just keep swimming

just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming.

I haven't watched Finding Nemo in a long time. In fact, I might watch it tomorrow night (yes, a Friday night - so?) just for fun. I'm actually excited to stay home and just hang out in my apartment this weekend. Maybe watch some TV, read some magazines or books, do some laundry, clean the kitchen - you know, fun stuff. Anyway, I just wanted to check in with my misadventures. I'm into the swing of things at work, taking on a case all by myself, hoping to get it settled through mediation in mid-May. Since the other associate went on maternity leave, I've had a chance to take this case and make it my own, and have relished it. Weird, no? But in the midst of all this, I'm going to the gym in the mornings and getting my hours in - it's all very good. I just keep swimming, and it works. Meanwhile, I think I convinced my sister that it's okay if she and Nick should have a baby sometime soon. Hooray, I can live vicariously through them! I just want them to be happy, and I think last weekend I was able to convince her that she doesn't have to have everything all perfect in order to start her family. I am happy lately. This is good. I'm going with it, I'm swimming.

line in the sand = drawn

Since my last entry where I wondered aloud (or, not aloud, but virtually) about where I was going to draw the line in the sand with fbf, I went to Seattle, had a marvelous time with my friends--who are some of the best people in the world (and whom I am so lucky to have in my life)--and went through some "being true to onself" thoughts. Basically, I went to Seattle and fell back into my pattern of "I want to move back here." Of course I LOVE Seattle, and I LOVE LOVE the people there even more, and this caused me major anxiety the last day and a half I was in Seattle. That carried over to me coming back to California and being pretty bummed out. I dragged my sad, sorry ass to work anyway, and was excited to have an email from my coworker wondering whether I was coming in that day. Success! I have a friend who cares whether I'm at work or not! This reinforced my decision to be in California, and helped me feel secure in the fact that I'm into the swing of things at work and in my life, and I am content. That said, I decided that the main thing dragging me down was fbf. And although I didn't get a chance to tell him (not "to his face," because how would that be possible when we only ever met each other once?) directly, I stopped calling, texting, or otherwise communicating with him. He followed suit. He's called a few times saying he's been busy and asking whether I've fallen off the face of the earth, but we haven't talked in weeks, now. I think my annoyance in early March really set the tone for where I am in my life, and I decided that sitting at home, talking to someone on the phone is NOT where I want to be. I want to be kicking ass at work, taking on new challenges, and learning new things. And I want to be embracing opportunities to hang out with people and develop relationships here, not just in California, but also in the south bay. I am making a concerted effort to make a life here for myself; one that I really enjoy.

And you know what? Although I haven't posted a blog for awhile, I made this decision and followed my instinct several weeks ago, and I'm really glad that I did. I guess I've just been so busy following this instinct, and working hard and creating a great life for myself that I neglected to blog about it! And I wanted to document for myself that I have moved beyond some of my old habits (such as fbf). I also started to work out in the mornings, which I am LOVING. Speaking of which, I need to get to sleep because I have spin class at 5:45 a.m.

More later, because I have a good feeling about this...

see? less annoyed already!

Funny how that works...

Thought today would be a terrible Monday, especially with losing an hour because of daylight savings time. Alas, it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. The loss of an hour sucked, of course, but I got more done than I thought I would, and billed more than I thought I would after rolling in a little late. Plus, the additional annoyance from last weekend related to the fake boyfriend ("fbf"), and after talking to him for a couple hours tonight, I feel better again. Granted, I'm still slightly frustrated - I've mentioned getting together a handful of times over the past few weeks, and tonight I really pushed (in the nicest way possible, of course). But it's hard for me to know whether he's giving me a hard time or not - he says he's just giving me a hard time, but I won't really believe it until he actually makes (and keeps!) plans with me... The more time that passes, the harder it gets for me to be satisfied with phone calls and text messages. Everything via phone says that we get along great, and that things are good, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to have someone to hang out with in PERSON and to do things with. So tonight I started by joking that I was penciling myself in for this weekend because if I don't, we won't see each other for three weeks...he changed the subject at one point, but I reiterated that I was serious, and I think I scared him. Oops. So I told him, well, we're seeing each other this weekend so you'd better think about what we're going to do. And he laughed, and of course made fun of me by listing all this crap he has to do so I got kind of irritated -- and then he was like, "I'm just kidding - I love giving you a hard time, it's too easy!" (I like this flirtatiousness, of course, but I also want to put my foot down and get something planned because I need some physical interaction, dammit). So I said, fbf, I've told you that I want to hang out this weekend so now it's up to you and I'll leave it alone.

He's not going to do anything about it. I know it. And I'll let him. I like him too much. But I have to draw a line in the sand at some point...I just haven't determined when that point will be just yet. *sigh*

I'm annoyed.

There's really nothing else to say. Hell, I don't even know why, exactly, I am annoyed. Maybe that's what makes it so annoying.

I love how I can post a totally happy, content entry one day, and then switch to being annoyed the next. I guess it's just been a long year already with work, and I am forcing myself not to work this weekend, even though I could/probably should. I need the break, but also get kind of stressed knowing that I could be getting ahead for the week. But I'm convinced I've been extra tired lately because I haven't truly given myself a break. So be it.

I'm also annoyed because I owe a bunch of credit cards moola, but can't seem to pay them off - I think it's the interest that's killing me. It's ridiculous, and taking me FOREVER to try to make a dent in it. I went shopping yesterday and had to resist buying anything other than two pairs of pants for work. Fun. I mean, I did buy something, which is nice, but work pants? So boring. All I really wanted was a bright colored scarf thingy, like orange sherbert colored, or bright teal - but I couldn't find one anywhere. Bummer.

I also get irrationally annoyed when people don't communicate with me, but I see that they have been on facebook or whatever, communicating with other people. Isn't that silly? I know full well it is. But I can't help it. And I hate that it annoys me. I don't want them to post on my page, that's not the issue. Really, I'd like to be hanging out with them. And when I can tell that they're quasi-making plans with people through facebook, but not making plans with me, I get bummed out. Not like I haven't communicated with them - I have. But it's one thing to be on the phone or communicating via facebook, and hangng out. I want to hang out. Yep, I'm pretty sure that's why I'm annoyed today.

Plus, we lost an hour for daylight savings time, and I'm exhausted. I'm sure once I get some more sleep tonight, I'll feel better. And having it stay lighter later is always good. I'll have another happy post soon enough.

another year older...

Another year wiser? How quickly time passes! The holidays feel like ages ago, and I can't remember what it's like for it to be summer. I suppose that comes with doing basically the same thing, day in and day out. I've been at my job for a year now (!) and I think the whole, "wow, I am just going to keep coming here every day, indefinitely," has finally set all the way in. It really freaked me out for awhile, there. Not gonna lie. I got used to being in college, and then in grad school, where each semester varied. I could rearrange my class schedule, I could participate in different extra-curricular activities. And over the summer, I could travel or get a completely random job. I could make it through anything for just several months. And that's as long as anything really lasted. If my classes sucked, I just had to get through finals and then different classes would appear. I'm actually ok with being more settled than that, now, but it took a good six to eight months for me to reach that point. Now I have been able to focus on getting better at what I'm doing, and that's making me happy. Granted, I work a lot, and am constantly making mistakes (in fact, I feel like the more responsibility I take on, and the more tasks I accomplish, the more mistakes I make), but how else does one learn? At least that's what I'm telling myself...

All in all, life isn't half-bad right now. I am still gainfully employed, and able to pay my bills (other than my massive post-law-school-pre-job credit card bills, which are monsters to get rid of!) so I shouldn't complain. I like my coworkers, and have been able to find time here and there to go cycling and mountain biking, and even take a weekend trip here or there (even if I am doing some work, eww, I know). I set some lofty goals for myself this year, but I'm pushing toward them and doing well so far. I'm a nice ripe 28 years old now (yikes), but I feel like I've earned it. I have no doubt that 28 will be the best year yet, just like every year before it.

Life just gets better and better - who knew.

WTF?!

So I guess I've gotten used to waking up at 6:30am, regardless of what time I went to bed the night before. I went to "happy hour" with one of my coworkers, which really turned into "go to see coworker's new house and have a drink there while waiting for her pregnant friend from law school to get there and then go to dinner at a delicious Mexican restaurant." The food was really good. I'm going to crave it, for sure.

After we finished eating, we headed back to coworker's house and sat around engaging in girl talk. I'm embarrassed because it was about 9pm and I was yawning often, but so were they so it wasn't too bad (we're all attorneys - my coworker's friend went to Santa Clara Law School with her, and their respective hubbies were out at happy hour for "guy night" before that little baby comes into the world and sucks away all fun in the guy's life, or so he thinks). I kept thinking that I should leave, but girl talk was fun! So I finally headed out around 11pm because I was worried that if I didn't, I was going to fall asleep on the short drive home.

I got home, got ready for bed, passed out a little after 11:30, and slept really well. Until 6:25am. And I awoke not even groggy. I was wide awake. So I decided to get on that devilish contraption, my iPhone, and check my facebook and my email. I thought, "I checked this before bed, I'm sure there is nothing in the last seven hours, but I don't know what else to do so why not?"

Alas, I am wrong.

There is an email in my inbox, and it literally made me say, "what the fuck?! are you kidding me right now? what?!?!" There is an email, sitting in my inbox as I type this, inviting me to some speeddate.com website thing from one of the schmucks I mentioned in an earlier post about 2008. We'll call him italy. (for reference, I met italy through match.com back in september, and we [I thought] really hit it off. we had about three dates before he left on a two week trip to italy, and we were supposed to get together upon his return. he scheduled a coffee date with me, but cancelled at the last minute and never rescheduled. I didn't try to, either) Apparently, italy has "added me as a friend." This invitation conveniently contains italy's picture in it so I know it's him. My hunch is that this "speeddate.com" thing requires you to enter your email contacts or otherwise somehow steals them from your inbox when you sign up, and italy didn't mean to send this to me. Nonetheless, I have an overwhelming urge to satisfy my curiosity and sign up just so I can see whether he really "sent me a message" or what. If he did, it would be even weirder and completely out of the blue. It would also piss me off because why would he have gone MIA four months ago, not even having the balls to email me that "it wasn't working out" or something lame, just to reappear at 3am through some speed dating website?

Part of me wants to sign up and see if there's anything there or not. The other part of me wants to ignore it. I'm leaning toward ignoring it, especially since I think (hope?) it was an automatic email sent to all of his address book or something.

But seriously, WTF?! Just when I'm feeling like things are going well and I'm relatively content and even-keeled...leave me alone! Funny how things like this sometimes happen. Here's the biggest problem: italy is looking good - he grew out some scruff. I'm a sucker for scruffy.

But a scruffy asshole is still an asshole.

2009 = a good year

Not that I had a big problem with 2008 or anything, but it's just so easy to wrap everything up into a little package, call it "last year," and move on. The beginning of another year lends itself to potential, to possibilities, and to moving on.

The good parts of 2008 were really good - I scored my dream job; my sister and brother in law moved back to California; a handful of good friends got engaged, others married. However, the low points were, of course, low. My great grandma and my cousin both passed away; I bought a new car and then got in an accident several weeks later; some guys were complete schmucks to me.

But that's the thing about the "new year." It gives one the ability to reflect on a snippet of time in one's life, and think about all that happened, good and bad. It's rare to have the time or motivation to pause and reflect, but ringing in a new year is an opportunity to do so. Moreover, it's an opportunity to let bygones be bygones, and cherish the good times from the past year (and beyond).

So although I'm confident that I'll still have many more misadventures, I am trying to put a more positive spin on things. I have swept the low points of 2008 out of my mind (at least to the point of dwelling on them; they'll always be there, of course) and am moving forward with positivity, new focus, and resolve.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I plan to continue my current mellow lifestyle, doing the best I can at work, spending as much time as possible with my family and friends, and--possibly most importantly--not beating myself up. That is probably the biggest "resolution" I can make, and I hope I can stick to it.

So the past has passed, and I won't likely highlight those misadventures via this blog, but I know there are more worthy adventures in my future. My two close friends from law school are getting married, and I get to be part of it - I couldn't be happier. Plus, I am heading up to Seattle and Whistler next week for some R&R and catching up with friends. I am visiting my grandma this weekend, and have a birthday coming up that I get to spend with my sister. I've been talking to a guy who actually isn't a schmuck. It's really all very, very good.