Update, Anger & Alchemy (T-Minus 160 Days)

Well I guess this is the new definition of “it’s been awhile.” I think this is probably as long as it’s ever been between entries and I would be very pleased to tell you it’s because I have been quite busy having completely salacious sex with a guy I met while crossing the street.

Alas, that could not be further from the truth.

I carried through on my Sept. 11 promise to do something I had been putting off and I wrote a letter full of things I have wanted to tell someone and never could. This opened up the floodgates and I ended up writing three more letters to people in my past who have been instrumental on making me who I am today – both positively and negatively.

Only one of them got sent.

I decided to reconnect with the man formerly referred to as The Badass. Our breakup was not full of animosity; the timing simply wasn’t right and we eventually grew apart. It happens. Hell, it’s supposed to happen.

I wanted to tell him though how much I appreciated him and, years later, how much I respected his desire for adventure and freedom. He began the quarter-life crisis and the normal time, but instead of letting it fester for years, he took care of it then and figured out his life before he forced himself to become settled in the wrong direction.

Right now, he is my hero.

I eased into conveying all that emotion and took the time to get to know him again over the span of a few emails. We caught up on each other’s families and friends and talked about what we were doing now. We never talked about either’s romantic status, but I expect he is still with the woman who he met while getting over me (his words).

It didn’t really matter though; I eventually told him everything I needed to say and I think we’re at peace enough to continue on, not as friends, but as an old love who is a mere email away. And I feel good about it.

The other letters (i.e. emails) remain in various states of scripting. One is half-written, one is done and has been sitting in my drafts for weeks and the final one was deleted as soon as it was completed. I didn’t even re-read it. It said what I needed to get out, but that’s as far as it is going to go. Some things – people – in life just need to be deleted.

I obviously have not spent the entire last month writing letters though. That took a couple days, tops, and the rest of the time I have no other excuse for except I was simply too angry to write.

I have spent much of the last few weeks in a state of anger I am not familiar with, and not a fan of. I literally woke up in the mornings angry and annoyed about the day ahead and, throughout the course of it, the anger just got worse. I was quick[er] to get upset at other people and I spent the bulk of my time at work either bitching to equally frustrated co-workers or listening to Jay-Z through headphones so loud I’m sure my cubicle neighbors knew all about my 99 Problems. Unless I was with someone in my immediate circle, I wanted to be left alone because everyone else, quite frankly, pissed me off.

During this time, I also found myself finding excuses not to work out and not stick to what I knew I should be eating. All in all, it was a really shitty few weeks.

I finally began to snap out of it when I talked it over with a co-worker/BFF – we’ll call her Rudy because if you knew her, you’d know why – and learned she felt exactly the same way. I think it helped us both to admit the anger and how much we didn’t like feeling that way. Since then, she and I have separately made steps to figure out our new direction.

Our guidebook has become The Alchemist, an allegorical novel by Paulo Coelho first written in Portuguese and published in 1988. Rudy read it and came in raving about her newfound clarity. We all know I can’t resist a book that’s supposed to help decipher life, so I’m about 30 pages in and looking forward to reading more once I’m done writing this.

The book follows the journey of Santiago, a shepherd from Andalusia, who follows a prophetic dream about finding treasure amid the Egyptian pyramids (sidenote: are there other pyramids?). He encounters several people along the way, most notably an old king named Melchizedek who teaches about discovering his personal legend and following all the signs to get there.

This is about as far as I have gotten, but I am sucked in. There’s a part near the beginning when Santiago is talking about his irrational anger directed towards his sheep and that’s all it took. Dude, I got you.

So we’ll see where the book goes and how much I over-invest in it as the means to discovering my happiness.  Yep, I am fully aware of my tendency to do that.

In the meantime, I followed a few signs/cosmic hints/twitter invitations of my own.

I emailed a former boss who now is out in the Portland, Ore., area to give him my resume and asked him to keep me in mind if he heard of any opportunities out there. I also asked a colleague who I know is friends with someone who works at a company out there which I would LOVE to work for to “introduce” us formally (you know, by email).

So I’m taking some steps in the direction I want to be going, quite literally this morning as I went on a 5-mile hilly backcountry hike. The park association “tweeted” about the hike yesterday and I talked myself into going – love the outdoors, but self-conscious about trying new things alone – and I am so glad I did. I felt alive and inspired … and happy.

It helps the weather has been positively gorgeous for the last week and the Indian Summer, coupled with a reasonably light work schedule this weekend, may very well be the source of this happiness, but it’s honestly just a relief to not feel angry.

And now I’m going to go read The Alchemist. I have a personal legend to find.

9/11 Reflections (T-Minus 187 Days)

Like the majority of Americans, I have spent much of this week reflecting back of September 11, 2001, and everything that has happened in the past 10 years. In the last decade, I have occasionally thought back to that day, remembering where I was, what I was wearing and how the events unfolded as they pertained to me.

I was in my sophomore year of college, five minutes outside of Washington, D.C., and had missed several calls from my mom while in class. I couldn’t get back to her, but I moved onto French class until I finally gave into the sinking feeling in my stomach something was wrong and walked back to the dorm.

It was then, while walking in grey sweatpants, my favorite Maryland lacrosse tshirt and flip-flops, my phone rang again and my mom asked me if I had seen the news and when I said no, she told me there had been terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. By this point, it was hours after the fact and by the time I got to a television, the towers were gone, the Pentagon had a gaping hole, a field in Pennsylvania was obliterated and all that was left were seemingly apocalyptic images.

From high points on campus, you could see smoke from the fires at the Pentagon and, as my New York/New Jersey/Connecticut friends heard from family members, the tragedy began to hit closer to home. As a journalism major and current affairs junkie, I spent the next few days watching the news with morbid curiosity.  

This would go on for just over a week until a much smaller, but still devastating, event literally hit home. A tornado ripped through the University of Maryland campus, the first in the DC area in nearly a century, knocking out power, taking down buildings, clearing trees and claiming the lives of two. Selfishly, there were suddenly other things I needed to worry about other than the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Not until this 10-year anniversary, however, did I realize just how much I missed.

I am not ashamed to admit I have been mildly addicted to much of the commemorative programming this week. I have been sucked into shows on National Geographic, History Channel and CNN. I have wept over commercials, musical performances and the national anthem. I don’t even dare listen to “Proud to be an American” or else I will be down for the count.

Anyway, through watching all these shows, I realize how much must have come out during the time I was otherwise occupied. The pieced together timelines, first-hand accounts and sobering realizations as sense began to be made were all new to me. I also was reminded of the patriotism that ensued in the weeks and even years following; a blissful phenomenon all but erased by the economic meltdown and overwhelmingly partisan politics we currently live with.

We are constantly told to never take days for granted and to always tell people who you love how you feel because you never know when you will no longer have the chance. There could be no greater reminder of that than watching the events of Sept. 11 unfold and hearing all the surrounding stories. And so I woke up today, not with grandiose ideas of proclaiming affection or living dangerously, but of simply doing something, anything, I had been putting off.

Because you never know when you will no longer have the chance.

I ended up working the majority of the day, but with just over an hour remaining in the day, I have a letter to write. And tomorrow, a boy to ask out. 

Baby Steps (T-Minus 191 Days)

It was around this time a year ago I learned something very important about myself.

I had been stuck in the weirdly undefined pseudo-relationship with Mr. NDNS (Neither Defined Nor Satisfying if you’re late to this party) for over a year and was pretty much at a loss as to what to do about it. Other than, you know, define it and lose the pseudo, but that would have made too much sense. Anyway, he had apparently had enough of it as well and I heard through the grapevine he had articulated to a mutual friend his realization we needed to talk about the state of our relationship.

So what did I do? I panicked and I slept with someone else.

I had recently reconnected with an old friend who was headed through the area on a road trip and wanted to know if I had any interest in getting together for the night (yes … as in the biblical sense). I had very little intention of saying yes, at least until I was faced with the alternative of actually figuring out my life, and so I found myself agreeing to a late-night Labor Day rendez-vous in a seedy airport hotel.

I had a bit of drive for the booty call, and I passed the time talking to an old friend, trying to explain the thought process behind making the decision to sleep with someone other than the man I had been saying could be The One for months. To be honest, I wish I had recorded it because I’d really like to recall how I made sense of that one.

My friend told me I was being a completely self-destructive idiot and to turn the car around. To go home, go to sleep and wake up the next day ready to face my future. I, however, opted to keep driving and have seedy hotel sex. And then ignore NDNF’s phone call and voicemail the following morning.

I would regret it later, but I deleted the message without even listening. It might have been something completely innocuous, but on the off chance he actually was ready to talk, I guess I just wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say.

As you know, neither one of us would bring it up again. And, after the high of my illicit night died down, I would spend many more months wondering what might have been.

So what is this important lesson?

It is something you have probably inferred by now, but it was the moment I realized I am completely jacked up emotionally. The friend on the phone, who will get his own entry one of these days, told me I have the most severe “daddy issues” of anyone with a completely normal father and family he has ever met.

It’s really easy to disguise commitment-phobia when you have a steady string of men in your life (not always in the biblical sense; I’m not a hussy). I wrote, at some length, about my proclivity for the unattainable back in the July 4 entry on a Declaration of Desired Dependence. It was in this moment a year ago I began exploring and trying to understand the phenomenon and my penchant for the geographically undesirable, selfishly unworthy, romantically unavailable, professionally unethical, aesthetically unachievable and/or unabashedly uninterested.

It's been a long road since.

The jury is still out on whether I found someone that breaks this cycle. Things are still very much undefined and I have to fight my inclination to keep them that way. For now though, I am enjoying the process and have no intention of self-destructing and ruining it with a spontaneous stupid decision.

Baby steps.

Taming the Phlegm. (T-Minus 199 Days)

Warning: This is not a fun post. I still don’t name the new prospect and I use the word phlegm at least three times. Read at your own risk.

I was prepared to make at least one of three grand, sweeping changes when I started this whole groove-finding journey. I fully expected to change states or jobs or form a romantic attachment (or five) during the 500 days, but as of 301 days in, there has not been definitive progress on any of those.

There are, however, a myriad of smaller changes that have been made and even more so that need to be. Among them, tweaking my diet after entirely too many months of ignoring signs and symptoms of a potentially larger problem.

I am honestly not sure the last time I ate a sandwich or bowl of pasta and didn’t go into into a coughing fit immediately after. Or feel pressure in my chest after a meal out or sudden trip through the drive-thru. And, more times than not, when all was said and done I was left with a gross, phlegmy (I really hate that word; it even sounds nasty) feeling after meals.

After analyzing all of this, as of a week and a half ago, I decided to give up gluten. At first I thought it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to go without bread, pasta or even beer, as much as I absolutely, positively love, adore and cherish it. The more research I do, however, the more places I learn it has the tendency to hide out. In addition to binding together grains like wheat, barley and rye, gluten often is used as a stabilizing agent in stuff like salad dressing, ice cream and ketchup, especially in the low-fat varieties I generally opted to buy. It can even be found in toothpaste.

Overwhelming, much?! I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I Google “Is ________ gluten free” a day or look over the list of ingredients in seemingly innocuous foods to find something like “wheat protein” listed. (I’m looking at you, Ben & Jerry’s).

Fortunately, there is a wealth of information out there and, thanks to the library, I have a pile of books on my coffee table like “Gluten-Free Girl” and “The G-Free Diet.”

I feel markedly better in just the last several days, but it has been, and will remain, a process. I think everyone would notice a positive difference if they started eating only vegetables, lean meat, fresh fruit and natural/unprocessed foods. Gone are the low-fat or reduced sugar varieties because I figure if my carbs are limited, I’m going all out on stuff like cheese and dressing and strawberry jam. And it’s so freakin’ good.

I am, quite honestly, not sure giving up all gluten is the solution or that there isn’t something else that still needs to get cut out from my diet. There are still times I get phlegmy (there it is again; sorry) after a meal and I can’t put my finger on what might have set it off. I am 90 percent sure everything I ate for dinner was g-free, but here I am still clearing my throat two hours later.

Giving up gluten just seemed like the trendy thing to do.

If I have learned anything from these books though is the right diet can literally change your life. These women were miserable for years because they ignored what their bodies were trying to tell them and/or didn’t have the resources to interpret what they were saying.

I was shocked at how many side effects of food allergies I exhibit and haven’t been able to figure out the source. If changing the way I eat alleviates the respiratory stuff, eases some of the joint pain, gives some psychological relief and improves the overall quality of life, I would rank it right on up there with forming a romantic attachment (or five).

Until then, I am going to crack open a g-free beer.

Falling into Me (T-Minus 204 Days)

About two weeks ago, I fell off my bike. And just like when I was a little kid, I pretended it didn’t faze me and I jumped right back up, got back on and pedaled my way home with blood gushing down my arm.

Unlike a 5-year old on her first two-wheeler though, I was going 16 mph around a tight turn, snapped into my pedals and firmly attached to a bike worth almost half a month’s salary. I went down hard. And it hurt. I was fortunate to have been alone and therefore not a hazard to drivers or other cyclists and even luckier not have sustained any serious injury.

Adrenaline got me home, but once I had time to examine, I realized I had busted up an elbow, scraped up one knee and somehow managed to bash the opposite inner thigh into black and blue oblivion. More than anything, however, the fall hurt my pride. And my confidence.

Plus, the timing of it couldn’t have been worse. A day earlier, I had dominated a 48-mile training ride and was flying high on how good I felt and how prepared I thought I was for the century ride coming up in six days. I had been training for five months and finally felt ready. I just had to get through one last short ride before a blissful few days of tapering off before the race.

In an instant, however, it all changed.

I am still not sure why I crashed, despite replaying it over and over in my head. Part of me hopes at least partial blame lies with debris on the path or an unexpected patch of wetness, but in the back of my mind I know I probably screwed up by being overly confident, spacing out or braking too hard, too late.

This self-questioning led to a lot of uncertainty over the next few days and I admittedly debated calling it quits altogether. I was so worried about being too hurt or too scared to finish 102 miles that I almost convinced myself it was better to just not even start. With a little help from some friends and the realization I couldn’t ignore the ~ing, my competitive spirit eventually won out and I decided to get after it.

I really wish this is where I told you I conquered the entire ride in record time, laughed in the face of endless hill climbs and made those 102 miles my bitch ... Alas, I did none of the above.

The first 25 miles were spent in relative ease, talking to riders around me and taking deep breaths around each turn, gaining more confidence with each successful (i.e. not wiping out) curve. The next 40, however, were absolute agony. While the hill climbs were physically demanding and, at times, led to the majority of cyclists getting off their bikes and walking, the downhill descents were what crippled me with anxiety.

I literally spent 40 miles – probably close to three hours – having panic attacks. This led to me braking on downhills, convinced I was going to lose control and crash, which not only pissed off everyone around me, but killed my momentum for the next climb and any mental toughness I had left. At the 65-mile mark, I sat on the side of the road for 10 minutes trying to get my breathing under control and not to break down and cry.

Passing cyclists made sure I was OK and one woman convinced me to get up and keep going, promising me we would leg it out together to the next water stop about seven miles later.

It was there my day ended.

I wanted to keep going and after 15 minutes of rest, I almost did. I wanted to finish because I told myself at the beginning I wouldn’t let fear get in the way. After talking with one of the first aid volunteers about how I hypothetically would get home if I hypothetically called it a day, I realized I was doing just that. It wasn’t the fear of not succeeding I was scared of, because I had already finished this event once before, it was the fear of disappointing those who donated money in support of the ride and of letting down the people who had backed me during the process.

And that particular fear is stupid if it means endangering yourself in the process. Even though the most difficult part of the route was over, I knew I was too emotionally-spent to go on, so I turned in my rider number, voiced my decision to the volunteer and began the call/text/twitter updates to friends and concerned parties.

I was embarrassed, apologetic, sad and pissed, emotions that were only slightly eased as the replies of concern and understanding came through my phone. In the midst of the barrage, however, there was one text conversation that meant more to me than anything else.

* If for some reason you’re still reading this, here comes your reward. *

A few weeks ago, I met and started hanging out with a man I have yet to come up with a blog-appropriate nickname for. It was, and still is, very early in the whole process and I wasn’t sure how I felt about letting him in to the emotional rawness of the day, but he responded with exactly what I didn’t know I was waiting to hear.

He told me I was amazing. That I had done amazing. That I fought through the fear and got exponentially farther than the starting line. That he couldn’t have done what I had done.

That he was proud of me.  

And it was in that moment, I decided to let him in.

Over the last few days, we have since shared many good conversations – together over drinks, on the phone while traveling and by text/email during the monotony of the work day. He is someone I want to get to know slowly and surely … and quite possibly completely. I think there is a mutual level of respect and inspiration there that has the potential for wonderful things.

Now I don’t want to say the busted elbow was worth it, but who’s to say I would be where I am without falling off my bike, finding the confidence to get back on and realizing the strength it would take to get back off.

Next entry: Why this one was written in complete absence of wheat and with the help of gluten-free beer.

Want You to Want Me (T-Minus 213 Days)

I have written so many blogs in my head the last couple weeks, it somehow escaped me that I never actually typed and posted them. Here’s a quick update on that job I was pondering the last time I wrote:

It seems the company’s convictions were about as strong as mine. They went back and forth with promises until ultimately, I got two automatically-generated emails from the HR department basically telling me thanks, but no thanks. It turns out I wasn’t supposed to get those emails and I was supposed to be told by phone they had decided to hire someone else, someone who was desperate enough for the job to take it for $15,000 less than I even would have considered.

In retrospect, I am glad they never made an official offer and put me in a position to have to turn it down because it was an intriguing job. At the time, however, I was hurt and kind of felt like I had been dumped.

Awhile back I mentioned going out on a lame date in an attempt to get over Sparks. I didn’t elaborate on it because it left me with a similar feeling of feeling hurt and dumped, even though I had little interest in the alternative. I met this guy at an all-you-can drink fundraiser for cancer research (a no-fail recipe for good stories) and I admired his use of a wingman to open conversation and then facilitate the meeting. He seemed interesting enough, so I gave him my number at the end of the night and agreed to a date when he called the next day.

It ended up being a perfectly innocuous evening between two new acquaintances. We had the default discussion of backgrounds, college majors and number of siblings, but the whole thing felt like an obligation and did not have any of that … zest … when you meet someone who you genuinely want to know everything about.

Even though I wasn’t really feeling anything, I agreed to a second date because he seemed all about it and I figured maybe round two would loosen us up a little more. Well round two never happened because he never called, and I was bitter I wasn’t the one who got to make that decision.

I realize it sounds selfish, but I wanted to be wanted and to be the one who got to say no. And it was the same thing with this job. They played it up like I was the first and only choice and said they would do everything to find the money for the right person, but after the first interview, they just never called.

And I was once again left rocking out to Cheap Trick in my head.

French Fries & Lack of Conviction (T-Minus 227 Days)

After returning from a week-long road trip to see friends and family last night, I set out for the grocery store in a quest to get vegetables, lean meat and all the fixings for a healthy dinner. After six hours in the car for the day and 1,200 total miles of driving, it seemed like the way to go. My plan, however, was quickly thwarted when I discovered the neighborhood store had closed for renovations while I was gone and, before I could think twice about it, I pulled a U and went through the McDonald’s drive-thru instead.

I could have gotten any number of their semi-healthy options, but I instead quickly ordered the Angus burger and fries … although I did get an extra side salad off the dollar menu and a Diet Coke which has to count for something. Right?!

Anyway, as I took it all home and geared up for a night catching up on bad DVR-ed television, I looked down at the mountain of food and laughed. I literally LOL-ed at the startling illustration of my complete lack of conviction. Talk about an epic fail on my part.

There are two more of the same grocery chain within a couple miles of my house and another store even closer, but in a moment of weakness, the glimmer of French fries was enough to completely throw me off track. And I quickly realized this penchant for switcheroos is far from limited to my food choices.

In addition to clearly not having iron-clad convictions for things like working out … or blogging … I have spent the last few weeks toiling back and forth with the prospect of a new job. Not just some light-hearted pondering, but from the single-minded approach of zero interest to the sudden 180 of looking for an apartment and outlining salary requirements and now, equally suddenly, to the emphatic belief it would be the wrong move for me.

I spent the last portion of my vacation on a friend’s 120-acre farm in the rolling hills of Western Maryland and this became the site for my latest professional reversal. For as much as I love nature, I am not a farm girl, but something struck me as we fed the horses at night and even more so in the morning, when I awoke to the most beautiful sunrise I can remember.

And it inspired me. If I didn’t have to drive so far back to return to reality, I could have stayed there all day and been moved to write for hours by that view. I wanted to create in the kitchen, sleep under the stars and get lost in what was around me. These things clearly are not enough to build a life off of, but I think I felt a flicker of passion and, dare I say, groove.

I’m not saying I want to pack up my things and go milk cows for the rest of my life, but I do know I want to be somewhere that makes me feel inspired … which has not been here and I am fairly certain is not the city where this new professional opportunity resides.

But hey, I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow once I remember all the convincing arguments I had for the other side. Or maybe not. There is still a big part of the story I’m not telling you … yet.