My life would be easier if I didn’t like men so much :(
From the category archives:
Sadness
I’ve been battling the phlegm in my lungs and throat for the better part of Sunday and Monday. Time to slow down, take a break and take care of myself. Sorry for the off / “sick day” on the site today. I’ll be back tomorrow with a more engaging topic than “phlegm.”
I really enjoyed reading at the Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak event at Borders yesterday. I gave the most honest delivery I could. It wasn’t a saccharine-sweet “my life is perfect” tale. But, I can’t help it; I rarely hide messes in my personal love affairs. I figure we all have heartache & sad things happen to us; so, why not talk about it? In fact, one of the first pieces I ever read at SMITH magazine — the producers of Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak– was story about a guy whose sibling died: Something happened, and he drowned.
“Chris, my older brother, died four years ago,” Something happened starts. “He was 34, single, and living in Chicago. I just turned 35; I’m now older than he ever got to be.” Read the whole story. It’s touching. Maybe I relate to it because I’ll be 35 next year and I couldn’t fathom losing my sibling at this age. Maybe the story resonates because, though I now live in New York City, I’m originally from the same city as the piece’s author: Chicago. Or, perhaps I like the piece so much because — whether on the page or on film — I’m inspired when others share stories about painful loss, heartache and failure because it lets me know life isn’t always perfect and, therefore, it’s okay if I’m not either. Love is an amazing, and it’s most honest (and most truthful!) when we don’t ignore its sinister sister: heartache. It’s like that saying goes [not sure who wrote/said it]: “Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.” So, THANK you to Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser for including me last night’s program, allowing me to share my “heartbreak story” with others. Now, on a cheerier note, my friends at YourTango just shot me an email with a bunch of links to Valentine’s Day-related stuff; so I thought I’d share the info with you. Full disclosure: The mag named me their blogger crush a short while ago and, of course, the love is mutual:
Video: 5 Worst Valentine’s Day Gifts
http://www.yourtango.com/200910139/5-worst-valentines-day-gifts
Video: What Men Secretly Think About Valentine’s Day
http://www.yourtango.com/200910667/what-men-secretly-think-about-valentines-day
Valentine’s At Wendy’s & Other Quirky Customs
http://www.yourtango.com/200910588/valentines-day-at-wendys
Why It’s Better Not To Have A Valentine
http://www.yourtango.com/20083562/5-reasons-its-better-to-be-single-on-valentines-day.html
A New Way To Celebrate Valentine’s Day: Keep Romance, Lose Hallmark
http://www.yourtango.com/200910507/reclaiming-v-day-keep-romance-lose-hallmark
Show Affection Without Getting Sappy
http://www.yourtango.com/200664/dont-worry-be-sappy.html
Romance On A Budget
http://www.yourtango.com/20086035/romance-on-a-budget
We contacted each other previously. He approached me at a friend’s party on 46th Street and 7th Avenue. Cute. Foreign. Brilliant. Interesting. Immediately sparking sexual chemistry, we were lip-locked within 20 minutes. Thinking back, maybe it was 80% chemistry and 20% booze … or 70% chemistry, 30% booze. Hey, it was a party. We were drinking! But, whatever. Anyway.
I thought he was a player. My snap judgments and gut instincts are usually spot on; I should trust them more often. When he initially gave me his little white business “card”, it had four things printed on it: (1) Name, (2) City/Country of origin, (3) New York City and (4) domestic & foreign cell phone numbers. Last summer, my visiting friend Anna-Scarlet said she’d never seen such a thing. “They’re player cards,” I told her. “Some New Yorkers actually get personal cards printed with just their contact info so they can give them out at bars.”
“Are you kidding???” Anna-Scarlet scoffed.
“Nope. They’re convenient when you wanna connect with someone, but you don’t really want them to know your personal information — like, where you work.” So, the dude gave me one of “those” cards. Still, I decided to reserve judgment until I got to know him better. Partly because I wanted to be wrong about him. Partly because I actually liked the guy. Maybe those two are the same thing? Over the next weeks, we went on dates: holding hands while strolling through museums; making out at bars; flirting across brunch and dinner tables; and, most importantly, talking about how much we mutually despised stupid games & lies people turn when dating.
Still, I was skeptical about his intentions. Instead of seeking honest answers, I mulled over tons of scenarios and came up with crafty solutions like 007 or Jason Bourne. Why did he have a player card? Why did he repeated tell me he was a “very private person”? Why did he refuse to friend me on Facebook though he contacted me through the site countless times — adding, “You can’t write anything kinky on my wall”? Why did he come on so incredibly fucking strong, then turn me down when I eventually suggested we go back to his place (e.g. “Um, we can’t. My apartment’s a mess”)? I wasn’t sure if we’d been on enough dates, and I didn’t want to feel like I was prying into his life. But, I knew this: if he’s not actively hanging around with other women (he said he wasn’t), at the very least, he’s hiding something.
Why are people so fucking careless with others’ hearts? It’s not worth explaining why the dude’s out the picture now, what went down and why our tale, this possible-love-story-in-progress, is now wasted on Manhattan’s streets — splattered on Midtown pavement like bird shit, run over with the clunk-clunk of a dump truck passing a pothole. It’s just, you know, over. Of course, I cried. Not for that specific boy; I’m just, you know, sick of the bullshit. What’s the point of lying to someone you barely know? When someone tells me “I’m not into games, I like honesty, I don’t understand why people date a lot of people at the same time, blah blah blah” THEN it turns out to be bullshit, it feels like a mind fuck.
When I meet a object of desire for the first time, I get really excited about it. “Ohhh,” I figure, “he’s cute! I really like him. OMG, MAYBE WE’LL GO ON DATES!!” So, when it doesn’t work out, I feel hurt, frustrated, irritated and saddened. And, everyone knows it. Sometimes I’m glad I have a blog because it’s cathartic to write about the shit I go through in the dating world. It helps me make sense of everything. Other times, it feels odd to be so “public.”
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Credit paid: “You Fucking Broke It” image appears on Chelsea Labsu’s Flickr.
Hey guys. Sorry for the post-free day(s) and, to some of you, the unanswered emails. I received a bit of bad news, and I’m still kind of working through it all. Believe it or not, over the past few days, I’ve received three … yes, count them … three rejection notices for jobs that I really wanted. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I now know why I’m having a hard time finding a job in my field.
According the “Those Who Know”, apparently I’m at a weird place career-wise. I’m definitely not entry-level, and I’m not really mid-career either. So, when I apply for entry jobs, I get the “overqualified” schpiel. They’re afraid that I would only stay there a year and then leave when/if a job that better suited my skillset surfaced. And, they’re probably right. BUT, because I’m in the fairly early stages of managerial/executive, I get the “not enough experience” bullshit from that end. They don’t want to go out on a limb and hand over their division or department to someone they don’t know. Where does that leave me? Exactly where am I now. What do I need? In a word: connections. People are waaaay more likely to give you a try if they actually know you. This is exactly the reason why people from Chicago keep calling me to offer me jobs back home. “Just come home,” they beckon. Thus far, I’ve turned them all down. And, now, after receiving yet ANOTHER tip about a really good job in the 3rd City just a moment ago, I’m really starting wonder.
I’ve been hanging on, but at what point do you decide that enough is enough? I love New York. This is my city. No doubt about it. Still, if I’m really honest with myself, the past year kind of kicked my ass. And, the past four months have almost knocked me out. I’ve tried to stay strong through it all, but everyone has their limits. In life, there are things that are difficult and then there are things that are simply unbearable …
I’ll be back tomorrow once I’ve had a little more time to clear my head. In the meantime, brilliant ideas and/or comments from people who have been in that more-than-mid-but-barely-managerial-limbo are especially welcome.
Okay, I have really bad news kids. I just lost my job. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to blog about this. In the end, I decided that I would because, if you’ve read the post So, Come Here Often?, you know that I started this blog to chronicle the ups *and downs* of my recent move to New York City.
So, what happened with the job? I hadn’t been there for a very long time and I was still in that evaluation period during which they determine if I am a good fit for the company and I decide whether the company is a good fit for me. In the end, we mutually agreed that it wasn’t working out.
I took the weekend off to regroup. I cried. I prayed. I called friends (I love you guys!!!). And, now that it’s the start of a new week, I have to face the real challenges that lie ahead. I haven’t told my family (my sister) yet. We’re different. For her, life is about finding your safety blanket and wrapping yourself in it. If I were to call her now, she would feel really frightened for me … and she would tell me to move back to the Midwest. That’s not what I need to hear right now. And, more importantly, I don’t want her to worry.
Boy #2 has been unbelievably supportive. I’ve seen him 4 times since my first post about him 5 days ago. We now see each other and/or he calls me almost every day; he even cooked dinner for me. I’m not naïve enough to think that everything is fine with the boy because this is actually quite a horrible time to meet even the most wonderful person. I don’t know where things will go with Boy #2 but, for right now, I feel okay. Oddly enough, approximately 3 months ago, I said fabulously single New York women never seem to have all three at the same time: an apartment, a job and a boy. “Once I find [a] boy,” I wrote, “I’m totally convinced that I’ll probably lose either my job or the apartment.”
Life is so incredibly odd.
