My Oh My

I rolled into work this morning two hours late, with a hideous headache after one of the worst nights of sleep I have ever experienced. It was the sort of night where I'd doze off for an hour, wake up, think I hadn't slept at all, recall the completely fucked up dream I had just had, and fall back only to repeat this scenario five or so more times before my alarm clicked on at 7:00 am. I have a love-hate relationship with my snooze bar, and two hours later we were still engaged in trench warfare.

The problem had everything to do with my weekend and my ongoing struggle to appreciate the finer points of the concept "weekends are for unwinding." This weekend marked the first official one of spring. It seemed that everyone came out of the woodwork to play. My weekend was defined by an overflow of friends, love, creative ideas, new possibilities, things that I didn't think I wanted that now seem like an excellent idea, things I didn't think I could have before that are now attainable, clarifications regarding some ambiguous situations, things that seemed bad that I'm learning to accept, self determination, and again--new possibilities. Several gauntlets were thrown down. I didn't get to bed until 5:30 on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Laura Sessions Stepp would not be pleased with me.

Seeing me cross the atrium of our office, our IT Guy (a friend, and one of the most sarcastic individuals on the planet) smirked and said: Well, you're looking lovely this morning. Decked out in a thermal shirt I stole from a college roommate (my last clean shirt apart from my vintage Journey tee), pants a size too big, lesbian orthopedic clogs, wet hair and eyes ringed with black circles, I could practically smell the facetiousness dripping from his words. I rolled my eyes and told him to suck it.

Despite my ragged constitution, everything that transpired this weekend was 100% worth it. I mentioned before that everything seems to be in a constant state of transition. But I think I'm learning to roll with it and to understand how these changes could help me in the long run. I feel in part like I'm seated on top of shifting tectonic plates, taking me for a ride and at the same time steering a new course for myself. For far too long I had felt a little adrift and now things are starting to make a bit more sense.

I've done a couple of things in the past couple of weeks that I am truly proud of. For one, I came up with a new business development idea for my company that I am now working with my CEO to fast track into something that we can share with outside groups and launch as a real thing. Bizarre seeing as how I have always thought of myself as the smart, sarcastic underachiever. And also because I'm a writer and not a business development expert.

Secondly, I've done a really good job recently of evaluating the presence of certain individuals in my life and honestly assessing how they can best fit into my life in a manner that is productive for everyone involved. It's meant realizing the shortcomings of certain relationships and accepting that I can't mold everything into something it wasn't meant to be. It's been sad to let go of certain expectations I had for people, but it was time. And it has meant displaying a bit of bravery and communicating with people in ways that I am normally way too reserved to do. And from there, lovely new possibilities have presented themselves--my reward for being assertive and true to myself. I was remarking to a friend earlier today that life has gone from Liz Phair song to a Nick Hornsby novel, and that's a very good thing indeed.