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 »

Dawn today found me walking home after a second consecutive sleepless night, singing Cole Porter's “I've Got You Under My Skin” in the swinging style of the 1956 Frank Sinatra cut. At the end of my street I could see the guy who works the all-night convenience watching me, most likely puzzled at what could cause me to allow my voice to echo all over the narrow street.

I'd sacrifice anything come what might
For the sake of having you near
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night
And repeats, repeats in my ear:
Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality.
But each time that I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin
'Cause I've got you under my skin.

I should have been thinking about why I would possibly allow myself to come home at dawn when I hadn't slept in over a day and needed to work, but I wasn't. I was thinking about the night that led up to the darkness. I was playing the horn saturated instrumental fill in my heart and trying my damndest not to spin on the street as if I was on a studio backlot in some mid-20th-century comedy musical.

I remember us at some late hour watching a bowling championship on ESPN, and he mentions that he loves bowling, and I some how work in that I can't stand it. I don't know exactly how but I'm not surprised that I would do such a thing.

“I guess we can't get married now.” I sadly say. Our eventual marriage has become somewhat of a running joke, and his tolerance of said joke indicates one of only two states of mind: ignorance or some other, slightly warmer, elusive thing.

“I guess not.” He hangs his head in mock disappointment. “Good job, Jenna!” He admonishes me sarcastically and I break down, despite the fact that the game purports to be only pretend.

“Well, if that was a deal breaker,” I say in a more serious tone than is strictly necessary, “I would learn to bowl.”

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 had a terrifying nightmare last night, disturbing enough to cause me to not even want to write about it now. It woke me up in the middle of the night, but I had already forgotten it and didn't know why I had woken up. Being the geek that I am, upon waking I wondered over to my computer to check my email. I was in the middle of surfing Consumating five minutes later when awful flashes of it suddenly started coming back to me, and I immediately opened up Notepad and typed out the details as they came back. Then I couldn't sit in the dark at my computer anymore, and I got back into bed, curling into a ball under the covers to wait for dawn, when things hopefully wouldn't be so scary. I fell into a restless sleep, and when I woke up at 6:30 I watched some Sopranos and stayed bed until the sun came up.

After all that, when I started to work this morning, I was tired and couldn't concentrate, not to mention sort of traumatized by what my brain is capable of producing. So I took up my long-dead habit of drinking coffee. Four cups later I'm wired and can't concentrate, not to mention sort of traumatized by what my brain is capable of producing. I drugged myself into mania and nervousness.

I think I miscalculated.

1. I choose my own projects.
2. Chasing down leads is half the fun.
3. I get to talk directly to clients, and build relationships with them.
4. I'm building a name and a reputation for myself, and adding value to my brand.
5. I get to say “I've never been happier” and mean it.
6. I set my own hourly rate, based on my actual value instead of my value as a cog in the corporate machine.
7. When I start to burn out, I just leave my desk for a few hours, and get to come back fresh.
8. I almost never set an alarm. I sleep until I'm rested, and I remember my dreams.
9. Now that I don't have to get up in the morning, I get up early all the time, and tango around my apartment just so excited to be alive.
10. I never, ever wear pants to the office.

My dear, dear friends; CB insisting that I go see Beck with him, and that it's his treat; fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; quality time with Zach at the beginning of happy hour; getting plenty of sleep; owning up to the fact that I was horribly unhappy at my old job, and even though I have no money now, I somehow still feel like the luckiest girl in the world

The thing that really sucks about having the flu this time around is even though I need nothing more than sleep, and even though I'm consistently drugging myself up to make sleep come easier, I'm only asleep for 3 or 4 hours at a time before stuffy nose or spiking fever wake me up again. It's been like this since I got home on Thursday night.

This is despite the fact that every time I'm up for more than half an hour I feel like I've been power walking for a whole day.

Besides being deathly ill for the past few days, things are not going well overall, hence the evident radio silence here at the House.

I've been meditating on why there are some things that have happened lately that I haven't told anyone about. Why I suddenly have become too uncomfortable to spin an amusing or alluring anecdote out of it all. I think the stress of everything is making me more susceptible to illness. That and the habitual binge drinking, the smoking, and the lack of eating much of anything. I kind of wonder how much is the cause and how much is the symptom.

This is really what has been keeping me up at night.

The fear that you won't wake up on time. Again.

This is entirely counterproductive.

My sister, the rock star, is in the red and black today. Read it and revel in her awesomeness.

Things have been mostly good, even if there has been almost nothing to write about. Work, school, work, school, the routine only sometimes punctuated with sleep, hanging out in bars, or watching The Sopranos on DVD. I am the busiest I have ever been, with three fifths of my weekdays beginning at 8 in the morning and ending at 8 in the evening. I feel myself aging at a rate much more rapid than just a couple of years ago, burning the candle at both ends, as it were. But rather than shrink back from the challenge I find myself stepping up, charging at the obstacle that can, at times, seem like a brick wall. (Going full speed all the time causes many periods of accidental and unplanned unconsciousness, a factor that sunk me last week, academia-wise.)

Sometimes I wonder if I've taken on too much, gotten in over my head, a thought hastened by the naysayers (I shall not name names) who insist I can't keep up this speed for 3 to 4 more years, who grimace and give me looks and tones that say what the hell have you done? I smile sweetly I say that I'm certain that I can handle it, and privately I regard the whole situation as a trial by fire or a rite of passage, ultimately a pathway to some semblance of self-respect.

I also try to constantly remind myself that I could be working much, much harder with the payoff being much, much less.

In the meantime, I (usually) have weekends as a reprieve from all the madness. This weekend I saw a lot of people and consumed a whole lot of whiskey. Friday night found me drinking with my co-workers, which, besides yielding many free drinks also ended with me walking home with two roses purchased for me (from the “rose lady” that most Athenians are familiar with) by two of the aforementioned co-workers.

Saturday night I went to Sarah's show at DT's. A coworker of Sarah's was sitting with my parents, and just before introducing himself (Chris, a lovely doctoral student who was pleasantly fresh with me throughout the evening) gave up his own seat for me. As we shook hands, leaning in to hear names over the music, he looked at me agape and exclaimed, “You smell—You smell AWESOME.” I grinned and blushed like a schoolgirl. That was possibly the highlight of my interactions that evening, excepting my phone conversation with HGB, which is always a pleasure all it's own.

I. Dig Your Own Hole.

Due to my especially caustic and matter-of-fact nature, I outright insulted the music taste of a dear friend on Saturday, calling him, as I recall, “a type”, protesting that he only enjoyed pretentious alternative rock, and pinning down that he is obviously a big Radiohead fan. Which is all true. So why do I feel bad about saying it?

II. Kissing Cousins.

Besides the inherent way you relate to them, I think this is the big difference between having men for best friends (read: family without blood relation) instead of women:

You don't have very sexy dreams about one of your female friends that, while pleasant (read: hot.) at the time, upon awaking leave you feeling quite uncomfortable and possibly incestuous. At least, I don't have those kinds of dreams about my female friends.

I'm going to blame it on the drunk sleep and never speak of it again.

III. Vanilla Caramel Cologne

Even though it was Monday morning, 8 am class, I was excited about going to class this morning. I felt that the week was rich with possibility. I sat at one of the ridiculous constructed desk-and-chair-in-ones in the classroom and waited, taking out my new spiral notebook and pen, eager to learn.

We had a paper to hand back, and instead of having us pass them to the front from where we sat (which would have made so much sense and which I so wished had happened), my teacher invited us to walk up and hand them them in.

Standing from one of these previously mentioned desk-and-chairs has never been a very easy feat for me. It seems I possess the grace of a baby elephant in these circumstances, and today was no exception.

I made movements to stand. The desk wobbled. The coffee which sat on my desk wobbled, and tipped. Verona blend coffee and Vanilla Caramel coffee mate went all over my desk, all over my new notebook, but worst of all, all over the right side of my person.

I exclaimed “Shit!” at what I believe was a clearly audible level no doubt heard throughout campus, and stood completely, attempting to keep my cool. Covered in coffee, I approached my teacher, handed him my paper, and promptly left the room in search of paper towels.

I returned and attempted to clean up, but no matter how much I cleaned more coffee seemed to come from somewhere. Even when I did get everything up, the desk where I sat was sticky, and worse, I was sticky. And I smelled like coffee, an increasing unpleasant odor that begin to fill the room, or at least permeate the air around me in a way in which I couldn't escape it.

I had to pretend that this was a completely normal day for me, and when I left to go to my next class, I had to calmly walk down Baldwin Street, sunglasses and headphones on, smoking a cigarette, pretending that the coffee stain covering the right side of my torso was the new cool thing.

I can only hope that the school year will go up from here.