Thank you all for bearing with me as I’ve been trying to get this blog back in order after the move.  Please please please take my little poll in the sidebar and let me know if there are any problems with comments and/or readers. I’ve heard such rumors and I’ll take them up with my site host once you guys let me know if they’re blips or consistent issues.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to handle this job of mine. I have zero, ZERO motivation now for the sixth month in a row. Today I went downtown to pay $100 in traffic court for BARELY running a red light (damn you, traffic cameras!) and actually enjoyed handing over that check more than I enjoyed staring at my inbox today. Something must be done. I have events scheduled pretty much around the clock until Thanksgiving and have been promised an event-free December (read: full of 2009 planning meetings), so the job hunt will commence in full on December 1st.

Here’s a tidbit: I used to want to be a baker. I worked in a bakery in high school and on vacations in college and although I never got to bake anything more than cookies, I loved it. I knew 63 different kinds of bread. I still bake my own bread at home from time to time, no bread machine here! I’m writing this while wearing my new pink cupcake pajamas (Target, $9.08) and thinking about the time Kayak and I talked about opening a cupcake shop in Paris called “Qu’ils mangent de la cupcake” which, loosely translated from French, means “Let them eat cupcake.” He lived there for a year and said no one in Paris makes cupcakes, so it would be a niche market. If Paris doesn’t have cupcakes, they need me.

In all seriousness, I do need a career change. I decided months ago that project management is not the career path I want to pursue, despite the fact that I am reasonably good at it and it would pay the bills tidily if I lived within my means and stopped buying Chip & Pepper jeans and J. Crew cashmere sweaters. Part of me wishes I’d never bought my house, so I’d have more flexibility in the budget and could live in an apartment and be able to accept less money to get started in a career path that I actually enjoy.

What if, what if, what if. The “what if” gets a bad rap as a phrase we use when looking at the past, what if I had or hadn’t done this or that. But maybe it’s really about the future, what if I DO this or that?

Everything I’ve read about changing careers suggests that I first make a list of things I like and do not like about the job I am in and the jobs I have done, and from there I can draw conclusions about what kind of job I should look for and ought not automatically assume it includes baked goods. So here we go.

——————-

In my current job, I like:

Having my own space. Creating things (even if they are just PowerPoints and Visio charts). Working with a core group of good people. Brainstorming. Finding creative ways to fix things. The rare, rare moments when something I have done is more than just good on paper – it’s good for patients. Designing things like t-shirts and company gifts (this is only about once or twice a year though). Building the monthly department newsletter. My boss. My office mate. The gift shop candy counter. A relatively stable schedule.

In my current job, I dislike/despise:

Standing up in front of a group and leading process improvement events (biggest measure of my success at job). Working with ad-hoc teams of people who are not dedicated to my projects. Being given projects that I feel are worthless/pointless and trying to convince myself and my team that the projects are important and high on the priority list. Trying to get other people to do their event followup and quit bugging me to hold their hands. Poor flow or lack of information. Egos. Competition. Overall lack of cameraderie.

From my old jobs, I miss:

Meeting and working with customers and patients. Seeing people smile. Feeling like part of a team that accomplishes something of worth. Being creative with design and making things fun.

From my old jobs, I hated:

Working on commission. Selling anything.

I wish I could:

Work with the same people every day. Trust my coworkers. Create something tangible. Be able and encouraged to improve on the things I create. Have a routine. Produce something in which I can SEE value. Go home and feel like I’ve done a good day’s work.

——————-

I want so much to look for something else but I want it to be the right something. I won’t leave a job that pays well and doesn’t entirely suck just to go into another field where I don’t want to stay.

So what should I be when I grow up?

I spoke with Ben on Tuesday night and he’s completely messed up; he can’t understand what happened and where it all went wrong. Of course, having spent a considerable amount of time listening to Mel that day, I knew exactly what was going on with her and why.

But of course I can’t tell him that. That’s her place to make him understand as best she can. The only reason I get it at all is because I’ve been in such a similar situation. I’ll have to tell that story another time. Of course I love Ben and want to give him all the support I can during a time like this – they are going to do a sort of trial separation – but I’m afraid to give him any remark or comfort resembling hope. It’s not that I don’t believe something could change in Mel’s heart, but I can’t offer hope of that and I know it’s what he wants to hear.

I can hardly even think of it without wondering, wondering, wondering. So I have to think about something else.

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had started dating a guy from work a few weeks ago. I can’t name this one after his job like I do so many others, because “Talent Acquisition Specialist” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue (or the keyboard) nicely. So I’ll call him Kayak because he has one and I dig that. We have similar interests in outdoorsy things and taste in films. He lived in France for a year and will watch subtitled Audrey Tautou movies with me, and not just “Amelie.” He’s affectionate and will hold my hand while we walk to dinner and cuddle me when we watch movies. He’s cute and has admitted to having a crush on me for some time. It’s been about 2 ½ weeks now and Kayak and I have seen each other a lot – it’s been moving rather quickly, but it’s been nice. Captain, schmaptain.

And then E.

He texted me over the weekend, saying he really wants to talk to me, thinks of me all the time, and that at his Metro stop near my work he’s gotten off and looked for my car in the parking lot to leave me a note because he was too nervous to tell me what he had to say. He never did leave that note, and I texted back that if he wants to talk, he should call me. He did, and we talked for about 45 minutes on Saturday afternoon. It was the first time I’d heard his voice since the day I gave him all of his stuff back in early June. He apologized over and over for the way he’d treated me, and I have to confess that although I accepted his apologies, I did light into him about WHY what he did was wrong.

“You LIED when you said you didn’t love me?” I said incredulously. “You lied. About that.”

“Yes. I’m still in love with you, I never stopped.”

“Why, of all things, would you lie about loving me?” I practically yelled. “You ripped my heart out when you said that!”

“Look, I was scared, and it was the stupidest thing to be scared of and it was the stupidest thing to lie about and I’ve regretted it ever since. I acted for the dumbest reasons and felt pressure from other people–“

“Which is a FINE reason for making decisions about our relationship, really. I love when you use that as an excuse.”

“I’m so sorry, I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. I know you don’t trust me, but I really am.”

“Well,” I said evenly, “for future reference, when you want to know what a girl wants from you and from your relationship, you should ask HER. No one else. And when you let other people’s pressure to get married or not get married or whatever make decisions for you, then you’re not a man about it.”

He was silent. I was seething. “Say something,” I demanded.

“I need to see you. I need to see you to talk about this.”

“We can do that,” I sighed.

“I’ll call you later this week when I get my work schedule,” he said quickly. “We’ll go get coffee, something. I promise I will call you.”

“Okay.”

Then came Monday night and everything with Mel and Ben, and I needed him more desperately than I ever had before. We’d had arguments before about how I felt he was dismissive sometimes when I was upset, but on Monday when I called him, he dropped everything and came over. Some of that is documented in my last post. Some of it is here.

When my tears for Mel and Ben were spent for the time being, the conversation turned back to our own breakup. “I’ve been seeing someone,” I said abruptly as we sat on the porch in silence.

“Really.”

“Just for a little while. It’s nothing serious.”

“Why isn’t he here with you tonight?”

“Because I needed you,” I said simply.

“It’s so weird that this all happened tonight of all nights,” he said.

“Why?”

“I talked to my dad today.” E’s dad has had two failed marriages and is a bitter, cynical old man. He warns his sons that women poke holes in condoms to get pregnant and demand shotgun weddings. He’s never minded me but I am a woman and therefore not to be trusted with his son.

“And?”

“He was glad about the changes I’m making in my life, of course.” E finally, FINALLY left The Restaurant and got another job. He’s still in the restaurant industry and working as a line cook and not as the big-cheese chef anymore, which of course is not ideal, but at least now he’s at the Four Seasons, making more money and not in that shitbox working for those idiot owners. E is also moving out of the apartment he’s shared with the stoner roommate and getting his own place. He is making positive changes, the kind he’d always talked about making and never did.

“I’m glad too,” I said. “You needed those things.”

“And so you know my dad, all business,” he said slowly. “He asked me if I had a five-year plan.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “And I do. I want it to be with you. I want you to give me another chance. I want to be with you and move our relationship forward, to build a life with you, to raise a family.” E got down on his knees in front of me and had both my hands in his and for a terrified nanosecond I thought he was going to propose or say something equally stupid. The words just spilled out of his mouth. “I know I’ve fucked up and I haven’t been a man. But I want to be. I’ve been trying, I’ve been making changes and I want to make more. And I need you, I want to do this with you.” He cupped my face in his hands and leaned his forehead against mine.

I closed my eyes.

“You told me the other day that if I want something from a woman I should ask her and no one else,” he continued. “And my dad thought I was an idiot until I looked him in the eye today and said ‘Dad, I love her.’ He shook his head at me and said I should do whatever I want if I’m that sure of myself. And I am. I don’t care if he still thinks I’m an idiot or if he approves and just isn’t telling me. I don’t care. So I’m asking you, only you, to give this another chance.”

“E… I don’t know… I can’t even think…”

“You don’t have to say anything now. I know this is an awful time to ask you to make a decision. But I had to tell you this and when you can make a decision, then make it.”

“Everything is falling apart.” I leaned back in my chair and looked in his eyes. “And now you want everything you said you didn’t want. Do you really mean all this?”

I dropped a tear and he brushed it off my cheek with his thumb. “I’m done lying,” he said.

“I can’t think.”

“Then don’t. Not just yet.”

He stayed with me all night. I lay awake in his arms and didn’t sleep. God, I’d missed those arms. I missed how the shape of his body fit the shape of mine when we lay in bed together. I missed his little beer belly because it made for such good hugs and snuggles and tickles. I missed the smell of him and the way he tangled his hands in my hair when he kissed me, and that he always knew exactly how to kiss me. I missed the way he rolled over in the middle of the night and grabbed me close, buried his head in my neck and made growly noises while he tickled my neck with his tongue. I missed his touch, his voice, his snores, the way he spreads out like a starfish on my bed and I have to shove him at least once a night. I missed playing with his hair in the morning and making the curls fluff out.

I’d missed him like crazy.

Everything he said to me that night was beautiful, and it’s hard for me to believe that he would say those things just because they’re what he thinks I want to hear. I say that because E has really never been that great at knowing what I wanted to hear. There were times I couldn’t shut him up spouting off his own opinions about a subject we’d beaten to a pulp, times when all I ever needed was for him to apologize for something and instead he’d get defensive. So when he said these things – I want to believe him. I want to trust him. But I don’t know how yet.

I don’t want to go back to E just to have affection and companionship again. I could have Kayak for that – things are going well and could be very promising. I could take that chance and not worry every day about being betrayed by E again. Kayak is an unknown. He could lie to me, hurt me or break my heart just as easily as E could. And chances are it would hurt a little less than the pain and indignity of being hurt by E a second time.

So I’m freaking terrified.

My bedroom is painted a medium-deep blue color, and has room-darkening fabric shades and navy curtains. It gets no sun until the late afternoon when the light hits the west window. On Tuesday morning, E and I lay there together, holding one another and sharing pillows and covers in what we always called our cocoon. Wrapped up with him in the isolated, darkened room, I felt a small peace. Outside the door there were choices and changes, inside the room I was protected by the arms of a man who loved me and wanted me to love him again. I don’t know if it was fear of the choices and changes outside or my love for that man inside that made me want to stay in there forever.

Conference, schmonference. The only thing of note during conference time on Friday was that it was freaking FREEZING in there. During the morning inbrief, a nice man saw me shivering and let me borrow his blazer. I got a cup of coffee just to warm my hands, and I didn’t take a sip. I was wearing a button-down shirt and a linen skirt, not a bikini. But brr!

So I did what any reasonable girl on Michigan Avenue would do. I skipped out of the fifteen-minute break/networking session and trotted across the street to the North Face store in the Hancock Building. I bought this:

It looked nice over my white button-down, although with the patch on the sleeve and the skirt I was wearing, I felt a bit like I was ditching class from my private school. Maybe I should have gotten this one instead.

It might have been even more appropriate. That and ski pants.

But I escaped without losing any digits to frostbite, and headed out into the fierce Chicago sunshine to go get ready to meet more of the blog posse.

I will pause here for a moment and explain the title of this post. I have a coworker who refers to my blogger pals as my “imaginary friends” since all I do is type and Twitter to you guys and have never met any of you face to face before this trip. NS, look! You’re finally being mentioned in a post! EAT THAT!

“Jess said she’d be wearing a blue shirt,” I said. “I think I know what she looks like, but not the others.”

“Yeah I saw the pictures she posted from BlogHer,” Jenn added as we scanned the plaza. “But why was she wearing a cheeseburger bag on her head?”

Even without her distinctive headwear, we found Jess. Three more lovely lady bloggers joined us – it should have been four, but noooo, Jamie just HAD to go to Lollapalooza and send eleventy-three Tweets that had us all checking our phones and envying her. I was the newbie in the group and I hadn’t read everyone and everyone hadn’t read me, but it took about three and a half minutes for me to feel like I was catching up with old friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile, rather than meeting new people that I’d be afraid wouldn’t like me.

This does go back to my theory of the Six Degrees of Blogroll. In the same way that we’ve always chosen our friends, we choose what we read. As we’ve all grown and gotten out of high school and college cliques, sororities, and organized extracurriculars, the friend-market becomes almost as tricky as the mate-market. I have no idea how to “make friends” with a girl, really. My only new female friends post-college have been from work. You can’t just go pick up friends at a bar.

But when you read a blog and you recognize some sort of friend material in that blogger, you read again. And then you click on that person’s blogroll and find someone who the blogger you like likes, because that person exudes the friend vibe to the blogger you like, and it’s the same vibe you get from that first one. So you read another blog. And click another link, and read another blog, and realize that one or two of them have been reading you and added you to a blogroll. The Six Degrees of Blogroll becomes a circle of friends who have met and friends to be made, and when you meet, you hug.

Among the six of us we didn’t finish one deep-dish at Giordano’s, and we took our takeaway bags down the street to a pub called Elephant & Castle* for a few beverages. Conversation ranged from jobs and politics to relationships and the relative size of one’s ass. At one point late in the evening it was down to three of us and a tableful of empty glasses, earnestly discussing the problems of age-centered blog ad networks, the hostile takeover by the mommy-bloggers, and certain people having crushes on other certain people. It was bliss.

So in conclusion, without sounding like a lesbian, may I ask: WHERE ARE ALL THE SINGLE GIRLS IN ST. LOUIS?!?!

And Chicago? Labor Day, bitches. I will see you then.

————

*Giordano’s also does not serve Bud Select.

**Which also does not serve Bud Select.

I am 5’3” and I weigh 120 pounds. Yay me. And I am just as entitled to worry about my health and appearance as you are. The problem I have with you is that you don’t seem to believe that I am just as entitled to TALK about it as you are.

Today I was on the elevator with two of you, my coworkers, heading to lunch. You were talking about how you wanted the ribs or the fried chicken but should probably just have the mandarin salad with lite dressing and a glass of water, and what would I be having?

I informed you that I like the cheeseburgers at this restaurant, and was considering ordering one.

You both narrowed your eyes at me. Whatever, you said, at your age you can eat anything you want, cheeseburgers, all of that, you don’t know what it’s like to have to watch your weight.

Yes, I pointed out. Yes I do.

One of you looked me up and down and said yeah right, it wouldn’t hurt me to put on a few pounds.

I pointed out that I am a perfectly healthy weight right now (I owe that to my Depo shots, without which I would still be a gangly 105 pounds soaking wet) and I intend to stay that way. So yes, I am watching my weight. Exercise, I say, that’s where I really need to step up. I may be skinny but I have terrible muscle tone.

Again, you sniffed and rolled your eyes.

What is your problem, people? Is it so wrong of me to say that I want to take care of my body and I realize that I could have healthier habits? Just because my problems are not the same as your problems gives you no right to be rude about it. And I tell you this: you are rude. Rude, I say.

You’ll see, you say, gray-haired and ageist. You’ll see, when you get older and you’re not 100 pounds anymore, it won’t be easy.

Ladies, it’s not easy for me NOW. I have to fight to keep weight on while I’m trying to keep my hypertensive diastolic under control. That in itself is a quandary, because steamed veggies are great for my blood pressure and don’t help me maintain my weight. I don’t like that my muscles aren’t what they used to be, so I exercise and you sniff that I don’t need to get any skinnier. You’re right, I don’t. Until I started my Depo-Provera shot and gained 15 pounds, I was pale, anemic and basically had no immune system. And back then you said I was anorexic and bulimic. You said it was my fault. You were never happy with my body and you never will be until I start wearing clothes in double-digit sizes.

Guess what? I have a little pudge on my tummy and I don’t like it. I should probably do some crunches. I have cellulite on my butt and my thighs and I don’t like that either. Maybe I need to get out the weights and do a few squats. There are things I can do to be healthier, and do you really want to discourage me from doing them? Does it make you feel better about yourself to be rude to the skinny girl, to belittle her problems because they happen to be the opposite of your own?

Sometimes the grass sucks on this side of the fence too.

I eat cheeseburgers because I like them and I need to keep my weight up, I exercise because I need better muscle tone and it helps lower my high blood pressure (My cholesterol, by the way, is quite fine). And you tell me to enjoy it while I can, because I am surely doomed to one day be as fat as you perceive yourself to be.

Leave the labels out of it: fat and skinny and obese and scrawny and plus-size and anorexic and all the others. Good health is the best goal for all of us, whether that means gaining weight, losing weight, maintaining weight, working out, watching what we eat, or building our self-esteem in what we are. I don’t want to be skinny and sick any more than you want to be overweight and fighting your own set of health issues. So we have a common goal and we both struggle. Don’t tell me we’re so different.

Healthy is beautiful.

—————————–

I cross-posted this one on BlogHer and got a nice e-mail from one of the Community Managers. That made me happy.