Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

My business has been featured in D-Web Magazine, which as I understand it is based in New York. Fancy. The article about me (which is really just a simple Q&A) is here, and my logo is on the front page twice. All at least marginally exciting, one must admit.

Last night I had a dream that I got my old job back. It wasn't a fun place to work anymore. My coworkers all hated me for some reason. The ceilings were much lower and more oppressive than I remembered. I sat with my back to the aisle, where I sat before I was promoted the last time. I clocked in at eight, worked all day with my headphones on, and clocked out at five, not speaking a word to anyone and trying to ignore every one's dirty looks. Last night, this went on for weeks. Everyday was the same. The weather outside was in constantly thunderstorm-like, grey and dark and dusky. My superiors yelled at me constantly and tore me down. I was miserable, and I felt trapped.

However, there was another emotion making a play: relief. Misery or none, I had a steady paycheck again, so I knew I would now be making rent on time and eating on a regular basis. And in this dream, this paycheck was worth my self respect and my freedom.

In real life, I got a few calls from recruiters last week. I don't know what happened, but I seem to be something of a hot commodity suddenly, or at least a lukewarm one. The problem is everything involves permanent positions and relocation and worst of all: going back to work in a cube, with a manager, and all the Office Space like trappings. There would also be a steady paycheck involved.

I have to admit, it's tempting. Quite recently it feels like my priorities have shifted from finding happiness in this life to just plain surviving. Every day it seems like there is a new crisis; I feel like I'm spending all my time catching up with the rest of the world and putting out fires. There is a part of me that wants to go back to working for someone else; I like the idea that there is security there. But you are never secure when you are working for someone else, because you are taking your fate out of your own hands.

I know where my heart is, and I'll tell you why: when I woke this morning, the relief that I hadn't gotten my old job back completely outweighed the relief I felt when I thought I had. I'm broke, and I'm stressed out, but I'm free, and in control of my own future. Even though things are bad now, I have a really good feeling about what's to come.

I didn't get to sleep until six this morning. I had been nothing but exhausted all day yesterday, but when it came time to actually relax, my brain was having none of it. There is way too much crazy bullshit going on in my life lately, and as a result I'm sort of trapped up in my own head all the time.

Ironically enough working — actual problem solving and coding, not this 24/7 hustle I seem to have going lately that consists entirely of solicting — is the one thing that makes me focus on something that is not me. Unfortunately, at the moment, I am not getting enough work, and that is causing a majority of the stress. I'm not sure if that's the correct English professor definition of irony but it's damn close enough for me.

So I finally get sort of unconscious, and I kept dreaming of being trapped in a haunted house with the ghosts of some sick people. I don't mean ill. I mean ill in the head. It was terrifying. I'm pretty sure I woke up about every five minutes, until my empty stomach said “No more!” and forced me awake for good. That was 8:30 this morning.

So here I am, awake and oh-so refreshed on a bright Tuesday. I'm not going to go into specifics but so far today has been nothing but bad news. I'm guessing I have until end of business to turn things around, but lately I don't feel in control. I feel like I'm at the mercy of the universe, and if I believed in God, I would have to assume I'd done something awful and I must be smited. As it is, being a non-believer, I think I'm just running into multiple random acts of badness. Even so, I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.

I talk a lot of shit about my mom, but when it comes right down to it, you can't help but love your mother.

People have asked me many times how I could write about my whole life on the Internet. Anyone could read it! Dire consequences might follow! They want to know how I keep it safe, keep it secret: a website bearing my real name.

My answer is always the same; honestly, I have nothing to hide. I'm an adult, I'm responsible for myself, and I own my mistakes. For many years I've been the type to give direct answers to direct questions, and while there have been times where I might imply that I have more (or less) experience with certain things, on these pages I've been pretty straight with the ethereal out there. There never seemed to be any point in hiding that I'm a drunk, or overweight, or sometimes pretty fucking lonely. Besides, I believe that reading about my life is probably like watching Nascar: no one really wants to see anyone get hurt, but if it happens, no one wants to miss it either. Having to run across a university quad in broad daylight wearing only a bathrobe? Fantastic! Walking home alone, drunk, in the middle of the night? Well, it was a close call, but I got home okay. Finally being painfully rejected by a longtime crush? Learning experience. Hungover and puking on a public intersection at high noon, with cars all around? Comedy gold.

My humanity and ability to err are the things that have made my life interesting. In the past couple of years or so, however, things have gotten much less compelling on paper. Not bad, per se, but not as riveting as things might have been in my younger days. I spend much more time just chilling out, or talking to my friends, or working, and not getting into anything really resembling trouble. On the one hand it can be comforting to have things be so constant, on the other I've almost been waiting for something to happen to me, because while I can go back to many times in my adult life and read about how things were, I feel like I'm going to go back to this time in my life and find an empty hole, resembling in that way my life before high school, of which I remember very little.

And yet.

The past couple of weeks have been different. I've felt like someone else, and that Jenna is totally irresponsible, blows off work, doesn't keep in touch with family, and is at times dishonest. That Jenna does things that draw blood. This person that I am not has felt more alive than I ever feel, but also manic, crazy, and fantastically selfish. On the one hand I want to be more like this woman, and on the other, I wonder how long I might live if I let her truly run wild.

Lately I've done enthralling things, actions and thoughts that make for compelling, if not necessarily happy or comedic, reading. I composed the essays in my head one million times, tossing and turning in my bed, trying to wrap my head around who I might become if I don't keep this all in check. Then it hit me: I finally have some things that I need to hide. I can't, at this time, live my life in public the way I used to, so I can't vent, I can't work it all out for myself in essay form and publish it for the world to see. Let me tell you, for someone who has a years-old habit of living her life out in the open, having secrets is actually pretty fucking stressful.