Shake It Off

Y'all --

I've decided to shake the dust off of this blog........ or, actually PRUNE this here Cherry Tree.... so that it may bear fruit again.

I started doing this by first scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page and rereading my previous blog posts, top to bottom. I don't think I gave myself enough credit. I was feeling dried up, pudgy, and stupid, but I was, in fact, sort of eloquent as far as rambling goes. Hot, self. Hot. Werk it.

This first post back in action is going to involve a bit of housekeeping, probably some rhetorical questions, and a lot of open ends that trail off into nothing, nowhere. Sorry.

Looking at that first post -- it was cute how optimistic I was. It was good! I felt young, I felt optimistic, I felt as though I had a plan. But, as often happens to plans, it was dashed. SMITED. Just completely pulverized.  That lad I thought I'd marry bid me farewell right out of the blue, that job I was crossing my fingers to love is the bane of my existence, and has made me consider tattooing my forehead with an obscenity, dying my hair blue, flipping burgers, and taking up tossingcomputersoutofwindows as a hobby. The sleeping problem I made reference to before is not cured, and I have spent many a night over the last year and 8 months (exactly, actually, since I started this job and was dumped at the exact same time) wide awake and wondering what to do with myself. I've eaten and eaten and eaten until I was bigger than I ever have been. Things have been low. Not awful -- I don't think I'm depressed. I still see the good in the world - but I'm thoroughly jaded and cynical and rotten.

I'm trying to do things to counteract this. Some are half-assed, but in my current state I consider even those things to be minor victories. For example, I moved out of my old apartment and into a new one, this time with a roommate - someone I think will ultimately be a positive influence. I dare say I've slept more since I've moved in with her than I did in a full month while living alone, and we've only just been at our new place for 3 weeks. I'm eating more "complete" meals, so there is less bingeing, but this is not perfected. I have nothing to do with men. It's not on purpose, but I am in a phase (dear God, i hope it's a phase) where I have no one to even contemplate being interested in, and generally am focused only on myself, what I want (immediately and in the future), and how to heal from all of the things that disrupted my balance a couple of years back. I was chrismated in the Orthodox church, and am trying, fitfully, to live by what I know to be right. This is all very hard for me. Much harder than I think it should be, and I'm not sure why.  I always thought that these years of instability were over and done with by the ripe age of what I'll go ahead and call "almost 25".... but this is where I am, and it seems, try as I might, where I will be for a little bit longer. I hope that I can come out of it all in a certain light. Something that goes like this: calm, joyful, lean, strong, peaceful, eager, understanding, thoughtful, wise, generous, sympathetic, and pure. I wonder if that can come true.

On another note -- which may or may not be unrelated: I have discovered a love. A passion, really, for Elvis Presley. I love Elvis. I could write a book, I could go on for days, I could cry over it. I do cry over it. I'm not lying, not exaggerating, not being a lunatic (sincerely), when I say that I love Elvis. I've always liked listening to his songs (though I didn't let my dad know that, lest I would've been coerced to hear nothing but Elvis every day of my dependent life), but the infatuation only came about on this past Christmas Eve. My family was driving to church, and listening to Elvis' Christmas album. Good friends, this is the best selling Christmas album of all time. Or at least tied with Bing Crosby's. But as we were listening, I realized that I really didn't know a darned thing about the man singing. I really hadn't even a clue as to when he was born, popular, or died (though, you'd think I could infer those things based on the way the music sounded -- but common sense often eludes me).  So I pulled up his Wikipedia page (I've mentioned before how much I love a good Wikipedia stalk) and I proceeded to read the longest, most detailed Wiki I've ever seen before. Ever. And I loved it. I just soaked it in. So as it turns out, Elvis was born on January 8, 1935 to Vernon and Gladys Presley in Tupelo, MS. He had a stillborn twin brother, named Jessie. Friends, I just couldn't stop reading. It was love at first... read... I suppose. From there I looked at pictures, and watched countless hours of YouTube videos again and again and again. I've joined fan clubs, read every site and snipit of information I could get my paws on. Every interview, listening to every song. Watching every movie I have the opportunity to. Saving and planning to purchase biographies, DVDs, albums, you name it. Since my dad is a lifelong Elvis fan, he has been so kind as to give me some old ticket stubs to a concert in '73, some old albums, and even a tiny piece of one of Elvis' scarves (be still my heart). I've never been so pleased that my family has a 1957 Chevrolet. It's just perfect. No, I don't think Elvis is alive. But I wish he was. And I talk to him sometimes, sort of like you might talk to a deceased relative. Sort of like when you talk out loud to God. I hope Elvis is with God. I think he is, and at least that makes me feel better. This all might seem absurd, but I don't mind if it does. As I said at the beginning of this paragraph -- this may or may not be unrelated to the other things that have happened in the past few years of my life. In some ways, Elvis is the man that I lost and will never have. In some ways, the things that he went through at a personal and emotional level remind me of what I'm dealing with and searching for myself. So, as his kindred spirit, I love him. It's personal to me. I'm going to Graceland in 3 weeks, and it's going to be a lot more than a tour in an old house-turned museum for me. I'll write about it sometime when I get back.

But for now, I try to focus on drinking water, laughing whenever possible, signing up for yoga classes, and listening to Elvis charm the pants off of men and women alike for the 21 years he was an international star.

Thank you, thankyouverymuch. You're a wonderful audience.

Goodnight.

Never Never Land

On November 12th of last year I got a phone call with a nice lady on the other end of the line who had some REALLY GOOD NEWS to share with me. It was a great way to end a week that I had otherwise spent bracing myself for rejection and prepping to "take 2" the whole shebang. I was interrupted during my graphics class, in which I was slaving away on my advertising portfolio, to answer a phone call with the jury's verdict about what I would be up to for the next few years of my life. People, I was about to find out whether or not I had charmed the pants off of my interviewers enough to snag a real job. Like sit-in-traffic-for-an-hour-wear-clothes-that-make-me-look-constipated-and-frigid-and-collect-dust-while-my-eyes-glaze-over-in-front-of-my-PC-in-my-4x4-cubicle style job.

I DID!!!!!

I GOT A JOB!

I couldn't believe my earballs. Partly because it was my first interview, but mostly because I am still consider myself a ninth grader who's certainly not old enough to have a mom and dad kind of job let alone be in college. These nutcases hired me! BY GEORGE. November 12th was a happy day. And I spent the next few months contemplating another date: June 7th. My "start date". I thought that made me sound like a rocket ship that was scheduled for take off, and Lord knows I needed some clothes for that. So I made Banana Republic my new BFFL and wrote a bucket list for all the things I wanted to do before I was, more or less, locked in a dungeon from which I would be lucky to escape 43 years later and in considerable disrepair. I say this because all I've ever known about jobs my whole life is that you can't live with 'em and you can't live without 'em... I'll reevaluate after a while and see if that's so. I'm still optimistic that I'll love my job. We shall see.

At any rate, having a job was a fun fact I could share with other job hunters and friends and family in November and December and January and February and even in March. Then it became April, and I realized that my fun fact had transformed into a time bomb that was going to explode in 2 MONTHS. 8 WEEKS. Like 60 DAYS. WAY. TOO. SOON. I suddenly gasped and thought BUT I'M TOO YOUNG! and freaked out a little and then thought back to the day I was hired and remembered a little something HR had mentioned in passing...: there was an alternative start date in August. August 2nd. Hmmmmm. Well, I figured, they've already hired me. It can't hurt to try. So I talked to my Ma and my Pa and my boyfriend and my roommates and a couple of other friends about it for the sake of second opinions... and then I called my job. Actually, I called the really nice HR lady. I woke up at like 8 in the morning, and as soon as my alarm went off I reached over for my phone and called. Still half asleep. I didn't want my request to sound rehearsed so I figured I'd do it with half my brain functioning and my eyes still shut. And I tried as best as my 15-year-old self in a 22-year-old's body could to sound professional, convincing, and charming all at once, and, in a nutshell, asked... Can I have my summer back?
The answer: YES!

Well hot-diggity-dog thanks a billion! I could have done a cartwheel over it. Except that I cannot do a cartwheel. But I digress.

All of this to say that today, June 7th, 2010, I am NOT at work. And am, in fact, sitting and blogging. Because I'm bored. And I'm hanging on to the last days of juventud. I've got less than 2 months before this rocket launches and I'm pretty sure there are no more alternative start dates :) I guess everyone's got to take a vacation from Never Never Land every once in a blue moon. I'll make plans to go back ASAP.