I feel as though I sound like a 16 year old in my previous post. Sorry for that. I am, indeed, 10 years older. I was so upset, which probably goes without saying. I feel very rejected by my mom, and it's tough. Sometimes it's tougher than others.

I need to not let her behavior (and my dad's) hold me back. I need to continue to really work hard and rise above it. It's tough to know how to do that when I was raised in such a dysfunctional environment. If your caretakers can't take care of each other/themselves, how are they supposed to teach you to care for yourself? If your caretakers reject you, how are you supposed to accept yourself?

I wish everyone who was seriously contemplating being a parent was magically infertile until *boom* they could care for themselves well. When setting out to become a parent, it's not imperative to have all the answers to life. That's impossible. But it is important to have the basics down, to know who you are, to be secure with yourself and your place in the world, to be secure in your relationship with your significant other and yourself.

The Way to (and from) Work

I have to admit, I had bigger and better visions of pictures for this post. Well, perhaps not bigger. The fact is our weather has been just rainy and damp lately so my "walk to/from work" post is a little lacking. Let's call this my winter walk to/from work post. As it gets warmer I'll take lots of time to take fun and interesting pictures because I think I see lots of neat details in my neighborhood each day.

Right now, however, it's winter. We're expecting our fourth huge storm tonight and it's supposed to last until mid-Friday morning. So I leave you with this brief snapshot of what I saw tonight:

Tomorrow it'll look more like this:

A Very Cool Site

Check it outtttt:

Racings Thoughts

I just got home from a quasi-stressful day. I didn't hear anything about "the" job, and work got really busy as the day was supposedly starting to wind down. A client came in at 4:45 instead of 4 for her appointment. And there's always so much paperwork! It really got my mind going fast.fast.fast, and it wouldn't stop. I walked home, and that just seemed to get it going faster. I think I missed my long bus & trolley commute/reading time! :)

So I came home a little grumpy, and immediately sat in my chair to go online. I almost just started to mindlessly surf the internet, which is not a good thing for me to do when I grumpy. Time and time again doing that has just proved to make me more anxious. Then, when I had the internet open and was already to make myself feel worse, I remembered Positive Pause. It's a great website that just slows things down for me when my mind is moving a little too fast for my liking. The website plays music, but since Liz was studying (anatomy...eww, gross and boring) I decided to listen to my iPod while watching it, and I have to say Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes is a great accompaniment.

Do We Ever Know What the Future Holds?

I am currently still waiting with bated breath to hear about this job. I know my references were checked yesterday. I know that's a good sign, and yet it made me feel a little crazy. I just could not stop thinking about maybe.perhaps.possibly getting this job that would definitely be a dream job for me. And, yet, at the same time, I'm trying to focus myself more on the present. I'm trying to not think about how it would be a dream job for me. I'm trying to prepare myself for, well, not failure, but a let-down, a rejection.

I also spontaneously got chicken fingers today for lunch. And that's all I had. Five chicken fingers. That's a lot of fried. I then proceeded to read an article in the New York Times about a calorie restriction study. Perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I was able to focus on what the researchers found to be the negatives of extreme calorie restriction. That was good. I probably should not have read the article to begin with, though. Even still, I think it's a good sign that neither event (chx&article) bothered me too much.

What Will the Future Hold?

I had a job interview today because VISTA is winding down and I need to think of something to do when it's over. I'd like that specific something to be focused in the social services. I think the interview went pretty well. I have my fingers crossed super tight right now, so tight that they're maybe not even crossed. The Director is interviewing 3 other people, and I should know by Friday or Monday at the latest.

I've definitely noticed that I've had more anxiety today because of the interview. Having a job interview just causes me to always get a million times too excited about the future, to the point where I almost cannot focus on the present. In fact, after my first post-college job interview (2.5 years ago) my anxiety was so high that I felt like I could barely breathe. I definitely don't feel like that today, and right now I am so thankful for that.