Retrospective of 2009

It's not a real vanity blog until I apologize for an extended absence at least once. I've been meaning to restart Flying Tiger for a few months, but couldn't figure out the proper way to do so. (Just write the damned post, you may exclaim!) So here's what I came up with: a retrospective of the past year.

January:

My car's radio stopped working, but I got my old laptop to boot in ubuntu, doubling my computer power. It was a month of insomnia, culminating in a horrible work week where Stacy came and got me from work because I was too exhausted to drive.

February:

Matt and I split up and I moved in with Beth, Jeff, and Kevin, stranding my cat at Stacy's house. Living with friends was really great; living without Zhenya was really hard.

March:

Then unexpectedly, Stacy's house was being sold and I needed to move Zhenya very quickly! I finally settled on moving her in with me at Beth's and then went to visit my folks in Cleveland. A good time was had by most.

April:

I had started seeing my friend Jason in Seattle, but before it got terrible serious, I started dating Paul in Portland. We're still dating. I'm still friends with Jason. :)

May:

I went to Renn Fayre in my scrubs! I sang in a small concert, too. And then the rest of the month was basically devoted to moving out of Beth's house and into my new apartment, Sanctuary. Stacy moved in to Beth's when I moved out. At the very end of the month, there was some drama at work that affected my employment (I got many more hours) and free time (I got very fewer hours of that).

June:

I took on more hours at work and took home a day old kitten who needed constant care and supervision. I also started my first term at Portland Community College. What was I thinking?! I got next to no sleep.

July:

Still wrangling extra hours at work, clashes with coworkers, school, tiny kitten, and a heat wave. I don't remember much of that month because I was constantly rushing from one place to another.

August:

Mom came to visit! She met Paul and they got along great. I picked up yet more responsibility at work and the kitten kept growing.

September:

I went to the Penny Arcade Expo with Paul and Amariah! I hadn't been to a convention in a long time and it was great. I had a party to celebrate the five year anniversary of leaving Crossroads. It was called the "Get to know Vera better party," though we spent most of the evening talking about cults. I finally got around to writing an essay about what happened five years ago. And then I joined a chorus!

October:

New term at PCC coincided with me suddenly getting half a promotion at work and picking up more hours permanently. Somehow I thought I could juggle these, but it didn't go as well as I would have liked. I declared social bankruptcy and didn't do anything fun until I was done with all of the homework and work work I needed to do for the month.

November:

I turned 26! And slogged around in schoolwork until I hated myself. Somehow I pulled through and got a 4.0, but that's really next month.

December:

Is still happening for a few more days! So far I've decided to take a term off of PCC and gotten a new attitude about my new responsibilities at work. Overall, my plan for this year (which was for it to be RAD) was a success. My plan for next year: be RADDER and carry less stress than 2009 did.

Welcome back, Flying Tiger.

cryptic gratitude

No details, but I think last night's gratitude is important to write down. I'm glad someone called me on my shit yesterday. I may have been angry in the short term, but I got stuff done and it shocked me out of a rut. Next rut to fix: sleep deprivation cycle.

State of the Vera

Well, apparently I didn't make it very far with my gratitude posting month. I'll probably do more of it, but every day didn't work out this year. So instead, today I'll post a State of the Vera Address:

Jobs:
I've been temping since we moved to Seattle. It's been a mixed bag of fun, horror, learning new skills, and just slogging through. I'm about to move back to Portland where I don't even have a good prospect at the moment. There are plenty of maybes, but maybes don't pay the rent. So I've been freaking out about that a little bit. I'm pretty confident that once I start walking into vet clinic and handing them resumes, things will loosen up, but since I'm living up here and can't physically do that, I just have to sit on my hands and surf Craigslist. Hilarious fun!

Housing:
Matt and I just nabbed a gorgeous house in NE Portland for a little less than the one we're in now in Seattle. It's biking distance to a number of friends and walking distance to the Kennedy School and New Seasons. It's bigger than this house (by a small amount), has a fenced back yard, and butts right up against Wilshire Park, where there's an off-leash area. It's wonderful! It's beautiful! And there've been a variety of interesting kinks in our plan to move there. It's not worth going through every gory detail, but every day brings a new emotional roller coaster of housing.

Sleeping:
I finally got my sleeping habits under control. For a while there, I had insomnia like whoa. I think it was mostly related to anxiety and I got that under control after a while with cunning application of tea and therapy. But here it comes again, just in time for us to move. Woohoo! In related news, I've learned that energy drinks are awesome, but I crash really hard after they're out of my system.

Depression:
Wow! I really kicked it! Well, mostly. I'm learning some coping techniques. Some are really mundane, like calling a friend for a quick kick in the pants, or going for a walk with the dog. Others are a little more maintenance, like eating balanced meals. But every day I wake up and tell myself that today is a good day, and usually it is.

Bad pun moment:
The state of the Vera is Washington, soon to be Oregon.

Today's Gratitude:
I managed to start turning my life around before age 25. Albeit, it was just a few months shy, but I'm still glad I did it.

fans, and things that hit them

I've been a mess for most of today. I think it's sleep deprivation catching up to me, or possibly leftover stress, improperly processed, from last night. But anyways, I messed up a few things, Matt and I grumped at each other, and then the toilet overflowed. A lot. There was some screaming and swearing and then cleaning up. And a bit more grumping, because that's how these things go. But then the grumps were replaced with dinner, accomplishing something in the job search, and snuggling in front of stupid TV. All is well!

Day 11 Gratitude:
rooting out the source of the grumps

remember, remember

I had a session with my therapist this evening. We talked about various things I've been doing to try to combat my depression and how successful they've been (or not) and came up with a few new tools for myself. I was surprised to realize that I'm in very similar situations that I was in about a year ago in terms of social isolation at work and monotony of what I'm doing to earn a living. And I'm handling it fifty times better than I did then.

Day 5 Gratitude:
making quantifiable progress

fiendish plan

I have a fiendish plan of what to Do With Myself when I Grow Up. I don't really want to go into detail too much for fear of jinxing anythings, but needless to say, this plan is very, very me and will be very, very difficult.

In the process of deciding to do this I've discovered a few interesting things about myself.

1) It took me two or three years to figure out that this was something I wanted to do. Many people (parents, friends, Matt, and even me) have suggested this line of thought before, but I guess I needed to be good and ready before I'd agree to it. Man, am I stubborn!

2) I'm letting my fear of screwing up keep me from acting. I spend a lot of time looking at how scary this path is and then not doing much about it. Then a friend calls, or something like that, and they tell me how exciting it is that I'm pursuing this plan, or they remind me how great an idea it is, and I charge in again. Today I'm looking at all of the steps I need to take first and it's looking like a big, gigantic, expensive thing.

success?

From Cats!

Well, whatever I'm doing seems to be working... Some combination of diet change, activity change, and attitude change has left me feeling pretty good about the world for many days in a row. Oddly, this means I feel like I have less to talk about in this space. Just sayin'. So here's a photo of me that I took late at night with a kitten on my shoulder.

Two of Swords

I started this blog initially to be somewhere I could write about rediscovering myself. Since starting, I've found that the things I'm discovering are so intensely personal that it's hard to talk about them, so here goes:

Suburban Housewives:

In my current job I'm working a lot with suburban housewives. They live in particular little boxes that make me wildly uncomfortable. As an example, they described a former coworker as "weird" because she was a little quirky and dressed a little gothy. By my usual standards, this woman was quite tame. By the standards of the people I'm working with, she was so ludicrously weird that they had no way of interacting with her.

Somehow I find myself tucked into an office with these women as if we have things in common. Yes, in some ways we do; I enjoy spending time with them and joking about things during the day, but I suspect that they would look at me even funnier if they knew anything about my personal life. I look at the Suburban Housewife archetype and I'm sort of horrified. Do I want to be a wife in that sense? How much do I want to be defined by cultural norms?

Heteronormativity:

I got used to being one of a crowd of mostly queer people and queer allies at Reed. Since graduation, with one notable exception, I've been thrust into a completely heteronormative world. It feels like I've lost something. People I spend time with now are all traditionally married or trying to get to that point. I know very few queer people (as friends) that I met after college. I barely feel comfortable talking about queer issues with the people I'm around now.

Loss of Self-Confidence:

I spent a lot of time in high school trying very hard not to fit in. Somewhere along the line I decided that the better bet was to hide how different I am with good clothing and grooming and let people discover my quirks later on. I think it was a financial decision, since it's hard to get a job if you dress funny and talk about your religion a lot. I noticed that people take you much more seriously if you establish yourself as reasonable before they learn about your atypical ideas. The unfortunate side effect that this change has had is that I find I have little confidence in identifying what is and isn't me.

I've found myself agreeing to do things that I wouldn't have otherwise, just so I don't stand out. Just the other day I agreed to order a dessert at a restaurant because everyone else in my party said they would like a bite of it. Generally, I don't like to order desserts in restaurants, let alone share them.

So where did I go from being stealthy about my differences to uncertain about what I actually like? I'm not sure where the change happened, but I most certainly need to change it back.

Conclusion:

So the point of all of this is that I need to make some major changes in the way I'm living my life. I made a promise to myself in January that I would spend more time with friends this year and that hasn't quite worked out, partly because of the move to Seattle and partly because I've fallen into unhealthy patterns. So I'm going to have to call people instead of seeing them in person. :) I also need to take more time just for me and nobody else. And hopefully I'll find more that I can write about in this space.

Next steps:

1) Spend more time with friends (in person or on the phone)
2) Eat healthier and cook more
3) Pray more, do more tarot readings, etc.
4) Analyze and identify my own likes and dislikes
5) Be more selfish

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!