Sunday, October 07, 2007

Catching My Breath After The Last Week

That thing that I was freaking about over at work is finally done. Done okay, I think. Not great, but not horrible. Time will tell if this makes a good impression or not. I am moving on to the next thing that I am freaking about over at work. I fly out tomorrow, spend two days in back to back meetings, and then fly home and have to pack up my office because we are moving, and then I move on to third thing I am freaking about over. Hopefully, though, after that, I will be able to catch multiple breaths in a row.

One thing is clear, though. My time doing this kind of work is limited. I've never loved it, but I loved being good at it, being one of the best kids in the class, and knowing that if I wanted it, tasted it, I'd be the one moving up in the world. That's not really sustainable anymore. I'm not quite sure how to extricate myself, but I do know I want to. This second, anyway. Most of the time I have these thoughts, I follow the thread and end up thinking that I'm so full of shit, that I'll be working in Corp Comm for the rest of my life, always trying to be the smartest kid in the class. Always worried that someone is going to figure me out.

This stuff is always rattling around in my brain, but there's been one GOOD development that's made it a lot louder lately. My writing class. It is fantastic! I'm having so much fun and loving the feedback that I'm getting from people, and again with the smartest kid in the class syndrome, I am loving that people think I'm good at this. For my second class, two women showed up and said that they couldn't wait to hear what I wrote. After ONE assignment. I'll be missing class for work travel this week, and that kind of blows. I love being disciplined about writing. It's not that I didn't write before (I blah, blah on this thing, after all, and I journal), but I wasn't writing stories.

The class is called Stories from Life, and duh, it's about using the stories from your own life as the basis for bigger and better things. For the first class, we had to bring an article of clothing that meant something to us and write about it in class. I brought the first pair of combat boots I ever bought. For the second class, we had to draw a four-panel cartoon and use it to tell a story, and then we later wrote a short story about it in class. I wrote about getting busted reading magazines and crappy books behind the Missle and Bible in Mass, when everyone thought I was the quietest, well-behaved kid in Church. The next assignment is to write about something related to weather, and I'm having trouble with it. I can't seem to think of anything, except for driving in the snow the Christmas day my Pop-Pop died. I'm so used to writing funny, ironic stuff that that is well out of my comfort zone. We'll see.

Another thought that's become very clear -- if feeding my family were dependent on my writing, I'd probably do more of it. Hmmmm....

Other good things:

* I ran my second 5K this weekend and smoked my previous time. I finished in 35:16, more than 3 minutes less than my last one. To be fair, I think the course was slightly shorter, but it had a horrendously big hill. I think that's it in terms of Massachusetts races, but I'm going to try and run one in NJ over Thanksgiving weekend.

* There is a race on November 4, but I'm skipping it because YG and I are now teaching Sunday School of sorts at our church. If you know me and you just read that, you've probably just either fainted or fallen down laughing. But, I'm serious. I'm not a fundie -- I just really like the church and we wanted to give something back other than money [because, really, we are still corporate money grubbers at heart. Kill the poor! Rarh! ;-)]. We had the first class today, and it was interesting. There were only three kids, but one antsy one, and I managed to suppress my urge to shout "shut the hell up and stop fidgeting and pay some frickin' attention," but I managed a more "godly" "shhhh..." We shall see.

* We had a great "I love living in the city" weekend. Yesterday, we caught some of the Honk Festival in Davis Square, and the MG and I danced around a bit before heading down to Harvard for a ton of Japanese food and a fantastic performer in the Square. Today, we went to Octoberfest and watched the Honkers parade, and it was awesome.

* Playoff baseball is here. I don't have much hope for the Yankees, but am quite impressed by the Rockies and that closer for the Diamondbacks. I am hoping that the Angels can pull off one game so I can rib YG a little bit, and that the Yankees don't blow it too bad. Right now, I'm resolving to not be too cranky. There's always next season.