3 posts tagged “life”

I have been having really weird dreams lately. I only remember bits and pieces of them, but I know they are on the bizarre side. I've been dreaming about people and places I haven't seen in years as well as celebrities I've never met ... you know. I'm not sure what triggers them, but I need to pay more attention.

This morning, I found myself dreaming that I was talking to Ani DiFranco. I apparently "saw" her recently, but she was insisting she wasn't in town. I had tentative plans to see her speak at the 92nd Street Y last week, and I ended up not going ... I am sure the dream has something to do with that, but why is my brain even going there? I did eat REALLY last last night which I suspect makes me dream more. The Ani one was right before I woke up this morning, and I slept hard last night -- so hard that my light alarm didn't have any effect and I was startled awake by my real alarm.

The other night I dreamt about cougars, snow and childhood friends among other things. I sometimes dream I am someone else. My favorite though is when I dream of places that look nothing like their real life counter parts yet I know it is that place. I love that these places come back to me throughout my life so I experience weird moments of dream deja vu where I know I have been here before in my dreams, but can't quite place when or where.

I'd love to keep better track of my dream world, but these days I just get murky bits of them. I guess it will take some ninja training.

I am done Christmas shopping and did my NYC wrapping last night. I am looking forward to heading out to Wyoming next week. I still can't believe it is mid-December, but that's the way my world works.

Countdown to China trip: 22 days, and I am getting nervous about both going, and getting everything together in time!

P.S. My roommate's new Christmas song is available for download on MySpace it's a love song to George Baily of It's A Wonderful Life and I LOVE the song. It is fun and catchy and I am really glad that she decided to do this project. She also recorded a new arrangement of Blue Christmas that I love too! Feel free to check her out at carolynsills.com. The music will be available on iTunes soon!

I was all set to start the job hunt out west. My recent travels for work and pleasure (New Orleans, 2 trips to Wyoming, San Fran, Seattle, Vancouver, Winnipeg, a train trip from Vancouver to Winnipeg, Newport Beach, and Las Vegas) coupled with life experiences had made me really think that it was time to leave New York. The death of a good friend's father in Wyoming made me wonder if I was living my dreams, and reading a combination cookbook/travelogue called THE WORLD IS A KITCHEN made me reconsider going into cooking as a profession – an idea I have toyed with FOREVER!

Everything in life seemed to be pointing to the fact that I would be happier out west and closer to my family. An opportunity came up at Apple in Cupertino in the form of a position I was perfect for working with someone I really respect. Clearly the universe didn't agree because the message HR left me got eaten by cyberspace and I never received it. Thus, they assumed I wasn't interested and the job went to someone else. But, I was ready to really start looking -- Business Analyst positions seemed to be doable. I was thinking Seattle or the bay area, anywhere but LA really. I even had an email drafted to send out to all my family, friends and contacts to solicit help.

Then things exploded at work: one colleague is on maternity leave, my boss's wife had a baby this week, my boss had been working on restructuring our department and he recently posted a new "Technical Process Manager" position (it is basically my current job on steroids with more decision making and opportunities to shape the future of our department, and a definite step up on the corporate ladder). I interviewed with my boss, even though I thought it was a long shot.

Tangent: For those of you who don't know what I do (and I know there are a lot of people in that group) I work for a not-for-profit that publishes safety codes & standards. My department builds and maintains proprietary, web-based software applications that facilitates the publishing process. We are essentially business analysts that develop electronic tools to replace paper-based practices. My boss likes to say we are efficiency experts ... maybe that makes things clearer, maybe it doesn't ... it is time to get on with my story though.

Then my close friend and colleague, S, resigned last week. She was the one person who was most likely to get the new position, but now she is moving to be near her family and have a better quality of life. I'm sad. We have been inseparable for almost 3 years … between graduate school, a close friendship, and working together we have put in A LOT of hours brainstorming and whatnot. I am also jealous because I want to be nearer my family, but in the end I am really excited and happy for her!

The aftermath is that they offered me the new position this week. In the period of a few days I managed to jump 3 whole rungs on the corporate ladder. It is a significant salary increase, and an interesting opportunity to help shape the future of my department. I feel like I am in WAY over my head! I'm now exclusively responsible for one of our software applications which means I will get to (sorry if this gets too technical) oversee/do everything from the development phase (design and functional specifications), to liaising with the programmer, to ensuring it is user-friendly, to managing the testing of new features, to training people on the system, to troubleshooting and fulfilling help desk support functions, etc. It's a lot of hats to wear.

So I guess my westward migration is on hold. That is not to say that if the perfect job came my way, I would turn it down, it just means that I am no longer actively looking. I see myself in NYC for another year or two or three and then heading west. The upside is that when I do head west I have better experience to go off of and a management title, even if the title feels meaningless.

I'm still wondering if I made the right decision though ... am I doing what I should be doing with my life? A friend pointed out that I should "make hay while the sun shines" and a few others said "take the money and run". They're right a higher salary in NYC is not a bad thing, but am I selling out? Am I really following my dreams? I guess only time will tell, but I am feeling rather insecure at the moment.

Then again, maybe it is just an effect of the cold meds I am currently taking. Stupid fall cold with sore throat has me feeling like I can't leave my bed.

So that's the news in my world, what's happening in yours?

I've decided that my down time today can be used productively to look at one of my bad habits, and come up with solutions for dealing with it. Random? Yes, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

It occurred to me recently that my ability to over-think any situation was causing me to be counter-productive. Instead of simply sitting down to work on my graduate school thesis, I found myself delving into every little aspect of it until I would get so overwhelmed that paralysis set in and I was unable to move forward. So I would focus on something really mundane for a while (reading my friend B's fantastic blog for example) until I felt ready to tackle my thesis again, but inevitably the cycle would repeat. This was definitely preventing me from actually writing my thesis. So today I decided to examine why this was happening, and hopefully by the end of this exercise I will have a plan to keep it from happening. (Hey, we're practicing positive thinking here ... it's good to have goals dammit!)

True, there are times when my ability to over-think is a good thing ... in the professional world it allows me to notice things that other people did not. This is helpful when I am trouble-shooting user errors, testing new applications or trying to come up with a creative solution to a nagging business problem. Over-analyzing on this level challenges me. It makes me think long and hard about things, and it means that I not only need to know the outcome of a situation or process, but I also need to understand the whys and hows that created said outcome.

When it comes to my personal life, my over-thinking is not so beneficial. Obviously from my opening example, it gets in the way of my schoolwork. But it happens at other times too ... I dwell on things more than I should, often remembering stupid things I said years ago and re-hashing them, as if someone really cared that in 1993 I used X word instead of Y word and everyone laughed. Does something that happened 13 years ago have any impact on my present day self? No. As they say I should let bygones be bygones. But I just can't seem to do that!

It's funny because I was on some silly astrology site recently (procrastinating from my graduate school thesis) when I read that my moon sign is prone to "over-analyzing" and one of the possible weaknesses of my sun sign is "Fear of the past repeating in the future" ... Now, I am not one to live my life by the dictations of my horoscope, but I find it interesting to contemplate. Then again, it may only take the power of suggestion for my brain to begin making associations and dredging up examples. I am sure that if my horoscope had said that my weaknesses were jealousy and intolerance I could find plenty of life examples to fit those traits as well ...

I started this post as an exercise to come up with a goal, and here I am digressing. I've started to over-think my tendency to over-think. Do you see how bad I get? It is a vicious cycle!

Goal: To live in the moment and not dwell so much on the past or worry so much about future.

I just need to "be here now" as Ram Dass said and enjoy the present. If I can accomplish that, then things like my thesis and huge projects for work won't be so daunting because I can take it just one day at a time, and do the best that I can. Similarly, I can take the time to truly enjoy the human interactions that make up my days. I can let the conversations, moments and connections be what they are and appreciate everyone of them -- from coffee and good conversation with a newfound friend to the look and smile I share with fellow passengers on the train as we realize that the woman who has been singing very bad renditions of songs by the Beatles has now switched to the original Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and apparently has no intention of being quiet ...

These are the things that make life interesting, and I need to appreciate them more.