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Thursday, May 8th, 2008
I’m having a mid-20s crisis. I’ve been realizing lately that at two months shy of 27 years old, I’ve had surprisingly few periods in my life when I could say “Whateva, I do what I want,” like Cartman on my favorite episode of South Park. And suddenly - now that I’m supposed to be heading into the quieter, calmer, motherly, responsible time of my life, I’m feeling the urge to par-tay.
When I do get a chance to get out and about - like on my recent work beach trip or this past weekend when I went to visit my sister in Athens, and she gave me a guided tour of four of the town’s 42 bars - I don’t want the night to end. I’ve become known as the girl-who-doesn’t-want-to-go-to-sleep.
So I’ve been analyzing myself to figure out where these feelings are coming from, and I realized that I never really partied it up when I was young and single and practically required to be irresponsible. I’ve done surprisingly few “wild and crazy” things.
I didn’t realize just how mild-mannered I was compared with everyone else until I started reading a recent Comment Diversion at Pajiba: Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People on worst prom memories. I was shocked at all the wild shenanigans that went on at 90 percent of these people’s proms. While my proms somewhat sucked - both years my date fell through at the last minute and I ended up going with my also-single best friend, and at least a few people thought we were lesbians (which mortified me at the time, though now I wouldn’t care) - they were innocent affairs, with only the slightest hint of alcohol.
I was raised Southern Baptist, which made me feel guilty about virtually everything teenagers might enjoy. In the movie Grease, Rizzo could’ve been singing to me:
Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee
Lousy with virginity
Won’t go to bed till I’m legally wed
I can’t - I’m Sandra Dee!
And …
I don’t drink
Or swear
I don’t rat my hair
I get ill from one cigarette
Keep your filthy paws
Off my silky draws
Would you pull that crap with Annette?
I was constantly protesting being labeled a goody-two-shoes or a nerd, but in restrospect it’s clear I totally was.
Then I went to college and announced to my dormmates that I’d sworn off swearing for religious reasons (I was at the tail end of what I call my Turbo-Baptist phase). The sophomores snickered and said, “Ah, just wait. You’ll be cussing like a sailor by midterms.” And of course, they were right. Without my mother and regular Sunday services to make me feel guilty, I began a delicious spiral of sinning, doing most of the things I’d been too scared to do in high school.
Still, my sins were pretty minor. I only drank enough to make myself sick one time and promptly learned my lesson; I never had a fake ID; I never smoked even one cigarette; and I never tried pot or any other drugs. Nancy Reagan taught me well - when a joint was passed to me, I just said no and passed it on to the next person.
Then, the summer after freshman year, I met a handsome, church-going fella named Darwin. From then on my partying ways were put on the back burner because I was too obsessed with my future husband to do much else other than canoodle with him.
We got married when I was one month shy of 21. For my bachelorette party, my friends and I had to go to the next town over because they had some bars that let in people 18 and up.
In our first couple years of marriage, I didn’t feel like partying. I wanted to stay home with my hubby as much as possible. When I had to go on business trips, I’d pout and sometimes even cry in my hotel room because I missed Darwin so much. When I was home, I was clingy and complained mightily whenever he had obligations that took him away from me even for a few hours.
But over the years, I grew up and mellowed out and felt more confident in our relationship. I no longer felt insulted when he didn’t need to spend every waking second with me. I no longer needed to spend every waking second with him, either.
I changed in other ways, too. I stopped feeling guilty about religion stuff, I converted from someone who voted for Bush in 2000 to a Jon-Stewart-worshipping liberal, I decided marijuana should be legalized (even though I’ve still never tried it), I embraced my own and others’ nerdy/quirky tendencies, and I became much more open-minded in general.
So in a way I feel like I’m only just now becoming who I really am. That timid high schooler afraid she’ll go to hell for one of any number of minor infractions, that clingy newlywed completely dependent on her husband to entertain and fulfill her - they barely seem familiar to me anymore.
And this new person - this freer person - isn’t ready to settle into a routine for the rest of her life. I want to travel with and without Darwin, I want to meet new people, I want to stay up late having conversations, I want to write for real, and yes, I want to party it up a little bit. I’ve always been terrified of change, but now here I am longing for it, even going out and looking for it.
Trouble is, I think this restless person I’ve become lately makes Darwin a little nervous. Maybe even makes some of my other friends nervous. Okay, maybe even I’m a little nervous.
But that nervousness is also part of the thrill - at least it makes me feel awake.
posted by Kristin | filed under Commentary, Wishing, Extracurricular | 1 Comment
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
The good news: I’m feeling more at peace about quitting my job. I’m that much closer to the reality of leaving - I’ve even started cleaning up my disaster area of an office and my haphazard mass quantities of computer files. And I spent $52 filling up my car with gas today, so I’m pretty eager to reduce my commute from 40 miles to 40 feet.
The even better news: I’m going to the beach this week on my final work retreat. Sun and surf + alcohol + last hurrah with dearly loved co-workers = my idea of a good time.
Also, the website didn’t plummet into oblivion the moment I quit, like I feared. It’s speeding right along, in fact. Mom and Dad are each working 80 hours a week and eagerly awaiting the day when I can dedicate myself full time to assisting them.
Also, also, I’m going to see the musical “Into the Woods” this weekend, I met a potential new friend, my Internet friend S just did something very big and awesome, things between Darwin and me have been terrific lately, and he and I have made a no-fried-foods pact that we’re sticking to pretty well. My dress pants fit better already - not that I’ll need them! 
So today I am a happy camper. By the day after tomorrow I’ll be sunburned and crabby despite my best efforts, but for now I’m basking in the glow and ready to crank up my “beach songs” playlist.
posted by Kristin | filed under Travel, Extracurricular | 2 Comments
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
1 part terror (abject is best)
1 part relief
1 part excitement
1 part sadness
Shake well and serve.
I quit my job today. We all knew if/when the costume website started doing well enough, I would no longer have time for what essentially amounts to two full-time jobs, and of the two, the website would win. I was (and still am) excited about that prospect - working from home, being free to travel more, matching my schedule to Darwin’s so I can see him more, setting myself up for my someday future as a baby-making vessel, having more energy to exercise and more time to write fiction and, yes, even work on the house.
But now that the day is here, I’m more scared and sad than I expected to be. I got this job straight out of college as a wee babe of 21. It’s the first place I started going by my husband’s last name and the first place I had real responsibility. The first place where I had my own office that wasn’t just a space carved out of a storeroom, and the first place I got to give people assignments and make peace between warring parties and handle crises.
It’s the only real job I’ve ever had, and - while I complained about it mightily sometimes - it was really a pretty good one. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss, and over the years I’ve met so many nice people - both the people I’ve worked with and the people I’ve interviewed for stories, some of whom still call to chat or send me Christmas cards.
Also, I got to say I was a magazine editor. My senior year of high school I decided I wanted to be a magazine editor, and in college I was one of the few people I knew who never wavered from her chosen major - journalism. I loved everything about it then. I loved working at the college paper (I was a copy editor and then a designer), loved the frenetic newsroom and the late nights, loved tweaking a sentence to make it better, and best of all, loved piecing together a puzzle of quotes and information into a fine little story.
While editing the exact same kind of stories month after month for the past five years has killed the love a bit, I’m still sad to be leaving behind my chosen profession. I write all the copy for the costume website, I write this blog, I might do some freelance writing for my former job, and I hope to write more fiction, but officially I won’t be a journalist anymore.
Also, I’m sad to leave my friends at work, who I somehow didn’t realize I had so much affection for. Today a parade of people came through my office, all eyeing me sideways and saying, “I heard a rumor you’re leaving.” When I confirmed it, J sat silent in the chair and looked devastated. T said, “You’re one of the good ones.” C said, “Who will I go to now to talk about [fill in the blank]?”
Of course, it isn’t goodbye just yet. I will be going on one last work trip with them in a couple of weeks, and I will likely be in the office at least another month or two, since I said I’d stay on while they searched for my replacement.
But the truth is one day soon I will be gone. I’ve wanted so badly the independence of working from home, but now I wonder if I’ll be desperately lonely without my daily dose of heated movie discussions, whispered gossip sessions, tales of New Orleans vacations gone wrong, complaints about the sales people, and the same old quips we make every month about the more tedious sections of the magazine.
Now my only business contacts will be my parents, customers with questions, and sales reps on the other end of a phone line.
I’ll make an effort to keep in touch with my former co-workers by phone and e-mail - some people who left still manage to stay on the radar - but it won’t be the same.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m genuinely excited about the new job. The website offers me independence and a sense that my actions have a direct, positive result. If I add a new product and we sell one that same day (as has happened before), I know I’ve accomplished something. And the website is mine; it is my baby. I share in the profits, and I am a partner in decisions. If I want to try something new, I just try it and see what happens. Since I was a kid, I always fantasized about starting businesses and making money, so if you think about it, that actually predated my journalism dream.
In addition, I can save $200 a month on gas and have that hour and 20 minutes every day to do something else with. I can take a language course or a cooking class, and I can go walking with my neighbor in the mornings. I can revert to my natural night-owl tendencies and be productive in bursts separated by periods of doing whatever I want. And if things continue to go well, I’ll make more money doing it.
Still, I’ve never been fond of change, and this is the biggest change I’ve made since the one that landed me in this job in the first place. It terrifies me, and as it looms, the old way starts to have a hazy glow of nostalgia about it. Even compiling another new products section and editing another technical article begin to seem tragically romantic.
And the fear sets my mind churning with all the worst-case scenarios - the website could suddenly and inexplicably drop off the face of Google and sales could shrivel to a trickle, or I could be so lonely and depressed in this house alone that I could eat a pound of brownies every day and eventually have to be hoisted off the couch with a crane. Or even with plenty of time and no writing burnout, I still couldn’t finish so much as a short story, let alone muster up the courage/motivation to submit it for publication anywhere.
So now is where you say reassuring things - you’ll love working from home, you won’t miss oversleeping every day and being so late you have to put your make-up on in the car, you’ll love the independence, you’re saving the environment by not commuting to work. Anything, people, please. Make the bad thoughts go away.
posted by Kristin | filed under Extracurricular | 12 Comments
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
We’ve been having trouble with the gutter over the back steps since we moved in, which was more than three years ago now.
Twice already, Darwin has installed temporary fixes to delay the inevitable gutter replacement, but for the past few months whenever it rains, it pours - literally. Right out of the split seam of the rotting, rusting, green-tinged bottom of the gutter, right onto the brick steps.
This is a bad situation for many reasons:
1. You get dirty water dumped on your head when you try to enter or exit the house after any rainstorm.
2. The mortar is being pummeled out from between the bricks.
3. All the moisture is causing a layer of fuzzy green to grow on that side of the steps.
4. It’s a rotting, rusting, green-tinged piece of metal right over the main entrance - not pretty.
5. Water + foundation = very, very bad.
It’s to the point where this gutter could spell doom for our entire house if we don’t replace it. And with the warm, wet Alabama spring already well underway, it’s high time we did something about this mess. Trouble is, we’re being our usual indecisive selves - should we hire a company to come out? Will they even come for one little gutter? Should we hire a handyman? Should Darwin attempt to replace it himself? How does one even replace a gutter? Can one be bought? How much does it cost?
I need to do some research, but with what time? I’m already working essentially two full-time jobs, an issue which is about to come to a head. Maybe one day soon I will be able to concentrate again and finish up some projects around this hovel.
posted by Kristin | filed under Exterior | 10 Comments
Monday, March 24th, 2008
I’m traveling so much lately that my one-at-a-time unlimited Netflix plan is going completely to waste. In the past month, I’ve been to Munich and Las Vegas, and I’m leaving tomorrow for Louisville, Kentucky.
Not that I’m complaining. Okay, maybe I’m complaining a little. My first trip was fun, but the other two are strictly work-related and were/will be jam-packed with activity. I’m already tired, and I have four days of work and suitcase-living ahead of me, away from my hubby and my animals.
And yet I keep daydreaming about all the trips I want to take. We’re going to Amsterdam in a couple of months, and I’d love to go back to New Orleans, and my sister and I want to go to Washington, D.C., and I want to go back to NYC, this time with Darwin.
Then there are all the projects we need to get finished around the house once the weather turns warm. Then, before I know it, Halloween will be back and I’ll be completely insane.
So I guess I should just get used to a faster pace. Fewer days lounging on the sofa, less time watching TV, less time in a squishy office chair - guess that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’ve actually lost 6 pounds lately without much effort. If this Easter candy from Mom doesn’t sabotage me, I’m on track to get a little healthier while I get my frequent flyer miles.
