My Dammit List
I’ve been meaning to write this for years, since before starting this blog. However, I resisted for a long time. Partly from fear, partly because words have power and I’m afraid of speaking something I can’t take back, and partly from vague notions that I’m still figuring it out. See, I’ve always been sort of a boundary-less person, someone who compromises herself in the face of stronger personalities and perhaps economic necessity. But I don’t like this about myself. I wasn’t always this way, but years of muckety-muck and you develop some gnarly coping mechanisms. I transform myself so I don’t get hurt. Believe me, defense mechanisms that rob you…
The Art of Holding Back
Looking back, I’m not sure why I was so nervous. Maybe it’s because it was my first “real” job after rehab and the wounds of alcoholism were still too raw, my self-image tender and peeling. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t worked at an office in three years, since getting laid off right before the recession. Maybe it was being one of two women in a roomful of construction men who bandied about casual insults like they were NERF balls. In any case, I was the low woman on the totem pole and grateful to have work at all after nine months scrambling frantically for any scrap of employment that didn’t…
Freedom is the Best
My days have gotten much more palatable since getting laid off in July. Rather than squeezing tiny drops of enjoyment from things like my drive home from work and stolen moments of frantic writing, I now look forward to every day. Every damn day. It seems a little excessive, huh? Granted, not every day is a cake walk (a couple of hours job searching in this economy is enough to crush even the chipperest of souls). But since deciding to go the freelance route, basically I wake up every morning excited. I love my first cup of coffee of the day, steaming and bold. While sipping those first precious drops of my…
