Everyone should know how to throw

A girlfriend I used to work with posted a picture of herself on Facebook today. She’s wearing a baseball mitt on her left hand. This friend is about 10 years younger than me.

Her comment was that she had never worn one before but she would learn how to play for her sons. She would do anything for her sons.

I’m astounded that she never learned how to throw and catch a baseball or softball as a child. I’m astounded that doing so was only a boys’ thing in her mind.

Seriously, every kid should learn how to play baseball or softball. Not get good at it per se. But knowing how to throw and catch a ball is right up there with knowing how to tie your shoes, look both ways before you cross the street, writing complete sentences, and multiplying and dividing.

I realize that children who have moms who were sports-age before Title 9, might not have female role models for throwing and catching. But seriously, girls and women should know how to throw.

I played touch football for a few years in my 30s. One of the women on our team hadn’t been taught how to throw. She stepped forward on the side of her throwing arm. Parents, don’t let your children grow up to be “that teammate.”

Oh, and may no one ever have cause to use the sentence, “You throw like a girl,” as an insult anymore.

I’m doing this wrong

I’m really quite out of practice making friends. I always feel somewhat disconnected from the groups I hang with. Some of the girlfriends I have at work spend quite a bit of time with each other outside of work. I was unhappy seeing their escapades on Facebook, but it turns out that they enjoy drinking and didn’t invite me because of that. I guess that’s fine since I’m not into drinking recreationally, but there’s the separate feeling again.

Then there’s the dance crew. All of the women from the performance I was in recently are very young. I think the oldest is about 8 years younger than me. They are very friendly and they sometimes invite me to hang out, but it’s difficult because not only are they younger by a lot, they are also all in the city.

And there was the dance workshop in Ann Arbor I went to a couple of months ago. I did that all by myself, and while I knew people there from Chicago, I didn’t drive with anyone. I didn’t make good enough friends with anyone to invite myself to lunch or dinner with them. I even barely danced at night, skipping one whole dance altogether.

I registered for a dance workshop again that will require flying to get there. Last year, I did that workshop by myself, and it looks like I will be again this year too. Actually, I’m not sure if any of the local dancers who are still students of Former Teacher and Partner will go or not, but I probably won’t be hanging out with them anyway. Last year, when I did it myself, I came back and wished I had someone to talk about the trip with. It was the kind of experience that is magnified when it’s shared. So this year, I may be doing it myself again, but hopefully I’ll make even more friends. It’s the post vacation that will be a little bit of a letdown.

I just sometimes feel like I’m stumbling through my social connections against the current. Lately, I’m just making it harder for me to make connections.

Fleeting confidence

For the past two months, I was taking a dance class in preparation for a performance. There were 10 women in the class, and the performance was solo movement but with a group choreography. We performed recently and did very well.

There were a few mistakes. A couple of us missed some of the steps, but overall, the performance was really good.

I remembered almost everything. I really only forgot how to angle myself in relation to the audience at a couple of points.

But immediately after the performance, while the adrenaline was still coursing through me, I was very happy with the performance. It looked good; it was a high energy performance; it was a fun group of women to perform with.

We performed at a social dance event during the band breaks. So before and after the performance, I was dressed up and dancing with friends.

I even made sure to ask New Teacher dance. Last year, at this event, I was too afraid to do that. It was a good dance with New Teacher. I was relaxed and just having fun. I didn’t let any doubt creep in while I was dancing with him. There was a point or two in dancing with him that I wondered if I misunderstood his lead, but I shrugged it off and just kept dancing. I felt really good during that song, and New Teacher said it was really nice at the end. I’m sure it was professional courtesy on his part, but it was also, I think, sincere because I heard a bit of pleasant surprise in his voice. Anyway, I took it as a compliment and just added it to the reasons I was feeling good that night.

The teacher for our performance was talking to one of the singers from the band at a different time in the night. The singer was cute, and I noticed, and I noticed that I noticed. I usually walk around never expecting anything to happen romantically for me, so to even notice someone is progress for me.

I went home feeling really good. It sort of felt like I conquered my dance insecurities that I got from Former Teacher. I was really happy with the night, calmly and confidently happy.

But by Sunday afternoon, all of that had rubbed off.

I watched the YouTube video of our performance. I didn’t like what I saw, and I really saw only two things.

1) My arms looked terrible in the performance. I had worked for the last month and even during our practice Saturday afternoon to make my arms look good, and then all of that went out of my head during the performance and they looked terrible.

2) I looked big, really big. I was really unhappy with how fat I looked.

This post isn’t about whether or not those things were true. That’s really not what is bothering me.

What’s bothering me is that I let those two thoughts steal my confidence. It took less than 24 hours for the high to wear off. It took less than 24 hours for me to shrink back in on myself.

And I don’t know why. I don’t know why I couldn’t keep the confidence. What makes it all go away that quickly? Why do I beat myself up over my appearance? Why can’t I do a better job with what I eat? Why do I still feel like I’m not a good enough dancer?

Sigh.

A little bit of the confidence is back today, but only a little bit.

Holy crankies, Batman

In my last post, I mentioned how much ridiculousness there is at my job. Well, in the last few days it’s been worse. Just more and more craziness.

And, and now I can confirm, that my level of crankiness dramatically increases as the ridiculousness increases.

I was downright mad at work in the early part of this week. I won’t go into the details because they will only make me angrier today, but it’s been trying.

And I can’t wait until something changes. I’m not big on patience in the work place. It’s just one of those things that I’m not good at. The longer it takes for the bad parts to improve, the more and more frustrated I get. I’m not really able to wait it out until things actually get better.

But I definitely needed outlets this week. I made sure to work out on Tuesday night. Dance class and social dancing on Wednesday also helped. I also had an offsite meeting on Friday, and my crazy boss is now on vacation for almost a week, so that helped too.

I’m going to need to do something else for the crankies this coming week. I, me personally, myself, am moving my office on Monday because we didn’t hire movers to move everyone into their new offices. So that will be a day that tests me.

I’m just going to need big stores of self control and patience for the coming week.

On, an unrelated note, my cat is aging and becoming ill. She’s about 15 years old, and her kidneys are beginning to fail. I’m injecting fluids under her skin and we’re trying a low protein diet, so we’ll see how well she does on that. I’m not that great at the injections yet, but she forgives me very quickly after.

My nonsense tank is overflowing

Work has been full of craziness lately. Too much, even. And I’m almost at the danger level when the pressure builds up and can do nothing but escape violently, which will take the form of me saying something that equates to a career limiting move.

Speaking of moves, half of the floor I work on is going to be demolished and turned into cubicles. Yes, that’s right, my company is finally entering the 1990s.

So everyone on my half of the floor needs to move to new offices until the construction is finished. We have to move ourselves. Apparently, that’s how office moves happen in the year 2013.

Okay, fine, I can fill up my rent-a-crate containers and wheel them over to my new office. But I’m expected to still wear our professional dress. Yes, that’s right. Physically, we’re moving into the 1990s, but we still have to dress as if it’s 1983 at the office, even while we’re doing the labor that big burly men are usually hired to do.

And with the new office space is supposed to come a new way of working. There’s a special team going into the newly renovated space and we’re all supposed to work more collaboratively now.

Okay, fine, you do sometimes have to remove physical barriers to get people to talk to one another. But cubicles are not magic fertilizer that causes great work to sprout all by themselves.

And, since the company is changing focus a bit, our department head has held off reorganizing our department even though we asked him to do that back in October and November. He, probably prudently, decided not to drastically change our structure until he knows more about how the whole company will be structured since we are a support function. What he neglected to do was tell us he was waiting for this new structure. Instead, we’ve all be kind of annoyed and feeling like mushrooms since the beginning of the year. Seriously, how hard would it have been to just tell us he needed to wait a little longer.

There are more examples, but I’m working myself up into a tizzy over the nonsense. I need to cut my griping off now.

When I didn’t understand the logic behind something one of our clients did, one of my very first bosses said to me sarcastically, “There you go making sense again.” Yeah, I’m apparently unable to suspend the sense-making part of my brain, so I’m always reminding myself to turn off the logic when I’m at work, especially the company I’m at now. Sigh.

Dreaming

So I had a dream last night. It all started because I had the pretty bad movie “Step Up” on the tv in the background of what I was doing. There was a scene in which Channing Tatum’s character kisses the female lead character.

Well that kiss stuck in my head. I ended dreaming that I was at a play with a guy I know from my dance lessons. In my dream, we were definitely a couple, and there was a good amount of making out in the dream.

While the dream itself was pleasant enough, it was not actually a good dream. My dream-life boyfriend, in real life, is the boyfriend of someone else I know. I haven’t had any romantic thoughts of him, and I don’t really want to.

But, damn it, I do want a boyfriend. Especially now at the end of winter. I’m tired of same.

My job is getting boring; I’m tired of my boss, and I have no patience left for that place.

My dancing is going well, but I don’t have the burning desire to go out to my regular dance venues anymore.

I’m tired of my house. These same “four” walls, which I haven’t updated in quite a while.

My photography class was really fun, and I do hope to work on it a bunch more, but it’s a bit of a solitary pursuit.

I just need a shake up.

And a boyfriend.

Another Tuesday storm

It’s been snowing all day here in the Chicago area. Pretty hard since late morning.

Thankfully, my office was closed today and we could work at home so I didn’t have to try to drive in the blowing snow. But it’s been a lot of snow, blowing from East to West, which is a little unusual around here. The wind usually blows the other direction.

And last year about this time, I wrote about how I was not letting myself get excited for spring, even though the weather was great then. I know that cold weather can really happen way into April, and sometimes even in June, it’ll only get as high as 60 degrees.

But I am tired of the snow by now. I’m definitely getting a little bit of cabin fever.

I’m annoyed with a few people at work, my boss in particular. I’m tired of having to exercise an extreme amount of patience around her.

I’m sick of the house and the projects around the house. I have plenty to do, but not a lot of enthusiasm for doing those things.

For more than one reason, I’ve lost my enthusiasm for my regular Wednesday night dance venue. It hasn’t been that fun the last couple of times I’ve been. I’m even at a point of considering going to a different Wednesday night venue. There was a time when I never would have considered that.

If I weren’t taking a photography class right now, I’d be going really crazy. It’s great to be learning something new and creative. And after a little while, I can work on it on my own. I’ll be able to do quite a bit with it without lessons and classes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already signed up for my second class, but it won’t quite require the same kind of commitment my dance lessons do. There are more direct things I can do and try on my own with photography than I can with dancing.

But it’s getting late in the day. The sun is starting to go down, I think. The wind is picking up, and it’s still snowing.

Right now, warm weather and sunshine sounds so appealing. I think I’m going to go plan a vacation.

Routine and shaking things up

I’ve come to the conclusion that my life runs a lot better when I pretty much stick to a routine.

For instance, having the same nights set aside for dancing every week, having the same nights and days set aside for going to the gym, having very predictable work hours all mean that I do very good job of staying on top of housework, bill paying, and what I eat.

When these things change a lot, it’s much more difficult for me to feel like I’m on top of things and to have discipline to stay on top of things.

Traveling will do it to me every time. Not only am I in a different place and on a different schedule, but traveling itself just wears me out. It makes it so much easier for me to talk myself out of going to the fitness center in the hotel and for me to talk myself into getting the burger and fries instead of something much healthier. And depending on how long my trip is and which days it covers, it can take me a while to get back into my routine.

The disruption isn’t permanent and it doesn’t make me spiral out of control, but it does make it harder for me to stick to long term goals and plans.

So I welcome having a fairly predictable life. I walk around feeling much less stressed.

But then, I think about my predictable life, and just how predictable it is. Predictability, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, but being in a routine makes it hard for me to get to something new in my life.

Have you heard the expression, “If you want to make a change in your life, you have to make a change in your life?” Well, I feel like I’m at that point again.

I learned recently at work that I’m at the top of my salary band for level in our department, which means no raises until I get promoted. This happens, and I know about it, but it makes the idea of finding a new job much more inviting.

And maybe finding a new job will be good. I’d get to meet new people, I’d be physically in a different place. I’d be learning new things.

I value those new experiences; it’s one of the reasons I decided to move to Chicago many years ago.

And I’m still on a quest for more and for closer friends. Shaking up my routine might help a lot.

I start a photography class tonight. It’s only 6 weeks long, but it could be really fun.

Anyway, I’m feeling a need to get out of my day-to-day rut, but only so that I can find a new routine that helps me set up new good habits.

Valentine’s and wardrobes

You know, today is Valentine’s day and I don’t really care.

I am generally really good at tuning out the commercial hoopla of this made up holiday. And I’m generally good at ignoring all the mushy couple stuff going on too.

But what kind of old maid would I be if I didn’t grouse a little bit?

So here is something that I find stupid.

Why do grown women insist on wearing red to work on Valentine’s day?

Seriously, you’ve been married a while, and you need to mark the celebration with a sweater with hearts on it?

You’re young and in love and a red jacket is just the way to tell everyone?

And don’t get me started on the pink.

Both red and pink are perfectly great colors to wear to work. I like them both, but I don’t need them to mark a celebration.

Come on. Just dress like a normal, professional, woman.

Not getting in the middle of things

A while back, a dance friend of mine asked me a question related to Former Teacher, and when I gave her my short and to-the-point answer, the conversation was over. In other words, she asked her question, got her answer and did nothing to stir up any anger or encourage me to say anything bad about Former Teacher.

The subject changed and we went on in our conversation talking about different things. Eventually this friend talked about some conflict in her workplace and how she did her best to stay out of it. She said, “I just don’t want to get in the middle of things.”

I nodded my head. I couldn’t do anything else, because I had witnessed and been on the receiving end of these very same actions of hers. She had asked me that question about Former Teacher at a time when I was still very much hurting and raw over the whole incident with him.

Before I had this conversation with my friend, I thought that not getting in the middle of others’ arguments was undeniably a good thing. It would have been my main plan myself for whenever people I knew were not getting along.

However, that night, I realized that an act intended as neutrality could still really sting too.

This friend who didn’t want to get in the middle of things had never asked me how I was doing. She never asked what Former Teacher had said to me and how I was handling it. And I was having a very rough time. A handful of people validating that I had a reason to be hurt would have at least helped me feel like I wasn’t making a bigger deal out of things than they were. (I wasn’t, but during, it was hard to be sure of that.)

A few of my other dance friends did listen to me and to how I was feeling. They managed to do that and still stay friend with Former Teacher too.

But not asking me was, in a way, minimizing what I had experienced.

My friend who stays out of the middle was not at all trying to hurt me. She would feel terrible knowing that I was hurt over that. But you could say I learned a lesson from this. If I ever have friends in similar situations, then I will listen to their side. Even if I don’t decide to do anything, I will at least attempt to validate what they’re feeling.