Okay, maybe not ever, but a pretty darned good one.  Go read NOW: Simple Marriage on how to break free from marital gridlock.

Some of the commenters on Corey’s site didn’t understand the post, but it really resonated with me.  How about you?

This is a public service announcement:

When you take a new job requiring cross-country commutes to the office and cross-office walks to the bathroom, the following may later cause pain and discomfort:

• Drinking liquids only for the caffeine or alcohol content.
• Waiting for just one more meeting to end before going to the bathroom – for five meetings in a row.
• Taking bubble baths to de-stress.
• Did I mention drinking nothing that doesn’t contain caffeine or alcohol?  For weeks?

You know what I’m saying here, right?  You saw where this was headed? 

Consider yourself warned…

… and now would be a good time to get on good terms with the sweet ladies at your husband’s Primary Care Physician’s office (because of course you’d make three phone calls to find him one but never get around to finding your own) who will kindly and cheerfully fit you into the schedule within 30 minutes of your phone call.

I love all these sweet southerners.

(Go drink water.  Now.  And call a doctor if you don’t have one.)

~~~

Speaking of, is anyone else freaked out by Brittany Murphy’s death?  Iron deficiency because she’d been on her period and drug interactions caused her to DIE.  And if you look at the drugs, they’re not DRUGS but regular OTC drugs likely taken because she’d had the flu.  AND SHE DIED.

I don’t know about you, but I’m freaked.  When druggies die?  Meh.  A 32-year old woman who’d been on her period, mixed up cold meds and was a little on the skinny side dies?  Two of those three things might actually happen in my life.  I’m freaked.

So I’m taking vitamins regularly for the first time ever — gummy kids vitamins, but still, something, right – and drinking V-8.  I still don’t drink enough water (yea, read the first section up there), but I’m trying.  This reminds me of why I buckle my seatbelt on airplanes now: because I wanted the intro to Lost once and that was enough.

I left my first husband because I was afraid he didn’t love me enough.  With distance and maturity, I’ve come to realize what an idiot I was to let the thought exist, much less define us.  But here I am, ten years later, worrying about the same thing again. 

Different man, same worry.  Different reasons, same fear.  Different me, same me.

Elizabeth Gilbert (she of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame) writes in “Committed” about trading personality deficit lists with her beloved in (my words here) a fcuked up version of a personality prenuptial. 

I get that.  I have crippling personality traits: I am inexplicably convinced I will someday prove my utter worthlessness despite evidence to the contrary.  I don’t like to feel.  I hide hurt and fear behind a thick wall of offensive protectiveness and anger.  I am a maximizer in every possible way.  And I live and breathe by words.

I was an early talker and early reader.  For close to three decades I have savored words.  I can’t remember lots of things but the spoken word isn’t one of them; long after a run-of-the-mill conversation has concluded, I turn the words over and over in my head, repeating them and their cadence, searching for meaning and trying to understand, well, everything.  I do all of this without thinking, without any active effort or interference, and if you asked me to repeat a conversation verbatim, I couldn’t do it, yet, I can feel every word in my mind, and I’m always looking back at something to figure out what happened.

I learn with my eyes on the rearview mirror – and most of the time, it works well.  My husband drives this way, always scanning around him to make sure he’s prepared to react to the crazies on the road.  It keeps him from being rear-ended, sure, but sometimes he misses what’s happening right in front of him.  Not so safe. 

That’s me.

In real-time, though I am at my most articulate, I don’t perceive accurately.  My argumentative mind becomes a liability, finding evidence of every unspoken fear and failure, and despite my hard-won maturity, I can’t always find a way out of the cycle. 

I try.  My therapist once said the only behavior that needs to happen to stop a downward cycle is to insert thought between feeling and action.  But what if, when you stop and think, you don’t know what to do next?  And what if, because of the way your brain works, the pause to think means you turn the ugly words over and over in your head, finding yourself stuck in the chasm of hurt?  Then what?

I like to think I’ve learned how to have a marital fight.  I stop and think.  I don’t interrupt.  I try to articulate my feelings without blame.  I show what I feel (hurt), not what is more comfortable to feel (anger). But I still don’t know how to prevent one.

Okay, that’s a lie.  I do know: you bring up hurts and frustrations, however ridiculous, before they blow up.  You ask for small doable actions the other person can do rather than puking out your fears and feelings and expecting them to make it all better.  You accept the intermittent and sometimes awkward cadence of marriage.  You stop giving too much of yourself and avoid any action that might cause resentment.

So I know, but I don’t do.  Starting Friday night, my husband did and said to me a series of relatively tiny things that added up into a seething pit of hurt.  This afternoon, it all blew up.

Because I don’t like to feel, I have to make myself show what I’d rather not be feeling, which is usually hurt.  Because I’m hyper-verbal, I have to hold back the stream of words flying through my mind while struggling to stop my mind from endlessly repeating the hurtful words he’s said.  Because I am a maximizer, I look for the best possible way to spend every minute, searching for an efficient way to move on from the argument while wishing we hadn’t wasted minutes on this.

And because I can’t manage to change myself from feeling that, ultimately, I am not really worthy of anything, when I can’t find immediate evidence of my worth through someone else, I become a big, pathetic puddle.

You can’t recover from that.  Not quickly and not well.

Why didn’t I say anything earlier?  Actually, I thought I did, but (as tends to happen) the depth of my discomfort isn’t clear when I try to handle things casually.  We, as a couple, aren’t there yet.  It would have taken recognition on each of our behalf to prevent this one, and neither of us saw it coming.

You know how when two dogs blow up at each other at a dog park, some people claim it was “out of nowhere” while others “saw it coming”?  Both are true, of course, based on the person’s experience with dogs in general and those dogs in particular.  If you’ve been around dogs long enough – or those particular dogs – you recognize the triggers before they blow up.

The same situation exists in relationships, though without the benefit of bystanders to validate the sequence that led to disaster.  If you’ve been around healthy relationships long enough, you recognize when to be careful; if you’ve been around a certain person long enough, you get the same spidey sense.  Felipe, Elizabeth’s beloved, recognized this:

“Let’s be careful,” Felipe had said then, out of the blue.

“Of what?” I’d asked.

“Let’s just be careful of what we say to each other for the next few hours,” he’d gone on. “These are the time, when people get tired like this, that fights can happen.  Let’s just choose our words very carefully until we find a place to rest.”

Once upon a time I would have fought the very idea of needing to be careful, believing the holding back of words to be a sin against the very idea of a relationship, but now, I get it.  I’m not as fired up at the idea of fighting it out anymore, don’t believe it’s the only way to clear the air.

So when Kasia writes this:

Me: You know, I’m really grateful for our relationship.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I’ve been reading some blogs lately that talk about relationship problems people are having. It seems a lot of couples argue a lot. Did you know that? They argue or can’t come to decisions on things together or one of them is pouty and quiet and the other obsesses about why they’re being pouty and quiet. It seems so tiring.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I feel really bad for them. It sounds like the kind of relationship angst I went through when I was younger, you know? All that worry and insecurity and heartache.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I’m starting to think that there actually aren’t a lot of people out there like us. I mean, people who are just… I dunno… happy. Uncomplicated. Who laugh as much as we do and just… you know… enjoy each other.

… or when I consider that Ree never (ever!) speaks of her husband in any way other than adoring, I want to wish to be in a relationship like that. 

Then I remember, I probably am, but we’re in a very different place than they are.  So says Kasia, and I agree with her.  They’ve been together six years; we’ve known each other almost three.  My god, I’ve had most of my animals less time than that, and I’m fairly certain Huck wouldn’t consent to being the same room with me until more than three years had passed.

Penelope suffers from the same misconception – that some people have the great relationship and the rest of us have to work at it.  But I think everyone with a seemingly perfect relationship has put in the work, somehow, somewhere.  Maybe they married the person with whom they had their very first serious relationship.  That’s work.  Maybe they were mature enough (for any number of reasons that I wasn’t) not to hold their marriage responsible for everything they needed.  Growing up takes work too.  Maybe their parents were great role models.  I love my parents, but because they divorced, they weren’t great role models for how to be married.  They are each great role models for other traits I’m proud of, but you can’t successfully model something you don’t do.  I am not a role model for shutting up or being patient, for instance.

When I think of my neighbor, she of the “we never fight” comment, I recognize that not fighting doesn’t mean they are each free to be whomever they feel like being at any given moment, and yet, each is somehow more free, too.  Their process seems to involve much less heroic effort of the kind I appreciate from my husband (who cleaned the kitchen top to bottom just to be nice to me) and he of me (who likes to surprise him with just the perfect thing to make his life more enjoyable and shuts up as much as possible when he needs cave time) and the corresponding lack of heroic effort needed to appreciate appropriately and recover from really high expectations.

Does that make any sense?  Joey and I are a zen puzzle, one where the best way to get better is to do less.  We each try so hard.  {And hey, I’m not saying that Kasia or my neighbor aren’t putting in the effort, not at all.  My point is that, like learning to ride a motorcycle, just staying balanced takes every bit of skill you can muster at first.  The more hours you have on the bike, the more natural it becomes.  Only then can you start to play around.  There’s a learning curve.}

Relationships balance precariously upon a huge pile of past experiences; the fewer you have that you don’t share, the less you have to work to not topple over.  Or, as my therapist once told me, “At some point you’ll reach the point where the time you’ve spent together will be greater than the time you’ve spent apart, and things will get easier.”

Note to self: marrying after a solid decade of adulthood makes this a depressing thought, but a true one nonetheless.

All of this is to say that, yes, we still fight, much more often than I’d wish but only as often as we need to until we figure this whole marriage thing out.  I’m reminded of the saying that the future will only happen as it must (as always, paraphrased because I am an ENFP and I never get the words quite right).

And even though I’m hurt and seething, and he’s hurt and seething, we’ll be okay.  I can see progress and for now, that’s enough.

I got the job, well, mostly (I verbally accepted a verbal offer, which is pretty official in our organization)!  I knew I was going to get the job, but wasn’t sure about compensation.  I girded my loins for a negotiation, got a pep talk from a work friend, and asked for a HUGE increase in pay. 

While I can justify the request, I also kind of wanted to giggle, like I needed to prove I wasn’t so out there I thought my corporation would grant a 58% pay increase.  They didn’t, of course, so LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU WHO DON’T NEGOTIATE.  If I’d insisted on even a nominal increase in pay with my last two role changes, this would have been easier.  Because I didn’t, I had a bigger deficit to make up.

But, bright side: I got a relatively huge raise (18%) in a tough economy doing a job I like a whole lot more, all while refusing to move to headquarters.  Not bad!  So, despite managing to convince myself I was worth more and feeling some disappointment yesterday, I’m celebrating today!

~~~

Please try this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, please.  Please.  It literally has three ingredients, requires no chopping, and is so good my husband and I each confessed to wanting to lick our bowls.  Even with good tomatoes, your cost is like three bucks, and it is so good.  So good.  It took me less time to throw the ingredients in a saucepan than to refill my coffee, and after happily simmering all by itself for 45 minutes, I took another shortcut and just cooked the pasta in the sauce.  Yummy!

Is making the same thing for dinner you just had for lunch weird?  I’m seriously considering it.

~~~

I finally updated the links on my post about the best planner I’ve ever used.  Of course, I haven’t used it this week, and of course, I am feeling very lost and adrift, perhaps because my desk is actually adrift in a sea of paper?  Anyway, I’m on the road for the next two weeks (any of you peeps in Seattle?) so I’ll let you know how it works for people on the move.

~~~

Have you read this article in the NY Times about the perils of sitting too much?  I’m horrified… and wishing I was one of those people who pace.  Instead, I’m one of those people who sits.  Oy.

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

~~~

I now have a dog with a cardiologist and a cat with a dentistry specialist.  Huckleberry went in for a much-overdue dental, not because it was due, but because his mouth is stinky and I noticed it a long time ago.  Because he’s a scaredy cat, though, I put off vet visits because he regresses afterward.  They had a 20% off dental sale, though, so I bit the bullet.

 

Poor Huck.  His mouth was so bad – for a cat his age, and for any cat – that the tech called me before they were done to ask if I’d consent to bloodwork and a referral to a specialist so they could wrap it up without 100% finishing.  Some parts of his mouth were so sensitive that even under anesthesia he would twitch when they touched them. 

*sigh*  I got Frank in 2003 and Huck in 2004, and both have/ had horrible mouths.  Frank lost nine teeth when he went in for a dental a few years ago – NINE!  The only thing I can think of is that I fed them wet food out of those little foil packets for a couple of years early on.  If you feed those, please stop, or take your cats in for a cleaning immediately?  I feel so bad.

Another not-great discovery: without Huck here, the rest of the cats beat up on Snickers.  She’s my only girl kitty, and I knew that the black brothers were prone to harassing her, but I didn’t realize how much Huck protected her until he wasn’t here for the day.  ‘Twas not good.  I have three (neutered, wtf) boy cats in time outs throughout the house.  ARGH!

~~~

Also: got my first electric kettle, fell in love, cracked it.  But I think I can convince my hubby to join me on a trek across town to buy another.  Maybe we’ll even have a date night!

Rule #1: Be a people-person stuck working from home in a remote location, then business travel will be a fun! and exciting! way to be around people!

I’m half-kidding.

Years ago I traveled full-time and often scratched my head at people who considered business travel stressful.  But now that I don’t travel regularly, I find it stressful too.

Here’s why: when you travel regularly, you are better prepared. 

You know how long it takes to get through security on a Wednesday, mid-morning, when the weather is bad and you’re a week from a major holiday.  You know what clothing travels well and have long culled the shirts that make you go, “Ugh, I’m wearing that?” every time you pass a mirror.  You have a well-loved suitcase and know just how to fit enough clothes for a week and still have an inch to spare if you happen to accidentally buy a bunch of stuff while on the road.

When you travel regularly, traveling is your routine.

But I don’t travel that often anymore, so I can’t sleep the night before for fear of oversleeping and missing my flight.  I leave too early and spend thirty minutes waiting for Starbucks to open because it’s 5:30 am and I could have slept another hour but was worried my drive would take too long and I’d miss my flight.  I melt down while trying to pack because nothing quite goes together or fits well and I DON’T WANNA GO! *foot stomp*

Lately, though, I’m remembering how to travel well and I’m happy to share that with you.  Ready?

We’ll start with packing.

Pick one neutral and stick with it.  I have a black set and a brown set, and I never mix them.  With one neutral, you can pack one pair of shoes (and holy cow, shoes take space… this is also justification for buying really phenomenal shoes, by the way, because you’re going to wear them alot) and one type of underthings.

Remember that nobody notices your clothes as much as you do.  I start to stress that someone will notice that I will be wearing the same suit jacket two different days and the same pants three different days and think… what?  I don’t know, that I’m a big fat loser who doesn’t know how to dress like the cool kids?  Yea, like being in high school again.  Blegh.  But I’m a grown-up so I remind myself of every ridiculous outfit I’ve seen on executives (sparkly reindeer sweater, really?) and that nobody ever got fired for not looking perfect.

Roll, don’t fold.  You can smush a lot more stuff into a suitcase with fewer wrinkles if you roll your pants and shirts.  Fold in half, then roll from one end to the other.  Oh, and buy wrinkle-free shirts (I like Eddie Bauer’s).

Packing’s one thing; attitude’s another.  Mine totally sucks the night before I travel.  Every time.  EVERY time.  My poor husband!  So I’ve accepted that I’m miserable and poopy the night before I travel; it’s my process.  I don’t take it as a sign that I shouldn’t go or that my plane will crash, just that I’m a pre-travel stresser.  And I try to stick with a few outfits I know I feel good in – because my meltdowns often relate to how frumpy I feel while trying on clothes — figuring if I have to wear the same thing every day for a week, that’s okay.  (I haven’t.)

~~~

Once I’m on the road, I’m usually okay.  I really like my job, really like to be around people, really like the focused solitude I can only seem to find on a plane.  I also like making brief connections with people, so I make small talk with everyone, and it’s kind of fun (for me and for them.  Really.  Strike up small talk with a poor harried airline customer service person and see how much better the experience is for both of you!).

But these things help:

Kindle.  The only people I know who don’t like Kindle don’t have one.  Think about that for a moment.  Every Kindle owner I’ve ever met loves theirs, myself included.  Yes, I know it’s not the same experience as real book, but I’ll happily trade that for a bag that weighs 20 pounds less and has 100 times more reading material.  It’s fast to download, relatively inexpensive, and if I don’t feel like reading a business book and would rather read some empty calorie chick-lit, I can!  Love.  Only downside is I bought mine a month before they all came with international wireless; mine only works in the US.  Oh, well.

A big, semi-organized bag.  I used to carry a more professional looking business bag, but while it did have a spot for my usual stuff, I couldn’t also throw in a bag of popcorn, mug from Starbucks, and cardigan.  So I splurged on a buttery yellow leather bag from The Sak and I love it.  I use a little organizer inside to deal with the crap that I seem to collect (gum, allergy pills, etc, etc) and then everything else just gets stuffed in – laptop(!), notebook, papers, Kindle, cell phone, wallet.  As a bonus, it’s somewhat purse-like so if we go out to dinner, I dump the big stuff and throw it over my shoulder.

Socks.  I take my heels/ boots off on the plane and put on socks that only ever get worn on the plane while I’m in my seat.  They’re warm, comfy, and clean, plus I can fold my legs up on the seat and not feel weird.

A scarf.  Yes, even in the summer I travel with a scarf.  Mine’s really big so I can put it around my neck or wrap it around my shoulders.

Allergy pills and candied ginger.  I get nauseous when I’m a) tired, b) over-caffeinated, c) under-caffeinated, d) nervous, e) haven’t eaten, f) have eaten, or g) the day ends in Y.  So, an antihistamine minimizes the sinus drainage that happens on planes (yuck, I know) and the candied ginger settles my stomach if it’s really bad.  I also stopped chewing gum with Xylitol in it (because it’s toxic to dogs and mine like to steal gum and chew it) and noticed my stomach wasn’t upset as often. 

~~~

Maintaining a relationship when you travel is hard, but it can be done.  I know because I’ve studied my cohorts who have done it, and have found success doing some simple things.

I call my husband every night, even for just a moment, and I make sure to tell him I miss him and I love him.  I didn’t do this well when I was married before, instead getting caught up in being away and feeling independent… plus, it’s hard to have a real conversation when you’re on different time zones and it takes so much effort to speak the same language.  My husband and I are in completely different industries and work environments, so we have no shortcuts.  If I want him to enjoy my successes, I have to explain them first.  More than once.  But he’s the reason I can leave on a whim, so I make myself call him even if I don’t have time to tell the whole story, and I’ve never regretted it.  There’s no shame in, “Excuse me, I need to call my husband for a second” even when surrounded by corporate executives.  They do it too!  And while the stories can wait until I get home, asking about his day and how things are going for him, and sharing his frustration with the dogs and cats and weather and laundry, can’t wait.

Along those lines, I bring gifts home.  Frankly, it often feels like I do this for myself, but I still enjoy it.  Lately I bring those city/ state coffee mugs from Starbucks, because they’re huge and I love to drink out of them, and because even though it’s a joint gift, it’s nice to pull something out of my bag for my hubby.

When possible, we meet for a meal when I get home before I walk back into the bedlam. This is a big one for me.  Going from the controlled solitude of a plane trip into the craziness at home can be overwhelming and I get grumpy.  It’s hard to say hello to my husband and put my bag down and find my phone and take off my shoes and greet the dogs and pet the cats all at once, and I’m likely to snap at any or all of them.  So, meeting for a drink or a meal somewhere (anywhere!) between the airport and my house is my preference.  Then it feels like a date… and is a much smoother transition.

~~~

Do other folks have tips to offer?  I know at least one of you travels cross-country more often than I do, and someone else travels internationally more than I do, so I’m betting you have tips I haven’t thought of.  Please share!!

Penelope is an ENTJ, something she mentions over and over (well, except when she says she’s an INTJ, which often happens in the same post). 

Honestly?  I didn’t get why until I discovered that I’m an ENFP, and now I want to say “Because I’m an ENFP!” all the time.

All the time.

Because holy hell, being an ENFP describes everything about me.  The procrastination, the indecisiveness, the love of possibility and fear of limitations, the muscle tension. 

Muscle tension?  Yup.

What stuck with me the most was that ENFP’s are great at ideas, but never follow through.  The book I was reading said something like, “Immature ENFP’s might have trouble in relationships because they haven’t learned to follow through or stick to the truth.”  With big ideas and gift for gab, one can easily be a lying flake.

Oh, so true. (Here’s a better link if you don’t trust my paraphrasing.  Note the use of the word “immature.”)

And while I think I’ve gotten past the lying part, I struggle to turn ideas into reality, and it’s time to grow up, so I’m focusing on learning to accomplish things rather than just dream of them – and I have a handful of tools I’ve tried so far because serendipitously, I’d already decided to focus on doing one little thing before reading the book, but now the words “haven’t learned to follow through” haunt me.

So true.  So scary.  Stay tuned.

If you don’t know what you are, here’s a quiz.  Please take it.  It’ll be fun!  (And seriously, I now want to ask for personality types in interviews, because I need some other letters to balance out my team, which currently consists of just me.)

Martha Beck grouped Dr. Laura with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, noting that certain public personalities want only agreement, not real discussion.

I listen to Dr. Laura because she’s on talk radio during lunch hours and that’s when I’m usually in my car.  I’d prefer Dave Ramsey, but he’s not on, and I can’t handle music sometimes.  I think that’s the most dangerous kind of influence, actually – the kind that surrounds your consciousness rather than being invited in.

I listen to Dr. Laura but admire Martha Beck, so I had some soul-searching to do.

~~~

Over the past couple years, every assumption I had about my life and role as a wife has been tested.  My husband is not like my previous lovers – he was raised by a stay at home mom, grew up in the generally conservative South, had always been the primary earner and decider in his relationships.  And I’m not like his – I’m the primary earner in my life, have lived in big cities, alone, and have always made all my own decisions.  I was raised by a divorced mom and involved dad, never felt particularly maternal myself, and was only sure that I never wanted to be left without options.

I never ever for one moment considered being a stay-at-home-mom.  Not even once.  In fact, I was pretty convinced I’d fail, hating every minute and resenting my kids for trapping me in an endless cycle of tasks I hate.  My ex-husband declared early on that he’d love to be a stay-at-home-dad; our path was set.

Then I got divorced and married a Southern man.  He never explicitly said he thought I should stay at home to raise our kids, but he mentioned he always thought his wife would.  Once.  In the first six months we were dating.  But it stuck with me and I began to imagine he wanted me to be that kind of wife, whatever “that” was.  I never specifically decided to consider the option, but between my assumptions about his wishes and regular doses of Dr. Laura, I started to wonder.

~~~

Wondering is good.  Options are good.  Assuming your path is set for whatever is reason isn’t.  So I started to consider the benefits of staying home with my children, paying attention to the choices made by other women, looking again at my childhood and my mother’s choices. 

But more importantly, I got a better sense of myself.

When I first moved away from the home I’d shared with my ex-husband, I was surprised to learn new things about myself.  It was like getting to know myself all over again. I discovered that I liked to cook, couldn’t stand elaborate patterns, preferred blank walls to mismatched paintings.  Who knew?

Similarly, I was surprised to find that I liked the idea of staying home with my kids, at least for a little while.  I was bewilderingly unable to consider leaving my husband to parent alone, even for a week, and not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t imagine it.  And the stuff that made me whimper in fear related to house-management, not child-raising.

Learning is good.  Paying attention is good.

~~~

I had a cushy stay-at-home job for the past few years, one where I decided what I worked on and how much progress I made on any given day.  I hated it.  Without external and somewhat objective evidence of my worth (both to my company and on a personal level), I floundered into self-consciousness and doubt.  Despite the best efforts of my husband, best friend, and even (the horror) my boss, I continued to feel useless and unnecessary.  I obsessed over paint colors and fireplaces and wedding plans because at least those tasks seemed clearly defined.

This was me, minus the large team:

And the more responsibility I had for running a large team, trying to hit many goals at once, the less work I did. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to do. I was outside my core strength.

And I know this:  the first sign that you are outside of your strengths is when you can’t make yourself do the work you need to do.

So I changed jobs.  Sort of. {Meaning I will be changing jobs if HR gets it together and gets me an offer, but I’m doing it already anyway.}

And now this is me:

I am great in that phase of a business–thinking, philosophizing, finding holes in markets, finding holes in ideas. I never give up. I always have another idea, and I don’t mind feeling lost day after day, week after week.

In any office, employees gravitate to the job each should be doing, no matter what the titles are. Sometimes we gravitate to a job and it’s not available, and we go nuts doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes we gravitate to that job and it’s such a good fit for us that we do it even without a title.

A lot of people say they should be doing a job they do not have the authority to do. Here’s some news, though: You’d be doing it already if you were great at it. Ryan Healy is now Chief Operating Officer at Brazen Careerist because he’s already shown he can do the job. That’s how you get serious promotions:  doing the job first, in an outstanding way.

And now I’m back to the me I knew – the kindly ass-kicking, embarrassingly confident, unflinchingly capable me – and I’m scared.  My husband only knew the cushy-job me and has already remarked on how different I seem when I come home from a work trip.

I knew this was going to happen.

Because I am different.  When I know what I’m doing, I know it – and I love it. 

~~~

My first semester in college, I took macro-economics with a professor known for chewing up and spitting out freshmen.  At the end of the semester, just before the final exam, I dropped by her office to find out my exam scores… for the entire semester.

“I’m here to find out my exam scores for the semester, please,” I said.

She sneered a bit, pulled up my paper file (1997, people!) and suddenly, her demeanor changed.

“Oh!  I didn’t expect this.  Most people who don’t know how they did are failing.  You got a 100, 100, and 98.  Why didn’t you know that?”

I didn’t know that because the only thing that happened during the 8:30 am class following an exam was that you got your test back. I preferred to sleep in, confident I’d done well.

~~~

I have this new job and I love it, but I don’t want to tank my relationship again.  I’m trying to be cognizant that other people don’t care as much about my job as I do, that my husband doesn’t yet recognize that my bluster is to counteract my worries, that I have to learn to leave work at work for the sake of home.

And I’m a little bit overwhelmed to be reminded how my preferences affect so many futures.  It’s the same sense of responsibility I feel when I hear the phrase, “Happy wife happy life,” – like, wait a minute, now my happiness has to carry the weight of everyone else’s?  Are you kidding me?

But I’m grown up now, or on my way there, so I remind myself that nothing is black and white.  I can want to stay home with my kids for a few years and still go back to work.  I can NOT want to stay home with my kids and still have a great relationship with them.  I can define my future however I want.

Or, to be more accurate, we can define our future however we want.  My husband and I had a chat about accepting each other’s influence, and contrary to our public personas, I seem to take too much influence and he might take too little.

I won’t be the wife he thought he would have, but neither is he the husband I thought I would have – nobody is.  We all discover somewhere along the way that reality isn’t quite like we’d expected…

… and that’s okay. 

~~~

So my next step is to challenge my assumptions about my husband.  Somewhere along the way I defined myself as the “keeper of all things household,” so I worried about hiring a housecleaner and dog walker and making freezer meals when my travel schedule got crazy.  I had this idea that things would fall apart because I’d be too busy to deal with them.

Turns out I didn’t “deal” as much as I “pondered,” so there wasn’t much left undone and my husband stepped in and took over what was.  We’re both happier that way, actually, because he’s much more the Doer and I’m much more the Stress Out and Worry While Not Doing-er.  (My truck insurance finally got moved and my tags are getting renewed and the dog’s medicines are all refilled.  In a week.)

And now I’m thinking about life with kids in a city far, far from my company’s headquarters.  We don’t want to move, so what does that mean for me, my career, my family, my husband, our children? 

What if I lived somewhere else for one week a month, leaving my husband to care for an infant full-time?  Why not? {His family is local so they could pitch in, and yet, I feel weird about that, even though I wouldn’t bat an eye if the situation was reversed.} What if we all lived somewhere else for half the month, packing up and moving cross-country every few weeks?  Why not? {Not sustainable past infancy, but in the short-term, maybe.}  What if we moved? {We like this area, my husband is starting a four-year degree program in the fall, and waaaaa, I don’t wanna!}

What if, what if, what if?

~~~

The best part about being a grown-up is seeing life clearly and still thinking it’s fantastically exciting.

Last night, at 1:30 in the morning, I needed a cuddle. 

“I need a cuddle,” I whispered as I wormed my way into my husband’s embrace.  Lately I’m asking for what I need and it’s working.

But in a departure from our norm, he laid his head on my shoulder and snuggled into sleep.

And an epiphany slammed into my heart with such force, tears sprang to my eyes.

~~~

I have never held this man in my arms and wanted to protect him from the world.  Despite his youthful demeanor and silly little-boy quirks, I’ve always seen him as a man.

My ex-husband, to me, was always a boy.  I loved him like a child some times, like a father others, but never like a husband, someone with whom the tiny battles of intimacy are fought.

I never fought him.

Instead I ducked and lied and hid from him, as if only his vote counted in our life, as though his judgment on all things was final.  He was the parent I must have needed at the time, taking me in his arms and giving me the stability I must have wanted.  He was my protector, the person who would fix everything and make it all better.

And yet through it all, I was overwhelmed by the suffocating pressure of being responsible for him.  His life was mine to make good, and as someone not even grown up enough to take care of herself, I collapsed under the pressure.

I was eight years old again, trying to protect my divorced parents from sadness by changing the radio station to happy songs.

But he wasn’t my son, or my father; I was neither his parent nor child.  He was my husband, but I was too young and the only relationship I could fathom was parental.  I’d not become enough of an adult to see one in him.

~~~

Joey and I have spent most of our relationship in locked horns, battling over the many things that form our life, but I’ve always seen him as a worthy adversary, perhaps the first in my long line of long relationships.  I’ve never felt the need to take care of him, or make his life good, or be his everything.  I’ve never wanted to wrap him in my arms and protect him from the world.

I’ve never even felt the need to protect him from myself.  {This explains the magnitude of many of our battles.}

This relationship has been hard for me because we’re forging new roles, figuring out life as partners, as adults who have to share.  Sometimes sharing sucks, and I don’t have really have adult partnerships to model. 

So in this dance, we have to step on toes to find the right rhythm, because we’re both responsible for our own feet.

~~~

The tears ended abruptly and a new lightness replaced the lump in my throat. I hid under the covers with my Blackberry, needing to put this understanding into words before it faded.

And another door closed on my previous marriage, this time with a comforting thud.

  

My dog is very sick.  Ill, actually*.  A muscle in his heart is progressively deteriorating due to a rare condition that we can’t fix, not permanently and possibly not even temporarily. 

It’s been a very rough day.

We are snowed in, my dog had to spend the night at the vet clinic because we couldn’t brave the roads to go get him, and he’s going to die much sooner than we’d anticipated. 

I don’t want to raise another puppy!  I want the full decade out of the work we did with this one!  This is unfair!

~~~

Early in my relationship with my husband, I told him I didn’t want to rely on him, because then what if he left me, what would I do then?  His reply: “you’d adjust right back.”

Why yes, yes, I would, wouldn’t I?  I’d adjust right back just as quickly as I adjusted at first.  So why was it so scary?

I’ve been struggling with how to reconcile being someone who can take care of herself with being someone who is and has a partner, but I’m not sure I have to, not in a broad sense, anyway.  I can be whichever I need to be in the moment.

I’d just left my dog at the specialist’s office.  I had to walk away from my pup’s imploring eyes, feeling like I’d violated his trust by asking him to follow me into that scary exam room – and then leaving him.  Why did I have to deal with this alone?

Because I can.  My husband couldn’t make it so I do this alone. I have lived in a life where I had only myself to rely on.  I know I am capable.

But wait.  I don’t have to do every moment alone…

*switch*

So I called my husband, told him how haunted I was by Indy’s fear, how I wished he’d ignored me altogether because at least then I wouldn’t feel like I abandoned him.  I asked my husband to join me in picking Indy up later because if the news was bad, I didn’t want to have to be the strong one.  I am the emotional one, remember?

*switch*

But then my husband couldn’t make it.  The weather was terrible.  I had to rescue my husband from an aborted drive home (me: SUV; him: Ford Focus) but couldn’t get to my dog.  I was driving in an ice storm surrounded by idiot drivers on my way to get my husband and wishing I wasn’t the one who had to do the saving.  I sucked it up and made it to pick him up.

And then I couldn’t switch.  I got stuck.  I couldn’t go back to leaning, being stuck in my resentment over having to stand.

~~~

Last night I tried snowboarding for the first time and I had a great time.  I was very good at coasting and staying perpendicular to the ground and falling well, but I got stuck when it came to transitions.  They scare me.  I can go straight; I can turn this way; I can turn that way; I can’t link them together.

The difficult part about transitioning is that it feels awkward, unknown, unstable.  You have to let go of something you know and leap toward something you don’t, even if only by lifting your toes.  Scary.

And in much the same way, I have a hard time letting go of my unhappiness at having to go it alone.  Who knew letting go of resentment was going to take the same kind of courage as throwing my body down a snowy hill on a piece of plastic?

Apparently I believe in perpetuity, wanting to always be one thing or the other.  But my dog — the puppy I swore was the last I’d raise for a decade, the dog not even two years old, the sweet puppy who drove us nuts and taught us lots already – only has 12 – 18 months to live, if we’re lucky. 

Perpetuity is bullshit.  It’s time for me to get better at transitions.

~~~

*Complete heart block with Persistent Atrial Standstill and early heart failure with a ventricular escape rhythm, bradycardia, and a significant systolic murmur.

Oh, boy, was it hard to get out of bed this morning, not that I did so particularly early, or that we’d been sleeping in particularly late. This morning just felt… different.  Serious.  Weighted with responsibility.

I spent the past four days in the almost constant company of my husband.  I’d been worried that our relationship wouldn’t withstand so much togetherness, especially when burdened with the expectations surrounding “a holiday.”

In fact, we had a great time.  We spent Christmas Eve as each others’ only guests, lounging on the couch drinking coffee, having a beer while waiting for our Christmas gift order (of beer!) to be filled, driving across town on a lobster run, and eating until we were food drunk.  It was very fun and special, yet free of the stress that comes from having people over. If the bathroom floor stayed covered in a thin layer of dog prints, so be it.  If the kitchen was less than sparkling, no problem.

We opened gifts throughout the day and agreed to continue the tradition.  One gift at a time with time to enjoy until the next one: perfect.  My fears that he’d be disappointed in his mostly-practical gifts were unfounded; he loved being restocked with t-shirts, socks and underwear (as would I).  I was blown away by his generosity and accuracy in gift-choosing.  {And woo, hoo, I finally got the entire catalog of “The West Wing,” one of my favorite TV shows, ever.}

We fought once, mostly my doing, but made up the next morning and moved on with our lives.  Other than wishing we had fewer animals – wishing fervently and actively – we had a great time!

And now it’s Monday.  Ugh.

My office is visual evidence of my reluctance to go back to work.  Or maybe it’s evidence of the enormity of the transition: every inch is covered in holiday project crap.  For the past two weeks, my cozy little corner office was Craft Central as I quilted my little heart out (and wrapped and taped and ribboned and stashed).  This morning I stuck my laptop on the piece of desk that seemed least cluttered – and I just realized I’m balancing on a piece of fabric.

So in a second I’ll get off my bum and try to create some order.  With the new year comes a new gig, one requiring more focus, strategy, and hours, and until I figure out how to actually do the job, I’m going to have to trick myself into believing I’m capable… and that means working in an office more suited for negotiating than stitching.

Does anyone else get the urge to move furniture when you need (or can’t avoid) a change?  Is that what nesting is?  {And if you’re particularly great at room arrangement, wanna help a girl out?}