Focus

It's been awhile since I posted, I know this. There has just been so much going on, and it's hard to know where to begin after a gap like this.

Today has been weird.  I went home for Christmas, but it was an incredibly brief trip.  With the new job only three weeks in, I didn't want to take off a bunch of time.  Didn't seem like the best way to start, so I left Friday evening and was back in the city by 10:30 this morning.  Told you it was brief! 

The holidays were good, but as holidays often are, full of nostalgia.  Special days like that are hard for me as a singleton, as I'm so used to being with someone for them.  Last year I brought the most recent ex home with me for the holiday, and so this year was full of memories of how things were just a year ago.  Just a year ago..in some ways it seems so recent, in other ways it feels like an eternity.

As time goes by I realize this is the longest I've been single since I was 18 years old, and at that point I'd never had a relationship.  In less than two months I will have been living back on my own for a year, which is crazy to think about.  So much has happened in this year, both good and bad.  Growing pains, personal revelations and exploration, internal struggles about who I am, what I want, what I deserve. 

The people in my romantic past never fully go away.  Sometimes I feel like I am being tested by their continued resurgence in my life.  Seeing them move on, even if I know we were not a proper match, is incredibly hard.  I see their new relationships progressing, and while I know they are deeply flawed, some part of me is jealous.  But I try to remind myself that having someone who things are good enough with is not better than being alone and being okay.  I don't want to settle anymore.  I don't want to make huge accommodations for the inherent broken qualities in people I've dated.  I don't want to make excuses for their bad behavior.  I want someone who I can embrace completely and with pride.  If I can't have that, then let me stay alone.

While my professional life is finally taking shape, and I feel like I am embarking on a career instead of muddling through a job, my personal life remains a muddled and murky place.  Honestly, it's been nice to have the job as a productive point of focus.  All of my life has been spent either waiting for a relationship or working with every fiber of my being to make an existing one work.  I've never put any real effort into anything else.  It's been a weird sense of relief to find the bulk of my focus and self-worth these days coming from my professional life instead. 

My job makes me feel like I have a purpose.  It reminds me how intelligent I am, how far I've come, and how much I'm capable of.  I have things to say, I have ideas, and I'm finally in a position where I'm able and willing to speak up about them, and where people who matter will listen.  Beyond that, and perhaps most importantly, it proves to me that I am more than just a person who can be in a relationship. 

I am more than someone who is too nice to exes who don't deserve it.  I am more than someone who gives into impulsive decisions that may burn me emotionally later.  I am more than someone who generally feels pretty lost personally in many ways.  I am more than the girl who occasionally crushes on people she shouldn't, and I'm more than a source of dating story fodder for my friends. 

These days, I take comfort in the security I've found professionally, even if it's still a pretty new feeling for me.  It's a place to retreat to when I've let my guard down a little in my personal life and either gotten burned, or realized that maybe this time, I'm the damaged one.  It is an escape from my overanalysis and dissection of every single thing around me. 

Oh, I have so many other posts in me, things to tell and do that very analysis mentioned above...hopefully I will get to it soon.  For now, bedtime.

So here's the thing...

I'm kind of happy right now.  Sure, it's only my second day with the new job under my belt.  But DAMN.  I'm happy.  I love it.  I am brand new there, but I already feel like I'm settling in.  I know what the hell I'm talking about.  I know what I'm doing.  I'm not intimidated by anyone.  I am knocking some small fears I've had for so long like they're minor distractions.  I'm motivated, and confident and EXCITED.  I can't remember the last time I've felt so legitimately excited about work.  I've had moments before, sure....recognition.  Praise.  Kudos.  Acknowledgement of my skill set and my abilities.  I got an absolute ton of it in my last week at work.  I had long, professional, equally matched feeling conversations with important people at my now former job at the holiday party, and I felt damn good.

Today the HR Director at my new firm saw me, and she was with several other HR members, and I was with the person I report to, as well as another new hire who was on the office tour as well.  The HR Director piped up and told me she'd received a really nice email about me that day from someone at my old firm.  Seriously?  That is AWESOME.  I am eternally grateful to my old firm for all of the opportunities I got there, for all of the relationships I built there, both in terms of friendship and in terms of colleagues and networking.

I got an office, too.  I sat it in this morning when I got in, as not many people were in yet.  I felt good about my efforts over the last several years, and how much I've changed to get to this point where I am more than okay in this role.  I spent all day working my ass off, wanting to do the best I can there, wanting to let them know every day they made the right choice.

I love my friends.  I love the firm I just left and so many people there.  I love the potential my new job holds.  I love that we might get flurries tomorrow.  I love how I feel and look in my new dressier work clothes.  I love that when I meet people in this office for the first time they've already heard about me, and are excited to meet me, and tell me how excited they are for my ideas.

Things are good, and I earned them, and I deserve them to be good, and I am going to enjoy every single (possibly overworked at times!) second.  :-)