Oh, Happy Day: The Thing About Chasing Happiness, Career and Definition of Self

I’ve been tossing and turning for a week or so running these topics through my head, for a myriad of reasons.

Let’s just start the groundwork by saying that I’m not a particularly excitable person. It takes a lot to really get me riled up over something, and I’m not one of those people that rolls over every morning, springs out of bed and is eager to start my day. Unless it’s something fun.

On my best days, I’d probably call myself copacetic. On my worst, a curmudgeon who finds fault in general, drab tasks and is just fine being on my own, spending my days, beating myself up over this, that or the other. I’m an introvert my nature, but can be a participant in conversation and life when I’m in the right mood with the right people. Yet, I value silence very much.

The correlation that I’ve found during my chosen sabbatical from the everyday 9-to-5 is that, at every other point in my life, I’ve defined myself by what I’ve done rather than who I really am or what I like to do. When I was younger, it was school. I had to excel. As I got older, I defined myself by my work ethic, to the point where my work defined my character, both inside and outside of the office. A major part of that came from working within a family business, where myself and my family went through a lot of really tough years, and had to make very hard decisions. I took all of that home with me because, when it’s your family, you don’t have much more of a choice. At my previous position, I really threw myself into the work, eager to both please my new boss and that’s just how I roll. I’ve rarely, in my life, had anything that resembled a 40 hour week. I am, genetically designed, to be a workaholic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I brought it on myself, very willingly. It's just an observation.

I’ve never been afraid of work; I’m still not. However, my current situation has lead me to really ponder what’s important in life, especially when it comes to societal normalcy. Having a stable job does fulfill a basic need, if you like your job. If not, it’s about money, and collecting a paycheck. Miserable or not, money is the root of all evil in this world, and I feel forces us into positions where whatever life you had in you is sucked out, but you keep doing it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. This is only my opinion.

I’m well aware that many of you are not in my same position; I’m 32, unattached, no kids. But I have a house with a mortgage, and adult bills to pay. If I had some of the other factors that any of you reading this had, my life would probably be different, as, hopefully, my partner or family would be my main focus. Maybe a distraction from working that is not all-consuming, with kids or loved ones. I am grateful for the time I’ve had to myself to try and figure out where I am now, what I believe and what I see in my future.

I guess the thing that I’m getting at here, is, for me, being unemployed has lent itself to time for many deep and thoughtful conversations with myself concerning the one big question, which is “who am I?” Taking away the crutch of being defined by your employment position in life, which, for me, has mostly been all-consuming for many years, for various reasons, is kind of a conundrum.

There are certain attributes by which I define myself; clearly I’m not perfect, but I try to stick to my own code, which generally boils down to convictions concerning the length I would go to help someone I cared about who was in need, to try and laugh off most things or handle them with humor, to be as honest, kind and caring to those I love as I can, and to tell them so. I’m smart and independent. I can talk music. But, for me, that’s not good enough. It’s just the surface, because I haven’t really taken the time to delve truly into the aforementioned statement: who am I? When I was younger, I thought I had everything figured out, but I don’t. Clearly.

It’s been a challenging few weeks, but what I’ve learned, which probably has the most impact, is that I personally feel like money isn’t everything. It’s so, so tempting when you see dollar signs. You think of all of the possibilities and how your life could change. But if you’re a 50+ hour worker per week, trying to make all your best intentions and goals come true may be difficult. Money is mandatory, because that’s what makes the world tick, but for the really deep stuff—like digging around into your soul and finding out your true passions—it isn’t. 

Almost no one I know really loves their job, or garners great satisfaction from it. I can’t really say I’ve ever had a job that I absolutely loved. My favorite job ever was probably working at Guitar Center when I was in my early 20s, because, at the very least, I was surrounded by music all day and awesome people. 

I think that first, it’s essential to define yourself and really stick to who you want to be. We’re only around for a short time and values change, priorities change. We spend most of our life at work; shouldn’t it be something at least a little gratifying and fulfilling? Don’t we all deserve a shot at that?

So this is where all of the topics come together: chasing happiness by really getting to know yourself and to stop convincing yourself that all life is is an endless rat race and we’re trying to reach the finish line before we burn out or drop dead. If a larger portion of your personality is defined by the work you choose and your work ethics, I feel that I’m too old at this point to get stuck at a job that I hate or have thoroughly outgrown, where the challenge is gone and it’s endless monotony. No growth or challenge makes me a dull girl.

Happiness, for me, lies in other places, the corners of your mind you haven’t had enough time to develop or explore. It’s putting in a hard day’s work and ending it feeling accomplished. It’s time with friends when you can’t stop laughing and can’t believe you’re surrounded by such amazing people and how lucky you are that they and their families are in your life. It’s your family, depending upon your relationship with them. It’s being independent and creative and pushing yourself to expand and hone your talents, whether you knew you had them or not. It’s finding, and sticking to, your creative outlets so that those things bring you satisfaction and joy, and you don’t need that crutch of the eternal, “so what do you do?” question looming over you.

I realize this is all fairly idealistic, but why not? When did it become frowned upon to be someone who wants to pursue their passions in lieu of doing a job that just plain sucks? Where’s the internal spark, the fire? I’m tired of settling.

Thanks for Reading,

A

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

Hi, y'all.

So, I'm lying here in bed, trying to sleep, and my mind is flooded with a million different thoughts. I've not really made it public knowledge, but I've had enough people ask, so here's the deal:

I resigned from my job at MedStar Health Corporate; I played out my two weeks (and one day, if you really want to get down to the semantics) and my last day with the company was July 3. My resignation had nothing to do with the company as a whole. I was proud to work with my team and on the projects we accomplished. I loved my coworkers, and I believe that they will go on to do great things and have the capacity to change the game in healthcare. 

However, my position was not meeting my needs and not fulfilling my desire for a new challenge. I felt stuck, I'm 32 and I needed to make a move. The prior statement has nothing to do with the respect that I have for my coworkers who are in the same position; if anything, they are more tolerant in a corporate environment than I. Or, maybe they have the unique ability to separate work life from home life, which I do not, and is sometimes my greatest downfall.

As a person who tries to plan their life, taking into consideration (read: obsessing about all details, hypothetical outcomes, etc...), not having a job lined up immediately was a big risk. And while this factor continues to be a big risk, I made moves in order to secure myself financially for a couple of months (my own money; I don't rely on others unless I'm deadpan broke and on the street), apply for jobs that I really wanted and take a short sabbatical, if you will. I'd rather do it now than in the middle of a polar vortex.

This is not something everyone can do, and, if my circumstances had been different, maybe I had kids or a significant other to consider, I would have stuck it out longer. But, with hours of my life tied up in traffic, long work hours and a handful of other mitigating factors of which I will not delve into in a public forum, it was either going to be me having a serious mental breakdown, or saving myself. I chose to save myself.

This is some real shit I'm about to throw out at you now, some of it you may know, friend or reader, some you may not. It's not for pity or any type of attention, it's just the fucking truth, and it's shit that people don't talk about as much as they should:

For some reason, in our society, telling people that you've struggled more than half your life trying to understand and manage depression, horrible anxiety, body issues, self-esteem issues, bulimia, is, to me, so much harder than telling someone that you have a physical issue that they can see, that can be measured. You can take a bunch of pills, you can talk to a therapist and these things are great. But you're the one who is in your head every day and you're the only one who can fix you. That's a great lesson that I've learned over the years, which is why I'm selectively vocal about the subject, and do my best not to burden others with a cycle that I've been though countless times. I know the drill. I know how to fix it. It's just being cognizant of it and taking the appropriate steps. Over and over and over again. Some times it's easier than others. Sometimes you feel like you can't take another step without falling over. That shit is cray, ain't it, Jay?

With that in mind, it's hard to see, over time, when you begin to lose yourself and fall back into the cycle, the things you loved to do, the people you love being around. Your friends, families. It's not until you take a step away do you realize how you've spiraled into a copacetic individual whose lust for life has faded. You (I) are simply existing and not contributing to your own well-being, your social circle or society. And really, that fucking sucks. Why else are we here? What's the point if you can't be remotely happy a fair amount of the time?

Therefore, I decided to eliminate that particular stress factor from my life. You may or may not agree with my decision, and that's totally your opinion. But, for me, in retrospect, it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life.

There's some bullshit saying about how life is about the journey, not the destination. I don't know where I'll end up, but I'll figure it the fuck out. I have a plan, I have some temporary resources at my disposal and I'll Tim Gunn the shit out of it and make it work. Failure is not an option in my life; it never has been. Ups and downs, yes. Complete failure, no. I have too much at stake, mentally, personally and professionally to be in a position where I became a shell of a person, and that's not who I want to be.

In the end, I don't feel the need to justify my decisions or actions to anyone. I'm not hurting anyone; in fact, I'm helping the number one person who needed help and that's me. Generally (unless you either have seriously unforeseen circumstances or are a serious douchebag), you have people around who love and care for you, who only want the best and they just want to see you happy. Those are the important people to keep and hang onto. Thick or thin. Ride or die. And they are amazing individuals to be witness and try to help this one girl through her shit, even when she's a stubborn B who hates accepting the aforementioned help (sorry, I'm working on it).

Means to everyone's individual end choices are a funny thing, but that's what makes us who we are, and makes us unique.

Drone away and get consumed by the fire. Light a fire within yourself and own that shit.

I don't know if this writing was meant to be explanatory or maybe just cathartic to me, but if you're still reading, thanks. 

If not, what do you want for nothing?

A Rubber Biscuit?

Take a chance. The worst you can do is be up at 1AM ranting and ending your post with a Blues Brothers song. There are more terrible things in life.

Thanks for Reading, 
A

Leap

A cursor blinking on a blank page, waiting to be filled with words, thoughts, the ramblings of a person who doesn’t know where to begin.

I haven’t forgotten you. In fact, you’re all I’ve been thinking about. Anecdotes, topics, things to discuss, constantly rolling through my brain. I’ve been scared to open Pandora’s Box, concerned as to what may fall out.

I’ve been guarded, defensive and protective of what runs through my head, but now it’s time to take a leap.

I was made to write. That may sound arrogant, but it’s true. And I’ve been pushing it aside, trudging through long workdays, finding solace in my bed at night when the day is finally over. I’ve been tired and sluggish. Life still goes on. I’m surrounded by great people, who have helped and encouraged me.

I haven’t forgotten you.

Here is my leap, my jump off of a cliff.

I put in my two weeks without another job lined up. It wasn’t the essence of the job, it was my unhappiness with my place in the world. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t where I was meant to be. I wanted more, but was scared to take the first step, teetering securely with a paycheck that barely covered my bills, allowed me to take moderate adventures, but it still wasn’t enough.

I crave this, my friends. Tapping at keys and forcing myself to negotiate over my next words. Will they be too harsh? Should I be funnier? Less serious? More serious? A million topics and opinions in my brain and I still struggle with what to put here on digital paper for public consumption.

A slim part is based on what you’ll think of me after reading what I write. A bigger part is having the courage to take a proverbial first step and just fucking do it already, man.

This turned out way shorter than I thought it would be, but it’s been churning in my head for days.

The cursor blinking on a blank page is more intimidating than I remembered, perhaps because I’m so out of practice.

So, here we go. Read it or not. If nothing else, it’s only for me because here I am, taking my scary, liberating and, probably in retrospect, melodramatic, leap.

An Introduction to my Music Obsession, or Wednesday.

I'm sick of talking about feelings and reflecting.

Let's get down to some nitty, gritty music talk.

Here's the deal: I am a music whore. I need it to survive, I have a soundtrack going all day long and it often times reflects, helps me cope and sets my mood for the day. I would completely die with out it and that's not an exaggeration. I'm pretty sure I would go completely insane.

I don't have many addictions, but this is a serious addiction that has manifested over the years into a ridiculous obsession to the point where it greatly defines my person. Kinda like Gollum when he had The Ring (Lord of the Rings, reference, watch out!). Music is My Precious. I've spent a lot of hard-earned cash and my time (and probably other peoples' time) over the years amassing my collection and I love each and every piece of musical medium that I own. Books, CDs, MP3s, Mixed CDs from the 90s, Memorabilia, Concert Stubs. I crave it, I collect it, I hoard it, I analyze and over analyze it, I obsess, I retain random facts, I study, I read constantly about it, I quiz people about what they listen to and why, I talk about it, I write about it. So, if that doesn't spell out my relationship with music pretty clearly, I don't know what else will for you.

Let's talk genres for a minute. If I were a character in an RPG, this is what I would look like (with respect to Music only):

Faction: Neutral

I would be approximately a Level 62 Rock History Scholar with a subset of skills in Musicology (this hypothetical comparison is ranked out of 100 Levels, duh).


Attributes
Indie/Hipster Cred: +75
90s Music Icon Knowledge: +85
Classic Rock (approximately from1955-1972) History: +85
Blues Spirit: +65
Punk Rebel: +55
Legit Hip-Hop/Rap Enthusiast: +50
Old School Hillbilly: +35
Generic Pop Queen: +65
Motown & Soul Sista: +50
Hair Metal Thrasher: +35
Funky White Girl: +35
Goth/Hardcore: +40

Weaknesses
Current Pop Shit: -45
Country, 1970 - Present: -75
Jam Bands: -65
Easy Listening: -90
Electronica/Dance: -75
One-Hit Wonders (all eras): -70
Emo: -1000000

You're welcome

So now that you're all caught up on my Music stats, generally speaking, let's talk about a few musical points that I have floating around in my brain that you may or may not get some use out of:

• I'm running low on new music to obsess over. The last thing I got was Flogging Molly's new album, "Speed of Darkness," which is okay but it's not striking me like I need to listen to it and absorb it. Previous to that was Lykke Li and, again, I liked it, but I'm not fawning all over her. I think one of the last albums I fell all over myself about was Iron & Wine, "Kiss Each Other Clean." I don't know what it is about that album, but I totally fucking loved it and listened to it on repeat a million times when they were streaming it prior to the album being released. I think I'm being a musical schizophrenic at the moment and nothing is seriously striking my fancy because I don't know what I'm looking for. Hopefully something awesome comes along soon because I'm going a little mad. I feel like if I don't have something new to wrap my greasy little paws around every few weeks or so I start to get a little twitchy about it.
• Turntable.fm. This shit is awesome. Two of my lovely friends, Zach and Kirk, that own and run wndr (they do a myriad of things, mostly interactive development, branding and advertising. Also, shameless plug, they're legit. Among a bunch of other stuff, check out the site they did for David Lynch, which just happens to be a music site. Don't you love the tie-in?!) told me about it after I was bitching about Pandora deleting one of my radio stations and it's super fun. Being a nosy music bitch, it's a way to essentially DJ, either with a few friends or in the public music rooms, and see what other people are listening to and playing. I had a great afternoon at work listening to picks from myself, Zach and Kirk and can't wait to see what they play tomorrow. They're fellow music junkies like me, so it's nice to be in the same company and have someone else entertain you with their selections during the day when you get frustrated with trying to pick everything yourself.
• I need to get some sort of digital music system happening in my car. My CD situation is out of control. If I had thought about it earlier, I would have taken a photo of the inside of my car with my shitload of cds and showed you this problem. I'm thinking that getting an auxiliary jack installed will be the easiest way to remedy this problem because then I can plug my iPod right into it and have everything at my fingertips without the CD issue. Don't even suggest the radio transmitter situation, I need something hardwired. I wasted $100 a couple of years ago on a Monster transmitter, thinking that it would be awesome and it totally fucking sucked out my will to live. So I don't want another one of those. A head unit would be awesome, but I'm not made out of money here, people.
• U2 is playing Raven Stadium tonight. My mom is there, about half of my friends are there. You couldn't pay me enough to see that fucking tour. Not only do I dislike U2, although I can respect them for their role in music history and development, I think that being stuck in a crowd of 80,000 at a stadium and then having to deal with the subsequent clusterfuck that ensues when you try to corral 80,000 people into doing something is totally not worth it to see a giant 360 crab stage and Bono fucking yelling about how awesome he is. No thanks. I genuinely hope that any of my friends that saw/are currently seeing them have a great time and it's everything they want it to be, though. 
• UPDATE: Our friend Frank has confirmed that Virgin Mobile Fest is happening at Merriweather again this year. We had such a fucking blast last year, I can't wait to go again this year!! Merriweather's shows have been sucking lately and/or I haven't been available to go to the ones I wanted to attend (see example: Mumford and Sons, who played the night before my best friend's wedding of which I was the Maid of Honor). We had a 2010 Merriweather crew that went together to see MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Virgin Fest and had a blast. We were a fearsome foursome and haven't had a chance to reignite that awesome yet this year. Even though it's probably in September, I can't wait to hang out with my people all day seeing awesome bands. HUZZAH!

Okay, so now that you've had the 101 lesson, we have pretty good groundwork for when I nerd out in the future and I don't have to explain my living situation between myself and my tunes. It goes a lot deeper than all the bullshit rambled off above, but those semantics can wait for other posts. Believe me, I'll nerd out about music enough for y'all.

Senses: June 22, 2011

Sounds: Today, I had to turn the Goddamn radio off because, the 45 minutes I was in the car this morning, I must've heard six U2 songs spread across various stations because those bitches fall into just about every genre and station that I listen to on a regular basis and I wanted to throw myself into oncoming traffic. When I got into work, it was random iPod shuffle for a while, then Warren Zevon, a little bit of the Velvet Underground (I also heard two different Lou Reed songs on two different stations this morning, which was weird. Maybe it was his birthday or something). Then, I got involved in turntable.fm (as mentioned above) and it was all over. I capped the day off after Zach and Kirk had left work (and the fun DJ room) with some Nerdist (#51: Comedians You Should Know!). Eagles of Death Metal on my evening commute and Mike Doughty, who Anna was listening to, when I actually got home. Now, as I type this, I'm in the "Indie While You Work" public room on turntable.fm listening to a bunch of random shit, including the White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, !!! and some weird Indie remixes. All in all, it's not bad. It's nice to hear things that I haven't heard a million times already from my library.

Sights: I had to go to Camden Yards first thing this morning when their box office opened to exchange tickets for a baseball game for our crew of friends (long story short - I bought cheap tickets through Towson U as an alumni, which was a game against the Yankees, and it got rained out so I was exchanging that group of tickets for this Friday's game against the Reds, who haven't been to town since like, 1975 or something). It was a little past 9am and the Yard looked lovely. If I hadn't been on a time crunch to get to work, I might've explored it a little more, but this is a quick picture that I snapped while I was there, using the Instagr.am program for iPhone:

Taste: I had kind of a weird lunch today that consisted of lettuce from our CSA (we have a ton of lettuce and mixed greens), cucumber, red pepper, grapes, leftover chicken (shredded) from two chickens I baked a while ago (don't worry, the chicken wasn't gross, we froze portions of it) and leftover squash and zucchini from dinner last night, with a honey Mister Mustard (another obsession) vinaigrette that I made. Overall, it was okay, but it was pretty random. Dinner was much better: grilled, BBQ thick-cut pork chop topped with mango, grilled zucchini and couscous with dried cherries, a ton of pepper and a smattering of good parm for some saltiness. I, of course, snapped a pic of that as well because I love grill marks (using Hipstamatic):

Touch: I didn't take note of any interesting touch today. Right now my hands are really dry and I've officially gone through four boxes of Kleenex since I contracted the Black Plague a week and a half ago. So, other than that, I haven't really been touching much stuff. I did see Gidget (my mom's blind Jack Russell terrier) today and she was fun to pet.

Smell: No particular smells, either. My face still sucks. I'll pick the smell of dinner cooking on the grill tonight. That was pretty rad.

Recap: Today was super fun because of the turntable.fm discovery. Otherwise, I accomplished just about everything I set out to do today, including writing this Blog because I'm tired and now dragging. So I'm just gonna end it.

I hope you all have a lovely evening, even if you are forced to hear all about U2 and Bono for the rest of the week.
-A-