It’s been a while since I’ve written anything… I’ve finally found a job that keeps me busy enough to turn off [most of] the noise in my head. And so, less time to reflect. And less time to whine. But here I am, 7am on Christmas Eve morning, curled up in my chair, laptop on lap, because I can’t sleep-in for some reason, reflecting on reflecting, and my week, and the last couple months, and what’s been going on in my world that I can write about.
I’m a lot happier these days. The new job is fun and I really like the pace of agency life. I like that projects that would’ve taken two weeks and half a dozen iterations of edits in corporate, I can now get done in an hour. I feel so much more productive at the end of each day. And the things I complain about now are really pretty trivial. I like that every day is something different. In November we attended a party for the Red Sox that the client co-sponsored — which was kind of ironic, seeing as I’m the one person in the state of Massachusetts least interested in meeting a Red Sock — but there was a certain amount of novelty value. Got to hang with the drummer from Aerosmith. And Dennis got to interview “Miss Massachusetts” for an NPR story. In January I’ll be going to CES in Vegas — a city I could’ve happily lived my life without ever visiting — but it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun. I can’t say that what I do for a living is especially meaningful, and I’m certainly not saving lives or making the world a better place, but I like that I at least don’t have to spend my days in meetings anymore.
I remind myself on a daily basis just how bad it was at my old company so I don’t become too complacent with my new reality. It was bad. So so bad. Worse than I’ll probably ever know, my friend Beth tells me. And the worst of it was that after a while I began to think it was me. And then I began to think it was universal, that all companies are like Dilbert cartoons. And when I could muster up that sputtering spark of hope, I would dream of what it would feel like to be out of there, and to look back on those days and think smugly about just how fucked up that company was. Which I get to do now. Thank god.
My taekwondo is suffereing a bit for it though. I work late a lot and don’t get to classes as frequently as I used to. I try to make it to at least three classes a week, but even that doesn’t always happen anymore. I’m a red belt now, which means I should actually be training harder if I ever want to test for black belt. This is something that’s been bothering me a lot, because black belt was a goal I set for myself when I moved to Boston four years ago. And I have to achieve it. But I’m not really in any hurry and I don’t especially mind if it takes another two years. It used to be, back when I first moved to Boston and was looking for work and didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my life, that taekwondo was the haven that kept me sane. Used to be I didn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t go to taekwondo every night. So I guess it’s a good thing in its way that I’m down to just three nights a week.
It’s now 7:34 Christmas Eve morning. The house is very quiet. Dennis is still in bed. My pie crust is sitting in a ball on the kitchen counter waiting to be rolled out and baked. In a little while I’ll go out and retrieve my parents from their B&B. Then Dennis promised to take my dad up to the Car Talk studio in Harvard Square, and maybe to Ray’s garage in hopes of meeting one of “the guys.” Then we’ll pick up a bottle of Jamieson’s for Peter and wrap the last of our presents and head up to Portland for Christmas.
