Maybe Ephiphanies Are A Bit Over-Rated

Have to make a confession here, I'm usually only inspired to write this thing when I am down or depressed or currently, using it as a crutch to prop myself up while I rationalize things.

For anyone reading my last post, I apologize if you did. I probably should have done the ladylike thing and delete it, but the subversive in me rears up and says, "Hey, while the post had a depressing overall tone, everything in it was true and honest!"

I'm depressed.
It's hard for me to admit things like this even to myself. Part of me wants to conceal that fact with the determinedly saccharine-coated positivity of one of the Disney princesses, "Whistle a Happy Tune"...while surrounded by a bevy of my helpful furry friends. But all apologies to Disney (I'm a big fan), that doesn't work in real life.

As is my wont, a few weeks ago, I had another couple of epiphanies. One was the moment I found myself in a beginners' college math class (trying to finish what I started) and realized that I was older than everyone else in the room including the Professor.  Things have changed since I last walked the campus. My classes take place in a building that didn't exist back then. I now walk to my car along a
sophisticated lighted breezeway that has landscaping facing a pond with a fountain water feature that glows with colored lights. It's a far cry from the dank dusky halls where bats literally roosted in the eves and people hung over the balconies getting in one last drag off a cigarette (not me) before classes resumed. Not anymore. Now if you light up anywhere but sanctioned 'smoking permitted' areas, campus police in their Keystone Kops-esque vehicles swarm over you like hungry dieters over the last jelly doughnut. The place is scattered liberally with recycling receptacles and where vending machines used to dispense nearly undrinkable coffee, tea, hot choc and soup (all of which tasted like coffee) now they have an eco friendly café that hawks veggie paninis and fair-trade coffee.

How much would you hate me if I admitted I liked it the way it was?  Before it became all sustainability conscious, when the library actually contained books instead of banks of computers. Yes, they have approximately 20 rows of shelves (I counted them), two (2) of which are full  of DVD and CD's. But it's a far cry from the nearly eighty (80) they used to have and most of the books that are left are nearly anthropological relics of the 70's and 80's. No more stacks, no more microfiche. No more senior citizen 'library ladies', just volunteers who are all younger than me and can never help me with anything I actually want, like a copy of  Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair'. My God, when did we quit reading or teaching the youth about literary classics?  I'm just a sad relic who doesn't really want to read the latest installment of The Hunger Games or the newest fad book about vampires or the undead on my Kindle.

I'm depressed. I'm about six (6)weeks from my 40th birthday and when it was suggested that perhaps a party should be gotten up in my honor, I had to decline citing no friends to attend it. Or spouse, or children.

Forty.  A sad woman who struggles with math, spends what would be a small fortune in a third world country on beauty aids and salon visits to halt the signs of aging, concealers under my eyes, highlights in my hair. I'm hating it and it isn't even here.

I'm depressed. I'm about to lose the best boss I ever had, the re-doubtable O'Malley. I work in a department that prefers my younger assistant temp to me. Who left me off the invite list for a co-worker's surprise birthday party. Who they never ask to lunch. I keep wondering what I did to inspire such treatment.

Every day I wake up and the only thing that motivates me to get moving to my job is the fear of poverty and unemployment.

I'm depressed, I guess I can finally admit it.

I am hoping that the catharsis of writing this will enable me to face it.
That this will lead me to the solution.

I am tired of saying I am depressed...I'm tired
I'm tired of pretty much everything, except God, my cats, 80's music and old movies...
Maybe that's enough to start with...

Reinvention

It's been awhile, I know.

I am not sure if my sabbatical was the equivalent of a summer vacation, or that I couldn't sustain the pace I was trying to keep, or simply that I couldn't hear the voice in my head because of all the background noise, but in the end, I think it's just simply that I've needed time.

Lots of things going on since I last floated my fingertips across these keys. I buried my grandma, got a new boss, changed my hair color (slightly and not actually on purpose), found out my thyroid was out of whack (probably not the technical term for this condition), started learning elementary German on Babble, but most importantly I learned a lot about myself.

On my second to last post, my mother, revealed as one of the most prominent readers of this screed (hey I need all the fans I can get) mentioned that many of my posts sounded angry and it really shook me.

I stood back and took a hard look at myself. And when I began to really measure it and take stock, I was staggered at the sheer amount of negativity in my life. How many times had I metaphorically shot myself in the foot, not believing myself capable of the tasks entrusted to me?

It's hard to change, as a negative person, to begin to embrace positivity. Very. In fact, it's downright excrutiating for someone as diametrically opposed to change as myself.

Sometimes though, you get help along the way from the places and people from whom you'd least expect it. Remember in school when you were getting your schedule at the beginning of the year, how someone would look over your shoulder and shudder and say "Oh Wow, you got O'Malley for Bio!", as if to say, man are you in for it!  But then unexpectedly, O'Malley would turn out to be the teacher you most remember looking back, because even though he was tough and demanding, you found yourself doing better and getting more out of his class, because he inspired you, because he believed you were capable of more than you'd even thought you were.

Remember how I said, I got a new boss. I didn't want one. No indeed, I was going along just fine, thank you very much, but Non-Company decided our team was getting one anyway. And there were a few fraught days where I teetered on the verge of taking my marbles and going home...after all... it's just an assignment anyway, right? I took a few days, went to Connecticut to attend my Grandma's memorial service, and I came back thinking, okay, I'll see what this guy is like.

Mr. New Boss is a very austere ex-Naval officer, incredibly soft-spoken in tone, yet somehow as steely as they come. And just like O'Malley the Bio teacher, he demands a great deal from you, but before he did that, he did something that no one had ever done before in all my days at Non-Company, he told me I was valued. And he conveyed the fact that he believed I could do more than I'd settled for. And somehow for the first time in many years, I was inspired again.

Please don't get me wrong here, there are plenty of stressful moments where the old me comes back the one that says, I feel that I just can't get this or that done, but then somehow I find myself digging deeper into reserves that I didn't know I had, because I don't want to let him down and also surprisingly I find, because I don't want to let Non-Company down. Not because of who they are, but suddenly because of who I am.

In many ways things are the same, but somehow, I've subtlety changed. I'm no longer angry at smart phones, I use one all the time and I love the exasperating little dude, I've embraced Kindle and wheras I once dismissed them as red-neck idiots, I now absolutely love the values and faith of Duck Dynasty. I've been to a food truck and while I still don't completely understand the allure, I won't knock it anymore. In short, I don't feel the need as much to run somebody else down to elevate myself and make me feel better.

I'll try to make it back to regular weekly postings and Flashback Fridays, and for those of you who are still reading this, I thank you...