Work got busy the end of last week. Quarterly reports and such. A co-worker and I  were about equally disgruntled and loopy, so we laughed over incredibly stupid things for most of Friday.

I managed to do laundry this weekend, and get rid of some junk as part of my continued attempts to not be such a pack rat. This is fairly impossible – I am a 3rd generation pack rat, and my parents attic is filled with boxes of my stuff. My nostalgia will not let me throw anything out, although I bet I wouldn’t miss it if I actually did. But, it’s in the attic, so it’s more trouble than it’s worth to drag boxes down a ladder.

The phone interview is tomorrow. I’m not nervous about the actual interview; my biggest worry is what to tell my boss(es) about why I have to take a phone call that will last an indeterminable amount of time at 11am.

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!

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?”

It’s been a rough week. Work has been crazy busy (in a somewhat good way). I had a stressful week regarding ride arrangement and some massive Fail. Oh and then I screwed something up at work and nearly gave my boss a heart attack and have spent the last 12 hours obsessing about it. Of course, this screw up happened about 30 minutes after I told my boss of my plans to apply for Libertarian-esque Fellowship and asked if he would serve as a reference. My timing is impeccable.

I basically spent last night fretting over aforementioned work mistake and babbling about my work mistake to a couple friends. Diagnosis: “You’re just being Rachel.”

I admit, it makes me smile a little that there are people who know me well enough that “Being Rachel” is a catch-all for my delightful neuroses.  I am actually far better than I used to be. I was able to watch Flash Forward and L&O SVU last night when in the past I would deny myself anything enjoyable until I knew for 100% certainty that whatever I was fretting about was resolved.

And now it’s Friday. I would really like to do something productive this weekend. Or, just to be novel, something fun. I am so sick of suburban New Jersey and general isolation. I miss NYC. And while this Libertarian-esque fellowship I’m applying for would be the best thing in the world for me, professionally, if I got it, it would mean NYC is at least that much further away.

After having a screwy day on Monday, I was terrified when my boss called me into his office and shut the door yesterday afternoon. (Residual effect of The-Job-That-Wasn’t, I believe)

Then he posed a grammar question to me, and we debated it for a minute, and he said “Well, we’ll keep this for now, but think about it.”

So I did. I also posed the question to the Libertarians, because the people there are equally dorky and it of course sparked a conversation about grammar-things. Which led to a conversation about how good grammar is an attractive quality and bad grammar is a Deal Breaker.

As for the grammar question itself, I came up with the right answer, and the evidence to back it up and I think my changes are being accepted.

Of course, in posting the question online, I managed to make a grammatical error because that’s how these things go.

And of course, grammar was a favorite topic between O-L-B and I. Of course.

Yesterday was a great day, work wise.

My supervisor gave me this Excel spreadsheet to do and it involved figuring out a really hard problem that I’d never done before (pulling datasheets with currency conversions, and enabling macros…yes I am easily amused). After struggling with it, I figured it out. There are no words to describe how good that felt after all the uselessness I always felt at the Job-That-Wasn’t.

Earlier in the day, I couldn’t give verbal instructions on how to fix a problem in Word, and was freaking out about my inability  to do so, but my boss let me just sit down and work on in. And he spoke to me like a person and didn’t yell at me.

And then I wound up having bad dreams involving a poorly dressed me running into The Ex and his girlfriend, who told me they were engaged, and while i was grateful to wake up and realize they are not engaged, it’s something that’s probably coming sooner rather than later. Perhaps I should write “Year Nine” as I was planning to last year, but I don’t know if I can do that without depressing myself.

I got fired today.

Around 3 PM, I got called into Nice Boss’s office with the HR person. Remarkably, I held it together. I cried on the subway home. Now I’m sitting on my bed trying to update my resume. Damage control mode.

The abject panic hasn’t set in yet. Seven months isn’t long enough to file for unemployment. I have a little bit of savings, so I can pay rent in May & June, but then there’s health insurance and the job market looks bleak, and how the hell do you explain being fired after 7 months in a job interview. (My company has a trial period of 6 months. Mine was 7 because my Important Boss was away all month.)

I need to start temping, ASAP. I’m too panicked to even enjoy the relief of being free from a job I should have been grateful to have, but hated.

2008 was supposed to be a better year. So much for that.

I’m so bored. The office is quiet and empty due to a staff retreat. I think I’ve already annoyed Drew, David, and Kevin enough with my incessant messaging but I am so bored. And as my recent LiveJournal history shows, I have lost the ability to write. Not that I had it too much to begin with, but I at least used to be able to waste a good amount of time composing articulate entries.

This morning, I got up early and finally got my computer to the Apple Store. When I lived in Chicago, it was not an exaggeration to say that besides my apartment and office, I spent more time at the Apple Store than anywhere else in Chicago. Well, the stupid Macbook continues to be cursed. Luckily this time it was just a case of replacing the battery. The Apple Store on 5th Avenue is fairly insane. I was leaving at about 8:45 AM, and going up the stairs to get out was similar to fighting my way up a crowded subway station stairwell; there were that many people going into the store.

I don’t get it.

If I had the patience, I’d go through the archives at a blog I’ve been following for years, because I can’t find it through search engines. (The author has become increasingly protective of her privacy in recent years, which I can respect), because in that entry she was writing about crying at work. She was at least 30 when this happened and for some reason I really remember how she set up the scene. I believe she mentioned a co-worker murmuring “Close the door. She’s gonna cry.”

Which is about what happened to me on Thursday.  I didn’t bawl or anything, but I’m pretty sure the welling tears were visible, and I know the absolute panic was. And afterwards I locked myself in a stall in the bathroom and cried very quietly. I can’t take this much longer. No matter how careful I am, it’s like I trip up, and then I’m so thrown off by that that I screw other things up.

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.

So today I found at that, because I’m senior staff, I’m officially invited to the NYC Gala on Sunday. I get to put on a pretty dress and schmooze. I was going to bring Drew as my date, but he can’t go, which is probably for the better due to his habit of cursing loudly at the most inopportune moments. So Joe is taking me. It didn’t even take begging, I was just like “Hey Joe, I need a date for Sunday night. Do you have a suit?” And he said “Of course.” Joe is actually a better person to go with me than Drew, because despite our lack of keeping in touch over the years his tolerance of the nerves I’m sure to have is far closer to “unconditional” than Drew.

I’m excited! It will be a good chance to get to know the other girls at work better and the presentations are actually going to be really interesting.

It’s still humid and icky. I have to go do laundry but then I’m going to get some sushi and watch House & SVU with my roommate. Tomorrow after work I’m going dress shopping. I haven’t bought a dress in this manner since prom.

I also have a writing idea for either NaNo or in general. Year Eight may get written afterall.

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 am surviving and I feel horrible for merely surviving, because I want to be awesome. At the job, that is. See, I’ve by the calendar been there nearly a month, but with all our Jewish holidays off I’ve only been there about 13 days.

So it’s frustraing. Especially because I am the type who hates to ask questions and hates to ask anyone for help and this is exactly the situation in which I need to simply ask questions.

I don’t know. I feel accomplished today because I made a lot of phone calls to get a form filled out when no one in house knew how to do it, but I also feel bad because I had to bother the same people (who I had to make multiple phone calls to) a few times.

I’m just still insecure right now. Some moments I feel okay, like I am picking up on things and learning my job and everything will come in time (as everyone keeps telling me) and other times I feel like a total idiot failure.

I’m just scared of total failure. I want to be good at this. And typical me, I’m frustrated that after 13 days on the job I’m not as good at the girl I”m replacing who was there for five years. I know it’s surface level irrational, but I know everyone got used to having someone in the position who just KNEW everything, and I don’t know anything, and so far, that’s just really hard to me.

I hope it will get better….I mean, it has to, right?