esteeming oneself

At the moment I'm sort of employed; I'm working a temporary job for a construction company with no definite end date. So far I've only worked three days for them, but I still feel like a fish out of the water. Their filing system is out of date and needs serious remedial help, so I spent a chunk of time today getting familiar with what should and shouldn't be there. I was mostly doing it for my own benefit, since I'm going to be working with this system consistently and feel pretty outclassed. My supervisor walked into my shared office this afternoon and exclaimed about how neat the filing section was. "Wow, Vera! You're really on top of this! You just charge right in and do it without waiting around!"

Right then it sunk in that I'm doing a good job. I've spent the past few months sitting in a little hole feeling bad about myself for various reasons. Suddenly I find myself in a position to be making somebody else's job much easier and she really appreciates it.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm awesome!

Seattle

Holy crap, I just moved to Seattle. Ok, "just" isn't quite the right word. Matt and I have been here a little over a week. The first few days we were here the basic getting stuff unpacked and wrangling of pets kept us occupied. We're still not completely unpacked. The house is beautiful and bright every room has a massive window (or four) that keeps the whole house well lit even on cloudy days. The weather hasn't been perfect, but it's nothing to complain about. The neighborhood is lovely and quiet, except for the occasional playing child.

So here's the thing: I'm terrified. I just moved away from a city that I'd grown to love over the past six years. I had just reached a point where I felt I could drive just about anywhere and not get too lost. Suddenly I find myself in a city whose traffic I despise and whose layout is so completely foreign as to make my head spin. For the first few days we were here I found myself getting panicky when we left the house. I got scared when we just took the dog for a walk, but when we hopped in the car for a quick trip to the grocery store, I would watch the scenery rush by and take me further from things I recognized.

The other day I went grocery shopping by myself. The drive itself wasn't so bad; I was concentrating enough on driving Matt's truck (which is a difficult task) that I couldn't get too wrapped up on the distance from home. I grabbed a cart and checked my list to see what I needed. The map at the door showed me where to find food items, so I got rolling. I was halfway through the vegetable section when I felt that panic again. The whole place was completely foreign and so very familiar at the same time. I thought about the grocery store that is near our old place in Portland and how it took me a while to get used to it. I will probably never shop there again. There is nothing familiar about things that used to be routine. It's a different store in a different state filled with people who are Washingtonians and not Oregonians who can clearly see that I don't belong there.

I decided not to panic. Instead I bought my groceries and went home. I felt triumphant when I got back. I beat the grocery store monster! And we made a nice dinner at home.

It's been six years since I last moved to a new state. Last time I did I tried to convince my parents that it was a bad idea and I shouldn't go to college after all. I'm handling it slightly better this time, I think? But here's hoping that the grocery store feels familiar soon and I can settle into a comfortable routine to keep my head on straight.

transformers

My last day of work was a few days ago. I've been working at a vet clinic for a year and a half. I've learned some very valuable things about myself and the world and I've gotten to sit in on some really neat surgeries.

So I felt a need to, shall we say, give back when I left. I purchased two Transformers figures from the grocery store next door and labeled them "2" and "3." They are carefully hidden in places that I know nobody will look in for at least a month after I'm long gone.

for the record

The other half of my worries about making new friends is all of my worry about leaving friends behind. I'm historically bad at keeping in touch with people that I don't see on a regular basis. So the plan is to be better about making telephone calls and emailing people more often.

making friends

On the way home from work tonight I was thinking about how to make friends. I'm going to be moving to Seattle within the next month and leaving behind everything about Portland that I love. I've lived here for six-ish years and I've made friends with all sorts of people, restaurants, and views. It would be pretty great if I could take them with me, but I know that's not possible. After stressing on this topic for a few minutes it occurred to me that it's really not that hard to make new friends.

In high school and college it was easy to make friends because I was thrown into situations with them. Sitting at a lunch table every day for a year with the same people will force familiarity, if not friendship. I'm still very close to my freshman roommate (we ended up living together in some capacity for four years). I'm engaged to marry a man that I met through an online dating site. But what's important isn't where I met them, but how well we clicked once we met.

So here I am sitting around stressing about meeting people in clubs, choruses, etc, or going out and trying new restaurants. I have to remember that everything and everyone that I'm attached to had to start out as something scary and unknown at one time.

Hello, World!

I decided to start a new blog, so I opened up Blogger and typed in this address. I found, much to my surprise, that there was already a blog at this location, filled with things that I had written. I don't remember starting it or setting up the syndication that mirrored my old blog here, but it was all me. Everything that was posted here was word for word things that I had written in the summer of 2006. So deleted the whole thing and now I'm starting over.

Hi! I'm Vera! My world is going through some rather rapid changes at the moment, so I decided to make more space to think about them. I'm also posting links on the sidebar that I find interesting (though most of them will be cute kitten photos) and mirroring my tweets here.