Friday, June 25, 2010

Link to Redemption

So, this guy I dated is a Christian. You might remember me writing about him before - he's the one who said he couldn't date me because I am a witch, but then two seconds later said it was because I was busy, and three seconds after that said it was because he was scared. Yeah, now you remember.

Well, he sent me an email with a link to some Christian lectures on the evils of witchcraft that he thought I should listen to. I told him thanks, but no thanks - I'd heard it all when I was involved with the independent fundamental Baptists, and didn't need to have my memory refreshed.

I ended the email by stating that the Christians also don't condone pre-marital sex, and asked him if he'd like me to forward him some lectures about that.

I still haven't received a reply. I wonder why?

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Wednesday By The Numbers

1) Every time J did something senior specialist-y to my work today, I felt tears of humiliation creep up. No, I didn't actually cry - crying is for sissies. And your mother. Word.

2) The phone rang, but I was nearest to my office phone with the broken Caller I.D. Do I answer and take a chance? Or let it ring? I answered and said, "I hope this isn't a telemarketer." The guy on the other end laughed. Turned out, it was the guy who hooked up my swamp cooler, which brings me to...

3) He told me that he didn't pay attention, and thought perhaps my swamp cooler was on top of my house, so he put his ladder up against my home and climbed on up. He said I'm missing a lot of shingles on my roof. Thank you, Universe. Any thing else you wanna do to screw me?

4) Speaking of screwing, on a whim I went to Goodwill after work. I looked in the protected glass cases to see if there was anything interesting and/or exciting. I saw a book I have on my Amazon wishlist: Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts. It had a big old sticker on it: Adults Only (hence it being in the locked case). I scratched my head. It's not porn. I asked to see it, just in case I was wrong. Nope. No nudie pics, no talk of positions, lube, or condom usage. It's just a book about being more womanly. I guess the people at Goodwill don't know how to read.

5) Dinner tonight was low carb flax seed tortilla chips, low carb guacamole, wine, and two squares of Lindt 85% chocolate. I think dessert will be another glass of wine.

p.s. I bought the book, but I guess if I want porn tonight I'll have to surf over to slutload dot com. At least it's free.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

It is Finished

“I don’t want to marry that girl!” This is what Todd said to me in August of 2009, on an afternoon when we got together for lunch. Lunch turned into sex. Sex turned into a conversation about regrets.

On that afternoon in August, Todd was frustrated and feeling cornered. Kim was forcing his hand. According to him, she first gave him an ultimatum regarding allowing her to move in. Once in, she gave him another ultimatum about marriage. He was frustrated and fearful and unloaded on me.

And I hate to say it: I was heartened. Maybe we would get back together. Maybe there was still hope for us. After all, that same afternoon he told me that she really didn’t even turn him on, and that he often thought about me when he masturbated. He said just the thought of me excited him, and that it took much more to get excited by her.

And yet… a part of me knew he had moved on. He had closed a door on us, because she wanted to have his baby. And be in business with him. And simply take care of him. I was never the nurturing kind. It taxed my energy to go through his depressive stages and deal with his lethargic nature and propensity to procrastinate. The lethargy and procrastination increased when he was depressed, and there times I felt like I was the only one contributing to the upkeep of the house.

But, she enjoys these things. And I have a feeling she thrives in this atmosphere. According to him, she only wants to make his life easier. And while I didn’t want to make his life harder, not at all, I believe I inadvertently did so.

“I don’t want to marry that girl!” I thought of that when I saw their wedding date posted publicly. It hasn’t even been a year since he uttered that sentence, and there it was in black and white: Todd and Kim are getting married. In fact, they did more than announce it – they filed for a marriage license.

I shook with loss after reading that. And yet, in all honesty, I knew this already. Intuitively. I had a dream about it in March, and another dream about it last week. You could say I knew without knowing. However, seeing the official evidence of it was jarring and upsetting and left me feeling like a failure.

I have never tried so hard to make something a success as I did with that relationship. He wanted me to be more this. More that. I did my best to be more this and that, to no avail. It still wasn’t good enough. I was still not enough.

He would often tell me that he loved me more than I loved him, and that bothered him. Twelve years later, I realize that all the time I was the one who loved him more. After all, I was the one who tried to make it work, despite all odds. Despite his disability. Despite his continued ambivalence about our future. But more than that, my love for him was unconditional. I loved him even though – and I never asked him to change.

“I don’t want to marry that girl.” I remember the frustration and anger in his voice when he almost yelled that sentence out. In fact, his emotional outburst surprised me. I hadn’t even asked about their relationship – and yet there it was. And when I thought about that outburst last night, I cried. Another lie – maybe to himself, but a lie nonetheless.

Why can’t I be over him? Why can’t I let go emotionally? Why does this still hurt so much?

I’m not sure I know all the answers, or maybe I do and I’m not ready to write them all out for fear the answers will expose me as being a loser. All I know is that when I read the news last night, I heard the door lock and I felt lonely, lost, and left behind.

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

First Child Syndrome

As many of you know, I've been working for a company since December 16th through Applied Staffing as a temp - almost six months for those of you who don't want to take out the calculator. A guy I work with started late March - today I was informed that we are both being hired on FTE.

This should be good news, right? Well, I guess it is - kind of. I mean, yay, benefits. But, at the same time I was informed that I would be taking over one of my co-workers duties, and he would be taking over H's.

I know this is Greek to you: Basically, what it means is that H., who used to be on the same channel, is a T2. As such, she has product launches that need to be off-loaded. Does the more experienced T1 (a.k.a. me, for those of you not in the know) get them? Nope. J gets them.

No wonder he was talking to me about T2 pay today - not only is he getting hired on, but it appears he is on track to be a T2.

And, yes, this upsets me, on several levels. One, that J is getting hired on after only two months, and it took them over five to make up their mind about me. Two, that even though I'm more experienced, they have more confidence in him to run a product launch.

Don't get me wrong: I love J, just like everyone else does. He's easy to like. Calm. Cool. Collected. Knowledge-wise, he's caught on quickly. But without intending to sound like the ugly step-sister, I know what he knows - and probably a bit more. The difference? I've made a few people unhappy on my team.

There are only two reasons why I know this: One, because J. gave me some gentle advice one day about a conversation he overheard after I left work one day. The guys (my whole team is guys - I am the only girl) were upset because I had disputed several Issue Noteds that were given to me.

What is an Issue Noted? It's a "training tool," used to identify mistakes made - which is sent to a QA Team, in the hopes that training would be built around commonly found mistakes. The other guys? When they get an Issue Noted, they move on. But when I get one due to faulty request details or incorrect information given to me, I send a return email back to the Issuer and the QA team, outlining why the mistake was made in the first place.

Simply put: The guys don't like having their part in the mistake highlighted.

I am not bitchy in these emails - I normally am as diplomatic as possible (for me) - but if I'm given the wrong information after I ask how to do a task, and that very same person who gave me the wrong information then writes me up for doing something incorrectly, well - let's just say homey don't play that game.

The reason I know this played into my FTE hiring being delayed and the T2 opportunity being given to J instead of me? Because my boss kind of let it slip - she said she knows that I take the Issue Noteds personally, and that the guys have come to her about that. She said she told them that they don't understand how "girls" feel - and that they tend to take criticism personally. I attempted to nip that in the bud.

I told her that I don't take them personally - and then I laughed and said that, well, not entirely true - in the beginning, when they were called Failed Audit or Failed Validation instead of Issue Noteds, I took them personally. I mean, who wants to see a big FAIL in their inbox when they get to work? But then I told her that yes, I realize the guys think I take them personally, but honestly, if they are the training tool we've been told they are, if X tells me to do something, and then X audits my work and says, "hey, you did this wrong," but I did it wrong because X told me to - well, then we both need to be trained, and the training issue doesn't lie solely with me.

My boss and J are Facebook friends. They IM on and off during the day, talking about movies and stuff. I know when it comes to personality, she simply likes him better. I can't fault her for that - I like him, too. He's a very likable guy. However, because he's so likable, I know that I am being punished for not being as likeable.

I know it takes a while for people to warm up to me. Believe me, I am self-aware. However, I feel that in this case, my work talents were overlooked because of a work relationship that became something more entangled - more personal. And also because J. doesn't dispute the Issue Noteds (even when he admitted to me that there were times he was also given bogus information) - he just rolls with the flow. So, the guys invite him to breakfast and IM him about game nights. But more than that, they used their power as T2s to influence his promotion over me.

I was in the Army, and for a couple of years, I was in a unit that was about 97% male. I know how the good old boy network works. And I feel as if I have been dumped right back into it. I could have taken J's advice and just kept quiet and ignored the bad information. Maybe if I had played nice, I would have gotten hired on sooner. Or been considered for the promotion.

But no - that's not me.

I have what I call First Child Syndrome - or as some people know it: Mommy likes you better than me. As a first child, life is just harder. Those are the scientific facts. Parents are harder on the first child. When they realize that the first child got through major events just fine, they ease up on the second child - they've become more comfortable with child rearing. Somehow though, that first child is still, well, going through firsts. By the time the second or the third comes on through, the parents have it down pat and have relaxed their discipline and their methods. However, this leaves the first child feeling as if Mommy and Daddy like the other kids better.

I went through my whole childhood thinking my parents loved my brother more than me. He got away with murder - I got away with nothing.

My brother was also smarter than me - and this isn't me being hard on myself - it's true. He was smarter. He was in the gifted minors program at school (I realize it's called something different nowadays, but back then that's what it was called). He had a high IQ. He made friends easily.

Life was never easy for me - in fact, I remember my mom saying to me once when I was young that I put in so much more effort than my brother ever did, and still everything came so much harder for me. She was talking about studies, but it really crossed over to everything, from taking me almost a year to learn how to tie my shoes to not being comfortable in my own shoes until I was in my mid-twenties.

At work, it is very clear that I am the ugly step-child. They don't hate me, but they haven't warmed up to me. And because I know this and can feel it, I am not comfortable at work - which just feeds into it.

So today, after being told I was being hired on FTE, instead of being happy, I found myself close to tears. My stomach was tied up in knots. J was going to be promoted - and here I was, six months into it, and still being thought of as the plodding team member, when in reality - if our work was compared side-by-side, it would show I get more done and get it done correctly more often than J. does.

I can't begrudge him this, though - I just wish Mommy liked me as much and saw my potential as well.