What they don't know

When I was in high school drama, I learned an important lesson: don't let the audience know you messed up, and they may not notice.  Don't let them know you're nervous and they'll assume you're a pro.  Once you break that wall and show you're vulnerability, there's no going back.

So when you're meeting people in your new town, and maybe you haven't gotten a job yet or have anything newsworthy going on, don't talk about that.  When the inevitable question comes up, "So what do you do?" don't bury yourself under your spouse's job or belittle your circumstances.  Be proud of what you used to do, say what you want to do.  Be confident!  No one is going to ask probing questions about your job status or choice to follow someone you love (and if they do, they are an ass and you don't need them.)

You're an adult, and life changes.  Be the confident person you were before you may have been shaken up by this move.  It's just one more change life throws at you, except you're catching that ball while running.

You've got nothing to be ashamed of.

No one is "just" a wife.

You may not be making your own money for a while, but that doesn't make you less of a citizen.

Doing something crazy and new? Own it.  Do you think people cared about the fact that my business was really fledgling and I wasn't sure if it was a good idea?  No, they were interested in what the business was and how I got it started.

Find something you're proud of and don't belittle it by pretending you aren't proud.

I hope anyone who is currently in the anticipation stage of moving for a spouse's job is going alright, and it's ok if you aren't doing alright.  It's a weird time, and you'll have to find your way of dealing. Just know there's people that understand, and I'm one you can talk to if you need to vent.  Click on the "Contact Me" button, and dish away.

Bathroom selfie!

This is real, and it will change.

Me and the DMV: A taste of what's to come

Today is a university holiday, so I have it off.  I've spent today buying replacement lightbulbs and paying bills, sitting at the DMV trying to smile in order to make myself feel happier.  But it is just not working.  I keep looking at this dreary day and hoping that's not what's making me feel so low.  If it is, Seattle may not be so great for me.  I never noticed how often the sky was just pure, cloudless blue until I started reading about the weather in the Pacific Northwest.  I understand why they have vampires.

J has a short phone interview today with a Google representative.  It is not the big scary one, but it's his first phone interview for a job.  I have promised to be out of the house.  I am feeling his nervousness.  Afterwards I am taking him out for a meal.  I have yet to eat more than a small bowl of oatmeal today.

When I am sad or confused, I can't eat.  I forget how to make food or just get really bogged down in making decisions. I am currently staring at some frozen samosas that I do not want to unfreeze or eat.  A friend tells me I am disassociating from my current situation because it is too much.  I don't want to believe that, because this is just a taste of all the change and stress we'll go through.  All this time hoping and  complaining about moving on, and I freak out the second we start to go forward.  I've  cancelled plans with friends twice and backed out of a creative project just in the past day.  I'll admit I felt a lot better afterwards, but I really hate to disappoint people.

The highlight of my day will be starting a project for a commissioned Halloween hat.  My patron (who purchased my cherry hat previously and wants to collect more of my work ;)) pretty much let me decide what it would be, and I chose a barrel cactus.  I took a stack of newspapers from the DMV and will start making the form today.

Now, I really should eat before I decide to take a nap and waste the day.

28 Days of Blogging

I'm attempting a blog post a day for February, egged on by my friend at Freeze Dried.  I already missed February 1st, but I didn't know about it then, and it was the first snow day so I had s(no)w-work fever.

 Today is the first day back on campus since Monday, and we didn't have to be here until 9:30.  That gave me and J time for one last late  breakfast and we got to walk to work together.  Penguin-walking, because this town doesn't have any budget for inclement weather plans, and the roads and sidewalks were still pretty crappy.  As of this writing, it is snowing again.  I'm doing my best to get work done (writing a blog post on the side isn't productive, I know) but it's hard with my student employees yacking about the snow and me wondering if I need to tell other employees to just not come in.  I haven't had to deal with weather safety too much in my time here, but now I feel like it's up to me whether to make these students drive/bus up here.  If the University thinks it's safe enough to be open, I guess I should trust my employees to get here.

J and I talked a little last night about The Future.  He said he felt selfish in his current path.  I think it counts that he actually thinks about that, and it's not selfish if I said I'm ok with it.  Plus, I've gone this far with him, and I want to see it to the end (or at least the beginning of the next step, with a job).  And, on a sort of sad note, I've built my current life around what he's doing, so I'd be totally out to sea if he abandoned it.  I guess if he went into industry we'd still move (I don't like to think about how I would react if I found out we would not leave our current town) so really  he should do what will make him happiest in his career.  He's worked so long I think he deserves to have a job that fulfills him.  Just because I'm unhappy at my job doesn't mean I want him to be brought down with me.    We could both use a change of scenery.

Why does the trailing/ following/ accompanying/ traveling situation even need a name?

Alanpaul*, from the comments of Traveling Spouse!:

I don't see why we can't just say husband or wife. If one spouse works and the other does not in an on-expat setting, they don't need to be differentiated to this degree. 

"Trailing spouse" is absolutely a horrid term.  I've just already renamed my blog twice, and it took me a long time on the internet to even find that one term, so horrid as it is, it's a keyword beacon for other frustrated souls.

I think there's more problems in not naming it.  Before I came across these terms, I felt very alone that had all these thoughts/feelings about my identity if I leave my job/town and go somewhere with my spouse once he gets his post-doc job.  Once I found the term "trailing spouse", even after recoiling at the name, it felt good to know that I wasn't imagining things.  Like when I found out "lie bumps" were just inflamed taste buds, not tongue cancer.

If there's not a word for it, and it's mostly women who are in this position then we're implicitly saying that it's just a normal female role.  "Why give it a name? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?" And even though the "you" in this situation could be male or female, if it was mostly men, there'd be less demeaning name.

Betty Friedan opened the door for a more comprehensive vocabulary about these issues in The Feminine Mystique, where she wrote about "The Problem That Has No Name" (women's ennui with traditional feminine roles).  Hello Feminism!  I can't imagine what it felt like to read those words back in the 60s.  As a twenty-something in 2010, I am conscious of the long road we still have to travel as women, but cannot even pretend to know what it was like for my grandmothers, or my mother.  And I thank them for saving me from those experiences.  And so, when I hear that differentiation isn't necessary, I would rather err on the side of too many names than not enough.

I hope this post doesn't come off as too aggressive, but I am a fan of words, and an obnoxious baby feminist to boot. I'm sure reading one or two posts made that last point obvious.  I still can't believe anyone is even reading this.

*I've linked to a post he wrote about his work/life/marriage situation.  Good to hear from a male perspective on this!  He is now on my blog roll! (and I know he's just thrilled).

Getting myself all excited

Did you know that in England, fanny and bum do not mean the same thing?  Not that I say either of those things, but it's just blowing my mind how many language differences exist between Americans and Brits. I shouldn't be reading this stuff instead of working, but daydreaming about moving to another country is so much better than my boring job in a basement. Especially on a day when it is raining.

But maybe I'll just have a boring job in a basement in rainy England?

Or maybe I'll be stuck here indefinitely.  It's a doldrums day.

I did make some resolutions last night, of the mid-year variety. One is to start journaling again (in a real journal), to write a few entries here per week, run more, and learn to sew.  I'm going to the fabric store after work today and I'm going to find an easy pattern and just throw myself in. I need something pretty to wear to make me feel good.  That works sometimes.

What suffers in limbo, Part I

oday I'd like to write about my job.  I started my current job thinking I'd only be here a year or two, but it's now past three years.  At the beginning, when I found that my boss and I were not a good work match, I was constantly looking for other jobs.  I applied for a few, in the same company, but was given the run-around. I applied outside of the company.  I got nothing.

I can't complain-- it pays me well and I have benefits.  I am very close to work, and really it isn't very hard.  Sometimes the hardest part about the job is how boring it is.

The spouse seems confident that The Move will happen in the next 6 months, or at least he'll have landed a job.  Though that's what he's been saying for a while, he only has a year left of funding, so he's got a fire under him.  With the hope of half a year left, three years of struggling to communicate with my boss and a job that sporadically challenges me, I am having a lot of trouble caring.

A lot.

I get really good evaluations, so if I think I'm slipping, my boss doesn't seem to think so. (Which I think is sad, in a way.)  I want to leave this position better than when I came in, but I also want to give my notice and happily flounce away two weeks later.  I won't do that, but I fantasize about it.


Watching this clip gives me a feeling of lightness and peace.

[Edited for negative boss-commentary]

What makes me crazy

is wanting to at one time make a home where I am comfortable and also not wanting to sink my time and energy into building something that I might be asked to demolish soon after.

Sometimes it's hard to convince myself to pull weeds from the garden or do a really good job cleaning the bathroom. But seeing the messes makes me feel so apathetic.

Sometimes I wish I lived in the rooms you see in magazines, with a single lamp on the table and a neat bookshelf. Maybe a pair of slippers by the bed. This is when I start throwing/giving shit away. How it is that I still have things after years of these fits and starts?