Whoa there

Someone sent me a few very nasty comments, which, hey, thanks for reading!  Come back next week and try the lunch special!

I should of course ignore them.  Instead, I will summarize the main points in a bulleted list, mostly because the original submission was so rife with grammatical errors and curses that I cannot bring myself to repeat it verbatim.

Based on that last post about my travel schedule, I am all of the following:

• An ungrateful biatch who should appreciate anything my job throws at me no matter what
• a horrible person to say these things when so many people (including the comment-writer) are out of work or stuck in horrible jobs they can’t leave
• a spoiled brat whose husband clearly is the breadwinner and has never had a terrible boss or a truly bad day

I get it.  I am immensely thankful for my job.  I enjoy it.  I am grateful every single day that I have gainful employment, amazing benefits, and the opportunity to use my brain at work and travel a bit and have a very cushy chair.  The constant travel and how it was affecting my life was my only concern, and that is fixed.  I wrote about it after the fact, after it was changed. I have no complaints – I have nothing but love for this job.  Especially IN THESE TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES. Because I guess now that we’re done putting everything in the context of Michael Jackson, we’re back to putting everything in the context of THESE TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES.

Part of the reason I appreciate my current situation so much is that I know how bad it can be.  In the past, I experienced some awful, toxic, soul-crushing work environments with the kinds of bosses who make you throw up in the morning before you go to work and cry on the way home.  And you can’t quit because you have bills to pay, and god, how endless they seem when you subtract one income, even though it might not be as big as your spouse’s. It becomes getting through one more day, one more hour, one more minute.  And yes, thank god I have a support system, thank god I have my husband, because when I got to the point where I had to force myself to get through even a single second of the day, I had to to take a scary, scary leap off a cliff.  And he was brave enough to catch me, to catch both of us.

But please do not assume that I have never had a rough work situation, that things have been easy.  I could tell you stories about things people have done and said that would make your head spin around in disbelief like that little girl in the exorcist, and you would spew green bile and then you would choke on it.

Because I promise you, if we held the Olympics of past job insanity, and I entered the decathlon of ridiculous shit a colleague or boss could do to you, unless yours caused you physical harm or ran over your cat, I would win the gold medal and the silver medal, and quite possibly, the bronze medal.  I would set a world record. And then, the National Anthem of Double Vision (which we do have, it’s the song by Foreigner also called Double Vision, because I am lazy and lack creativity) would play and the flag of Double Vision would be raised three times simultaneously for each of those medals I won.  And I would weep tears out of my broken eyes and put my hand over my heart and they would put this spectacle in musical montages for years to come and someday, I would be the subject of a Bud Greenspan documentary.

Because I would win.

So please think for a second before you make assumptions or send mean comments that are nasty for the sake of being nasty about this particular topic.  Remember that you’re  dealing with the Bruce Jenner of this shit, the one before the plastic surgery and all that Kardashian nonsense.  Step off.

The hours go long and slow

I received word a while ago that my work travel schedule is going to calm down considerably over the next year.  And by calm down, I mean I will only have to get on a plane six to eight times a year for meetings.  Initially, I was  bummed at this news, because I truly adore the part of my job that requires me to interact and network with our industry professionals at conferences.  To me, there is nothing quite as rewarding as putting on a fancy suit, killer shoes, and working an exhibit. (Except maybe writing this here fancy weblog, but that does not pay the bills.)

And then I really started to consider how I should feel.  That initial feeling of disappointment gave way to one of relief, of a giant weight being lifted, especially when I realized I could channel all my energy into doing the other things I love about my job.

I realized I had bought into the myth that traveling for work is glamorous and exciting.  Sometimes, it was.  Everyone always said how jealous they were, how cool it must be, and truly, I managed to squeeze in some sightseeing and some wonderful eats. But if I really think about it, I mostly saw the insides of conference rooms, the hotel restaurant, that guy who brings room service. I lost any sense of routine, and as my husband could tell you, I thrive on routine. (I get hungry for an afternoon snack every day at the EXACT same time I used to arrive home from school as a kid. I still wake up to go the bathroom every single morning at the same time I used to wake up for first grade. And so on…) Occasionally, he came along, and that helped immensely.  But it also made me jealous, because for him, these trips were little vacations.  He was golfing in the Miami sunshine, and I was working, and even though I love the work, he was golfing.  In the sunshine I could only see through the window of my meeting room.

The reality is that airplane seats are uncomfortable, switching times zones is constantly disorienting, you cannot avoid travel germs, hotel shampoo will destroy your hair, coffee at conferences is uniformly awful, and eating at the bar with your book gets really, really lonely.  Time drags on, and sometimes seems to stop.  Seeing the polar bears go crazy bananas at the San Diego Zoo would have been so much more fun if my husband had been there with me.

When you are alone on the road, you don’t have to consider anyone but yourself.  You don’t have to get up extra early so you can take care of the dogs.  You can watch Bravo all night. You can eat what you want, go where you want, throw your dirty clothes in a pile on the floor and use all the hot water.  However, I’ve found that the longer I did this, the harder it became to switch back when I returned home.  I also have a tendency to live inside my head, and this is exacerbated by going days and days with my only human contact being work-related.  The more I’m inside my head, the more I stay there. And the harder it is for me to emerge.

The truth is that I spent the last winter and spring in suspended animation, bouncing here and there, never quite putting my suitcase away, never quite feeling at home even when I was here.  Because in three days, or four, or a week, I left again.  Every time I came home, the transition to real life made me cranky because I could not feel settled. I didn’t feel present in my own life, and I do not EVER want to feel like that again.

I’m still not caught up from the work that piled up in May, the month when I sat at my desk physically for four days total, or from the subsequent week I was gone in June.  I no longer feel like I’m drowning, but I still wake up in the middle of the night and bolt upright in bed, thinking of the endless list of things I have to do, the things I am forgetting.  All the sightseeing in the world does not make up for this feeling of panic. All the comp time I earned can’t replace the three days I lost on a visit my family at the end of my last trip in May when I was  so sick I couldn’t function.  All the cool souvenirs I brought my hubs did not negate the number of times I snapped at him because I was exhausted and out of whack.  All the delicious free meals I ate did not compensate for the ones the pooch refused to consume because he thought I was never coming home.

So when you see people in the airport in suits, looking tired, looking hassled, frustrated because you are taking too long to get your items assembled at security, be extra-nice to them.  Remember that the last time they got a hug from their spouse might have been a week ago.  They might have missed their son’s baseball game, or their daughter’s school play.  They probably haven’t been in comfortable clothes in days.  They might have a dog who sits at the door for days, waiting and waiting and waiting for their car to turn into the driveway.

And they might not have an end in sight.  I do, and I could not be more thrilled.

On Notice, now with more insects

Randoms

Shut up, Al Sharpton.  About everything.

The next time a celebrity dies unexpectedly, I would appreciate it if the manipulative and horribly staged memorial service didn’t fall on days when I have meetings booked solid. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, LOHAN.

Does anyone find it sort of frightening that about a week after the Jacksons were given some new children to raise, one of them was already on stage in front of millions of people?  Because that worked so well the first time? An 11-year old can’t make a good decision in that situation.  Someone should have said, “no, the entire world does not need to know what you look like or see your raw grief in repeated loops on CNN for days.”

I am so tired of the “should larger people have to buy two airline seats” debate.  Yes, they should.  I should not have to give up half the commodity I purchased for someone else’s free use.  I would be ok if the airlines refunded me half my fare as a compromise.  There is this whole big debate about fat taxes and what is discrimination and I just don’t care about it.  I want my space.  Or my money

I am reading a book called The Millionaires: A Novel and the author disregards quotation mark requirements and other grammar tenents to a distracting degree.  It’s a shame I can’t get past it, because the book is quite interesting.  It’s not like it’s a fancy weblog on the internets, it’s a real, live book, so there are rules.  They should be followed.

I have been doing yoga on a pretty regular basis for the last month or so.  I hate it while it’s happening, but afterwards, I feel so good I want to go right back.  Mostly, it’s the stretching and the whole mind quieting thing. Because  if you’ve read this blog for more than 30 seconds, you know it’s normally pretty shouty inside my head.

Is anyone else scared shitless of Vladmir Putin?

My eyes still suck and my fancy pants doctors can’t do anything about them until they get worse.

What happened to those journalists in labor camps in North Korea?

I am so happy that the next two times I have to get on a plane, there is vacation at the end.

On Notice