New Year, New Format

First of all, thank you for your feedback. Amidst mixed reviews, the majority came out with a slim margin leaning towards: “Keep it the same, you’re awesome.”

I think, organizationally I am going to change it up a bit, at least while I’m “single.” There are a few major areas that I’m working on as a person so I’m just going to give updates on each of those things. I think I’ll try to stick to the same categories for a couple weeks. I’ll still have my wondrously stream-of-consciousness type writing because a) I’m a little drunk and b) “Keep it the same, you’re awesome” feels pretty good to hear.

Job: Still going well, overall. Spent the entirety of last week boning up on my qualitative analysis mad skillz. About Thursday someone showed me where the actual books I needed were and that made my life approximately 100,000 times easier. Except that physical books don’t have a “ctrl f” function so I have to look up d=7.01 Å, manually on pages of charts. It’s all good. 

I’ve been doing logistical nightmare stuff n on breaks but…should all things come to pass in the way I want, logistical nightmare will become daytime dream come true. …I’ll explain next week.

So far I’m procrastinating pretty hard on practicing my TED talk for a group of managers. Gotta get that confidence up, yo.

Active Hobbies: This week I tried out Roller Derby. This is what I looked like:

I like it as a hobby. I will try to stick with it. My inner thighs hated me for several days, I think that means I did something right. Being with the team was just an immensely empowering experience. I am by no means the largest girl there (which spoke more to me than perhaps it should have) and having hips/tits/ass is an important part of the sport. Those bitches are STRONG. I like Derby because it is something I have absolutely no familiarity with. I cannot just do as I’ve always done. I liked that about Crossfit too, I was learning the skills from scratch so I had no bad habits to fall back upon. So far, I have learned how to go and how to stop. Pretty excellent. However my creative hobbies might interfere so I might have to adjust my weekly plans.

Creative Hobbies: Speaking of mad skillz…it turns out I’m pretty badass at stage makeup. I’m still totally novice status but the local theatre is letting me be in charge of makeup for their production of Harvey. Unfortunately, I do not get to do makeup on the Pooka. However, I have been crafting a really decent old-age on this one dude, pretty rad.

It has been really refreshing to be back in the Theatre world again. I am meeting people my own age, who don’t work at the lab. One of the young women has her own company and is very inspiring to talk to. Another young woman is a stay at home mom and I admire her ability to do that. I have been getting really good life advice from people there while I take approximately eons to do their makeup. It’s been a good laugh and a great learning experience. I’ve also gotten to know a local cray-cray-people band through one of the cast-mates. Possible dancing opportunity there.

The only thing that’s been a bit rough for me is that the combination of direction and writing of the character Ellwood O’Dowd (main character) reminds me a bit too much of my father-in-law. I found myself unable to decouple the character and the person for the duration of the show. After the show, I kinda re-experienced my father-in-law's death a little bit and that was rough. It didn’t help that I had an allergic reaction to the cake. I slept for about 11 hours and felt much better. I think I’ll watch the show towards the end of the run to see how the cast improved but also try to be more objective. I don’t know when I turned into a theatre snob, but I certainly have and I need to appreciate local theatre as just that. In the words of a cast-mate: “It’s community fucking theatre.”

Mommaloo, I’m also making you a present. It’s a special surprise so I’ll give it to you the next time I see you. <3 <3 <3

Religion: I don’t think I’ll usually include this section unless it’s relevant. Since this week was Rosh Hashana, it’s extremely relevant.

I’d like to back-up and give an eentsy bit of background before I tell the events of what happened: I had emailed some HeadHoncho at TLoTH and asked him about his school/life experience that lead him to be a manager. I also asked him for an introduction to someone even higher up at TLoTH because sometimes that’s the tactical way to meet higher-ups. He responded with an email that basically pulled rank on me, asked why I couldn’t figure these matters out with my direct mentor and reminded me the person I was asking for an introduction was busier and more important than me.

Ok, so that leads us into Rosh Hashana.

Last night was a complete disaster. I have been dreading High Holy Days for some time now. I really miss my shul in the City and the clergy and the congregation. I really miss PartnerPenguin who has always been with me, despite not having a strong Jewish identity growing up. But I couldn’t actually place what it was that I was dreading. I figured it out last night.

Last night was the first Rosh Hashana of my entire life that I have not been with family.

I’m 25 years old. In all of those 25 years, I have always had family with me to celebrate the New Year. Even if that was the only night of the entire year I saw them, there was someone of blood or marriage relation that was sitting next to me, holding my hand if I needed it. Last night, I felt more alone in that chapel than I have ever felt. I started to cry, silently, during the opening prayers. I realized I wouldn’t be able to, and more importantly, didn’t want to stop crying. I ran to the bathroom and sobbed like a little kid. I missed my childhood. I missed my PartnerPenguin. I missed everything. I missed everyone. I missed the ocean. I cried for a good portion of the service and I didn’t really care. I needed to pray by crying and the stuffy, predominately white, predominantly heterosexual group in the chapel was not a safe place to cry. I have never felt like I needed to hide my crying at shul, and that also hurt. I didn’t feel safe being vulnerable there.

I eventually cleaned up and returned to the audience. They were mostly done with the Shema (the central prayer of Judaism, establishing monotheism), or about halfway done the service. I was grateful the woman I sat next to, a new-ish friend, never asked me what was wrong. In fact, she came over my house and we shared a holiday meal together with apples and honey. We actually stayed up talking until nearly midnight and it felt very good to have someone in my home, listening and caring what I had to say.

This morning, I returned to the small community. Not to be modest, but I have a really good singing voice. Other members of the congregation looked at me throughout the service and introduced themselves or just looked at me while I was singing. I get pretty into singing, as that is how I pray. I don’t usually care. I did feel a bit uncomfortable, even bordering hostile that the previously mentioned HeadHoncho sat directly in front of me and did not even say hello. He could obviously hear me and I know he recognizes me. It just added an extra layer of discomfort for someone to actively ignore me.

At least today I did not have an overwhelming urge to cry. I obediently listened to the copious amounts of Hebrew and lamented privately at the lack of silence or space for private meditation. But I need to acknowledge the ability for me to practice my religion freely and there being a community for me to do so. I appreciate the effort of this community to provide a space to invite in the New Year and to provide liturgy for emotionally readying myself for the next ten days of retribution.

Future plans: I'm looking through some grad school programs, though perhaps not with as much vigor and rigor as I should be. I hit a stumbling block when I looked into taking the GRE. The website was broken and instead of trying to troubleshoot I basically threw my hands up in the air and gave up for the day. My Jewish New Year’s resolution is to be more kind to myself about future plans. If I don’t get things together this year, it is not the end of the world. Absolute worst case scenario, I can stay at TLoTH for another year. That’s not what I plan to do, but I need to acknowledge to myself that I do have a rather significant safety net here. I need to practice being kind to myself. Even when I think I am being, I can be more kind and compassionate to others and myself.

Well that concludes my week. The song that I really want to post is a spoiler for season 1 of Steven Universe so I won’t do that because I hate spoilers. So here is some fantastic dancing to Ms Beyonce Knowles. Watch the video if you can, it's worth your 2:17 minutes.