Building a new life.

A month ago I submitted my resignation to my employer.

For two weeks now, I've been a full time member of the self-employed.

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I have been an active member of the workforce since I was 16 years old (maybe even younger if you count working at my parents' businesses). My whole life I thought that work was something you simply have to do to have the lifestyle you require. It didn't matter if you didn't like it.

This is a strange kind of reasoning coming from someone with advanced degrees, but in my mind education was meant to make you feel accomplished, and work was, well, work. So I have been to school for stuff completely unrelated to work, except for those graduate courses in Public Relations.

It took 15 years of work before I realized that I was done with all the nonsense I was doing.

So I quit my job.

Guided by my passions, leaning on my background, education and interests and hoping for the best, I started my very own business. For the first time in a long time I'm excited about something. I love the items in my to-do list and I wake up knowing that I can be as much or as little as I want to be. It's really quite exhilarating.

So now I am building for a different kind of future. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Cold and cool.

Hell is frezing over. Literally.

Last night temperatures in the great land of Miami dipped to 30F (the freezing point in Fahrenheit is 32). I didn't think this was possible. I also became convinced that I have in fact seen everything, when I was checking out an apartment somewhere in Brickell and while standing out on the balcony, we spoted snow flurries mixed with the rain.

I have a number of theories as to why this is happening ranging from global warming to God losing his/her compass and confusing Miami with London. But regardless of why this is happening I think we should all take notice because this is flat out freakish.

In any case, I'm working on a new project. I finish my MBA in 32 days. Quite frankly, I didn't think this day would ever come; but since it is practically right there, I am already planning for my free time. It's not enough for me to spend 45+ hours at the office. I need more. So I got myself a personal trainer and am going back to the gym. I am also going to be doing something good for humanity outside of my regularly scheduled volunteer work: I am going to be helping out with the US Census.

The census is important. When people are not counted accurately, our elected officially can unintentionally screw us over. I want to do my part in ensuring that everyone is counted. I am also very curious to see what the new face of America is. I remember years back, after the last census, an article that came out in Time magazine that had a digital picture of a person representing the face of America at the time. I would like to see the updated version.

I woud like to see if the great recession of the past year has scared people away. I read somewhere that people were going back to their home countries because if things everywhere were bad, here they were worse.

It seems to me that this year is going to be pretty special. Ten days into the year, I find that many of the things we knew and accepted as truths have been disproved. Maybe the world will end, but if it doesn't, some interesting things are going to come out of this.

Annush vs. Publisher

I have a love/hate relationship with my job.

But I am not going to dwell on the hate part. One of the reasons why I love my job is because they always make available all these professional development/ continuing education courses that I like. As if I don't already have enough to do, I always sign up and complete them. It makes me happy most of the time. Just not now.

I have been taking this writing class online and between work and school, I haven't been able to keep up. I asked the Professor for an extention and he says "no extention unless you submit the next 3 assignments by Thursday." So what do I say? Ok.

It's writing. It's what I do for a living. I was certain I could BS my way through 3 assignments- albeit reluctantly. And that was until I completed my first assignment (now) and noticed that the following 2 assignments were like art projects!

Apparently in the next 12 hours I have to download Publisher, somehow figure it out and then manage to create the kind of work I would have submitted if had I bothered to read the syllabus and then delegated.

...and I could send this all to hell but I refuse to look bad in front of my co-workers...

Today!!

Maybe I should have trained a little for this one...
3.2 miles is nothing though.

Happy 4:20!

An Inconvenient Truth.

My neighbor and I work in the same company so we carpool to work. Yes, it’s good for the environment. Yes, it’s good for our finances. But it sucks for my mental health.

You see, Sonia loves British pop music, as do I; however, she likes to listen to it quietly and hum along the tunes with the occasional sentence she manages to utter. That’s how she listens to music and I respect it. I, on the other hand, like to listen to my music loudly and I like to sing along. I like to listen to British pop, but I also like rock, and folk, and house, and pop and the occasional hip-hop song. Sometimes I listen to Christina Aguilera just so I can sing loud enough to hit the notes (because I can hit the notes!).

But I can’t do that with Sonia in my car. And I certainly can’t do it in hers. And it makes me miss Yvette L. desperately. It makes me wish for the days when Yvette L. and I would get in the car and not only would we sing along to everything but we’d make up little dances to go along with the songs.

I’ve tried to think about the reasons why I feel so inhibited when I find myself in a confined space with Sonia but I can’t think of anything. I thought that maybe it was lack of trust on my part, but that’s not it…at least not after she saw me in my undies, or drunk, or crying or jumping on my bed. I trust her.

But I guess not enough?

Once, a while back at 5am we were drinking in her apartment and we had a Fiona Apple sing along. I don’t know what was different about that night but I wish I could transport that emotion, that openness to my car (or hers) and bring it with us wherever we go.

Because I want to sing in the car…and I wish she were someone I could sing with all the time.

and i say what about breakfast at annush's?

This week sucked.

Well, actually, it didn't suck per se; however, it wasn't my best. Between a compressor that took 3 days to get fixed and had me sleeping over at the neighbors', people overstepping their boundaries on Facebook, my lack of desire to go buy food, a phone that refuses to quit ringing even at ungodly hours, the houseguest that seems to have turned into a roommate and last but not least the swelling of my breasts which has made it practically impossible for me to fit on most of my work shirts for two days now, I have to say that it's been a rough week.

But it hasn't been all bad. My week started on Sunday with obscene amounts of champagne. Sometimes when there is nothing to celebrate it's good to get all Breakfast at Tiffany's like and celebrate smoked salmon or something-which we did. It set the tone for the new job which I started on Monday and that aside from all the time spent on all kinds of bullshit training has been great...even with all the obscene amounts of time I've spent with MPChick (and you'll have to excuse me for calling her that but I'm convinced that the girl has multiple personalities!)

I've also been introduced to two new characters this week. These are two people I know. Three dimensional cartoon character like versions of real people who only come out at weird times and I never realized they did. But I like them. I am going to write about them one day soon.

Life's been good...but I'm tired, in desperate need of a visit to Publix, maybe a cigarrette and a Midol.

That would be nice.

Changes.

Someone once said that today is the first day of the rest of your life. Today I say that tomorrow is the last day of this stage in my life. Tomorrow is my last day at the job where I've had so much fun in for the past 7 months. And happy though I am to be moving forward, I am also a little bit sad.

In the past 6 months I've had something like five jobs, at times simultaneously. I've done what my family wanted me to do, what gave me the most money with the least amount of effort, what I felt I should be doing and this, which is what has served me as therapy...the job I never wanted to quit doing.

On Monday I go back to "corporate America" with the office hours, "casual Fridays", 401K and fun paycheck that go along with it. I'll probably go back to my workaholic ways and start a life filled with stories about crazy co-workers that I won't be able to write about in order to protect my job- because we all know that bad things happen when you bring your job to the internet!

I am excited. Much more excited than I am allowing myself to be on this post. It seems like things are falling into place so that I may find some stability and can begin to do (again) all the things I need get done to truly build a life. This time I am doing it under the sun so I hope that if nothing else this same sun brightens up my days so that I may be happy, and remain happy for a long time to come...

I wish I was a trust fund baby.

There is a first time for everything. Even for things you thought you were too good for because frankly they seemed like things that happened to "other people".

Today I took my very first drug test or as they like to call it "drug screening".

In the great land of America apparently you need to pee in a cup before "they" decide that you are good enough to hold certain types of jobs. After what has felt like years (but has really been something like weeks) of going through every imaginable screening process to land my dream job (which I did, thank you!) I finally got offered the position I was after (along with another one but that's another story) and along with 500 documents I had to sign there was a disclosure that stated that my employment was contingent on me "successfully passing a drug test".

You can only imagine my surprise. If anything, in my line of work I would think that certain drugs would enhance your performance but that's besides the point. In my shock/horror/stress it never occurred to me that I couldn't "successfully pass" a drug test.

On Saturday morning, I went straight after a long night of partying with my girls to the designated test site. I think I was more stressed out about taking the test than I was about actually passing it so I wanted to get that out of the way as soon as humanly possible. So 2 venti lattes and 1 liter of water later, I went.

But of course, as luck would have it, it had to be on a weekday from 10-2.

So I went today. I had asked my friends about the test taking procedure and I was surprised to learn that in the great city of Miami drug tests are a standard practice (which only proves my theory that down here EVERYONE is on something). They told me to calm down that the entire experience came down to peeing in a cup. And of course I believed them.

I wish someone would have told me that part of the "procedure" involved me sitting in an air conditioned room for an hour (because as the lab technician explained, you can't just go in and pee right away), that they would hold my purse hostage while I peed in a bathroom that had no sink (you can only wash your hands while being observed) and that I wouldn't be allowed to flush the toilet after I went, which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.

But in any case, I did it all and I came out unscathed. Though I have to admit, I feel a little bit cheapened by the experience and perhaps a little bit worried. I am not worried about the results but I worry about all the genetic information stored in urine. I worry that now the government can genetically profile me and I don't think that's cool. And people are calling me paranoid for saying this but you tell me, if this isn't the case then why did they need my social security number so badly and why does this test take as long as it does when I know for a fact that drug tests these days are like pregnancy tests: 3 minutes and wait for the stick to turn blue.

Whatever though. I can only hope that I don't have to go through this again and now- if nothing else-I have yet another story to tell my grand-children.