Somehow or another, this appears to be my 800th post. I’m the only person who reads them, though, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’ve only got a couple of things to mention so it’ll probably be brief. First, I’ve actually managed to get to Sunday evening without feeling anxious about my new man interest. I am working very hard on being patient, on staying hopeful and interested and eager to get to know him.

Second, I got through two major projects this weekend, they took an enormous amount of time and effort and I’m hoping it’ll have been worth it. The projects ended up being related, all thought they didn’t start out that way. I’d been thinking of reworking my resume but I wasn’t sure what to focus on or what kind of work I would even be interested in.

Well, a position opened up as a youth coordinator and the position would be perfect for me. So I reworked my resume from chronological to functional, and focused less on my technical skills and more on my project management, mentoring, and planning/implementation experience. I’m pretty frakking incredible, with a skillset worth envying. We’ll see if it’s enough to get me at least an interview!

The second project was a presentation to a local youth organization to get their input on yet another project I’m considering. As it turned out, the youth coordinator position is actually the staff position that supports the organization! I didn’t know that when I asked for the time on their agenda, but it did give me an excellent opportunity to get in front of them – get some extra time and (hopefully), make a good first impression. They seemed at least somewhat engaged and one of them thanked me for sitting down and actually talking to them. Apparently, all the other presenters have just stood up and talked at them – they didn’t like it.

So it was a long and tiring weekend but I’m hoping that all the work will have been worth it. If nothing else, I’ve recreated myself professionally and that means I have a lot more opportunities to look for work and work that I could enjoy.

is feeling like a four-letter word to me right now. The man I’m interested in and who says he’s just as interested in me, is making me wait. and wait. and wait. ARGHHHHHHH!!!!! I mean, if he’s interested, why doesn’t he just ask me out already? I know he is, I think he’s just enjoying torturing me. Or doesn’t know/care that I feel tortured. He probably thinks I’m a mature adult with a life; that I’ve got other things going on and am not sitting around waiting for him to get his ass in gear.

Technically, I am all of those things. Emotionally, I’m sitting by a big, black, rotary phone, biting my nails, twisting my hair, and counting the seconds till that fucker finally rings! It is taking an e-fucking-normous effort of will not to just stalk him until things go my way. Trouble is, he’d play along, sort of. He’s pretty responsive to communication, but I haven’t been able to get him out on a second date. I made the first move, have *definitely* expressed interest (as has he), but it’s really on him now. If he really is interested, I need him to make something happen and he knows this.

And still the torture continues….

before the dawn. Or so I’ve heard, time and time and time and time again. But what they don’t tell you is that there’s no telling which dawn is real and which is false. And if we remember, dawn happens every single day. So that means there is, potentially, no end to those “always darkest” moments. It fucking sucks. Because these last few days full of moments have felt really really hard, some of them. Some were okay, but some were bad.

I think the worst has been when I’ve felt so hopeless about my credit card debt. I finally realized that not only am I ashamed that I’ve racked it up, I feel no hope that it will ever be gone. I’ve been struggling financially for at least the last six years and it feels like there is no end in sight. And that’s the worst part. That I’ll be struggling and scrimping and barely getting by for the rest of my life. I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel really good about my financial situation. I’m not sure I ever have, if I’m completely honest.

Even when I was married, my ex was a freak about money. It was good in that we didn’t rack up debt, but bad in that we still counted every penny, even when we were doing well. We never truly enjoyed it. But it’s the feeling of hopelessness, of no light at the end of the tunnel, of never digging out from under, that’s finally started to wear me down. But even though I don’t believe it, I’m going to say it anyway – it will get better. There will be light, the universe will help me through these dark moments.

Is a word I know little about. Especially when it comes to men. But I know more than I used to, which is good. But I’m feeling antsy because I think I said something that might have been a little snarky to someone who doesn’t deserve it. But maybe not and maybe I’m making a deal out of nothing. But I feel bad for the comment and am trying to come up with a way to apologize, without making a big deal.

Or maybe not. Maybe I should just ignore it and let it go. It’s these little things that make me realize just how terribly insecure I am. The man has expressed interest, says he enjoys chatting & such but, on some level, I feel like he’s probably just looking for a reason to bail. And I’m convinced that any little thing I say could trigger it. It feels like the same kind of “walking on eggshells” that I did so long with Carl, and then Michael – having to try and guess their moods so I wouldn’t say the wrong thing.

Every indication has been that he means what he says, but I’m just….I don’t know what I am. But I know that I’m hypersensitive to every little thing, most likely for no reason. I did send an apology, because I don’t like it when people doubt my word and I shouldn’t have expressed doubt in his. Hopefully I didn’t make matters worse or weirdly awkward.

Today is one of those days. I’m low energy, unmotivated, unproductive, and generally not even interested in being around myself. I don’t know why I feel like this and I don’t even have good questions to ask to try and find out why. What I do know is that it’s an effort to be around people, to make conversation. There’s really no point to this post, other than to practice my typing.

That’s how I feel about my life right now – as if I’m just a mildly curious observer. Well, sort of. The part of me that is present feels like things are just happening without any conscious direction and she’s only making a half-hearted attempt to keep up. It’s like I don’t really care what happens, as long as it’s nothing too catastrophic.

This is totally unlike me – what the fuck is up?

I can’t muster the motivation to continue writing my book or start working on the business plan I talked over with my SBDC counselor. She loaned me an excellent workbook to help me get started and I haven’t even cracked it open. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did copy all the information from the CD to my laptop. And that’s it.

I feel like I just don’t care about anything. Again, not entirely true. I care about working, but only to the extent that I want to get a paycheck. Other than that, it doesn’t matter anymore either. Things aren’t bad, or exceptionally stressful, I just couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

I feel numb.

Perhaps I finally just got to the point that I had to separate myself a little or just collapse. The past year was so difficult and stressful, maybe I’m interpreting the absence of that stress as detachment. Or maybe I’m just giving myself time to NOT be worried about things. Maybe it’s emotional and mental exhaustion that has quite been un-exhausted yet. I don’t consciously feel that bad off, but who knows?

Honestly, I don’t even care about what I’m writing about.

I’ve spent my whole day distracting myself from writing. I have a great book started, I can feel it hanging around in my head, waiting patiently to get out, but I can’t seem to sit down & type. Is this normal?

This morning, I had an epiphany about the phrase “I want.” I realized that, until that moment, I was almost unable to use that phrase in any sort of meaningful way. I just couldn’t admit that I wanted anything. I started a post a few weeks ago when I first came across the enneagram and discovered my tritype is 8 (gut), 4 (heart), and 5 (head). I think tritypes are new and may not be widely accepted but it works for me. I was very familiar with the 8 characteristics but the 5 stuff blew me away.

The 5 type resonates really, really strongly and the description, themes, and practices for growth were dead on. It was both scary and exhilarating to read something that targeted my tendencies and patterns so accurately. It’s like I had some limited awareness of the behaviors but nothing to connect them or help me understand them. The analogy of seeing something through a foggy glass comes to mind – I could catch a glimpse of movement once in a while but the whole picture was fuzzy and indistinct. Reading the enneagram cleared away the fog. Here’s what I found out about my 5 type from Explore the Enneagram:

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You lost sight of the universal principle that there is an ample supply of all the knowledge and energy that everyone needs, and came to believe instead that the world demands too much from people or gives them too little. You learned to protect yourself from intrusion and insufficient resources by becoming private and self-sufficient. You limit your desires and wants, and acquire knowledge.

As a consequence Observers retracted into the mind, detached from feelings and emotional claims, and conserved their energy by reducing needs and pursuing self-sufficiency. They didn’t realize that this can lead to a lonely and even impoverished life. Fives believe that if you don’t want, you won’t lack. If you can get along with little, you won’t be vulnerable or dependent.

Six healing and growth commitments for Type Fives:

* Recognize and release the avarice for time, space, energy and knowledge
* Make the counter-instinctive move forward into life and feelings
* Stay present, engaged with others
* Share or give more of yourself while taking in more support from others
* Recognize there are ample resources, and practice abundance
* Realize that the flow of universal energy to meet life’s real needs
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Oddly enough, I just retook the test, in two different formats, and came up with some different results on the tritype. My main type is definitely 8, no doubts there. But my secondary type in one test came up as 4 (first time that’s popped up) and my third type showed up as 7 (not a surprise, that’s my dominant wing). The 5 showed up behind the 7, a distant third to the 4. And when I read the description for 4, it also resonated deeply. This could all be very confusing and lead me down the path of “I need to understand it all and find out more” but I’m going to resist.

Everyone has at least some of all these aspects present in their personalities. Although we probably all have a main type, our other types probably shift a little, depending on where we are in our lives. Interestingly enough, the first time I looked at the tritype, I thought my heart center was a 1, but 1 isn’t a heart type, it’s a gut type. But 4 is a heart type, and that means all three of my tritypes feel accurate (8,5,4). I’m rambling a bit but the ramble is helping me clear out all the stuff I’ve been thinking. Well, not all of it but some. It’s still kind of cluttered in the enneagram closet in my brain but it’ll organize itself at some point.

I just had a conversation with a co-worker that emphasized how different my mindset is than some of the folks I work with. Becoming a state employee after over two decades of experience in the private sector is a big adjustment. This small incident was, I think, indicative of two major differences:

1. Reluctance to change mindsets to adapt to “new” technology
2. Disconnect from today’s more quick-moving business world

What happened was that I met someone at a business fair and she had some questions about jobseeker services. I gave her my card, told her to contact me if she wanted some assistance. She emailed me with questions so I referred her, via another email, to a colleague of mine. I did this the normal way – I wrote a new email to her and cc’d my colleague, introducing them and telling her he would work with her.

My colleague stopped by my desk and asked me what he was supposed to do. He kept saying he didn’t have any of her contact information, even though I kept telling him he had her email address. Then he started asking about her phone number – which wasn’t on her original email and I didn’t have (or want to go find). We went around and around for a few minutes because I didn’t understand what the confusion was over. Finally, he told me he didn’t usually get emails like that – normally he just gets people’s phone numbers and he calls them. Obviously, email isn’t his preferred method of contact.

Tough shit buddy, get with the program. Email is the medium of choice for many many people these days, myself included. And, honestly, he’s a talker – even more than me and that’s saying something! He does know a lot, though, and I’m sure people appreciate that. But I just could not understand the problem with simply emailing her back and starting the conversation.

And then he started to get a patronizing – saying “it’s not a big deal”, etc. Crickets on bicycles!!!!

Well, something finally happened. I had a couple of moments of acting like a sullen teenager that prompted A to have “the talk” with me. He handled it far, far better than most people I know would have handled it and even though I was mortified, I was glad it finally happened. What I’ve since realized is that a chunk of my sullenness was coming not from feeling rejected but from feeling frustrated that I felt like I couldn’t talk to him about my feelings. I’d held off for so long, waiting for this and that to clear up and I was *really* feeling stymied.

Given the circumstances, I couldn’t think of a single way to approach the topic that wouldn’t end in something bad happening. There didn’t seem to be any route into and out of it that I could navigate with any degree of success. So I created a situation where he brought it up. All it cost me was my dignity and several hours of feeling completely mortified by my behavior! Oddly enough, I was completely unprepared to talk to him (given the circumstances), so I mainly sat there like a lump, probably with a dumbstruck look on my face, trying not to be completely hysterical. argh!

I woke up still feeling like an idiot but have since managed to get myself together. I’m really lucky that he is the person he is and that he was sensitive enough to not only address it but to do it kindly and with care. So I’m going to talk with him again this evening not only to acknowledge his sensitivity but to address the issue itself with more than just a dumbfounded look. There will be no dating, which is fine, given my ambivalence, but my hope is that we will be better friends and I will be able to relax and be more myself with him. This also made me realize that some (not all) of my unhappiness with Tex’ behavior was a result of my personal frustration at feeling like I couldn’t talk to him.

Honestly, there is a big part of me that still wants to yap about her behavior and its implications, but I need to let that go. She interacts with men very differently than I do and I have to figure out how to deal with that. Regardless of what I think about why she interacts the way she does, it’s not my job to dissect that. And I have to admit that part of my discomfort (i.e. jealousy) around it is that I wish I were a little more like that – more cute and bubbly and flirty. This is the work and sometimes it just sucks. It’s nothing but a downward spiral – I don’t think I’m good enough as I am, then I get mad at myself for being so judgmental, which prompts more judgment – and so on and so on and so on.

Why is this so hard? And why do I feel like it never gets any easier?