completely random, and since I’m now of the opinion that I’ve used up a great deal of my good luck in my earlier years, there is no reason for me to just have faith that things will get better. I have been at this for nearly nine months. Getting interviews doesn’t make me any closer to getting to DC, anymore than one can be a little bit pregnant.

There is no reason for the madness of my hope, and yet I often find myself with it anyway. When I’m in my car, and my iPod shuffle hits the right song (lately, it’s been hiting Dar Williams “Better Things” quite often) it’s so easy to hope. It’s so easy to get in the state of mind where I think all this whining and angsting and waiting is both worth it, and happening for a reason, even though I believe that we assign reasons after the fact.

I don’t know which is better anymore.

And so we choose between reality & madness

It’s either sadness or euphoria.

I think that I’ve used up every bit of good luck and perfect timing that one is granted in a life time.

There was PLI, the job that I originally didn’t get, and then did get, and it was through there that I met everyone important for my rockstar year in the city.

There was the time I had to move out of my Astoria apartment, and a livejournal friend was moving into the city, and the timing was just Worked Out.

There was the eight and a half months of not driving, and stressing over rides, and while there were some bad days, for the most part, it just worked out, right when it needed to.

Hell, if you want to go even further back, I can name at least half a dozen moments and coincidences that gave me many bits of charmed life.

I have been very lucky.

Now, Keithers is scouring DC for an apartment for his second year at Georgetown, when the two of us thought that for sure, by now, we’d be able to look for a two bedroom together, but I’m no closer to a job than I was when we first start talking about this potential plan.

Now, I have an idea of A Plan, but no firm idea about the timing, and the ideas swirl around in my head and I can’t decide what to do, and every decision seems like the wrong one, because it leaves me here for another six months, at least, and I don’t know if I can do that. I mean, of course I CAN do that but it seems more and more daunting every day. And again, I wish all the jobs in DC could be in NYC. That would make things easier. (While I’m wishing for things I can’t have, I may as well go all the way)

Things are not bad now, in the grand scheme of things and all. But the little hits add up, and I just don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t control HR people canceling interviews I’ve specifically traveled to town for. I can’t change that one of my best friends is moving across the country. I can’t make there be more job postings. I can’t  help that the Cute-Shy-Boy couldn’t even be bothered after an awkward first date to say “no thanks,” to a second. I can’t control my first reactions to any of these things, but I can control my second thoughts, and despite the amount of whining and angst that appears in this space, I’ve been handling it remarkably well (I think). There’s room for improvement of course, but I think I have done well without sinking down into complete despair.

But it’s getting harder. I am still fighting the ennui (in fact, sometimes I am so far into my new-agey belief in the universe that the side of me that’s writing this would call that side delusional) but I’m starting to wonder: at what point do you just give up and concede that it’s just not going to work out as you hoped or planned, and that there’s nothing you can do about it? At what point do you admit defeat?

And then, what do you do next?

You can skip this entire post. Job hunting angst. Lots of whine.

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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.

While posting everyday is a NaBloPoMo requirement, on the flip side, it’s an excuse to post everyday. That means, I don’t have to come up with something especially witty or deep in order to justify throwing my words against the internets; I can hide behind the shield of “Sorry guys! I’m just doing this because I have to!”

I wrote that this morning. Now, eleven hour later, I have no idea where I was going with it. This is another weekend where I am impatient for Monday, because I am impatient for an answer. But I’m also scared of an answer. Because it might not be what I want to hear. And I may have already jinxed it. I know that it is absolutely ridiculous to speak of “jinxing” something; whether or not I mention the possibility will have no bearing on what the answer will be. And yet, there is a tiny part of me that wonders and worries about daring to send these thoughts into the universe, as if by acknowledging I’m thinking about it — and acknowledging I care — I’m tempting the universe to smack me back down.

Ridiculous. I know.

And also, there’s this other weird thing…Out of nowhere, I got a message a month or so ago, from someone I had been thinking of, for literally the first time in years. And I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s not anything. It’s not. Since I just put it into the universe, even a little, it’s nothing. My mind is just inclined to drift into “drama” because I’m bored, and sometimes I still like to pretend that life is like an episode of Dawson’s Creek. Now that the universe knows I’m thinking about the non-thing, I’m sure it will waste no time in showing me just how ridiculous I am.

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I should get this in before the WordPress backend crashes on me again.

The day started off poorly (forgetting my travel mug full of freshly brewed coffee on the counter) and while it would be too much to call the morning a slow and steady decline, the plateau is not very pleasant. Actually, if you want to start my day by the clock then my after midnight check of my work email, the neurotic replies I composed in my head, and the junk food I ate can definitely be added to the column of “reasons why this is not going to be a banner day.”

I am currently attempting to compose a cover letter because “what else is new.”  What I really need is a means to concentrate on something for more than 30 seconds at a time.  Same old story; the situation is suitably bleak enough to sap your motivation, which is self defeating, because not doing anything is certainly not going to get you anywhere. David and I are currently having our usual conversation about bleakness and other career related woes that are too depressing to go into. David and I are both intelligent, talented people with (I think) a lot to offer, yet we both find ourselves unhireable.

We should go into business together, although doing what, I have no idea. We are the people that pull off the impossible and the incredible at zero hour, but we do it in situations and circumstances where there is no opportunity for recognition or reward. And yes, we have both tried the avenue of being your own advocate. Working for dying offices is not a place to nuture talent.

I get asked to do all sorts of crazy things, develop new skills on the fly, and I always pull it off admirably, with no time and no budget. You’d think that’d be something that’s valued.

Instead, I’m hiding out in my boss’s office, because my cube is in a high traffic area, and they’re loud today. Instead, I waste my mid-now-late 20s endlessly tweaking a resume that’s getting me nowhere. I know that this is the only subject I write about; that it’s boring, it’s endless, and that you all wish I would quit my whining.

I wish that too. But what I really wish is that I could find a place where I could be productive, where I could actually do something.  I just want to be found valuable.

I’m sure my therapist would have a field day with that one.

I made plans to go to a Monday meeting, with the intent of “running into” Just-In-Case. Partly because when I actually ran into him a few weeks ago, he told me I should. In anticipation of this (and also, just because I felt like it) I fixed my hair and dressed all nice. I wore this shirt, because Keithers described the color (Fantasia Blue) as “I want to have sex with that.” I recieved several compliments.

Just-In-Case, was of course, not there this Monday. Typical. At least my hair still looks pretty today.

The days are dragging this week. I feel like Toni Collette in Clockwatchers, which is a wonderful and very underrated little film. The movie was made in 1997, so while the internet existed (we had it at my house. My family had internet before Al Gore, probably) it certainly hadn’t infiltrated every aspect of the workplace like it does today. There’s one line in it

Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you’d ever do would matter.

Which pretty much sums up what I feel some days. I was driving to work this morning and it’s already almost March. 2009 was the year of Just Surviving. Last March, I said that I knew it was going to be hard, that “this year” was going to be really, really, really hard but that I would get through it. And now I have, and it’s like “ok, what next?” and while I clearly have some ideas of what I want for “what’s next,” the present is speeding away as I try to make the future happen.

This is quickly veering towards angsty-existential crises territory, where it seems to go a lot these days. I think back on when I was temping, at this time, five years ago. Sure I’m older and wiser, but I am so jealous of my 22 year old self sometimes. And then I remember what it was like trying to get a job just out of college, practically having to beg someone to give me a chance, and well no, I’m not jealous of that, but then again, is it really that different from what I’m doing now? That I’m offering to answer phones and make copies for an abysmal salary just so I can finally work somewhere that I feel relevant?

That was a major run on sentence.

I guess part of it is that deep down there is still this fear, that maybe This Is It. That all I am ever going to be is a glorified secretary. And while that’s not the worst of fates (or pays) it’s certainly not what I ever wanted or imagined for myself. Maybe I just Don’t Have What It Takes. To do what, exactly, I’m not sure, but for now I use the sentiment broadly. It seems entirely possible that it isn’t going to matter how many carefully crafted cover letters I send out or how smart I am, or how capable I am of doing any of these jobs; I might never get one because of all that is still missing from my resume. And maybe, it’s missing from my resume, not because I choose wrong or differently, but because I am just not the type of person who saw those chances, or opportunities in the first place. David is always pointed out that every ponderance of “what would have been if I had taken another path” requires you to question whether you, being the type of person you are, could have done anything different anyway.

This started out as a lighthearted post. I swear.

It’s funny how doubt hides itself. It follows behind you. It waits in every corner. You never see it coming. But you feel it, on the inside. Maybe it was just that office. Or maybe it was bigger than that, it was all around. A million eyes. Watching. Judging. The whole wide world even. You feel so small.

-Clockwatchers

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Points if you get where my post title is from without googling.

I feel the need to clarify something from yesterdays post (she says, defensively). Much of my woe is coming from the fact that I can’t even get an admin assistant position in the field that I want to be in. Two commenters pointed out that this is the way to go if I’m serious about DC (and they are right) but I have applied for admin positions at every foreign policy, or foreign policy related think tank in DC.  As well as various other interesting places.

There are a number of places where I want to work where I don’t care what the job is – I just want to work there! These positions pay about half of what I’m making now, but I’d manage. Someone just has to hire me first. My fear is that in order to move to DC I’ll have to take another legal assistant job (or worse) which isn’t really my field and I’ll just get trapped in it because all my experience on paper is in it.

The other thing V and I were lamenting is “entry level” is both a misnomer and a double-edged sword. For example, these positions will claim to be “entry level” and they will pay entry level wages, but then they will ask for three years experience and in the end it’s basically an admin position. On the other end,  I have been viewed as “too experienced” for entry level. The number of times my snobby Masters degree has raised the eyebrows (and not in a good way) of the hiring person is astounding. They question why I’m applying to an “assistant” position and they question why I’ve been working in as an assistant.

Existential crises aside, do these people not understand having bills to pay? I’ve been at my current job for a year and a half. A year and a half ago, I was running out of unemployment and I couldn’t afford to shop around for the perfect job. Now that I’ve built up some savings (and I have the luxury of looking while employed) I can be choosier. But my experience, particularly my type of experience, is generally looked down upon.

I know that this all sounds defeatist and terribly know-it-all-ish. Who am I to claim that I know the workings of a hiring manager’s mind? I could be projecting, right? Thing is, I truly feel I’m being pragmatic and realistic with all of the above, and that if I let myself think otherwise then I’m being delusional.

Which perhaps is another puzzle. I believe I experienced this when I was job hunting immediately post-college. That is when I was interviewing for every receptionist/assistant position in NYC. Including one at a glue factory way the hell out in Brooklyn (seriously, it was a looooong ride on the R train) staffed solely by Orthodox Jew.

That was an awkward interview.

On the plus side I put $500 in my savings account this paycheck. On the negative side, I spent an obscene amount of money on clothing. On the plus side, I will be returning a large percentage of it, so no harm done. Mostly.

Now, to get a job in DC, so I have a place to wear all my cute clothes. Suburban Jersey + no dress code at work means I’m wearing jeans and plain sweaters everywhere.

One of the main reasons I haven’t wanted to get all angsty about the Great-DC-Job-Search (other than the fact that whining is not an attractive quality) is that I don’t want to listen to people tell me that I’m being fatalistic, or that I CAN do it, or making suggestions about what I should try.

Here are the facts: I never had a fancy (unpaid) DC internship when I was in college. I could have one summer, but it would have involved paying for houses and not making any money. I chose instead to go home for the summer and work. There were lots of factors involved in that decision, and at the time, I wouldn’t have been happy in DC, but I am paying for it now. I have NO DC experience, and this is somehow relevant even for non-Hill jobs (I don’t want to work on the Hill). The Libertarian Fellowship was so important to me because it was a back door into DC. A shortcut, so to speak. I knew that the chances of me getting a job in DC the old-fashioned way were/are very slim and that that fellowship would have given me an in.

The other thing is the type of experience I have. I have a Masters degree from a very good university, where I also worekd as a research assistant. But my resume also evidences that I’ve been a glorified (and at times, not even glorified) secretary since college. I was lamenting this with Virginia, a girl who graduated a year before me; job postings want you to have 3 years of experience, and the only experience you can get is admin work, and then that’s not good enough.

Do you know what I would have done, as an intern, in DC? I would have made copies and filed and answered phones. Yes, I recognize that location is everything and there’s more to it than just the clerical aspect. But I hate that that looks more important on paper than what I do now (and I do all those things and a whole hell of a lot more). I hate that my only option is a lateral move into another admin position – that that is my only hope of getting into DC, and that is still a small chance.

I don’t want to hear about how I just have to be patient and try and whatever (yes, I know I sound whiny) because these are not the off-the-cuff ramblings of a frustrated job searcher. These are just the facts. They are something that I have been painfully aware of for a long time. To an extent, this knowledge may have kept me from job hunting in DC in the past – fear of rejection/failure and all. I know the odds and they are not good. Add in the recession and they slip to sub-zero.

So I don’ t exactly know what to do. My motivation is sapped. Writing another cheery cover letter makes me want to stab my eyes out. I know that everyone searching for a job must feel the same way. It’s a disheartening process, to see these jobs that I would be perfect for and not get a resposne to my carefully crafted applications. And then I read the barrage of job hunting advice that’s on the internet about networking and promoting yourself and finding your job through twitter (and how you’ll never find a job the traditional way, not in this world) and it’s even more confusing about what to do.  What am I supposed to do? Blog incessently on my RealName wordpress account (I don’t use it, I just snatched up the name) about the places I want to work and why they should hire me? Because I do have 2-3 places in mind that I would LOVE to work.

I don’t know. I know that my frustrations are the same as almost everyone going through the job hunt. But I feel so trapped. I feel that the decisions I made five years ago are haunting me now and that this is my life. A future something great destined to spend her life answering phones and ordering office supplies. I like my job and for the most part I do way more than that, and there is nothing inherently wrong with those things.

But I want to be something other than a glorified secretary. I don’t want to have to answer someone else’s phone. That’s my dream. Right there.

The utter laziness of this weekend (in which I did not even do laundry) disgusts me. Occasionally the sloth-ness of my existences gets to me and I spend Monday feeling icky about my hardcore indulgence in one of the seven deadly sins. I am hoping to rectify this by doing my laundry tonight and perhaps straightening my room, but the number of hours I spend sitting on my bed with my laptop is really obscene.

I’m getting punchy. Maybe I would also feel better if I cleaned my desk, but instead I am choosing to whine unattractively.

It’s not that I hate the person I am now. I’m ok with her, the girl who has developed an unhealthy West Wing (or more accurately Josh/Donna) obsession, the girl who reloads her email every 90 seconds, the girl who eats far too many of these delicious crispy pretzel-cracker things. She is better off than the person I was a year ago, even if I have to refer to her in third person. But sometimes, I am just so sick of her, and she is so sick of her surroundings, and we are so impatient for it not to be this way.

I know of all the suggestons and solutions , the if you don’t like where you are or what you’re doing then it is up to you to change that. I’m working on that, I am – the Libertarian fellowship was certainly a huge part of that. But it’s a slow process and it feels like a lot of hurry up and wait and go nowhere fast, and so for now I’m just stuck being the girl I am now, who has nowhere to wear all her pretty new one-size smaller clothes.

In April, I will have been in suburbia for two years, when it was supposed to be for a few months. In May, I will be 27, and before I know it, another summer will speed by. Time is going to fast and I’m not keeping up with it, and while I’m doing as much as I can to find a way to get to a place where I want to be, there are only so many avenues and outlets. There’s a recession, there’s reality, and there’s logistics.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into such an existential angst fest, but my whining should be recorded. For posterity’s sake.

I went to the diner with Joe this afternoon to help him with Grad School admissions essays – physics majors don’t do a lot of writing.

After we went over his essays, we slipped into our usual conversation of what we’re trying to do, the escape we trying to make, and what our two mutual friends are doing along those lines. For all the differences we have on paper, we’re in a remarkably similar place. (Still stuck, for those playing at home)

As we were leaving, and I was talking about my weekend in DC, I admitted that a tiny part of me was fearful of running into The Ex in Georgetown. And I was being SUCH a girl, running over in my head whether I look better or worse than the last time I saw him – which was over five years ago now. In the “worse” column was the weight gain. In the “better” column was more put together.

“And,” Joe added. “You’re just hitting your stride. There’s always something attractive about that.”

I know what he means. I’ve said it myself before – that confidence is hot, and the first rule of confidence is faking it. But hitting my stride? I wouldn’t go that for. The Libertarian Fellowship is an attempt to get back into my stride, and my success thus far in the interview process has helped push that along, but there are still 3-5 rounds to go, and if I fail, I’m back to where I started.

It’s out of my hands now. All I can do is wait until mid-January, make another trip to DC, and impress 3-5 more rounds of people. Simple, right?

I am listening to my iPod, Just Because. Due to Jill-IAN’s influence I have plenty of Gin Blossoms. (As Long As It Matters will be in the my head the rest of the day). One of our favorites was of course “Hey Jealousy,” the Gin Blossoms song that everyone our age probably knows. When I was in high school, that used to be my “I’m mad at my boyfriend” song. It was only in the last couple years when I realized just how much I had been misinterpreting the lyrics, and also, how pathetically relevant it was to some of my MOs.  Oops.

(I just love talking about the relevance of song lyrics, like a 16 year old)

Today will likely be a busy day, which is good for distraction purposes, but then at the end of the day, I am still left without an answer from Libertarian Fellowship, and what good has distraction done me? Last night, I was hanging out with Jon and he was encouraging me to think positively. Which perhaps I should, because I DO have the credentials for this, and, as I put it last night “I have a Masters Degree from the University of fucking-Chicago! They better accept me!”

Yes. That. Before I went to grad school, whenever I would start getting mopey or negative about anything, my friend CK would remind me “You are going to University of Chicago. University of fucking Chicago. Fuck Everything Else.”

Which was generally good advice and my snobby Masters Degree has generally served me well. But I don’t know if that’s powerful enough to overcome my phone awkwardness. Few things are, probably.

The only thing on my mind is the Libertarian Fellowship. All I have been doing it reloading my email and angsting to my friends via email about it. I said to Brent yesterday “I really have nothing to say that isn’t obsessing over the libertarians. I am completely uninteresting in that respect. (waits for you to point out that this is actually in all respects)”

And that about sums it up.

Oh, and when I remember, I’m also worrying about the fact that I haven’t heard from the bureaucracy of the State of NJ regarding my license.

I am falling back into my old habit of not being able to accomplish anything else, think about anything else, etc, etc until that which I am worrying about is resolved. It’s an issue that I have been trying to work on for years, and I’ve gotten better, but this is a pretty big test of my patience and resolve and I am failing somewhat miserably.

At least my closet is clean. And my hair has looked good all week thanks to my new magic hair straightener. And I will soon have more clothes than I know what to do with (via my anxiety induced shopping spree). And I’m smashing my high scores on Wordtwist.

I can’t concentrate. I couldn’t decide what to wear this morning. I haven’t eaten anything and though I haven’t had THAT much caffeine, I feel a case of caffeine induced nausea creeping up on me. So what do I do? Brew quadruple strong tea, pour it over ice, and sip.

I have been a slacker about reading/commenting the past couple weeks. This could be attributed to my self-centered obsession with the Libertarian Fellowship, or maybe it goes back to what I was writing a couple months ago, about how I don’t know if I can “do” this blogging thing. I still view bloggers who become BFFs through their blogs with a mixture of suspicion and awe. Are you really THAT good friends, or are you just putting on a show for the rest of the blogosphere? What is UP with the love-fest for some bloggers? I usually don’t get it. But then, I am always behind the trends. The suspicion could be brought on by jealousy that I am not in the popular crowd, but when have I ever? 20sb, from what I’ve seen, has a fairly insular inner circle of rock star bloggers who fall all over themselves to suck-up to each other.

God, I’m being a bitch. Defensive much?

I had a point I was going to make, but I forgot it. Anyway, I appreciate all the commenter support the past few weeks as I have angsted over the Fellowship, particularly because they lack sycophantry (I just made up that word). I hate being lied to. At this point, the last thing I want to hear is how awesome I am and how I’m sure to get this Fellowship. Because really, my qualifications don’t matter much. They got my foot in the door, for certain, but after that, it’s based on some fairly subjective interpretations. One of them being the extremely mediocre phone interview.

Joe told me not to worry too much, because what’s done is done, and if these people are going to reject me on the basis of a phone interview (which almost no one does well on) than I don’t want to waste my time with them anyway. That is a nice thought. I wish I were in the position to be so flippant, but at this point, I need this people. I want these people.

I should know more by Friday. Until then, its caffeine induced nausea and an unhealthy amount of unwarranted hope.

Still waiting for news, obviously, and the longer I don’t hear the less optimistic I am. There is no logic that I could introduce to the equation that would make me feel any better/more positive about this. It is not a rational thought process.

I am irritable. Truly, madly, deeply.

First, the ATM is still not working. Logic should dictate that I simply go to another ATM, but the whole “I can’t drive” thing sort of puts a damper on my freedom, even the freedom to merely search out an ATM.

Secondly, some new person in A/P is just inventing these new procedures/rules and totally screwing up my invoice processing. This should be a very, very simple task from start to finish, but there are constantly like, 87 new people involved, asking questions and making things complicated.

It’s also raining, so the bottom of my jeans are wet. And my crazy carpool lady cannot drive on Friday (after not driving yesterday) and she is going on and on about her dental issues and it’s like “Shut up lady, it’s 8:00 am, get over your teeth and drive the car.” And I could work overtime on Thursday due to a major quarterly project, but probably can’t do it because of driving situation.

There are four more weeks of this nonsense, but that’s if and only if the bureaucracy of the State of New Jersey has worked itself out correctly, and that is a big “If.”

And I have meetings I have to go to tonight and tomorrow night, and I woke up dreading the one tonight (and that’s the lesser of two evils one). I HATE, HATE, HATE the Wednesday one, to the point where walking out of there at 10:05 PM is the best part of my week because it means I don’t have to go back for another week. And since I’ve skipped the Tuesday one the past two weeks, I REALLY have to go, and it’s somehow harder to force myself to these things after an absence.

I know I say I just want to know about the phone interview one way or another (and I know all of you are entirely sick of hearing about this, but so is everyone else in my real life) but I’m going to be crushed if it’s a “no.” I’m going to be even more crushed if come Friday, I don’t hear anything because, as I mentioned yesterday, I won’t be able to stop myself from hoping about the off chance that I wound up in the wrong application pool. But seriously, if my application was so bad that I don’t even warrant a phone interview? Forget the 8% acceptance rate – I’m going to be crushed.

So when you combine this with the little irritating things, you have a Rachel who is not quite fit for human contact. And of course this is the week that I have to be a happy little worker bee at work because its quarterly report time!

About a year ago, I thought I would be maybe, possibly applying for Law School this fall. It quickly became clear that my head was in no way clear enough to begin the process. And also, um…I’m not sure I want to go to Law School. I have moments where it seems like a great idea, but also moments where I think “why the hell would I want to go to Law School?” 

The problem is that Law School has begun to seem like an inevitable instead of a want. 

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David:  So who wrote this, you or me? It must have been you, I don’t have my MA.

I am all over the map this month. Go away, October.

Anyway, my high school friend Joe, who’ve I just recently gotten back in touch with due to the fact that we work across the street from each other and saw each other on the bus all the time when I was briefly commuting from Jersey, agreed to be my date for the black tie event I had to attend for work. He agreed with no begging on my part, just a “Sure, when do I need to be there?” Because old friends are awesome.

I called Lisa up, who i haven’t spoken to in forever, just to tell her about this agreement, and she told me that “This entire ordeal with you being a grown up is too surreal and upsets my always tenuous equilibrium. In addition to Joe’s capacity for predictable decorum, he has also grown up a bit and no longer is our “little Joe.”

Which I relayed to Joe, and he was like “yeah, that’s pretty much accurate.” But for the record, the evening went very well. Joe was exactly the perfect date. He kept me talking throughout whenever it was just the two of us standing around, because anyone from staff was either a) important enough to be schmoozing with donors b) had to work the front door. (I am still not sure why my presence was required…whatever)

He kept me talking which prevented me from wringing my hands, biting my nails, or looking overly awkward. There was massive amount of delicious sushi. I drank too much wine, but that had no ill effects, because we were seated with the scientists, not staff for some reason. This was actually a pretty good situation, as Joe was a physics major in college, and chatted up the science people. I am completely floored by Joe’s ability to seamlessly socialize with various individuals at the table. He kept me from being a nervous wreck. Joe has known me for nearly a decade and thus is familiar with my particular brand of neurosis and was able to balance it well. Ladies, Joe is a total catch, my new mission is to find him a girlfriend.

So the evening went very well and thank god it is over, but also being a grown up is fucking scary. I really think I’m still pretty clueless on the ‘life plan’ level. My job is stable and I like it, and it’s a pretty cool organization (this was just confirmed to me tenfold because of the presentations on Sunday. My organization funds some really awesome work and I should be proud to be a small part of it)

I’m just…I don’t know right now. I feel okay about my job, but I’m not sure where I can go from it in the long run. I know I’ve only been there for two months, but I’m already thinking along the lines of that there is nowhere to really go from where I am and that’s…frustrating. I have my expensive education and it’s like if I ever want to do more than what I’m doing now I’m going to have to go elsewhere.

I may ultimately want something else, even though I should be perfectly grateful with what I’ve got, job and apartment wise, because for another example of how much of a jerk I am, right now I am back at Freeze Peach in the Ditmars area, and as amazingly awesome as my apartment is the location will never be Ditmars….

Most people would say I”m in a better location now, more transportation options, etc, but Ditmars is home. Ditmars feels right. I don’t think my new location ever will feel quite right, and that makes me sad because it is an AWESOME apartment, but I think I’d take back my humble abode on 21st Avenue too.

As I suspected I would, I miss my previous life as an Astorian.  I don’t know what’s next, and I ALWAYS know what’s next. So I”m trying to take a deep breath and go to bed early tonight, because god damnit, I’m a smart girl and I’ll figure this the hell out.

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.