And exhale.

Well, I can finally officially spill on something big that's been brewing for a few weeks now.  It is part of why I have been so distracted/stressed/anxious.  I have accepted a new job, and my last day at the current job is December 2nd.  I start the new position on Monday, December 5.  I am pretty damn excited.  It's also scary because I have been at my current employer for nearly 7 years, and there are certain perks to such a long term of residence in one spot.  However, comfort and familiarity will get you nowhere in the professional world, so when an opportunity fell into my lap, unsolicited, I gave it a fair assessment and went for it.

I am insanely proud of how well I handled the whole process.  I interviewed very well, two interviews total.  I met with all the big important people and impressed the hell out of them.  They even ceased their second round interviews after meeting with me.  :-)  They made me an offer the next morning, I counteroffered the next morning, and within half an hour my counteroffer had been accepted.  I advocated on my own behalf, negotiated what I wanted and needed and got every thing I asked for.  It was a pretty spectacular feeling!

Everyone at my current employer has been so fantastic.  They are all very supportive and they understand that the move is in my best interest, as there is no room for advancement here.  Our Chief Financial Officer took me out the day I gave notice, and in my last week I have two lunches scheduled, one with my small sub-department and one with the entire bigger department.  I am lucky to have spent the last nearly 7 years at such a great company, and I am going to miss everyone and everything I know incredibly, but I know I need to take the next step.

I'd been waiting on the background check to formally clear before I told my news, and it was finalized this morning, and so here I am, sharing my good news with you all.  :-)

Just breathe

The past couple of months have been so crazy for me.  I've been going through a lot of things, including very soaring highs and very hard lows.  I've alternately felt very aimless and very set in my path, and sometimes I just fall in the middle somewhere.

Work. Dating.  Friendships.  Family.  Personal goals and personal failures.  Successes and mistakes.  Self-reproach and self-satisfaction.  It's been a weird ride.

I saw my therapist again today.  As often happens, in advance I thought maybe I wouldn't have enough to talk about.  However, once I got in there, I talked mostly nonstop, often in jumbled, hurried, paragraphs.  By the end of the session I realized it...I've barely given myself time to breathe lately.

I've either been legitimately busy with real activities, or my mind has been racing a mile a minute.  Mind you, I've also had bouts of plenty of free time.  But even in the quiet times, I can't get my brain to settle down. 

My attention span has been lacking.  I can't focus my thoughts enough to write blog posts like I used to.  I've been reading the same (excellent!) book for over a month, which I NEVER do.  I can't write in general because I can't sift through everything in my head to glean anything useful out.  It's all such a disjointed mess. 

I never just sit in the quiet anymore.  I don't know how to be quiet right now.  I always have the TV on, my ipod on, music on in the car.  My phone is always buzzing with emails and texts and IMs or I'm surfing online or playing on Facebook or otherwise entangled.  I go to bed with the TV on until I'm near sleep, I keep a notebook on my nightstand not for impulsive creative thoughts, but in case I think of something I need to do or take care of. 

My mind doesn't know how to rest anymore.  I don't know how to just sit quietly, disconnected, by myself.  I feel like I always have to be doing something or talking to someone or worrying about the next thing.  Silence panics me. 

Yesterday my day felt off.  All day through.  I knew why, too.  Compared to a normal day, I was interacting with far fewer people via text and IM and email.  My phone wasn't ringing like usual, or buzzing constant alerts.  I felt invisible most of the day and night.  I actually felt forgotten, missed, ignored.  The break wasn't welcomed, it was a reason to feel upset.  I went to bed feeling off kilter because of it. 

My therapist encouraged me to take a minute to just pay attention to my breathing.  She had me do it right there and then, in our session.  The silence was deafening.  Ten seconds in and I was thinking about how I felt dumb, worrying about the things we'd been discussing, consciously fretting that I was wasting my valuable therapy session just breathing.

 "I have a picture to give you, too. Here is a forties photograph of a woman that I found in last Sunday’s paper. She is seated on the grass, wearing a suit and a hat, her purse centered in her lap. She is smiling, but her eyes ache, and behind her, I know this, her hands are clenched. She can’t relax. She has forgotten the grass. I kept staring at her, thinking, this is me. Checking my purse three times for keys before I leave the house. Stacking mail in order of the size of the envelopes. Answering the phone every single time it rings, writing “paper towels” on the grocery list the second after I use the last one. I too have forgotten the grass. But I used to do one-handed cartwheels and then collapse into it for the fine sight of the blades close up. And there was no sense of any kind of time. And I was not holding in my stomach or thinking what does my opinion mean to others. I was not regretting any part of myself. There was only sun-rich color, and smell, and the slight give of the soft earth beneath me. My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place ."-Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

I too have forgotten the grass.  But I want and need to remember it again.  I have to figure out how to let myself breathe again. 

This Girl Can't Focus

I am super distracted.  I'm at work and I can't focus on work at all.  Luckily I don't have a ton of work on my desk, nor anything particularly pressing, so my scattered disposition today isn't too much of  a crisis.

I have a lot going on in my head right now, so it's kind of handy that I have my final free counseling session with my therapist today.  We're doing a wrap up of our sessions since I returned and deciding if I want to continue.  If I do, it will likely just be a couple more times this calendar year since I've already met my deductible, LOL.

It has been an eventful couple of weeks, with lots of things circling around, and hopefully soon all of it will settle down and I'll be able to talk more freely about these things.  Right now I just need to keep my stuff in check so I don't get overwhelmed! 

Slacker

I have been such a blogging slacker lately.  Partially it's because I have been insanely busy, but I think it's also that I've just had too much sloshing around in my head and I couldn't find a way to organize it neatly.

Dating.  It's going.  Better than it has in awhile, but that doesn't require much.  ;-)  Tonight I go on Date #3 with the gentleman I will refer to as Maryland.  I am driving out to him because he drove out to me last weekend, and it only seems fair.  I'm not particularly excited, as I've discovered that I don't really enjoy driving around Maryland (the state, LOL) because I'm still hugely unfamiliar with it, and it seems to involve a lot of construction and detours and other such madness. 

I have many tentative plans for the weekend, but I have to be honest...I'm kind of hoping most of them fall through.  I need a break.  I need time to get some sleep.  To do laundry.  To clean up my apartment, run errands, watch football and DVR.  I need time to just be on my own.  I'm hoping to get together with a girlfriend who is in town Saturday/Sunday.  I spend entirely too much time with guys!  Most of my friends I talk to most frequently in the area are men, and that's fine and dandy, but sometimes you just need a break.

I'm doing okay, though.  Gotten to bed a little earlier the last few nights, which is nice.  Thinking about taking off work early today to go home and relax a little before my long night of driving and dating.  The idea of bonding with my couch for a bit is hugely appealing! 

Anyway, that's my boring Friday update.  Will try to do a more noteworthy post this weekend perhaps!