Right now I'm a few days away from a month of technically being unemployed for the first time since I was 14. It has honestly been unnerving and I'm hoping by the end of this week to have officially accepted my new role. I've never left a job before firmly having the next one but I've never had a supervisor so clearly gunning for me. My last day was the 15th and while last week was my first week off, it was crazy busy because it was my in person "Lab" in DC for the course I'm taking this semester. It was an amazing week, truly invigorating and so many of my classmates were incredibly impressive. I definitely know that at some point I need to work in the capital but it's very much about who you know. I have no desire to start over, so a few more years in the industry and getting that master's in global climate change and policy should make it feasible for a more lateral transfer. Maybe through targeted contracts I can begin supporting policy efforts even sooner...However I'm not sure I'm in a financial position to go after that masters anytime soon. This current program was supposed to be completely covered by my previous firm and that obviously hasn't worked out. I was chatting with Burdman yesterday and I was telling him that without a family or close group of friends I see regularly, not having a job creates this really big hole. I am burnt out and I do need the time off, but I think I will be able to enjoy the time off when my immediate future is more settled.
I did decide to fill some of my time today with getting my 13th tattoo. It was a slow start after waking up to the horrible news about FSK. Wild that I was part of the feasibility study last year for the new dock they need to build ahead of the reconstruction. They've known the bridge has needed to be replaced for a while now, thankfully this all happened in the middle of the night, the loss of life could have been so much worse. With the port being closed, we'll have to wait and see just how steep the ramifications to the supply-chain will truly be...
This most recent tattoo is one that has been kicking around in my head for about a year. A long time ago at this point I once told the man "our lives are the sum of our choices" and I recently heard that phrase in a movie trailer and I was like yup that's a sign, time to get that tattoo. So I got a decision tree wrapped around a sigma. I love it. I'm hoping just like my first tattoo, being able to look down at it during this phase of transition will continue to inspire me to make better choices and focus on myself. I've spent so much of my life focused on others that I think I'm going to spend a little longer being intentionally single. I thought in September I was ready to try again and in December even invested in a matchmaker service. I was already feeling like I just needed to step away from it after that terrible date, but after this last date I had, I for sure know I have no interest in putting myself out there right now. I ended up meeting with this guy I matched with on a dating app years ago, like at least 2019 but quite possibly sooner than that. I used to have my Instagram linked to my profile and he ended up messaging me there a few months after my 30th birthday trip letting me know he had been reading along and was sorry he hadn't given me much thought when we first matched. We've had a few short conversations via messenger over the years but he was local for a conference so we agreed to meet up. It was a little weird knowing that he knew lots of pretty vulnerable things about my life, but also that this blog and these thoughts are such a small part of my experience. When I told my sister I was meeting him I told her it feels like I going out with a groupie lol. When I asked him if I lived up to online me, he told me that in person me was more interesting and that he could listen to me talk for hours. I liked that sentiment and I enjoyed learning about his many past lives. But after walking me to my car he made the assumption that I'd want him to come over and any part of me that was wondering if this was something worth exploring completely evaporated. I guess I thought that someone who is familiar with this part of me, would know that feeling like I'm only good for the physical parts of a relationship has been a recurring theme and one I very much no longer wish to cycle through.
I'm not sure how long it's going to take for me to want to start trying again and that definitely makes me anxious because my hopes of a family are feeling like a pipe dream. If biological kids end up becoming infeasible, I will adopt, and if I finally luck into a worth while relationship, damn I can barely comprehend just how grateful I'll be to have found them and how hard I'm gonna love them.
