I'm having one of those days where all I want to do is sit outside in the sun, listen to Bach on piano (my inexplicable obsession of the week), read, and try to write my first new short story in years. Of course the short story goal is greatly "inspired" by the fact that I have to produce 10 pages of new content for a writing retreat that some friends and I are having in Davis, but there's nothing wrong with a little external push.

current reads:

I miss reading all the darn time for school. But my upcoming Coursera classes should alleviate some of that! 

done done and done.

this feels more right than i ever thought it would. i thought i'd be sadder, or even a little bit regretful on my last day, but i am so content and ready to move on. 

i am relieved. onto the next adventure in career-making! 

one more day of work!

I am ambivalent, but mostly I am very excited and ready to be done with some different things that always bothered me about my job and grate on me more and more each day as I finish out my two weeks. 

I've been utterly grateful for the opportunities I've had and the people I've met, and I will never forget that gratitude, but tis time to move on!

gratitude journal 6/28:

Today I am utterly grateful for:

1. Coworkers who take me out for a goodbye lunch and toast to my future. 
2. The ability to read (and read and read and read). 
3. The sobering sense of humility as I grow older. 
4. Bandaids to keep your heels from bleeding when you're breaking in new shoes. 
5. Clorox wipes. 'Nuff said. 
6. Everyone and everything who has shown me great love.

 Obviously I'm in a sappy mood (hello, monthly hormones)!
 I love ya'll though. 

on repeat today while I type away my last few days:

next week's plans:

mostly, I plan to stay at home (or in zee area) and do the following:

• read
• write (perhaps tackle my first short story in oh... YEARS)
• eat avocados and desserts and drink healthy juices 
• visit a friend or two (BRUNCH, PEUT-ETRE?) 
• yoga

In three days I will officially be done with my first full-time job out of college.

Weird times, guys. Weird times.

MOVING FORWARD IS STRANGE AND UNCERTAIN.

I am pretty excited though :).

gratitude journal 6/26:

Today I am grateful for:

1. Grapes, yo. Is there ever a better summer fruit? 
2. That I will be out of this job before they do the staff meeting where everyone has to talk about "a song that inspires them." OH MY GOD. 
3. Living across the street from a bar (classy, I know). 
4. THAT THERE IS A BON CHON IN SUNNYVALE. OMG KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN. 
5. For slow, leaving the office kind of closure. 
6.  For breathing exercises. 
7. For my (relative) youth. I have a lot of time to figure things out, even if I don't always think this way.

on repeat (repeat).

this is a little cheesy, but I might get on that gratitude journal train:

Today I am grateful for: 

1. Noticeable hair growth!
2. A relationship in which I can talk and talk and talk it out (and that challenges me to do so). 
3. Nice strangers who find Kindles and give them back to their very worried owner. 
4. Moms who text "goodnight I love you" every day. 
5. BATHS. 

And many more things! 

Is it just me or have 90% of the girls I know started talking/complaining about problematic digestive issues as they reach their early 20s (myself included)?

What's up with that? OUR BODIES ARE FAILING US ALREADY?!

free write!

What circuitous nature, these thoughts

that arise and float to the surface - only to be chased by a moment's breath.

Somedays, I just want clarity, the kind of all-knowing power that superheroes can only dream about. I want to know it all, be it all, do it all. 

I itch, I pick, I fret at my skin because at the end of the day, it will never house me comfortably. There are too many errant thoughts to fit into this imperfect body. 

How does anyone ever claim perfect honesty? We're not even honest to ourselves. 

I love spring and summer for its glorious blooms, for the grocery store displays of blush pink peonies. And yet, here are my annual allergies. Pros and cons at every angle, I'm telling you.

Where shall I go, what shall I do? 

All I want in life is a big library, a huge bed and a computer that I can type out my stories on. This basic tenet has never changed. 

In which I am certainly not feeling (or looking) my very best today. 

HALP.

OKAY INTERNET. ONE OF YOU OUT THERE MUST HAVE A FLAKY ECZEMA/PSORIASIS  INDUCED SCALP AS WELL.

All the shampoo recommendations in the world, please?! This ish is driving me insane.

I resolve to be better at tracking my finances.

Technically, I am doing a-okay for a recent college grad as far as salary goes. However, I have a whole bunch of monthly expenses that pretty much drain my bank account dry (what? $300 for gas money? all dem utilities? student loans/car loans/car insurance? rent monies?) and I realized today as I dipped into my savings account in order to save my checking account balance that I have NOT been budgeting.

I read something online a while back about how you should take your net income, subtract all those necessary evils/bills/etc. and then try to determine, based off of the remainder, how much you are allowed to spend per day (on average). I did those fun and exciting calculations and came out with between $15-20/day (ideally).

Now, that is totally not too bad because it doesn't include gas monies or any of the others, but it DOES include groceries, toiletries, etc. And it totally means that I HAVE to be much better with things like packing my own lunch, or not blowing $10 a day on coffee. Because if I do that, at the end of the week I will have exactly negative dollars for groceries and going out.

Maybe this isn't exactly startling news to anyone else, but it is to me! I am going to start trying really hard to keep track of this kind of stuff (spreadsheet, maybe?) for the next few months to make sure I'm on track with my daily average spending. If I plan on blowing a bunch of money over the weekend on going out, I will track my expenses accordingly and make sure that I'm not buying lunch all that week or going out to dinner a lot.

This is doable. Right? Totally doable.

Time to be an adult and all that businessssss.

On Being 23 and a half(ish):

Confession: I have to think really hard when someone asks how old I am, simply because I don't want to embarrass myself by giving the wrong age. 22, 23, 24... these ages all feel approximate but wrong. The definition of a number has faded away (I'm 18 and now I'm an adult, I'm 21 and now I can drink) and now all I am left with is a nebulous sense of self and a number that doesn't mean too much.

Sometimes I feel like I messed up, like I skipped over things too quickly in my haste to grow up. Where are all those memories now? Why didn't I catalog them into journals, photos, videos, etc? I am the kind of person who likes to purge, who burns diaries (metaphorically - in truth I shred them and throw them into many different trash cans) and discards all sentimental objects from past lives. I have no need for old mix tapes, for scrawled notes from old friends. What have I to gain by hanging onto this life's detritus?

Today I started cleaning out my work desk. I am 23 and I am leaving my first full-time job. My first corporate job, where I had to dress up and go to client meetings and figure out whether or not I would put money towards my 401K. I found a stack of thank-you notes from colleagues, notes that spoke of appreciation for certain tasks or projects that I'd worked on. I threw them all away. 

I think that I worry too much for someone who's 23. I worry too much that my life is passing me by, but I also worry too much about how young and inexperienced I am. I want to enjoy my life more than anything, but I have this crippling fear that I am not doing a good job of "finding my way," whatever that may mean. Self-actualization, and all that jazz. My eczema flares up the moment I start to think about all those linear metaphors for life: the journey, the ascent, the climbing of a steep mountain. Linearity doesn't leave room for many mistakes.

I still have days (actually, to be completely honest, this is what constitutes most of my days) when I feel like I'm not doing enough. When I feel like there are deadlines to be met: when I should be promoted, go back to school, get married, have kids, publish a book, edit a book, etc. etc. I think my goal for the remainder of this year, and on an ongoing basis, should be to let go of all these self-imposed deadlines.

I want to do my best. I want to make the kind of life that I want for myself, yes. But telling myself that I'm a failure if I don't achieve certain things by the age of 25 isn't going to make me a happier person. It could be setting myself up for a subjective and entirely unnecessary failure.

I am not sure what the point of this self-reflective post is, just that life in one's early 20s is hard (at least for me) because deadlines are no longer demarcated for us. We have to make them up ourselves and for me - someone who likes a certain degree of orderliness - this can be completely maddening. And kind of depressing. But I'm learning to work with it and cherish the struggles and rewards of growing into myself.

HAPPY WEEKEND, YA'LL. 

Next week I start integrating some form of exercise into my life at least 3x per week. I'm done with complaining of sluggishness or mental cloudiness; I need to take charge and do what's right for my body. And I've come to realize that short-term goals of eating less, etc in order to prep for swimsuit season aren't good for me. They're not sustainable and I can't base exercise on pure body image. I need to think about its other benefits (and how they're more important).

The goal, of course, is to eventually get to the point where exercise is a part of my DAILY life. I also need to reevaluate what I eat (something that I'm sure will be easier when working at a company with a fully stocked kitchen, yes please!), but it's HAPPENING.

A thought-provoking article on how women still struggle today with work/life balance and how to juggle the demands of professional development and growth with raising a family.

I think it's worth a read, ladies.

I also loved this quote from it about California:

"Space for play and imagination is exactly what emerges when rigid work schedules and hierarchies loosen up. Skeptics should consider the “California effect.” California is the cradle of American innovation—in technology, entertainment, sports, food, and lifestyles. It is also a place where people take leisure as seriously as they take work; where companies like Google deliberately encourage play, with Ping-Pong tables, light sabers, and policies that require employees to spend one day a week working on whatever they wish. Charles Baudelaire wrote: “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note."

Yay for California! :)

True story: all I want to do right now is watch historical romantic dramas, eat ice cream, take a bath, possibly weep, and sleep forever. I AM SO TIRED.

WHY ARE YOU COMING AT ME FOR $1200 OF THE $1800 I MADE INTERNING WHILE I WAS IN SCHOOL IN 2010, IRS?

You make no sense. Writing another letter, URGH. Way to go after a girl in a year when she had NO DISCERNIBLE INCOME.

In other tax-related news, I should probably start putting some of dat freelance money aside to pay for the taxes I will inevitably owe on it next April. Fun! Real life finances are no bueno. I want to be a kid with an allowance, a candy store and a mouthful of cavities again.

I feel the molting, the restlessness of this skin as it crackles and strains, my hairs standing at attention. In the morning, I feel the aching in my legs. Another notch. And my mind, that sweet organ, exhausted the the point of cloudiness. Where is clarity in all of this?

I had thought the summer would bring clear skies, the metaphorical cleansing of a palate. And yet. The heat hangs over me like a net, catching the tail ends of thoughts as they tantalize me. I am with and without purpose.

Maybe it's the sleep deprivation or the sad French tunes I'm listening to (thanks, Pandora!) but I'm almost getting weepy as I transfer all my important files to the company database.

NOSTALGIA FOR ALL YE EXCEL DOCUMENTS. Or not.

I am so freakin' sleep deprived and kind of crazy right now. I'm in that state of mind where actual, real work seems IMPOSSIBLE (especially when it involves going through all my files ever and creating transition and "pass off" documents) but I am feeling awfully restless. I had very little sleep thanks to some gin and tonic (celebratory drinks... gone wrong?) and my decision to eat a lot of pasta and "wait" for the new episode of The Bachelorette to appear on Hulu at midnight. Which it didn't. Of course. Because that's the way Hulu works.

I don't mean to be bitching I'm not even particularly unhappy or displeased. More in a weird suspended state of consciousness where I am sooo tired but at the same time hyperaware thanks to the miracle that is caffeine.

I think I am going to peruse my long-overdue novel revision (hello Nanowrimo... has it been nearly a year already?) and see if I can make a couple pages of edits with this addled brain of mine.

I also just texted my brother to see if he'd go get sushi with me for lunch. Need to get in those San Jo lunchdates as often as possible before I leaaaave.

!!!!!!

a woody allen dig, eh?

happy monday!

 

I'm off to accept an offer letter and give my 2 weeks notice :)

summertime maxi dresses foreva.

Trying on some forgotten pieces of clothing at my parents' house and coming to the dreadful conclusion that I must have been skinnier last year, or at the very least, that my waistline must have been smaller.

OH WELL. WEIGHT FLUCTUATIONS FTW.

Someone do an exquisite corpse poem and/or drawing with me, please. I'm bored.

Soooo. I'm going in on Monday to receive my offer letter in person!!!

So much excitement - it's one of those (extremely rare) days when I can't wait for the weekend to be over already!

... I might like this without irony.

running late for work, praying that this offer letter comes my way ASAP:

 

Of course I shall spray on some good luck cologne. 

 Because what smells like professional success? 

HOPEFULLY A COLOGNE THAT'S BILLED AS ONE THAT JFK WORE, GUYS. 

Have a great weekend, ya'll! 

 

I am just dying over these:

Trying to do breathing exercises at my desk because the prospect of giving my notice (though exciting!) kind of also makes me want to break out in hives.

Happiness as tampered by anxiety = STORYOFMYLIFE.

Anyway, wish me luck on giving my two weeks by the end of the week, what what!

still... waiting.

when (if) this offer arrives, we are all going to happy hour together. yes, i am talking to you, nameless interwebs! all of us!

summer lovin' and a snapshot of my hair growing progress

a true netflix gem!

take me to this exhibit of glitter lights plz:

uncertainty and whatnot

So I'm supposed to hear back on a decision from this job sometime "early next week." There's nothing like a cloud of uncertainty hanging over your head to take you into the weekend, amirite guys?!

Le sigh.

My consolation prize right now is a fun-sized Milky Way bar, which is actually way more delicious and nostalgic than I thought it would be. TRICK OR TREATING, WHY DON'T I PARTAKE ANYMORE?

I'm a little delirious from all these goshdarn allergies. To the pharmacy we go (after work)! 

outdoor bookstores always make me swoon:

yes!

"I like the way you die, boy."

whenever I am feeling lost, I always come back to Dear Sugar columns (aka Cheryl Strayed)

"You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.

You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.

But that’s all."

this makes me want to start editing my novel again, all that childhood creepiness. love it!

Drinking coffee before work, happy that my bangs are finally (sort of) growing out and behaving, and just utterly flummoxed by the thought of going into the office today. All this "we highly value you and want to keep you!" business is very flattering and deeply appreciated, but it's confusing me to no end. Of course, I don't even have an offer for another job in hand yet, so I am trying to just be calm and stand my ground.

SO MUCH AWKWARDNESS. Ugh.

point/counterpoint

kind of the story of my life right now.

I am in a weird state of limbo right now, but in a good way (I think!). I can hardly concentrate on anything because it feels as though change is imminent, and regardless of what happens, I will be moving forward. Life is very odd right now. Recalibrating relationships, my career, my personal identity, etc. makes for a rather confusing and bumpy time in my life. But I think there's some discomfort that is necessary when you are growing, and so I am trying to take the more unpleasant aspects with some optimism.

This job business, dealing with my parents, trying to assert myself as an adult, etc. is winding me up right now - but I think it's in a good way. All this energy drives a purpose. I'm making headway! :) 

UGH THIS JOB THING IS SO MUCH CONFUSION.

I mean, I guess "I'm interviewing and my current job keeps trying to entice me in order to stay" isn't the worse problem in the world, but it still is a little mind-boggling at times. Le sigh.

That horribly awkward moment when your boss pulls you into a conference room and asks you point-blank whether or not you're currently interviewing.

...Yikes.

 

Listening to T. Swift and getting ready for work... and then afternoon. Ugh, so much nervousness!

just returned from our monterey weekend excursion (complete with plenty o' aquatic animal viewings) and am utterly exhausted.

time to start prepping for my interview - and i do not mean research, etc. since i've already done all of that. it's time to do my nails, make sure my eyebrows are symmetrical, and shave my legs. SIGH. grooming is difficult sometimes!

also, i have rescheduled my GRE test taking date for december. because we all knew i wasn't going to be ready to take that thing in 2 weeks, right?

trip to monterey time!

 

this, of course, calls for my dorky travel backpack. 

So after 1 phone screen, 1 phone interview, 1 on-site interview (which consisted of meeting with 4 people and sitting in a conference room for 3-ish hours), I have been asked back for a final interview.

I'm nervous/excited/trying to figure out how to get out of work without folks asking too many questions! But mostly, I am ready for this. Please keep sending good vibes my way, because I am so very ready for a change.