Saturday, October 21, 2006

Ya Basta!

I'm happy to say that I have gotten over myself since Thursday. I just read over my last entry and started cracking up. The one good thing about these momentary freak-outs of mine is that they're quite amusing to read about after the fact. Like good lord, so this place is not River Oaks and people here think a little differently. So what? It's not like I expected this to be an extraordinarily comfortable place for me, and clearly I needed to be made uncomfortable. Anyway, the point is that even with the challenges, I think it is a good thing that I am here, and overall, I really am ridiculously happy to be here.

So anyway, other than my meltdown on Thursday morning, this week was relatively uneventful. My boss, Daniel, got passed up for a promotion over the weekend and is threatening to quit. He called the whole staff into a conference room on Wendesday to tell us how pissed off he is and whine about how much more he deserved it than the lady who got it. . . . and we're supposed to be a modeling professionalism to the clients? . . . The funny thing is, she has more experience and an MBA from Berkeley, whereas Daniel's still working on his BS in kinesiology from CSUN. So yeah, I'm not sure I follow his reasoning, but I do know that I wouldn't be terribly broken up if he left. He kind of treats me like a mentally challenged 5-year-old, and it kind of bothers me.

Thursday night we went to a birthday party for one of the Good Shepherds in North Hollywood. My roommates all whined about how incredibly far away it was, but really it was only 3/4 of the way to my work. uggh. I swear I spend almost half as much time on the 405 as I do actually at work. It's a problem. The party was pretty fun, though.

Yesterday I had my monthly one-on-one meeting with Alta. It was pretty awkward. I didn't really have anything to say to her, and it ended up only lasting like 20 minutes of the hour it was supposed to. hmm... I suppose I could have brought up some of the stuff I was freaking out about Thursday, but she's part of the source of it (in a good way, but still). I think she just would've thought that I was a dumbass. Or maybe I'm just a chicken shit.

Anyway, yay for Saturday! I love Saturdays. Today was an especially good one. I woke up at the crack of dawn to row, but now that I have to get up at 6:30 every morning, this isn't nearly as hard as it was in college. Plus, the stroke seat of our 4+ has finally returned from a month-long vacation, so I've moved back to 2-seat. Yaaay for not having to stroke!

After crew, Erin and I went to breakfast at the Mexican restaurant across the street, which was the 4th time in 5 days that we've been there. I think this place might actually be better than Cosmic. It's a complete dive with really good, really cheap food, and the owner is pretty much the nicest guy ever. I love Inglewood.

The rest of the day has been pretty leisurely. We went to the Santa Monica Farmers' Market as usual (no celebs this time, unfortunately, but I did get some really good tomatoes), and then I took a 3 hour nap. Right now we're waiting around for Brian and his friend from college to come back from dinner, and then we're just going to hang out here and drink some sort of concoction that Brian's making consisting of beer, vodka, and pink lemonade mix. Supposedly it's really good...?  We'll see.

Well, that’s probably enough random thinking for the day. Life is hard here, and it’s good. As to be expected for this homebody, I ask myself pretty often, “what the f am I doing here???” I can’t necessarily answer that question now, besides by saying I trust the answers will be revealed in a way that’s always surprising, humbling, and more graciously miraculous than I can imagine. 

Mwah.  Y'all are the bessst. 

Quote of the Day:
“'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'
'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Sad

I just spent my entire hour-long commute to work sobbing. If you know me well, you know how incredibly rare it is for me to cry (I usually go years without even tearing up), so obviously I'm upset about something. The strange thing is that I don't even think I can really articulate what it is, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.

I guess to sum it up, I'm just freaked out by how radically different this environment is from home, and I'm not adjusting as well as I thought I would. What set me off was hearing that Alta was talking crap about my SUV again last night, but really the SUV shit is only the tip of the iceberg. I even agree that gas conservation is important and that SUVs aren't necessarily the best car choice, but when it comes down to it, the car that I have is a product of where I came from, and I am just sick of hearing about how everything about my background and my family and especially what my father does for a living is wrong and evil and oppressive. I'm sick of being told, even implicitly, that people I love are bad people for how they live and what they believe and who they vote for. .

At this point, I don't know what to think about anything. I feel ignorant and stupid, and I know there is no one here to talk to who won't judge me for still having to struggle with this.

Wow, sorry to sound like such a whiner. I think part of the reason that I am so frustrated is that I know I should be smarter, I should know more, and I should be much more mature about how I handle all of this. I felt even worse when I got to work and saw my clients and realized that I really am freaking out about nothing. My life is so incredibly easy, and here I am sobbing because I feel sorry for myself. Basically I suck at life.

Ooo, but one of my clients just rang the bell cause he got a job. At least that's one good thing for today.