Archive for the ‘My quarter-life crisis’ Category
Money talks
Thursday, 4th September, 2008I was supposed to be flying to New Delhi today, which is a depressing thought, but on the bright side, I’m starting a new job on Monday. Cue joyous celestial choir.
It’s a change of sector, but still business/financial journalism, and even better, the starting salary is exactly 50% more than I was making before, effectively solving all my financial problems. So it seems the redundancy did me a favour, although I guess it remains to be seen whether I can actually do the job. It’s certainly good for the ego that after the interview the managing editor went back to the guy at the recruitment agency and offered more money than he’d pitched.
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
He phoned me today to ask for my references and said the managing editor, a woman I liked immediately, was really impressed with my writing test and suggested I may have set the bar high for myself. Oh yes, there was a 45 minute writing test and a 12 minute maths test (no calculator just to torture me) on Monday morning. By the time I got to the interview I was a nervous wreck, but clearly nervous energy can be good too.
So it’s a slightly odd week; I’m just floating around in adrenaline and expectation counting down to my first day.
Last night a friend and I went to check out Hell Pizza in Fulham and their promise of gluten-free bases. We gorged ourselves on yummy gourmet pizzas — piled high with decidedly non-vegan ingredients like chorizio, chicken, and smoked cheddar — and agreed we’ll definitely be going back. Pizza is something I miss desperately on my wheat ban, so the place was a great find. Stuffed, we strolled down the road to The Arbiter, a pub with a fab cocktail menu, to drink to my newfound employment.
A Lesson in Survival*
Sunday, 24th August, 2008Today I am 27, at the tail end of one of the worst weeks of my life. I’m jobless, broke, and if I don’t find a new employer within the next couple of months I’ll also be homeless for the trifecta.
And to think, this time last week I was about to book flights for a business trip.
Miss J phoned me this afternoon and used the opportunity to encourage (prod, cajole, tell) me to get myself a Canadian work visa and move in with her in Toronto. Maybe this is my chance for a complete change of pace, lifestyle, direction. The jury is adjourning to a back room in the recesses of my mind to consider the motion.
The following has been around for a while but it’s doing the rounds on tumblr this week and the timing couldn’t be more perfect:
Surviving Your Twenties
They call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.” It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.
One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person. Random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!
What you may not realize is that everyone reading it, relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.
==========
*Lyrics to the Joni Mitchell song begin:
Lesson in Survival
Spinning out on turns
That gets you tough
Guru books-the Bible
Only a reminder
That you’re just not good enough
The rug, it has been pulled
Thursday, 21st August, 2008I have had a headache since Monday afternoon. No, it’s not entirely because of the multiple G&Ts and mojitos I’ve consumed since then.
As of tomorrow, I no longer have a job.
A job that was supposedly sending me to India in two weeks.
Hence the booze.
It feels as if I’ve been suspended upside down all week, just like I literally was on Monday evening — hanging off the edge of my mother’s settee with my head dangling to the floor, a return to a forgotten childhood habit.
The week has dragged on interminably: Monday with its out-of-left-field HR meeting and a subsequent escape to the pub with a pair of supportive colleagues; Tuesday with sympathy calls and a long lunch to pass time before a second meeting; Wednesday spent at home sprawled out with my laptop writing a new CV; Thursday a forgotten plug adapter and a final meeting delayed leaving me twiddling my thumbs. Brings a new meaning to TGIF.
I feel like such a fool for my excited blathering about India, for calling an editor on Friday about booking flights and extending my stay. The unusable visa in my passport is mocking me, my dreams of India shattered.
I’m relieved I didn’t buy any of the guidebooks I looked at over the weekend.
I feel humiliated for telling a colleague on Monday morning who asked about my health how fortunate I was to have this job where I could frequently work from bed if the pain was too much.
I feel annoyed by the way the names of those of us being made redundant was announced on a company-wide conference call from the U.S. office mere hours after our initial meetings.
I am still numb, feeling my way out of this week and a routine of close to five years towards a new start. I try not to think about what will happen to my flat if I run out of money before I find a new employer.
And yet in the midst of the wreckage I have a new friendship, a confidante who called this evening to check on me and ended up inviting me over for mojitos and meandering, comfortable conversation. We ate ice cream and shared stories. I walked the 10 minutes home in the rain grateful for her arrival in my life, a lifeboat in a choppy sea of uncertainty.
Regression
Monday, 14th July, 2008I feel such a huge sense of regression. I didn’t even realize it until those words came into my mind, unbidden, as I lay here working my way through my neglected Feedreader.
I was doing so well — going into the office every day, ratcheting up my productivity, having something of a social life, coming up with new vegan dishes to cook.
Then one day it all came apart.
The pain has inexorably returned, curving violently around the base of my spine to my hip bone, crawling down my leg to pull at the nerves in my toes. I lose my will get out of bed, when it’s like this. If it wasn’t for my laptop and a broadband connection, I’d have been unemployed a long time ago. Instead I’m just in exile.
I haven’t wanted to go out, talk to people, even on those days when it’s not so bad. It’s even worse when I do want to. This weekend an old friend was having a party while I lay on my mother’s settee whining like a child about the pain shooting through the right side of my body. Sitting in my fridge is a bottle of white wine I’d bought to take with me. But as the day drew on and my ability to put weight on my right foot diminished, I knew it was destined for a different story, for a night at home alone with TV and takeaway.
It’s about the only thing in my fridge right now, aside from a red pepper and some long out-of-date olive oil spread. I haven’t had the ability or the inclination to go to the supermarket and I was living on Oatibix till I ran out of oat milk. I avoided my dilemma by spending the weekend at my mother’s, where food was brought to my permanent location on the settee, but I’m home now, and feeling nauseous from a day subsisting on leftover cinema sweet popcorn and a bumper bag of Swizzels Matlow “assortment of children’s favourite sweets”. (Fizzers, oh how I’ve missed you.)
It feels so much like a defeat this time. I don’t want to deal with people because I don’t want to deal with the “how are you question” after disappearing for a couple of weeks, but I don’t want to say “I’m fine” and move on because I can’t block out the pain enough to have normal social interaction.
Last night I found a temporary solution — after a long soak in a bath so hot beads of sweat poured down my reddened skin, there was a marginal improvement and I limped off to the cinema with The Bookworm to see The Edge of Love. Watching a film in the dark doesn’t require any effort of conversation on my part and I can just be, there in the dark with a whole other story unfolding before my eyes, captivating my attention.
Of course, sitting for over two hours is likely part of the reason for the stabbing ache overwhelming me tonight. I’d down a painkiller or two if I had some food to take them with.
A blast from the past
Sunday, 30th December, 2007Yesterday I unexpectedly ran into someone I haven’t seen for a couple of years, and not so unexpectedly it’s brought up some memories and emotions I’d rather forget.
It’s not that it wasn’t good to see her — as a close friend of my mother’s she was in my life for a long time and in some ways had a formative influence on me — it’s that she sees me through the distorted lens of my mother’s creation.
As much as I dislike stereotypes, I have a stereotypical relationship with my mother, an ongoing struggle characterised by miscommunication, misunderstanding, and resentment. I might have lived in her house for over 20 years, but it’s clear from repeated episodes over recent years that she does not know who I am. And to be honest I don’t know what makes her tick either.
Her friends regard me with a curious tentativeness, wondering how I could be such a horrible, ungrateful person when that sainted woman raised me and my brother by herself. I don’t care what she told most people about me, but it hurt that this person never seemed to consider that my mother might be less than objective in telling her side of the story.
So many times I would sit at the top of the stairs listening to her in the living room telling people either on the phone or in person what a “nasty bitch” I was. I didn’t think I was being a bitch — I thought I was saying it wasn’t helping any of us that she would constantly play me and my brother off against each other, or that I was frustrated that nothing I ever did seemed to be good enough. But once I became a teenager I wasn’t allowed to have a legitimate complaint about anything because it was invariably dismissed as mood swing-induced whining. Because as far as I can tell my mother has never been wrong about anything, ever.
No matter what I do in my work, or where I live, or how effusive I am about my travel experiences, I will always be made to feel like some kind of failure as a human being because I don’t care about being tidy 100% of the time. When she came over the day I had surgery in October she simply had to get in a dig about how messy the place looked with Frenchie staying in the living room. And by “messy” she meant that there was a quilt and pillows folded up at one end of the settee.
What helped me come to terms with the way things are with my mother has been my relationship with Miss J. My mother might be unable to tell me she’s proud of me or say those three words we all need to hear, but Miss J fills that need; she hugs me, expresses her pride in me, ends our conversations in “I love you” with an ease that moves me and enables me to say it back. She is my self-appointed “Canadian Mom”. It’s just a shame that she’s 3,000 miles away.
I don’t think I actually realised how messed up my relationship is with my mother until I came back from my year studying in Toronto. A few weeks later we were sitting around with this friend and a few other people and my mother came out with the most absurd comments, stuff like ‘woe is me, I’m a single parent and I can’t afford to pay for my daughter to get her hair braided so I have to do it myself even though it hurts my hands.’ (Fact check: She never paid for my hairdresser — I was working before I went to Canada and I paid for hair extensions myself every two or three months for three years. She only did it then because I came back broke.)
But the classic that I repeated incredulously over the phone to Kam (who’s always there to reaffirm my sanity on these occasions) was when one of the girls there invited me to a party she was off to and my mother interrupted with “I know my daughter; she doesn’t like going to parties…” blah reading books, blah something about people I don’t know, blah I have no idea what else because I was stunned into silence. She knows me? I don’t like partying? Wha…huh? Hi, have we met? Because all the friends I’ve met at parties seem to know more about me than that. But then, this is the woman who doesn’t know what I do for work, even after I’ve had the same job for four years.
It’s the accumulation of these stupid little episodes over time that stick in my brain and build up to drive me crazy. And then something like yesterday happens and it all comes tumbling down over my head.
Consulting Dr. Google
Sunday, 18th March, 2007To me, consulting Dr. Google always seems like a better idea than it actually is.
Sure, it turns out Dr. G is better at diagnosis than my regular doctor, but he’s also better at causing me to freak the hell out.
You see, when I saw my GP about my constant abdominal pain, he kept clinging to the hope that I had a fever, because that would fit in nicely with the textbook list of symptoms for kidney stones or appendicitis or some other kind of infection he seemed eager for me to have. Of course, I didn’t actually have a fever — a fact he confirmed the multiple times he took my temperature. “But,” he kept saying, “if you had a temperature that would indicate an infection.” He looked at me across the desk with an expression that practically pleaded with me to at least concede I felt hot so he could have his diagnosis and send me off to the hospital for someone else to deal with.
I ignored him because what I really wanted, and he thankfully gave me, was the referral for an ultrasound. Because by ruling everything else out, I could rule in what I thought was really wrong with me.
I said before I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, but the fact is that according to Dr. Google, and my osteopath, and the Bowen/Emmett therapist I saw once, and a friend of mine who was diagnosed with it herself, I have endometriosis. And when I went to the doctors’ surgery for my ultrasound results, I saw a different doctor, a woman. Consistent with this disease the ultrasound was clear, and after asking me about the same things I had tried to tell Dr. Useless, she said: “Have you heard of endometriosis?” I audibly exhaled in relief. I had been prepared to bring it up to the doctor and come up against that “I’m the doctor here, you can’t diagnose yourself” attitude I’ve become familiar with over the past year, but that she brought it up first made things so much easier for me. I have an appointment to see a gynaecologist next month.
But to my original point, searching the term “endometriosis” on Google is a rather frightening thing. Because although I had an “aha” moment when I read the list of symptoms, my heart sank as I read the stories of women who have gone through the long and difficult process of actually getting the correct diagnosis and treatment…and the effect it’s had on their lives.
I’d been hoping I was wrong, because almost anything would’ve been preferable in my mind to an extremely painful, little understood, easily misdiagnosed illness for which there is no cure, only treatment that in some ways seems worse than the illness.
And of course I’m yet to get an actual diagnosis myself, although my osteopath agrees that all the signs — including my history of chronic back pain and year-long bout with sciatica — clearly point in that direction. When I saw him Friday he asked about my mood and encouraged me to keep my spirits up, to try to keep my brain out of that cycle of pain and misery that begets more pain and misery. That seems like a lofty goal on a day like today, when I can barely get out of bed and I’m grateful for the invention of the laptop to keep me amused. My mother was here this morning (she stayed over after we went to the theatre on Friday night), bringing me hot water bottles and food and painkillers.
Most of the time I appreciate living alone, being a single girl in my favourite part of town. But sometimes you just need someone there to bring you a hot water bottle.
The perils of red wine
Monday, 18th December, 2006After too much red wine and G&T at lunch on Friday I boldly proclaimed in front of the boss that since my health is finally improving I would show up at the office this morning. I also vaguely remember this year’s edition of our annual music debate, in which we all shout down the Kiwi sales guy when he tries to sell us on the idea that all post-60s music is directly influenced by the Beatles. And there was something in there about the type of guy I would marry. It’s quite alarming that I don’t know how we got onto that particular subject or what I actually disclosed…
Anyway, I’m a woman of my word and in my sleep-deprived state this morning (same effect as having too much wine, no?) it still seemed like a good idea to start getting back into the swing of things. By the time I got myself on the Underground in time for the Monday morning signal failure it seemed less so, but it was too late to turn around and take my laptop back to bed. And it’s just as well I didn’t, because at this time of year random companies send us marketing crap disguised as Xmas gifts and today we got the best ever — a pizza-sized box containing slabs of smooth milk chocolate. It made the back pain worth it, but for the record I’m working at home tomorrow.
On becoming unencumbered
Wednesday, 13th December, 2006“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was immediately struck by that quote when I came across it recently, and it’s been floating around my subconscious ever since. I’ve never been able to ‘finish a day and be done with it’. I obsess over those blunders and absurdities until it makes me crazy and then I put them away until the next time something triggers the memory and sets me off obsessing all over again.
I was thinking about this when reading Ignorance by Milan Kundera the other day. There’s a passage where he writes about memory, about how we only retain random scraps of recollection about the past, a fact that in itself shapes us into who we are. It made me wonder why my clearest memories are those blunders and absurdities, those times when I said or did something cringe-worthy in my shyness and inability to be myself around most people. I would love to move forward unencumbered by that old nonsense and I think while it’s easier said than done, Emerson was onto something.
Entering the next phase
Sunday, 22nd October, 2006I’m not having much luck with this going out lark — it looks like Tuesday’s cinema outing is being postponed until Saturday and I was supposed to go to a party last night but I’ve basically been a shut-in for most of the week. I’m having a back pain flare-up (not that it ever went away) and it’s been feeling like every muscle on the right side of my body is tight.
Several weeks ago I saw a muscle therapist, a friend of a friend over from Australia for a few days to teach courses. One of the things he said was that my muscles are basically three times tighter than they should be, and it’s restricting my breathing. I’d been vaguely aware of it, but on Wednesday it felt like something was sitting on my chest and I was pushing against it to breathe in.
That was the last straw.
I’ve got a new credit card and I’m going to track down an osteopath, which the therapist said would work better than the physio or acupuncture/acupressure. I stopped going to the Chinese clinic anyway when I ran out of money. This is an issue that’s put me into a vicious cycle of being stressed about money, which makes the pain worse, which stresses me out, which makes the pain worse, and on and on…
Time for shopaholics’ anonymous?
Saturday, 14th October, 2006I love clothes at the best of times, but lately I seem to have become obsessed. I still can’t go out far without being in major pain, but the thing about living in central London is I don’t have to — I’m surrounded by fabulous shopping opportunities. The problem is, I’ve cleaned out my bank account on acupuncture, acupressure, and various other Chinese torture techniques, and this is the worst time for me to be on a fashion kick. I just can’t help myself — when I go out for a walk I invariably end up in a clothes shop. I’ve even been surfing their websites and signing up for email newsletters. I just love the dresses and knits and layering, and, gosh, the purples (my favourite colour) this season!
In particular I’m lusting after this fabulous bag I saw in River Island:
And this corset ribbed top from Oasis, which I’d been monitoring almost daily in case it went on sale. And then, score! It’s half price! I’d been getting so mad because the bright blue one was £25 cheaper than the black one. 25 quid for the colour! This will sooo be mine…
This belted minishift dress from Warehouse is way out of my price range, but maybe I’ll be lucky in the sale
I actually do need to buy some new trousers for the winter — being ill I’ve lost weight and gone down a size, so now my already loose trousers look ridiculously baggy. I don’t think the gangster look will really work when I go back to the office. Perhaps it’s time to break out the store cards…
