i've got a feeling

so it has been awhile. i haven't posted and even though i had this urge to post something, I just really never got around to it.

these days, i am still in new york. this year will be 5 years on this dreadful coast. when people say the west coast is the best coast, it's not a lie. i'm at the point where i love my social activities but i still see no point as to why i should be working where i am. i got a new job within the same company last year. let's just call it a forced non-promotion. despite all of my hard work that has been noticed by many others outside of my department, i still have not gotten that raise or title change. they incorporated two jobs, that were both at the manager level prior to this, into one job for me.

*note to self: Obama signed an addendum to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 back in January of 2009. This law basically enforces equal pay for men and women who are doing the same job. maybe my company hasn't read it yet?

that being said. i've decided to give up. i'm giving myself until june in this place and if i can't find a job back in Seattle then it is splits ville for me. ideally. i want to find a company who would pay for my move home. that would be a dream come true. fingers crossed.

more news to come on that front at a later date.

i'm going to Maine in a couple of weeks for the national toboggan championships. it should be a great way to play in the snow and drink a lot with my aunt over a short weekend span.

later.

gah!!! what is wrong with people these days?

i can't stand it anymore. i think i may be on the edge of losing my mind.

the economy sucks.

my job sucks.

my boss sucks.

and nyc is really not the greatest city in the world.

i feel the urge to move back to seattle or move to latin america, shirk all of my responsibilities, and live a bohemian lifestyle for a while.

option b is looking really good right now.

everything has been awful lately. as if it isn't bad enough that the job market sucks and there is virtually no mobility outside of your own company. they lied to me. the job they described in my interview is not what i do. my boss is socially unacceptable. not to mention i have been reading a lot about cross cultural business and management lately and have realized that the S&S model of management could/is the WORST model I have ever experienced. god forbid anyone want to ever apply to a better position than what they are in now!!! why would anyone ever want to move out of a dead end department when you know that your job is pointless? i mean really, why would you?!?!

all i can do is keep my head down and do the bullshit work that i need to do. i can honestly say that lately i have been missing Pearson and all of my friends there. at least their reps aren't all lazy assholes and the managers actually encourage and promote growth. imagine that... promoting growth and encouraging development. who would have thought that was part of a successful management model?!

i can't wait until summer.

hopefully with obama things will look up soon.

next week i get a root canal and take the foreign service officer exam. fingers crossed on getting past the test.

in other news, dayne apologized to me a few months ago. we get along now for the sake of living together. we are still not friends and i make sure to keep her at a safe distance because i really don't trust her much still.

oh yeah... i got my first tattoo last month. i got a map of the world on the back of my calves.

not all it is cracked up to be

on thursday october 16, 2008 i have tickets to Game 5 of the ALCS! Go Sox!

i thought that my dad and i were getting along and then today he told me that he is going to take my brother to hawaii... and not me. he already did this once when he took my brother to portugal. does he really think that this is ok?! what the hell is wrong with him??? sometimes i wonder where i even came from because i did not get the asshole gene that my father seems to possess. really i think that my dad doesn't have a mind of his own and he just goes with whatever his bitch wife says. then he wonders why i stop talking to him for months and years at a time.

so NYC is a fun city. certain things that have taken place here since moving have not been so great. overall, it is an interesting place to be right now and a good place to decide where i want to go next.

the job is ok. it hasn't really proven to be as challenging as i thought it was going to be. it pays better than pearson did in boston but the city of new york, the state of new york, and the fedral goverment end up getting the extra in all of the taxes that they charge for the luxury of living in NYC. is it really a luxury to not have clean air?

my former best friend is crazy. not just the, oh that girl is crazy, ha ha. no. i really believe that she is certifiably crazy. i have been looking into it more and more and i think that she might actually have borderline personality disorder with some bipolar disorder thrown in to make it a little more interesting. they say that normally people don't find out that other people have these kinds of disorders until they actually live with them and have to deal with the mania and outbursts of irrational behavior on a daily basis. let's just say i put a lock on my door because she decided that she was going to storm into my room at midnight one night to yell at me.

these are the symptoms:

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment- she makes these brash irrational decisions that she wants to move back to seattle because she has no friends and no one that care about her in new york and she doesn't have anyone except her family in seattle. at least she thinks that they love and care about her.
  
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation- i don't even want to get in to this one... it would take too long
• Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self- she is deeply obsessed with the way she appears to people that she admits are not even her friends. i don't understand it but she will change what she likes or is into at the moment based on the people that she is with.
• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)- she has already actually admitted to having an "issue" with promiscuity and then there is her whole need to buy expensive furniture for an apartment that neither of us plan on living in for more than a couple of years,
  
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior- this one isn't actually an issue
• Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)- she again says that she is depressed sometimes because she is "lonely."
  
• Chronic feelings of emptiness- this could be what she calls her other issue "lonliness"
  
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)- she busted in to my room at midnight to yell at me about an e-mail that I sent her and the fact that i moved my toothpaste out of the bathroom. not to mention she can't even handle standing in line at the grocery store without flipping out. anger- i think yes!
  
• Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptom- she gets super stressed out and can't handle it so she ends up lashing out on everyone around her. she ended our 5 year friendship after one such instance because she said that i just wasn't a good friend when i wouldn't help her move.

pretty much everyone i work with thinks she is nuts and that goes for the rest of my friends in NYC as well. most of them want to come over to our apartment just to see her and what they think is some kind of circus sideshow.

come one, come all!

that's all folks!

today was melancholy and exciting all at the same time. first let me just say that i really enjoyed working for Pearson. It was a great experience and the business and the people that I worked with taught me a lot about the industry and myself as well. i gave my resignation on wednesday and today they decided that i could leave today instead. but its all cool. i don't think i could be happier to be away from my bitch of a boss and its like getting three weeks of paid vacation!

i made a joke to brian at karen's expense and it ended up landing me more time for myself and no work for a month. awesome! on top of that i just get to work at the bakery more which just helps me make more money for the move to nyc. really, a win win all around.

on the road again

it is once again time for a new move. yesterday i accepted a position with Simon & Schuster in New York City. I start my new job on June 2 and i don't think that i could be any more excited and scared at the same time.

nyc holds so many more opportunities for a career and even a more exciting life than what boston has offered so far. i like boston and i have made a lot of friends here now, but i have never loved boston. i have spent the last few months incredibly unhappy at work and i felt like it was eating my soul. no job is worth that. happiness is by the far the most important thing to maintain because without it... what are you really living for? i will miss the red sox :( from now on most of my games will be in concrete jungle of yankee stadium. boo to that.

so yeah... we'll see how things go. for now i am focusing on having fun in seattle at the end of may. it will be full of music and baseball games. what could possibly be better for the beginning of summer?!?

what a failure

it is so sad that i don't post more often. i really enjoy blogging.

since my last post i traveled to istanbul, turkey and greece for a little vacation in november and then i headed out to seattle for christmas and new year's. it was good times. i miss seeing my friends as often as I would like.

instead i work... somewhere in the 65-70 hour a week range. i don't find it to be challenging or rewarding anymore. i find it more to be tedious and boring. i applied for a new job at work. i didn't get it and so i applied for a different position which could possibly be my Pearson dream job. The day after i applied i was offered the job of "sales campaign coordinator" in my region which sounds like it could be fun and interesting for about six months. i am hesitant to accept. i want the west coast again. i want the rain and clouds over this snow and wind. i want long drives around sane drivers instead of these grumpy new englanders who act like they rule the road.

i hate it here.

if i stay i may just be due for a check-in in depression city at some point. not right now though. i am having fun here right now. part of me feels that i need to stay here to make my career into something more. the other part wants to run far far away.

this is kind of what i felt like when i was about to graduate from college and i had the choice before me of applying to law schools or digging myself into the the corporate hole of gluttony. obviously i started digging into the corporate hole. now i may just be digging deeper. tunnel to china anyone? i may make it there in time for the emergence of china as the world's next super power on the rate that i am digging. maybe not.

i wish i could be an independently wealthy nomad. tell the world that the corporate systems and the United States political machines are not for me and spend my days brushing llamas on the inca trail for a few months followed by lounging away days in the sun somewhere in the south of france. something like a perpetual eco tourist with a panache for some of the flair and fun associated with having money.

in other news... i fought off this cold for a really long time but alas it has caught up with me. :(

This weekend will undoubtedly be spent in bed with a lot of fluids and cold medicine.

turkey for turkey day

it dawned on me recently (with brian's help) that i have not updated my blog in a while, which is a shame because i do enjoy writing in this thing and keeping it up to date. the summer has been a little crazy for me though. i find it hard to set aside time to write when i barely set enough time aside to sleep, eat, and have some sense of fun in my life during the summer. i turned 24 since my last post and i must say that while getting a little older is nice, but it is just that... old. year after year i feel myself growing even more disconnected from my "peers" or from the age groups that i used to really like being around. for some reason chattering about careers, mortgages, and politics seems so much more appealing to me. i especially notice this age gap at the cafe that i have been working at for a few months. i am friends with a few of the people that work there because i find them to be enjoyable and entertaining and MATURE, especially for their age. Lately though i have realized that the age difference between myself and some of my co-workers is actually quite profound to me, yet in a way some of them remind me of people that I once knew or still know.

earlier in the summer i went to new york and had some fun times in the city with brian and dayne which was great! brian and i got some free yankees tickets and then got a "buzz from the guz!" while we sat in our awesome first base line seats in a truly awesome baseball stadium. now, i am NOT a Yankees fan. I was born and raised with the red and white of the red sox but there was just something about going to yankees stadium before they tear it

in other news i have basically decided that boston is the land of assholes! i really can't imagine myself living here for too much longer and i have began to think about the new places that would be fun to escape to this time. on the short list right now are Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, and Miami. We'll see exactly where this takes me but I think that I would definitely prefer the west coast over anything else. i just can't imagine staying in a city with so little common courtesy or human decency and the longer that i stay here the more i notice it. i guess another reason that i feel that i do not want to stay in boston any longer is because my dad and i started fighting again. it's been a month since i spoke to him and i really feel no urge to start any time soon. i've done a lot of thinking about this, especially after his most recent actions while my brother was in town, and i definitely feel that my dad is one person in my life that i would be completely content with not speaking to again. it's sad, but i am so tired of his antics of playing my brother and i off of each other and the fact that whenever we start fighting he does some immature bullshit act just to spite me or get back at me for not talking to him. whatever, i'm done with that shit. i have no desireto live anywhere near him any longer and maybe one day after i move away he will realize what a selfish asshole he has been all of his life.

i bought tickets to go to Istanbul and Athens for Thanksgiving this year. i'm not telling my family that i am going. so keep this a secret! shhhh....