Cat's City Life

I dropped Roo off after a day of shopping, headed home and did something I basically never do: I turned off my phone. I’m always reachable. I have about fourteen different modes of communication on my phone, everything from email to texts to Twitter. Not to mention a good old fashioned phone call. Plus, my computer is usually on and within arm’s length if I’m home. But last night, I cut off all modes of communication, popped a couple pain pills and curled up on the couch next to my mom with a book. I didn’t want to talk to a single soul, and since Mama usually nods off over her paper somewhere around 10PM, there wasn’t much chance of my being disturbed.

It wasn’t just the fact that I had a headache the size of Texas or that a guy I’d just met was pestering me with texts (I told you, super interested). It was my fault really. I solicit opinions when I don’t know what to do. And a guy that is oddly interested in me is a situation that I certainly don’t know how to handle. So I asked everyone from my mother to Taz to Roo for advice. And they gave it. And then my head exploded.

They were basically all saying the same thing: that he appeared to be a nice guy who I should give a chance. But as much as I trust all their opinions and believe they wouldn’t steer me wrong, my gut just would not agree. And the more advice I heard, the more my instincts asserted themselves and demanded an argument. Yeah, I’m incredibly pleasant to be around when I have a problem. Eventually, my friends and family offered their final opinions (which more or less amounted to “fine, don’t do anything you nutter) and basically told me to shut up. So I did…sort of. More like I shut them up by cutting off my communication hubs. I needed a minute to listen to my gut without all the outside opinions and figure out what was going on in my own head besides explosions.

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I met a guy. I met a guy at a club and he was sweet and funny and he treated me like a lady, asked for my number, and didn’t try anything funny. We danced and we laughed and I left. He didn’t even try to kiss me. Then he texted me to make sure I got home okay, said goodnight and asked if we could hang out the next day before I caught my train to spend the weekend upstate with the family. He was nice and polite with just a hint of cheekiness and he’s doing the whole pursuing me thing. And it totally freaked me out.

Usually spontaneity is my best friend. So when Bee and I wrapped up at our second bar of the night, not quite ready to go home, it seemed perfect that the guy she’s seeing wanted to meet at a west side club. We sucked up the heel-induced pain and hopped the A train uptown. I wanted to meet her guy, dance, and possibly indulge in a little flirtation. Guys at clubs generally aren’t my type, seeing as how clubs aren’t even my type, but a dance and a drink could be fun. So I third-wheeled it a bit until Bee had imbibed enough to forget the holy heel pain Batman and we hit the dance floor.

Now, there’s something you should know about me and Bee. When the two of us are together, we act like complete fools. It’s part of the reason we’re friends: we get each other’s silliness. So while with Roo, dancing is a hip-shaking, cha-chaing kind of affair, with Bee it’s just slightly short of a night at the Roxbury. There were silly faces, fist-pumping, and even a little faux girl on girl grinding. All in good fun, but not the type of thing to really attract the fellas. Of course, all that fun is exhausting so we eventually found a seat and parked ourselves in a corner to ease the pain in our toes and toast to our crazy amazing dance skills. Or, that was the plan. Until a guy in a jacket and tie waved me over with a smile.

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Do you remember that part in Harriet the Spy when all her classmates find out she’s been spying on them and writing all about it? I think I might be remembering that wrong, but it’s close enough for the lesson of the day, which is: if you don’t have anything nice to say, make sure your blog really is anonymous and doesn’t randomly post to your Facebook wall because WordPress is colluding with the universe and its crazy sense of humor. Point being that the post I wrote yesterday, you know the one that none too subtly bashed the job I just quit? Yeah, it somehow made its way to Facebook, even though my blog is purposely not connected to my Facebook account. But through the magic of the internet, secret’s out and though it’s been great for blog publicity, I’m kind of freaking out about it. You know, especially since I found out about it because my ex-boss sent me an email in which she quoted back to me certain passages from said blog post. Yes, my life is apparently a really crappy movie.

And after panicking, removing the post from Facebook and holing up in my apartment with a box of doughnuts (which completely negated the hour and a half I spent at the gym that morning) I started to really think about what just happened. Because despite the initial horror at having my “secret” out, and then annoyance that my boss had the stones to point it out to me, there was also a slight tinge of excitement. I mean yes, I got busted and I deserved it in some sense. I thought I could get away with talking shit about a situation and a person because I was hiding behind a pseudonym. So the universe in its infinite wisdom and mischief took away my mask and reminded me that every thought, every word, and every action has weight. And my boss proved herself to be the bigger person by taking my complaints and instead of throwing back her own, swallowing the sentiment and pointing out that I’m a good writer and I should do something with it. Yeah, that’s right. I was a bitch and she totally rose above it. In the karma department, she totally wins and I’m a cockroach right now.

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It’s been a bit of a weird week…and it’s only Wednesday. My job has slowly been eating away at my soul, breaking me down day by day until I dreaded even getting out of bed. I know, drama queen much? But it’s true. I sat in a concrete box high on fluorescent lights and low on windows for hours on end, tapping away at a computer and pretending like this was actually helping me with my life. And then it became too much. There’s only so far faking it can get you. So I quit. Yes, just like that. Yes, in this economy. No other job lined up, no real plan, I just did it. Irresponsible? Maybe. I’m sure that’s what my mom would say, you know…if I had told her…which I haven’t. That’s probably not my best move ever, but I’ll figure it out.

There are a lot of ways to look at this, one of which is that I couldn’t deal with things and just gave up. No job is absolutely perfect, there’s always going to be something that is hard or annoying or just not quite right. That’s why it’s work and not lazing around doing whatever the hell you want. So maybe I should have just sucked it up and pushed through the hard parts. After all, this was supposed to be great experience right? It was supposed to build up my resume so I could get the job that was better, that was less bad, that had fewer sucky parts to it. It’s called paying your dues…right? Except that in that sense, I’ve been paying my dues since I graduated from college and those dues have seen zero returns to date. Instead, I had slowly begun to wonder if this was all I was worth, if I had risen as high as I could go and that for the next forty years of my working life would be spent on the same level of crappy dissatisfaction. And then I cracked.

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“So when do you have time to date?” The question came in the middle of a conversation that covered everything from work to grad school to how I keep my apartment clean (the answer is barely). With all these things going on, it made sense to ask a single woman where dating fits in. But for me, the simple answer is…it doesn’t. In the last year or so, I’ve mainly taken a “take it or leave it” approach to dating. And more often than not, it’s been “leave it”. While my friends regale me with stories of the latest dates they’ve been on or the guy they’re talking to online, my guy stories have mainly begun, “well, I met him at this bar.” And with very few exceptions, I’ve been okay with that. Occasionally I’d start moaning (usually to Roo) that I wanted to be wined and dined, to have a well-dressed guy take me out for a night on the town. I might even begin to think that I wanted a relationship, to be loved, and to find a guy I could make that leap with. But inevitably, these bouts of romantic desire would end with a shrug and the declaration that it could all wait until I had a better job, better wardrobe, smaller waistline, or whatever the excuse of the week happened to be. After all, I didn’tneed a man and I had no desire to waste my time with thed-bags that seem to populate dating sites these days.

So I would bury myself in my work (or search for better work), schoolwork, writing, socializing, alone time, or whatever else I felt was important at that moment. Dating, along with things like “(re)learn Spanish” and “make a new dress” just fell to the bottom of the list, because they’re not all that important. But sometimes, I feel like I’m missing something. When my friends gather at the bar to recount their latest dates, analyze the potential of said guy, or discuss the merits of the dude they’re currently talking to online, I shrug and offer my input but don’t have much else to contribute. It seems like too much work to cruise sites, exchange awkward online messages, show up for a first date not even sure you know what the dude looks like, then hope things click and he wants to go out again. And for what, a free meal? I’m unconvinced.

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sodamnrelatable:

via sodamnrelatable

Boom. Sexy

(Source: ariiellelovee)