Crash(es)

I'm not sure how so much time has passed since I last blogged. There has just been a lot going on. I'm finishing up my first month here at my new job. To finish the story from the previous post, I received a verbal warning for showing up late to the Houston branch and not calling into my corporate managers (although I did call in, immediately, to the branch itself, but apparently I didn't follow correct protocol by letting everyone know at corporate). The warning was then written down on paper and signed by my boss. I had the option of also signing the paper and having it put in my H.R. file or writing a rebuttal letter, but I chose the easiest option and just accepted the letter, as it was, and filed it for myself.

What's even more disturbing than a written, verbal writing within the first month of my job has been what's been going on while driving to work. I've been in three accidents in two weeks. There, I said it. All of them have been my fault and all of them have occurred on my way to work in the morning. With the first accident, I simply looked down at my phone and rear-ended the person in front of me. There was minimal damage to the hood and license plate that I took to a body shop and had repaired that day. Accident #2 occurred just three days later. The roads were wet from rain and I was driving too fast for the gridlock of Houston rush hour traffic. The car in front of me stopped and I slammed on my brakes and skidded into him. Since I was braking so hard, the front of my car actually went under the bumper of the car in front of me. The hood damage that I had repaired was compounded into a wrinkly mess of metal and red paint transfer on the front of my car.

Accident #3 was by far the scariest. I was driving to San Antonio for work. It's about a three-and-a-half hour drive each way. I was only a mile or so from my exit, doing about 75 mph in a 70 mph speed zone on a two-lane stretch of highway outside San Antonio. I looked into the passenger seat for the notebook that I had written my directions on and my car drifted into the gravel on the left-hand side of the road. I overcompensated by turning the wheel sharply to the right and braking hard. The car went into a spin. I crossed over the right-hand lane and ended up traveling in the wrong direction on the westbound freeway. My car slammed into a curb, exploding the wheel, causing the back tire on the driver's side to go flat. Thankfully, no one was in the right-hand lane when I went over and all the cars stopped or went around me. A Good Samaritan and his son put on the car's donut, which was barely drivable. I turned on the flashers and drove 20 mph to the San Antonio branch.

I was going to have the car towed to a tire dealership where I could get a wheel and a tire put on, but apparently one of the advantages for working for a distribution company that has a lot of transportation equipment is deals with guys that will come to the facility for basic repair and maintenance. By 4pm that day, I paid a guy $100 to put on a steel wheel and used tire in the branch parking lot. I was on my way home by 5:30pm, very slowly this time. The car's alignment was pulling hard to the right and there was a strange burning smell. I made it home and the car went into the body shop for the damage sustained during Accident #2 and #3.

I wish I knew what it all meant. On Monday night I couldn't sleep. My mind wouldn't stop racing thinking about what could have happened had there been another car in the right-hand lane or if I had a head-on collision with another car while I was traveling in the wrong direction. I had risked my own life and the life of strangers traveling on the same road. I called a crisis center. The woman that finally answered, after putting me on hold for ten minutes, thinks that I'm possibly trying to sabotage my new job. She said I should give myself the freedom to look for another job if I continue to get in accidents and have such a high level of stress that I could possibly become distracted doing daily tasks, like driving.

There is something to be said about managing my stress better. I feel like I'm finally getting into a new routine and getting used to my hour long commute, although some days are better than others. I am still exhausted by the end of the week and my school work has been suffering. I limped my way through the past module and am having a hard time completing the final take home exam for my marketing class. I'm trying to not to beat myself up about it, just realizing how high my stress level is right now. That's just easier said than done.

And Then There Are Days

Where you are probably better off staying in bed. Contrary to appearances to the contrary, I actually try pretty hard to be a professional, put together young woman that is a shining representative of her company. Then there is reality. I was tired when I woke up today and decided that once my Dad got Zac off to school that I would go back to sleep...just five minutes I rationalized. Except I can never sleep just five minutes. An hour later I woke up in a panic and raced out of the house. Guess what I forgot to take? If you guessed the medication that helps me avoid falling asleep while driving, you'd be correct. I realized this error about half way through a tour of a box factory when I couldn't keep my eyes open.

So besides showing up late, I feel asleep sitting up while watching a purchaser work her magic on the computer. Basically, I've been worthless today. Worse than worthless, bordering on an embarassing liability for the corporate office. I'm at the branch office this week and somehow can't seem to find the words: "I'm off my meds today" to describe my erratic behavior.

I have more to write about my new job, new school for Zac, and new commute for me, but I'll save that for a time when I have access to a keyboard bigger than my thumb. Wish me better luck tomorrow. I need it if I'm going to keep this job.

Unbelievable

I'm down to the final countdown at my old job. Technically, right now I have 2 1/2 more days and feel compelled to do very little other than make it through the day. I could write about how therapy is going or how I continue to spend money because I want to appear "well put together" and "thoughtfully dressed" even though I absolutely abhor my body that I have to carry around with me.

BUT, instead of that, I'm going to write an entire post about my eye brows. Unbelievable, I know. It all started when I got a picture back from Christmas Day of Zac and I. I had the picture on my desk for a while, but I started obsessing over my eye brows. Clearly, the only logical thing for me to do is to put the picture out on the internet and ask for suggestions.

Without further ado, I bring you the offending eye brow shot:

Chubby and/or self-conscious women will recognize this pose as, "Use the cute kid to distract people from your body fat" look. Zac does look mightily handsome in his button-down shirt and sweater vest I will admit and we both look happy, so that's something. Particularly since we are looking happy simultaneously. Shocking.

Back to the eye brows, though. When I look in the car mirror at my eye brows, they seem full and almost robust. Yet in this picture, they are minuscule...almost mocking the chubbiness of my cheeks and chin (which are chubbier than I ever really imagined they'd be. Except that I've had lipotherapy and know what I would look like if I gained 40 lbs and it all went to my chin. One word: waddle).

So, what is a woman to do? Here are my options:

1. Stop obsessing about my eye brows and work on my real problems for God's sake
2. Leave them be! They are fine after all.
3. Try and grow them out, although I worry about years of waxing and tweezing that they wouldn't really comply with me if I tried. I also don't know how to "grow out" eye brows without looking like a have a hairy squirrel's tail above my eyes. It's not like the hair grows in evenly, ya know?

I'd like a vote, please. Since I didn't participate in National DeLurking Day, you can consider this my call for commenters. I'll even take off the comment moderation for the day so you just really let me have it. I'm seeing my doctor on Friday to discuss my high blood pressure and weight gain, so if you'd like to leave that topic be, that would be good. Otherwise, just tell me that diet and exercise will make my eye brows look more in proportion to my face.

I'd love that. No. Seriously. I'll thank you right after I find a way to block someone from Blogger. Promise.

The Job

About three months ago I started looking for a new job. I didn't tell many people about it, but I had a growing feeling that I wasn't going to be successfull professionally or personally at my current job. There are many reasons that I don't want to go too far into on here. The good news is that I found a new job and have given notice at my old job. My last day of work as a Grants Manager of social service non-profit in East Houston will be Wednesday, January 20th. I have two floating holidays that I don't get paid for, so I'm taking those on Thursday and Friday.

Now the drama with the new job is that I was recommended for it by a woman on my team in grad school. She reads this blog and my team has decided that I should refer to her as "Sunshine" from here on out. After my post on duality, I was terrified that Sunshine would regret recommending me for a position on her team. After all, didn't she have some kind of duty to tell her employer that they were considering hiring a crazy woman? Fortunately, Sunshine didn't do that and my fears and worries were for nothing.

I have four more working days to wrap up my job as a Grants Manager. It feels almost overwhelming when I think of all the deadlines that I have to communicate to people and all the final projects I need to wrap up. Everytime I do some menial, administrative task I think: "And that will be the last batch of thank you letters that I need to write and get my boss to sign" or "This is the last time I'll have to go through this contract." It's kind of beautiful really, just a bit tiring.

At my new job, I'll be working with Sunshine and four other people on a team as a Project Manager for a corporation. The business has about 1,000 employees and 50 branch and satellite offices in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. It's my first corporate job and I was officially welcomed to the team with a tour of the office that included the refrigerator full of soda that is stocked by someone in the office for everyone to drink and hot water in the bathroom. I have to confess: I've been washing my hands in the bathroom in cold water for two-and-a-half years because my non-profit doesn't have hot water. I can't wait to leave that behind.

In honor of the occasion, I've made a list of everything that I won't miss at my current job:

1. Incredibly loud pages in English and Spanish over the phone system for someone to move their car out of the loading only zone.
2. Feeling like I'm constantly in college during finals with all the papers I have to write and submit by their deadlines.
3. My coworkers switching from English to Spanish when I walk in the room so they can discuss the workings of the photocopier in "private".
4. Being called the white girl
5. Reporting on everything I do and am working on a regular basis to my boss.
6. Constantly worrying about if the agency is going to have enough money to stay open.
7. Being blamed for the agency not having enough money because I didn't write enough grants.
8. Feeling like my work was never good enough.

I think that about sums it up. Am I nervous about my new job? Definitely. The former direct supervisor (it's a long story) that interviewed me says he considers the team I'm joining some of the best and brightest minds at the company. He uses them to solve problems and smooth out relationships between distributors and suppliers. It's a totally new field, but I'm excited about learning something new and moving on from my current position.

Did I mention that the job comes with all the Diet Coke I can drink? How could I not be excited?

Worries and Anxiety

I worry that my worst fears about my writing on this blog and how it would affect me outside the computer may have already come true. To take anything down at this point would seem redundant and silly. All I have are worries, anxiety, and one episode of Criminal Minds before I fall asleep.

Just a Little Late

But still very cute. I went and saw him after therapy today before I went in to work. I rubbed his back while he whispered that we needed to be quiet because all the children were sleeping. I miss him so much when we aren't together.

I Hate Therapy

It's time for me to admit that going to therapy is like me going into a darkened room with a hammer and being told there is a nail somewhere that I should pound into a wall. Somehow, someway...I'm sure it makes sense to the person who gave me the hammer, but to me, I'm clueless as to where to find the nail. Maybe I'm just tired of hearing all the same things, recycled and reformatted in different ways, and feeling like a failure because one of my coping mechanisms for depression doesn't include "positive affirmations of self and situation".

I went to an intensive outpatient program (conveniently known as IOP) today with no less than 14 other crazy people in a room the size of a small office. That's a lot of crazy in one space. It took over two hours to go over our daily check-in sheets where we list if we are currently having any suicidal urges or hallucinations. Or maybe where we report if our voices are telling us to hallucinate more. I'm not sure. The daily check-in logs always seemed a little silly to me. Same with the question, "Do you have a plan to hurt yourself?" That has to be the dumbest question I'm routinely asked. Really, you should ask something along the lines of, "Do you know exactly how you plan to hurt yourself and what your back-up options are if something goes wrong?" That would be a more precise question. I'd also like to point out that you don't actually NEED a plan to do damage. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you are just sitting there, feeling like shit, and the idea comes to you. No planning. No flow charts. No excel spreadsheets with forecasts on probabilities of success and the division of property.

I annoy my sister because she says that I complain about every place I go to as not being therapeutic enough for me to actually get any benefit out of. It's a little surprising that my sister is even still talking to me, six years after moving to VT/NH and entering into my first program. During that time it's become apparent to me that I have a very firm idea as to what is "therapeutic". I imagine that my nirvana of therapy would involve soft music, extended meditation on comfortable pillows, and gentle cognitive behavioral coaching and guided reflection in a small group setting, no more than 5 people. There would be hot tea, honey, and locally-grown mandarin oranges, when they are in season, of course. We would eat salads and drink mineral water for lunch, without having to worry about how much money you're losing by not being at work.

What I got today was a brightly lit room crowded with people in straight-backed chairs. There was a woman in her late teens, early 20s that dominated the group with some serious ADD/Anxiety/I-have-no-idea-what, but it caused me to leave the group 30 minutes early. She screamed and gasped without any apparent provocation. She would hold her breath and have to be reminded to breathe. She talked on and on about ex-boyfriends and how famous they are, which made no sense to me. I was trying to practice my "non-judgment of others and self" skill that they teach in DBT, but I'll be honest, I was ready to evict that girl from the group within the first hour. I'm out of vacation and sick leave and have to work eight hours AFTER my three hours of therapy, so I'm already annoyed and trying to focus on getting the most out of my time when I hear her yelp to the right of me. Finally some of the older clients (it was a mixed group of adolescents, adults, and seniors - two out of the three therapists were sick today), told her to quiet down.

In individual therapy at the new DBT place, I've taken to wrapping myself in a throw blanket and lying in the fetal position for 50 minutes. I feel like I can be an active participant in my recovery, while I ward off potential invaders to my sub-conscious. My brain is busy and it's tired of wondering how I'm going to pay for the therapy that I'm receiving. Taking a nice rest sounds much more productive and less expensive.

Clearly, I either need more napping and less therapy or to become a Buddhist monk. Those are the options I'm looking at right now.