free time

Classes have been over for nearly three weeks now (graduation is on Saturday!) and I'm sort of settling in to the fact that I don't ever have to write another paper, take another exam or go to another class.  Well, the "go to another class" bit is probably a joke because there are a million things I want to learn, just not as part of an academic program.  I have to admit the first week off was kind of rough.  I gave myself a week off from everything - no job search, no volunteering, nothing I "have" to do.  It's been so long since I've had time like that, that I forgot how miserable I am without structure.  Weeks two and three "off" have been a lot better now that I have a bit of a routine.

I had intended to start volunteering a shift at the food bank after my first week off.  Unfortunately I burned the shit out of my finger while roasting some tofu and two weeks later, I can almost start my car, hold a pen and moisturize my face without crying from the pain.  So stretching my fingers to lift and haul boxes of food has been out of the question until I'm healed.  I'm hoping to be able to wear my rings again by graduation.  I also managed to get my semi-annual flu during my second week off and that has put a bit of a damper on my usual go-go-go nature.  The silver lining here is that my dad got a nasty infection in his leg and was hospitalized for a week.  Having time off meant I could visit him a couple of times and chauffeur him home when he was released (and get the Worst Relationship Advice Ever Given! - a story for another day).  My dad is getting old and he's not handling it well so I'm not keen on spending time with him which makes me feel like a jerk (another story for another day).

One of the best things about having free time is that I am spending more time with D!  By the end of my last semester we were down to only spending a couple of hours together on Wednesday night to watch a movie and a couple of hours together on Sunday for a walk in the park.  We both hated this and I hated that it was my schedule that was keeping us from being a normal couple.  Now we're spending several evenings together and spending all day on Saturday together and I've re-remembered how much I love spending time with D and how much fun we have together.  D works a lot so a few of our evenings have been spent doing mundane things like going to Costco or to the Apple store for work purchases.  I've never been part of a relationship where all time spent together hasn't been a Big Deal Event with a planned activity so I like that we're doing things that I've always observed other couples doing. 

I started my job search two weeks ago and I'm trying to not freak out about it.  Basically, I get up, I exercise and then I sit down at my computer and spend the morning working on my resume and my LinkedIn profile, searching for jobs and sending out resumes.  It took me a while to be able to articulate what I was looking for and articulate my skill set but I'm pretty happy with the story that I'm now telling about my career and goals.  It's hard not to pay attention to stories of "it took me two years to find a job!" without panicking a little.  It's going to take a very special company to look at my resume and see beyond the "L word" (librarian) and hire me.  I know that I can do whatever is put in front of me and kick ass while doing it.  The good news is that while there haven't been a ton of jobs out there that I can apply for, the ones that I have applied for have been *perfect*, like seriously PERFECT.  Hopefully those companies will think I'm perfect for them too :-)  I have a fee networking dates and events in the next couple of weeks so I'm looking forward to working on those skills too.

Free time has been nice, but I don't have a paycheck or a lot of extra funds to "do" much and it would be nice to have someone to hang with during the day.  It's definitely a weird position to be in, one that I've never been in before.  I've either been in work or in school or both since I was 14. I needed the break; I just don't want the break to last all summer.  I (and my wallet) would love to start a new job after the July 4th holiday so we'll see . . . .

MWF seeking BFF

I am not the "MWF" in question of the title of this post.  The title refers to a kind of annoying and kind of insightful book I just read by Rachel Bertsche.  This is a "faux-oir", ie a fake memoir where someone decides to change a habit for a year and then gets a book deal out of it.  (I didn't come up with this term; a review I read of MWF seeking BFF did - I wish I were clever enough to have thought of it!).  Bertsche moves to Chicago with her husband, and after two years realizes that she has nothing approximating the BFF ("best friend forever") relationships that she has with friends from youth summer camp or high school (Bertsche is 28 and I don't think she uses the term "BFF" with irony) and embarks on a year long search for a new BFF in which she will go on 52 "dates" with women.

This was a pretty annoying read.  Bertsche actually has a number of friends.  Though her BFFs live in other cities she is in constant communication with them and sees them a few times throughout the year.  Her BFFs introduce Bertsche to numerous friends, some of whom she hits it off with.  Bertsche also has a group of work friends and semi-regular couples dates with friends of her husband.  And she's constantly running into people she knows from her alma mater (Northwestern) or her sorority.  So it's not like she's alone, living in Chicago without knowing a soul.  Bertsche defines a BFF as someone who she can call and just say "What's the plan for today?" without making formalized plans.  It's the intimacy that she has with her her two BFFs from summer camp and high school that she wants to replicate within the year of the experiment.  Bertsche's desperation to achieve this level of BFF intimacy is palpable and she's too immature to recognize that you simply cannot go from a first meeting to a 16 year history in the course of a three hour date.

Despite how annoyingly Bertsche is, she actually does make some interesting points about friendships and I've been thinking about my own approach to friendship since I finished the book.  Her points:

• It is really hard to feel like you don't have friends.  Bertsche's perception is that she doesn't have friends.  I don't think this is true, but I'll go with it for the sake of my argument.  If you feel like you are alone or if you feel lonely, it's the same as being alone or being lonely. 
• While a mate can provide many things, a mate cannot and should not be everything.  As Bertsche says "You can't complain about your husband to your husband."  I love D and my life is vastly improved for having him in it, but we had a gigantic fight last week that I would have given the world to have run the fight by another woman.  
• Making friends is like dating.  The first date is all about sizing up the other woman.  Do you have anything in common?  Do you have compatible personality types?  Is there enough there to want to see them again?  Bertsche shares research that you need to see a friend twice a week for two months before you can consider someone a friend.  After this amount of time in the dating world, you either cut them loose or you're in it for the long hall.  
• You have to be willing to take chances.  Bertsche literally tries everything to make friends - introductions, meetup groups, online friend matchmaking (like match.com for friends), religious organizations, approaching waitresses and sales clerks with offers of lunch, etc.  You have to be persistent.  You also have to be able to put yourself out there to make the first move.  It was surprising to see how many women would respond to Bertsche's overtures with a "Yeah, I don't know that many people either."  And you have to be prepared to do a lot of follow up and take the onus of doing the followup.  People are busy and overbooked and overscheduled and the easier you make it to be friends (at first), the easier it will be to reach the friend level.
• Distance is really important when making friends.  Sure, social media allows us all to stay "connected" but it's hard to achieve a level of intimacy when your relationship is relegated to reading one another's posts on facebook.  I made some good friends when I first moved back to MA but once I moved away our fledgling friendships all but disappeared.  If it's hard to stay friends with someone who's not in your immediate geographic area then it's doubly hard to start a friendship long distance.
• Food and drink are natural friendship enhancements.  It's so easy to bond over a favorite restaurant or bad service.  Most of Bertsche's dates take place at bars or restaurants.  After a while I started to wonder how she could afford to go on 6 or 7 such dates a week!  And I considered my own challenges in that I don't drink and have some food allergies that make casual food outings a little difficult.  I have an acquaintance who once turned to me (once it became obvious that I was the only one in a group of people who had just seen a movie together that had not been invited to the post-movie dinner) and said "I would have invited you but I didn't think you would be able to eat anything."  I am sure this was a cover-up for not inviting me in the first place (and an obnoxious one at that - did I mention that this person is an "acquaintance" and not a "friend"?), but the remark stung just the same.  How many other people look at me and think "Doesn't drink.  Allergic to everything.  Not worth the time."?  If they got to know me, they'd know that I love a good cup of tea, am always up for Asian food and that it's often not the food I'm interested in but the company. 
• Yoga is not a great place to meet people.  Bertsche observes "for a discipline all about nonjudgement, [the women in her yoga class] seem oddly unapproachable."  If I had a dollar for every conversation I tried to strike up with a women in one of my yoga classes only to be ignored or shot down, I could afford to buy the ridiculously expensive yoga outfits that everyone seems obsessed with!

Though I found Bertsche to be annoying I couldn't help rooting for her and I am glad that she wove the friend-making lessons into her story of trying to make friends in a new city.  I've been out of the game for the past two years, after I moved an hour away from where I worked and then started grad school and I have felt very very lonely.  Grad school doesn't exactly have the best schedule to make friends; most of my classes are at night (when everyone else is free) and weekends are spent working, writing papers and meeting with your groups.  Now that I'm done with school, I would love to make some friends.  A BFF isn't a requirement, but it would be nice to have someone to take a class with, knit or sew with or go to lunch with (I am more like a man than Bertsche - I need an activity to focus around rather than jumping head first into revealing my soul).  I also see more clearly which "friends" I'd like to cultivate more and those friends who I need to let go of (if someone tells you they're "always up for doing things" but never makes the first move and takes weeks to get back to you if they do at all, then it's safe to say that you're not going to BFFs).  I don't think I'm going to embark on a year long search for a BFF but it would be nice if, a year from now, that I had some social engagement outside of D or my family.

Done!

Around noon today, I submitted my last paper for my MBA program.  I'm done!!!  I got my MBA!!!  Considering how stressful and chaotic the past two years have been, the end of the journey was strangely anticlimactic.  My last class was on Thursday night.  There were three groups presentations, we filled out our evaluations and with that, I was done with all of my classes.  When I left class on Thursday night, I had just two papers left, both of which I finished and submitted this morning. 

It feels very weird to think that I have nothing I *have* to do.  Sure, there are things that I want to do, but in the back of my mind and in the back of my to do list, I don't have readings, cases, papers, exams or class preparations to do.  It feels very freeing but at the same time, very unfamiliar.  My plan is to give myself the week off to reset and then search for a job full-time.  I've sent out only two resumes so I'm a little anxious about not finding a job by the time my insurance runs out in August.  However, I know that if I were to jump into the search with no break, I would be pretty useless; I need the time to get bored with having free time before I can start looking for a job with all cylinders firing.  So I'll spend the week doing some cleaning that I've neglected for months, doing some cooking, going to yoga, going for walks, doing some sewing and knitting and spending time with D.  Or I may just spend the entire week taking a nap every afternoon simply because I can. 

In the next couple of weeks I'll reflect on the MBA program.  It was really an amazing experience, one that I am super happy I did.  Getting an MBA was one of the hardest things I've ever done and while I suffered immensely while I was in the middle of it, it makes me all the more proud of myself that I finished.  I got my MBA!!!!!  :-)

sewing blog - change

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that a while back I created a separate sewing blog. I've made some changes to the name and URL. It can now be found here.
(http://whennatashasews.blogspot.com/) If youfound it before through Google, it may take a couple of days for the crawler to catch up. Until then, just click on the link in this post. In May, when I can breathe again, I'll explain everything :-)

4 weeks

There are officially 4 weeks left of the semester. I cannot wait. I have so much to do and I am just so so so tired of it all. I can't remember what it's like to relax without having a million things in the back of your head just waiting to be done. It's mentally exhausting.

The good news is that on Friday I was just cleared by the registrar to graduate. In order to do two internships my professor had to give me a hold over grade for last semester which gave me a "graduation block". The professor just released the grade and barring mass global destruction (ie spectacularly failing all of my classes) it looks like I am going to walk across the stage and get my fake diploma on May 22! When I think about this moment I have to admit that I get a little teary. Part of it is from wanting it all to be over so badly and part of is is from recognizing how damn hard I've work these past two years and realizing how much I've learned and how much my thinking about business has changed. I am incredibly incredibly proud of myself.

My last class started yesterday. It's a 4-week class (and bonus for me, I mis-read the syllabus and thought it was a 5-week class but yay! it's only 4) that meets all day on the next three Saturdays and one Friday night. The class is in nonprofit management and I really liked the teacher and it was nice to have so many experienced (read that as older, more mature) students in the class. The class is in the Masters of Public Administration degree program so I'm one of the only MBA students there. And boy is it obvious that I think about nonprofits like a "business" while they think of nonprofits as "groups that do good"! I'm glad I saved this one for the end.

The only rough spot ("only"!?! hahahaha) right now is the job search. I would love love love to work at my internship as a real, full-time employee after graduation. I'm doing some interesting work and I like the company and I think I would be a good fit for them. My boss and I danced around this topic a couple of weeks ago so I am in a show-them-how-awesome-I-am-and-what-an-asset-to-the-company mode which is kind of stressful. I just got onto a pretty big project with a few VPs that will start next week and I'm really excited for this opportunity to shine. On the other hand, I simply have not had any time to even look for any other jobs, much less send out any resumes, so if it doesn't work out I'm looking at a whole lot of (new) stress immediately after graduation. I'm sure everything will work out but right now I just want to punch a couple of my super smug classmates that already found jobs that keep saying "You've got to do something now - what do you mean you haven't been looking?!!?" Yeah, like I need to hear that all that time.

4 weeks.

retired

I sold my triathlon wetsuit on Friday. My last race was in April 2008. I am officially retired from triathlon. I have no idea why I held on to it so long. When I moved back to New England I had grandiose ideas that I would join the local triathlon scene here and continue on in a sport that meant a great deal to me while living in SoCal. When I drove across country I found I didn't really miss my bike. Running has always been my true love so I was happy for the opportunity to run more. The summer I arrived in New England was the summer of crazy rain storms where the sky would just open up for a few hours in the afternoon and drench everything. I've never been crazy about riding in the rain. By the time fall came around I was ready to ride. I rode a few times but the riding is different here. The roads are in bad shape and there aren't miles of bike paths; you ride with cars, in traffic. I thought about finding a pool but never did. The swim was always my least favorite part of triathlon.

And yet, I still thought of myself as a triathlete and still fantasized about racing again. I would see groups of triathletes out for a group ride and think that I was still like they were, that I would be joining them just as soon as I ran out of excuses. The more time that passed, the less I wanted to be part of it all. It's like I knew that moving back east was the end. Triathlon was such a big part of my life in California. I loved it. I loved training and racing and being part of something bigger than myself. And I loved being fit and strong and knowing that I could accomplish just about any physical task that came my way. But I didn't like how crazy it made me, how easily it fed into my obsessive nature and how little time it left for anything else. I had to take a break after my bike crash and I found it really hard to get back into it afterwards and then I became preoccupied with getting out of California. It would be too easy to make a big metaphor out of all of this and say subconsciously that I was just ready for a Big Change and was ready to leave triathlon behind, but I think it's kind of true.

Change is hard and giving up something that was essentially my identity for seven years is really hard. So I held on to my wetsuit and silly fantasies about racing again, or even riding my bike again. But the passion I once had for the sport never came back and it just became absurd to look at my wetsuit hanging in my closet every time I went to get my coat. So I posted it on CraigsList and sold it to a women who said she was going to trash it while caving. It's bittersweet. I am glad to put that part of my life behind me but it's also a little hard to let go. Aside from school and all the related stress, I am generally in a good place. I'll never do another triathlon again and I am happier for it.

the winter that wasn't

Last winter we got a million feet of snow. Seriously. Every time I turned around we'd get another foot. It was brutal. This winter has made up for all of last winter's pain and suffering. We got a freak snowstorm on Halloween weekend (and to be fair, the accumulation in my area lasted about 30 seconds), and another few inches in January. That's it. Sure, there have been many threats of snow but we've gotten more sunshine than anything else. I've loved every minute about it.

The thing about there not being snow is that the ground never freezes. And if the ground never freezes then the bulbs get a little seasonal confusion and start to grow in mid-February. The crocuses and daffodils around my complex are ready for spring. Me too.

(note: all pictures were taken on February 19)