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

So, Internet, it's been a pretty okay summer. I've been working hard, in more ways than one, and it is starting to pay off in small, incremental ways, although it is a hard road to hoe, not to mention slow going.

The business is coming up, even if it is at a sluggish pace. I finally feel fully confident in my skills, and my ability to sell those skills to just about anybody. I haven't gotten any aghast reactions to my rates in a while, which means I'm selling to the correct market, at last. Now I just have to find the time to seek out more of that market.

I joined a gym a few months ago. I pour lots of time into walking briskly on a treadmill, and once a week I see a personal trainer who kicks my ass. My first week, I had personal training sessions on both Monday and Wednesday, and on Friday morning I was slowly waking up when I asked my half-awake self, Was I in a car accident?

Nope, I realized. I'm just that sore. Read More »

Loooooong, slightly masturbatory essay. I apologize in advance.

“Jenna,” He stuck his chin out and whined with faux exasperation, “why do you hate me so much?”

Everyone's got that one friend who uses some variation on this phrase as a way to tell you to just lighten up when you are trying to get them to do something completely reasonable. Like stop drinking when they've clearly had enough. Or get in the car when it's 5 in the morning and obviously time to head home. Or to please, just put some clothes on. While you're just trying to get through to the end of the night, your friend basically says to you, Stop being so uptight. You're totally harshing my mellow. Read More »

I can't sleep and it's all your fault. That's what I want to tell you, although if I was going to be grown up about it, that point is not entirely true. You are just the genesis, my relationship with you bringing to the forefront various other issues that were probably due to come up anyway. Next month I'll be a year older, and I am starting to feel like there are some things that are never going to happen if they haven't happened by now. I don't know whether such issues would be rattling around in my pretty little head if I hadn't had fallen in love with you, but you can't unfire a gun, so we'll never know. Read More »

I'm not feeling all that great, Internet. The past few weeks I've been focused on my own broken heart, and I've been working in an unenthusiastic way, not concentrating as easily or finishing as fast as I have in the past. I also think I was probably due for a little bit of burn out, considering the pace I've been keeping and the stress that never goes away. So I slept a lot (I told some people whose calls I didn't answer that I “took a coma”), I stared at the TV a lot, I smoked a lot.

This week, however, I was ready to pull myself back up and pour myself into my work once more. I got a pep talk from my mentor, who has been through all the same things. Yesterday afternoon, after hitting the proverbial wall trying to make progress on an overdue project for weeks, the universe gave me a break and I was able to start moving forward. I was so excited to be back on track.

Then, the setback. Yesterday evening I had a sore throat and some sneezing, today it has turned into a full blown cold, the kind with dizziness and lightheadedness and permanently chapped lips. I have a headache, I can't breathe, and most devastating, I can't think clearly at all. Right now my mind is a big marshmallow when it comes to tackling the hard techie stuff.

There is something horribly unjust about getting a cold in the dead middle of the summer. On the one hand, it does prove what I was always trying to tell my mother when I was a teenager — that leaving the house with wet hair in the winter is not what makes you sick. On the other hand, why now? When the weather is perfect and people are having parties and my professional queue has been backed up for weeks? Why not in the giant holes of time I had last November or February? In the winter, when it makes sense? That's all I ask.

I know I'm not eloquent today. I'm just grumpy.

“So... any boyfriends?”

“Boyfriends?”

“Or relationships. Whatever you call it.”

“Nothing that turned into a boyfriend.”

Heather looks at me, quizzically, interested.

“There was this one guy, [Shortstop]. I kinda sorta hooked up with him... in my roommate's bed.”

Laughing. “Where did you meet this guy?”

“He's friends with my roommates. I really had met him only about six hours earlier when they brought him over to the apartment.”

“Was alcohol involved?”

“Of course. But we just made out for awhile, nothing serious.”

Laughing. “How was that?”

“Drunk. He was drunk. I was drunk too. We were both pretty drunk. It was fine.”

We sit in silence for a moment.

“He is really cute though.”

“Yeah?”

“And before all the activity I talked to him for awhile, and he has this really fascinating internal life, and he's smart and funny—”

“—so you really like him.” Heather makes the declaration for me.

“Yeah. Yeah I really do.” I give a half-hearted sigh. “I don't think he likes me though.”

“Well that's a shame.”

“Yeah it is. But that's the way things go sometimes.”

This is what happens when you can't sleep.

You sit at your desk reading about TSA regulations and procedures and lusting after kitschy personal care kits, all in hasty preparation for a brief trip that is still 6 weeks, two tests, one project and one birthday away.

You now know that if you were so compelled, you could bring five liters of whiskey onto a plane. If you had that need.

You again inspect the beautiful locket that you would love to receive from someone and imagine dreamily what that would be like. To actually have a Valentine on Valentine's Day, or on any day. You decide you like the idea of receiving the locket even more than the locket itself, and somehow simultaneously applaud yourself for being so unattached to material things while using the same attachment to overshadow the issue at hand. You use them to cancel each other out.

A certain part of you feels hollow.

I had a blast at The Company's Xmas party. I took the Indian as my date, and at 6:00 pm we got on the bus that would take most of the Athens attendees to the party in Gwinnett. The thing that is both cool and dangerous about taking a bus to this party is the drinking begins the moment you get on the bus. So, my estimate was totally off. Drinks included:

• Something Neil handed to me on the ride down, ordering me to “Drink this!” Even though it was pretty weak the Indian determined for me that it contained bourbon.
• three vodkas on the rocks from the bar at the party (where I had this classic exchange with the bartender):
  

  “Vodka on ice, please.”
  (Incredulous.) “Vodka on ice?”
  “Yessir.”
  (Smiling.) “I like it when people say that.”

• Something an unnamed manager came up and offered. Possibly gin with sprite.
• All of what was in my flask. (5-6 oz. vodka)
• About half of the whiskey in Neil's flask.
• and several hits off of Neil's bottle of Gentleman Jack.

An aside: while making this list, I have determined I owe Neil a bottle of something in the near future.

The party had a casino theme, and while I didn't gamble, I did stand at the end of the craps table for a little while, cheering and blowing on dice. I felt like an archetypal Vegas blonde and I loved it. I stayed off the dance floor but shook my hips to the music anyway. CB and I rapped along to Missy Elliot while Neil gave us his best faux look of stern dissapproval in our musical tastes. I didn't express it but I couldn't get over how hot everyone looked. We clean up very nicely, part timers especially.

Silliness abounded, which as it turns out, was only a precursor to the drunken melodrama that followed on the ride home. Read More »

I could never imbibe enough liquid courage to tell him how I really feel. These days I'm a coward with a staggeringly high tolerance.

CB (9:07:13 PM): you're a hardass. not that i condone that.
CB (9:07:16 PM): but you can drink.
Jen (9:07:36 PM): me?
CB (9:08:06 PM): yup Read More »

Tonight, I feel that if it means I'll never have to feel this way again, I would prefer to be alone for the rest of my life.

Note to self: keep your fucking guard up.

I'm not going let this happen again. Next time, I won't ignore the obvious clues in the hopes that it will still work out. Next time, I won't get myself so wound up, even when I pretend, even for me, that I'm not.

Next time? I'll remember that I am truly a playa, and playas don't let their hearts in on the game. Ever.

Self-protection above all else.

Also, a note to any third parties: I'm not mad at anybody but me.