Reverse order: something that's been weighing on me today

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won't be coming back with the rest
If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, "Check the oil!"
Mom stares out the window and says, "I'm leaving my girl"
She said, "It didn't seem like that long ago"
When she stood there and let her own folks know
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

I'll trip, fall, pick myself up and Walk unafraid

In honor of my year anniversary of moving to Tennessee, let's review what's happened:

-I have been at my full time job at BCTI for 6 months and continue to keep my part time job at Bath and Body Works
-I'm slowly, ever so slowly, making friends and starting to have a bit of a social life
-Of my friends, there have been 4 couples who have become engaged, 3 who have married, 2 babies born and one old friend who has passed away
-I am in the process of finding my own place to live.

After giving it more than just the college try, Max and I have come to the conclusion that we will not continue our relationship. It's taken the couple months since the final decision to come to a point of being able to talk freely about it, and to even consider picking up my still packed boxes to my very own place.

There was no catastrophic event that broke us up, so there's no lasting anger. It's not how I would have thought things would go and but there's no hate. And after three years of a relationship, there is still the detanglement that needs to happen. I have some really fantastic friends who has been helping me limp along and I'm still slipping on the basket case clothes from time to time, but everyone, including Max, has helped in their own way. And I love all of them dearly for it.

And now I'm looking at a different benchmark. Even while incredibly nervous of the unknown, I know that I was lead here for the purpose of finding out what I've been about for the past 31 years. While living in the same area and having friends since middle and high school is great, sometimes it just doesn't help you figure out the 'you' of the younger years and the 'you' of the adult years. Now that I'm basically starting from zero with no one here in my day to day who knew the 'me' from before, I get to really figure out what I'm made of. I've never lived alone, so that in itself will be a new challenge.

I am hoping to chronicle what I find out, but I've never been great about documentation and I find that most things should be in the 'duh' category and feel embarrassed about broadcasting. But who knows? Maybe it'll be as cathartic as I hear it's supposed to be.

If I just breathe, Let it fill in the space between, I'll know everything's alright

Today was my first day of yoga. My manager at Bath and Body Works has been promoting her parents' studio and encouraged me to go. Plus, it turns out a coworker at BCTI has been long-time friends with the couple and she also was insisting that I join. So, after weeks of promising myself I'd go, I finally got myself out of bed this morning and went.

I met my coworker on the way in and she picked out the spots for our mats. The only problem was, mine was right next to the decorative water fountain. Throughout the full hour, there were the gentle sounds of relaxed breathing, lovely music, and the tinkling of the water cascading and draining. No matter how smart I was in using the bathroom before going to class, I had to concentrate hard to not be... too relaxed. Which leads me to think of 'Friends'

Because my mind works by running clips and blips of all kinds of media, while I was supposed to clear my head, I, instead, had a plethora of brief images of what I've seen, but not really songs because the instructor had some mellow tunes running in the background. First image: the first episode of the 3rd season of 'Friends', Phoebe was trying to get Monica to relax so that she could sleep, and with the even-tone and relaxing voice she was trying to have Monica concentrate on the 'plinking, plunking' sounds of the music and 'the lovely waterfalls, and the, the trickling fountains. And the-the calming sounds of the babbling brook....' and making her friend need to pee.

My mind then shifted to stand-up comedy.

In Ellen Degeneres' stand-up she spoke of two commercials and this popped into my head as well: 1) the old Clorox jingle, "Mamma's got the magic of Clorox 2"; 2) the end tag-line jingle "By Mennen". So that took my thoughts for a while as I tried to suppress the urge to laugh out loud.

I got serious and tried to do the following things:
-Commit to myself the next hour
-Appreciate my feet
-Become a dead bug or a happy baby

...with minimal success. Commercials were going through my mind.

During the time when we were just supposed to lie down, relax and clear our heads, I continued to resist letting go of thoughts and could only theorize on "Lost". I'm working on a different idea of why there are some in the 70's, some in the 'present' and what was supposed to happen when 815 was first knocked out of the sky. And to make it even funnier, we ended our session by saying to each other-

'Namaste'

The class on a whole was fun and the people there were nice. I'll go again and do better next time.

Weight off my mind

Since about a week before Thanksgiving, I have been basically auditioning for a job that I saw listed on a job search website. At first glance, it was just listed as an 'executive assistant', but after a phone interview, a face-to-face interview with two people from HR and then a third interview with the same two ladies, the project manager and the boss they were looking to assist, they gave me a better idea of what they were really looking for - a brand new position to keep the boss organized. And he's not just a run of the mill boss. This guy started this company about a decade ago and has way too many ideas and way too many tasks already running, but no filter system and believes the world runs on a 48 hour day. His co-workers finally realized that they need someone to keep his schedule, keep his voicemail, kick him out the door to be in time for meetings and basically make sure that his brain and the schedule of others actually coincide. And that is just the first couple of layers.

The more they explained the job, the more they kept halting the conversation and was asking me if I was getting scared off. I kept insisting that I wasn't, and I wasn't just trying to get a job. I am so intrigued by this position. In my professional life, there's nothing that matches this, but with the grand total of my experiences in my personal life, I know I can do this job. The guy is a computer engineer tech guy, who is high energy, no concept of time and not the greatest at explaining everything he wants but would like it to come to fruition anyway. Within the group of people I know, that's a mishmash of a good number of them.

Now, the job was only confirmed to be mine today, after about a week and a half of waiting. And they can't have me start until late Feb/early March because my boss is busy training a new person to take one more responsibility off his plate so that he can go full force on the bizillion and one other ideas he has cooking. But in the meanwhile, they have offered to let me audit the classes they run at their location. This will give me a chance to catch up to all of the 2007 upgrades to the programs I need to know. I'm excited, though a little disappointed I can't start until then. But I think this is really going to be a interesting opportunity.

Hooray!

Well, that was successful, though not with any content.

I do plan to sit down and have an entry about the slight differences between what I know of Tennessee and what I grew up with in Jersey, but for another time. Soon. I hope maybe this afternoon, if football isn't too much of a distraction.

Thoughts of Tennesse

Well, it's now been three weeks since I packed my belongings and headed south. The first 30 miles was incredibly rough, being that I just left my brother behind. I cried my eyes out and I didn't really calm down until I was out of the Jersey state line. And, sadly, I didn't really have too much of an adventure on my way down here, being that I don't really trust my car to meander the countryside. (Sorry, Derek, I had to skip Bland, Virginia)

The one interesting thing I came across that just had me look at for a moment with perplexed wonder was this building in Roanoke, Virginia. I still haven't figured out what that building is for and there wasn't a helpful sign to tell me, so I'll just have to Google it:


It's some bird-looking architecture.... not sure what it's for...




Gathering my belongings from the moving pod proved to be a bit of a chore, but after renting the cargo van and 3 trips to unload all of my boxes, furniture and garbage bags of clothing, I finally was able to spread all of my earthly possessions into my new home. Here are some before and after pic's:




Slowly I've been putting things away, but it's mostly stacked up in the back room still in boxes. I've been trying to find a good paying full time job, but it's hard in a college town, mainly dedicated to the medical profession. So, to help have at least some income, I've started work at Bath and Body Works. I've done a part time gig for that store during the Christmas season before, so I'm comfortable there. I'm still trying to make friends, or any connection whatsoever, but it's been forever since I've had to make friends from thin air. It's really hard, but necessary.

Hopefully, I'll be able to nail down something soon. I'm getting a little stir crazy.