What Happened?
Monday, December 22, 2008

Why do people ask "So...what happpened?" I mean seriously...if YOU had just gotten laid off, would you want to answer that question?  What happened!?! What happened? Fuck if I know. I have no idea. One day I was getting promoted, truly loving my job more than I can remember, and the next day (ok 3 months later) I was being tols that I had no job.

Was it suppsed to make me feel better to be told I had more important things to be concerned with right now? It didn't. Was it supposed to make me feel good to know it has nothing to do with my performance? That my boss felt I could run the company one day? It didn't. It made me feel worse. If I had such potential, showed so much promise...then why were they choosing ME?!?! It's hard to swallow. I have gone over it and over it and over it in my head 50 million times. I don't get it. I don't get some of the people that still have jobs and I don't. The pieces of the puzzle don't add up. And while I never thought things like this happen to people like me, apparently, they do. 

I have gone from pissed as hell to zen and back again tonight. I don't think I want to talk about it anymore. At least not with just anyone. I need people who get how I must feel...and sometimes it feels like people don't. They couldn't possibly if they are saying some of the things they are saying, asking some of the questions they are asking. And having these conversations is not making me feel any better. It's not helping me to move forward. I don't know why it happened. I don't know if my pregnancy played a role or not. I don't want to hear that companies are doing this left and right and then 3 months later, hiring people that are cheaper. I truly don't believe that will happen here...but even thinking about it makes me angry again. It makes me furious in fact. It makes me want to throw something. Something large that could do damage. 

And I don't want to be angry. I don't want to stress too much about the future.I just want to be. To be pregnant. To be happy.

I'm finding it hard, though, to not have a job. I know that my job is not my identity. I have said it many times before. I know that there is so much more to me than what I do. But I was loving my job. I was proud of where I'd gotten. I worked my ass off to get there. And I was loving it - truly loving it - for the first time in a long time. It felt like an achievement to have finally gotten to a place I had been working to get for so long. And I was good at it - I was really, really  good at it. So it felt like it was a part of who I am. And I feel like I lost a part of who I am. I mean, I know I didn't. I know that's not really true. I know that I still have the things that truly make me who I am-that no one can take that away from me. But still...it feels like it. I feel a loss.

And tonight I just want it to go away. I don't want to answer questions or hypothesize about why or think about what I'm going to do. I just want to move forward. I really want to pretend like it didn't happen or like I never worked there. Which I suppose means I don't really want to deal with reality...but that's how I feel for tonight.

Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 12:21 AM 1 comments  

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Content My Ass.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

I suppose I spoke too soon.

I've been staring at the screen, trying to figure out how to make this creative or funny or...something other than straightforward. I haven't figured it out.

It's 5:33 on a rainy LA morning and I've slept for a total of about 3 hours. I'm chock-fucking-full of angst. I don't actually know if it's a rainy LA morning or not - I don't think it's raining anymore to be honest, but rainy sort of fits my mood and it sounds good. So for my purposes of this post, picture it rainy.

I started to write about all the good things, the things that are truly important - like the fact that my baby is healthy - and, for that matter, how excited I am that I'm having one. That everyone important to me is ok. And then I realized that I'm doing via blog what my friends and I all discuss our parents do to us when they call with bad news. They go through a laundry list of all the things that ARE ok. Everyone that IS fine. Telling you that everything is alright...all the while preparing you for the fact that things actually AREN'T ok, that not everyone is fine, that everything actually isn't alright...until you want to reach through the phone and punch them, but not before they tell you what the hell is GOING ON ALREADY!

Yeah. So I don't want to do that. I got laid off yesterday. Almost exactly 2 months after I was promoted. Almost exactly 3 months before I have a baby.

So yes - everyone is fine. And everything will BE fine. But things aren't ok right in this moment.

I keep reminding myself that everything happens for a reason. That when one door closes another door opens, that out of necessity comes invention. That we are not handed anything that we are not capable of handling. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. I'm working every last ounce of energy I have to embrace zen. Because what other choice is there really?

Zen as hell - except when I'm not. Not in the the moments of complete rage I've flown into or the twenty minutes spent crying in the middle of the night, trying to understand how certain people who make four times what I make and do about a quarter of the work still have their jobs but I don't. What the reasoning is behind laying off a person with a salary that's less than the new desk that the CEO of our company recently purchased. A person who has been loyal and worked hard and told time and again of their value to the company and their potential for the future.

All I can remind myself is that someone, somewhere knows that I am destined for bigger and better.

Dear Someone,

Your timing sort of sucks.

But I'm sure you have your reasons. I'm sure you have big plans for me. You're more than welcome to reveal them sooner than later.

So yeah - about that whole being content thing? I spoke too soon. But I sure enjoyed it while it lasted.

Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 5:32 AM 4 comments  

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Angstless in LA
Thursday, December 11, 2008

It's DECEMBER???? WHAT THE HELL?

Anyhow. I've been having this conversation as of late with a couple different people. And I could be totally off on this one, but I'm thinking that blogging is better - even writing for that matter - when it's being used as an outlet for some sort of angst. I would have been an AMAAAAAAAAAAZING blogger when I moved to LA. Just ask any of my close friends who had to put a limit on the number of times a day I could call them. I was oozing angst.

Or when I was single living in NYC. I met with a writer the other day (for an hour and 45 minutes by the way. That sets the record for my longest writer meeting ever. Except, of course, for the first "meeting" I had with my husband...but that doesn't count.) who said she was sort of glad to be single because if she were in a long term relationship, she's really unsure what the hell she'd write about.

I know exactly what she means. I'm not feeling so much angst these days. I have my moments and I'm all too sure that I will have many a meltdown in the not-so-distant future, that life won't feel quite so even, that I will want different things, wish for something new, feel like my brain is going to explode, have moments of "why can't this just..." and "when will I ever...".

But for now, I'm sort of...dare I say it...content. And content makes for boring blogging I think. I'm sort of uninspired. Although I can tell you that my baking extravaganza this weekend will give me plenty of food for thought. I can't even believe I just wrote that. Food for thought. SEE!?!??!?!?!?!

I sometimes wonder if I'm just not a good writer. If I were, wouldn't I be able to pull something out of my ass at a moment's notice for the sake of the blog? Wouldn't I be able to go back to that time of angst and channel it to write something poignant, funny and touching all at once? Wouldn't I be able to paint a picture of that day seven years ago, that moment in the middle of Times Square, that time when I thought I would never recover? Maybe I can. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough...I don't know.

I know I have thoughts in moments in the middle of downward dog that I think would be a really smart piece of writing. I write the whole thing in my head as I move through my (modified for pregnancy) vinyasa. But by the time I get home, it's gone. I remember the general feeling, but the words...they're just not there.

I wish I'd written more at certain times in my life. I could have done wonders with my mid-20's in Manhattan, my late 20's in LA...among other times. My head was constantly swirling with questions, anxiety, endless clutter and conversation.

But for now, my head isn't really swirling much at all. I've managed to find zen in the past six and a half months. Like I got knocked up and something switched inside my brain telling me that I needed to just roll with the punches a bit more because from this point forward, there was going to be a hell of a lot more out of my control than had ever been before. And so that's the way I've been living. I've had a few meltdowns here and there. And I've wished I was closer to a computer when they've happened. But by the time I sit down to write it down, it's over and done with and I've moved on. I find myself wondering what the point of rehashing is. And so, I don't.

So I'm angstless and blogless. But I'm happy.

Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 4:46 PM 1 comments  

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