2 Months. Whoops.

Been awhile. Don't know why - got busy, got happy, got a car. You know...life stuff.

It's easier to write when I'm upset or crabby, but I haven't been much of either lately. There is a lot of stuff I wish were different, a lot I wish I had that I don't, but all in all I have a pretty sweet life and I am just trying to live it. Lame sentiment, I know, but I am really focusing on getting rid of as much of the negative as I can because it really does just poison your outlook on everything and I was so tired of feeling poisoned all the time. The money, the prestige, the size 3 pants...that is all window dressing on a life that I might one day have. For now I have a stable job, awesome friends, a wonderful boyfriend, a CAR (thank the lord I don't believe in)...it's enough. Not to say that I'm settling or expecting it to be like this forever, but...well. For now, for this moment, it's enough. I am happy.

At night, I would rather go to bed grateful for what I had that day than obsessing over what I didn't. It's a good place to be in, this head space of mine. I'm digging it.

And so our heroine withdraws to the taiga

I've felt very mentally impotent lately, hence the lack of updates. I'm too rusty at self-expression after all the months of being so stuck in the morbid recesses of my brain this fall and winter. I can only hope that the warmer, calmer weather just out of grasp (come on, April, I know you can do it) will also thaw my frozen brain.

She would get the flowers herself

As I was laying in bed reading earlier I came to a startling revelation...

Virginia Woolf's writing appeals to me so much because my brain works in exactly the same way that she writes. Paragraphs and paragraphs of what seem to be unconnected thoughts and descriptions that melt together to form beautiful, usually somewhat melancholy pictures.

Weird. And, you know, vaguely awesome. Well...awesome until I remember that Virginia Woolf put stones in her pockets and walked into a river anyway.

Undiagnosed

I am fairly certain I have undiagnosed OCD. I know, I know, a ton of people claim to be OCD, but I really wonder about myself.

Every day at work I follow the same routine. I get in, turn my computer on, take my coat off and hang it up, sit down, and take the following items out of my purse (always in the same order - always): wallet, cell phone, glasses, iPod, chapstick. These items sit in the same place on my desk.

My activity sheet at work (where I keep track of how far out I am on my stuff) needs to line up. All my monthlies must be logged out to the same date. Same thing for my weeklies. This is just so my activity sheet is more aesthetically pleasing. It REALLY, really irks me that in our new operating system I can't manually control the colors because having blank spots without color makes me CRAZY. Seriously. Crazy.

I follow the same routines in the shower and when I'm getting ready for bed.

Now, I know, all this still doesn't mean I have OCD. But when any of those routines are messed up even slightly, I get physically agitated. I have actually closed out of my activity sheet just so I wouldn't freak out about not being able to line up the colors.

So, my point is, sometimes I wonder. And, really, would anyone be that surprised if it were true? Really? When I finally get my shit together and make an appointment with a therapist maybe it's something I should look into.

In conclusion, my brain is a special special place.

Stuck

One of the main motivators I've been using to try to find a new job was that I don't get paid enough at my current job. And, for what I do, I don't get paid enough. Unfortunately, my W2 came in the mail today and seeing just how much extra dough my overtime nets me was quite shocking. It put me in an entirely different pay bracket!

Needless to say, the chances of me finding a job in a new(ish) field that will pay me as much as I am making now (including overtime) AND offer me the same level of benefits and paid time off are pretty much slim to none. At least in this economy.

I hear your unasked question - Aren't you miserable there, though? Well, yes and no. The job itself has improved a lot over the past month or so. My personal problems with a few of my managers continues, but it balances out with the great friends I have there to vent and commiserate with. The ex working 50 feet from me isn't the best, but he and I are still friendly (closest description I could come up with) so even that isn't as horrible as it once was.

It isn't what I want to do with my life, but I am 24. Its paying my bills and keeping me healthy. I get to take time off to relax a bit and decompress. I have friends there. It could be a lot worse.

Sigh. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

I used to be afraid of my boobs

Note: This entire entry is TMI. You have been warned.

On January 8th of the year 2000, I began dating a boy. It had taken him almost four months of nightly phone calls and daily group lunches for him to screw up the courage to "ask me out" and it was the most awkward conversation of my life. Earlier that day I had admitted to our joint friend that I liked him too and she couldn't hang up fast enough to go dish with him. And then, then...the phone call. Let's relive it, shall we? -

Scene: My bedroom. I am wearing nothing but a towel, my wet hair dripping down my back and I am running late for my friend's birthday dinner. My mom enters and hands me the phone.

We: *exchange the heys and what's ups of most teenage conversations*
Him: So, Friend F called me earlier and told me...
Me, interrupting: Yeah, uh, I know, she told me she was going to call you...
Him: So, I mean, would you...do you...
Me, interrupting: Oh, I know what you are going to ask. Um, look, I'm running late for Friend S's dinner thing, I think I...can I tell you my answer tomorrow?
Him: Oh, um, yeah, sure, if you need.
Me: Great, bye!

And then we dated for almost 6 years. He was my first love, my first heartbreak and my first...well, you know. It took us over three months to make out, almost a year for me to let him get to second base and I believe I gave him an impassioned speech on afternoon about why I thought oral sex was a horridly disgusting idea and should never be attempted (never say I don't admit when I'm wrong!). It was two years before we slept together. I thought it was scandalous that we fooled around in his car on my weekends home from college. I liked it all, don't get me wrong, but there was always a feeling of, "maybe I'm a skank! Should I not be doing this with him?"

The point of this post? Today I sat down and seriously plotted out a scheme to start booty calling my most recent ex. Who is this woman I've become, scheming for one night stands with mentally unavailable men? And, more importantly, why don't I care? Why am I still so glad to be rid of the 15 year old girl who thought she would get in trouble for kissing her boyfriend with tongue outside of her high school? Thinking devious thoughts about seducing guys shouldn't make me feel empowered, should it?

Food for thought while I talk myself out of texting my ex and telling him how much I want to do all the things to him that my teenage self fled from in terrified disgust. I really just want to take her by the hand and tell her, "There, there. Try it...you'll like it."

Three things

1. I am finally done Christmas shopping. Well, for the gifts I need for Thursday anyway.

2. The Holiday (shut up, Leah) has inspired me to get the fuck over Ben already. He doesn't want me and as much as that might tear me up, there is nothing to be done. Time to put on my big girl panties and keep on moving, even if my movement is toward spinsterhood (look, I know it's crazy to say...remember how I need therapy?). ANYWAY, yes. Ben is the one losing in this deal because I would have stood by him through his whole ordeal and he is the one who chose to be alone. So why am I making myself suffer as well?

3. Tomorrow is the last day I have to see No Deal until 2009. This is a very good thing.

In the beginning

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, I had an online journal. Well, technically, I still do, but it a sad shell of a thing that I keep to stay connected to my friends from those golden days in college when I spent my free time pretending I could write and talking with people for hours on whether or not I thought Harry Potter was the last horcrux (spoiler alert: he was). These days I am lucky if I have the energy to update my Twitter or send emails to my mother.

I created this blog to get back to myself. Somewhere between Harry Potter and Twitter I became as sad a shell as my LJ. My job situation sucks (although, really, at least I have one in this economy), my heart is broken and refuses to mend, my weight is the highest it has ever been...I'm depressed. Not in the "cry, whine and eat ice cream" way it sometimes is, but in the "come home, go to bed and forget to eat dinner" way. My friends have been very supportive and I am working on getting better, but I keep coming back to those days in college when I could sit down at my desk and throw my day into an empty screen. It felt good to do that. I hope this blog gives me that same sense of release.

Not every entry will be this much of a downer, I hope, but if every now and then I revert to my Bad Place then at least I have a place to put my poisonous thoughts. Siphon them from my brain for a bit, if you will.

The point is this - if you want to really get to know me, Justine, in all her screwed up, wacky, sometimes random, sometimes fun, always weird glory, well. This is hopefully the place to do it.