Up and down, and all around - I'm not so good at that kind of stuff, but it seems to be pretty good at finding me. So time to rewind and recap the roller coaster ride of the time since the last entry.

The day after the last entry, I started the meditation class I mentioned, and it was pretty intense. Four hours of class each day Tuesday through Friday, then six hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. As expected, there was a lot of the touchy-feely hippie stuff that makes me rather uncomfortable - giving up our fears and insecurities to the spirits, gazing into our classmates' eyes, telling our secrets and discussing how it affected our prana - but there was also yoga and games and breathing exercises, and it was these things that made it worthwhile for me.

I am very skeptical when it comes to spiritual experiences and seeking enlightenment. I like facts and logic and analysis. The games forced us to interact with 20 strangers, to laugh with them and bond with them. That makes sense to me. The yoga stretched us out and put us more in touch with our bodies, and exercise is good for both body and mind. That makes sense to me.

The breathing exercises were what blew my mind away, and partly because I know that there is most likely a scientific basis for the very positive side effects the exercises had. It makes sense that how we breathe - how fast, how deep, how often - affects how everything works, but I had no idea just how great of an effect something as simple as breath can have on your state of mind. When doing the breathing exercises, I experienced mild hallucinations, tingling, numbness, a sense of detachment (both from my body and from my own mind), and a general sense of happiness and well-being. Given how absent that sense of well-being was before, it's a pretty drastic side effect.

The only way I can explain it is that the breathing exercises changed the oxygen-carbon dioxide balance in my blood, which in turn affected brain function, which in turn made it difficult for me to focus on my thoughts (i.e. my worries, stress, and anxieties), which in turn gave me a temporary sense of detachment from my own life, which in turn gave me a better sense of perspective, and that even after the immediate effects wore off, it still had an effect, because once you detach from your problems, it's hard for your problems to fully reattach and consume you in the same way.

In any case, when I was a couple of days into the course, I noticed a significant shift in my state of mind - work was still confusing and stressful, but not as overwhelming; things with Apple were still upsetting and less than ideal, but not cataclysmic; my social life seemed a bit sparse, but it didn't hurt that I met 20 new people through the class. Placebo effect or real effect, I didn't really care what it was, as long as there was an effect.

Then Apple IMed me about his visit on the way back, and then sent me a text, asking me to call him. I did, and he said he was going to end his road trip early and come back in town on Sunday (the last day of the course), and asking if he could stay with me until Thursday morning (today), when he would fly back to Europe. It seemed like a terrible, irresistible idea. I agreed, telling myself that it would be a test, that it would bring closure, that I would be able to use my newfound sense of detachment to see things as they were and move on. I don't know if I actually believed that to be the case, but it's how I justified it to myself.

I went through a few more meditation classes, and felt things evening out and stabilizing. Maybe part of it is the fact that I've been here for two months, and I'm getting used to the fight - it's an uphill battle, but I've done this before, and I'm still standing. Maybe it's partly the class. I don't know. But I feel like there may be a light at the end of the tunnel somewhere, and if I just keep going, I'll get through this eventually.

Apple showed up early Sunday morning before my class. He immediately fell back into being lovey-dovey, but I, with my new, enlightened sense of detachment, resisted and remained polite but cool for a good ten minutes. And then I fell back into old habits. Enlightenment is short-lived, apparently. But it wasn't a total loss - I felt like my heart was a little more shielded and less vulnerable than it was before, and I was able to look at him and talk to him without feeling upset or anxious. I saw how things were and I was generally OK with them.

He took me to my final meditation class, and promised to pick me up afterwards. I got out of class about half an hour late, and he was waiting patiently outside. He brought me home, and lo and behold, true to Apple form, he had gotten rid of all of my cardboard boxes, organized the kitchen and living room, tidied and stacked whatever he could make sense of, and built my dining room table. The next day, he took the table legs off and brought them to Home Depot to get them cut down so that my table would be low enough to sit on the floor to eat, and picked up assorted bits and pieces of hardware to hang things, replace missing parts, and so on. It was incredibly sweet, especially since it isn't his apartment or his stuff, and he was supposed to be on vacation.

His visit here was really bittersweet. On one hand, things were exactly as they always were - it was as if the last two months never happened, and we were the same couple we had always been. We are great together in person. Really great. We don't fight, and we make each other extraordinarily happy. We both started the visit hoping to help ourselves finish getting over each other, but just found ourselves falling in love all over again. On the other hand, it was hard to look at him and think, "This is not my boyfriend. He is leaving in a few days. He has been here for over two weeks for a trip that was originally planned for my birthday, and is only spending a few days with me." But in between those pangs of regret, it was just good to have him here.

We talked about us, on and off, and about how things did and didn't work out, about how wonderful it was to be in one place again, and about how hard it was to be apart. I told him that he wasn't making things any easier by acting like nothing had changed, and saying "I love you, I miss you, come back," and he said he couldn't help it, that he was just saying what he thought and felt. During one particularly sad conversation, in which I said I thought that it was a mistake, letting things slide back to how they were, because it would just mean a second round of heartbreak, he said that he didn't want there to be any heartbreak, and that he wanted to find a way to make it work. Oh.

And that started off another round of discussions, both between us and internally, with myself. In general, I have a few policies that I try to observe when dating. "No recycling" is near the top of that list - once an ex, always an ex, because if it didn't work out the first time, and nothing has changed in the mean time, why go through it all again? On the other hand, I've already broken a lot of rules with him - no more smokers (oops), no more long-distance (nope), no hooking up with an ex (d'oh).

What we finally ended up doing was sitting down and discussing what we would each require if we were to get back together - what would make the relationship more feasible and less stressful, what we liked about us and what we didn't like, what we would do in the next month, three months, six months, if things continued to go well. And over sushi and grocery shopping, we came to some sort of agreement about the shape of things to come. I am still ambivalent about whether this was a good idea - maybe I'm setting myself up for another round of emotional battery, but after seeing how we much we are still in love and how well things go when we're together, I don't think I can walk away and never look back and wonder.

So wish me luck with that. I'll need it.

Work is still bewildering and confusing - I still don't feel like I know enough, either about the substantive law, or about our company policies, or about the mechanics of getting deals done, but I'm getting better at faking it, and that's something.

I'm slowly scraping together a social circle - people to call or see or talk to. It's a sad substitute for the social life I had, but it's better than nothing, and it has to go through this awkward ugly duckling phase before it will turn into something worthwhile. I'm getting a little more patient with respect to getting results, because I can finally see that I'll have something there, eventually.

Generally, I still feel like I'm struggling, and that I'm walking on rough ground with a blindfold, but I no longer feel like I'm sinking and drowning *all* the time. So it's not great, but it's an improvement, and I hope that things will keep getting better, bit by bit, through a combination of an actual improvement in my situation, continued efforts on my part to find a way to fit into my life, and the side effects of the class I took.

***

And Tuesday was my 30th birthday. Sounds so mature, doesn't it? I feel like I should know more about what I'm supposed to be doing by now, but I don't. I wonder what age I'll be when I finally feel like I'm grown up and living the life I'm supposed to be living.

In Cinderella, the prince goes all over the place bearing the glass slipper that his mystery girl left behind when she ran away from the ball. He lines all the girls up to try the shoe on, promising that whoever is able to fit the shoe (ostensibly only one person could possibly wear that shoe size) would live happily ever after in a perfect fairy tale life. Cinderella’s stepsisters want the shoe to fit so badly that they cut their toes and heels off to try to squeeze into it. What harm can a little self-mutilation do, when it’s in the interest of never-ending (albeit toeless) bliss? It doesn’t work, and the prince keeps looking for someone who can wear the shoe without any self-inflicted amputations, and to add insult to injury, the stepsisters later have to dance at Cinderella’s wedding (on their maimed feet) while wearing red-hot shoes. And then they die.

I feel a little bit like a stepsister right now – I am not convinced that the shoe really fits me – except that I’ve actually managed to convince the prince that the blood that’s overflowing from the shoe isn’t a big deal, and now I’m supposedly living happily ever after, and wondering if this really is the perfect life for me. How long can you really wear shoes (or a life) that don’t fit and still be convinced that they suit you? Especially if your feet get ravaged by gangrene. That can’t look very good through the glass slippers.

Maybe this is the perfect life, but it’s just the perfect life for someone else. Maybe my perfect life is something entirely different. I have this unshakable feeling that I’m living someone else’s life, and it just doesn’t fit. Maybe I would rather wear flip-flops or go barefoot than try to squeeze into someone else’s glass slipper.

It’s so infuriating that I have all this great stuff going on, and I’m still just miserable most of the time. How is it possible that I can have the perfect job at the perfect company, and a perfect apartment that I share with my perfect dog, and still be unhappy? It seems ungrateful, but it’s true. I can’t decide if it means that I would be unhappy no matter what (because if I can’t be happy with the perfect life, then nothing will make me happy), or if it just means that this isn’t *my* perfect life. Or maybe it’s something else, altogether.

I went through a similar period of isolation and doubt when I left New York four years ago, but there are a couple of key differences: (1) I was fleeing a miserable job in New York and going to a job I was good at, whereas now, I’ve left behind a job I was good at and am trying to do a job I don’t understand, and (2) before, I was going to a totally unknown world, and thus expected to have some trouble adjusting, whereas this time, I naively believed that it would be a sort of homecoming (despite the fact that I’ve never lived on the West Coast before), and am finding that the reality is much bleaker.

I would love my job if I knew how to do it. The company is great, the people are great, and the work is interesting. Lawyers here get lots of responsibility and autonomy in really cool deals, which is rare. Instead, I spend most of my time at work feeling anxious, stressed, scared, and useless. Anxious and stressed about how much work I have and how little I understand about how to get it done. Scared that they will realize how little I know and decide that they made a mistake in hiring me, and scared that I’ll make a huge mistake on one of these deals that I’m running with almost no supervision – I almost wish that we didn’t have so much autonomy, because I really could use some more supervision right now. And useless because I can’t do the work the way it should be done. I am one of the youngest lawyers here, and the least experienced one, for sure – everyone else came here from law firms or other in-house positions. They knew that I was young and inexperienced when they hired me, but maybe they didn’t realize quite how young and how inexperienced, and maybe they will run out of patience soon. (Although I guess I’m not that young anymore – I turn 30 in a week, and the idea of turning 30 never bothered me when I was happy with my life and myself, but now that I’m feeling rather stupid and useless, I am more perturbed by the thought of turning 30 and having nothing to show for it.)

It is very hard not having any of my close friends nearby. 2FX flew in from New York Saturday morning and left Sunday night, and it was really good to have him here. We didn’t do much of anything, but sometimes when you lose faith in yourself, it’s good to have someone around who still has faith in you. They can’t restore your faith in yourself, but they remind you that there is something in there that someone thinks is worth believing in. Seeing 2FX did me a lot of good, and having him leave made me realize even more how alone I feel out here.

Apple was here for a day last week. That messed with my head. I thought I had made so much progress, then he came and was all lovey-dovey, and really, it’s hard to tell yourself that you’re over someone when they are kissing you and telling you that they still love you and miss you and think you would be happier if you moved back. It’s pretty inconsiderate of him to say and do such things, when he is the one who more strongly advocated breaking up, so I’m not sure what his intentions were. I’ll be seeing him again when he finishes his road trip, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Maybe it will be OK, or maybe it will just be another mindf*ck.

*sigh*

I know that this will pass - it took a year before I really got comfortable with the last life I was living, the one I left behind for this one - but knowing that things will be better in a year doesn't change the fact that for now, things suck. And it doesn't alleviate the worry that if I keep sucking so badly at this life, the prince might realize that I'm not the right one and take the glass slipper away.

I've been meaning to write a substantive post, but haven't gotten around to it. 2FX gets in town tomorrow morning and leaves Sunday evening. I saw Apple on Tuesday, and it was quite a mindf*ck. More on that stuff later.

In the mean time, I think today's lunch menu at one of our on-site cafes is the best one I've seen so far. I love having free food at work.

Key excerpts:

Kobe Beef Burgers - Kobe Beef Served on Brioche Slider Buns Topped with Melted Gruyere Cheese and Sauteed Mushrooms Served Medium Rare
Kumamoto Oysters
Blue Point Oysters
Lobster Risotto - Arborio Rice, Lobster, Butter, Parmesan Cheese, Crab Meat, Tarragon, Chives, Truffle Oil

[Edit, two hours later: Ugh, I think I'm going to puke. I really need to learn when to stop eating, especially if I'm supposed to work after eating.]

Going through three fails (relationship, work, and social life) at once can be emotionally and mentally tiring. I definitely feel like I don’t always have all the marbles I’m supposed to be playing with. To that end, I am making a very determined effort to force a turnaround. I can’t do anything to force my work or love life to resemble what I want them to, not in the short run, anyways, so my efforts right now are directed at the goal of forcing me out of isolation.

I figure that if I’m making my friend set and fulfill missions, even if he doesn’t enjoy them, then I should be willing to take a dose of my own medicine. I have to stand by the things that I tell him will help.

Here are my missions:

• Do something outside of work and outside of the apartment, involving other people, at least three times per week. (I’m doing well on this one. I have been out and about every day since Saturday. Tonight will be my first evening this week of doing my own thing, which has me a bit nervous, because it’s never good to be alone with my thoughts for too long when the thoughts are gloomy, but I can’t hide from my brain all the time.)
• Poach or cultivate as many friends as I can. (I’ve been getting in touch with local acquaintances and also asking friends to put me in touch with their friends so that I don’t have to start completely from scratch. Also, I just joined the Harvard Club, which is very active in the Bay Area, so hopefully that will help.)

I’ve also signed up for an intensive meditation class that is being held at work. It’s supposed to help you deal with stress and negative thinking, and since I’ve definitely been fighting with both of those, I figured I’d sign up and try it out. On one hand, I have to give up four evenings and a weekend to do it, but on the other hand, what else am I going to do with that time, anyways? Plus, I’m living in California, land of Birkenstocks, wheatgrass, and morning yoga. I’ve got to do something to blend in with the locals.

2FX is also going to try to rearrange his schedule so that he can fly out here to hang out for a bit. Even if I am middle-class in terms of finances, I am very rich in friends. It’s crazy that I have friends who would drop everything and come if I say that I need them. When faced with their generosity, I always just hope that I can be the same kind of friend to them.

Apple asked me if I thought we would stay friends, and I told him that I honestly don’t know, because I’m not sure that he’s the kind of person I’m usually friends with. Friends don't always make good boyfriends, and boyfriends don't always make good friends. He argued that I stayed good friends with 2FX, that my friends are all so different from each other, and asked how I could say whether he was someone I would usually be friends with. And it’s true, 2FX is an ex and is one of my best friends, and my good friends are very different from each other, to the point that many of them really have nothing to say to each other. The thing that they have in common, though, is that they are dependable and generous in times of need.

Apple is many things, both good and bad, but I think that he is not the person you turn to when you absolutely need something, because he is often unable to shift his priorities away from himself. If his interests align with yours, he will do all kinds of things to help and support you, but if his interests diverge from yours, then he tends to only give weight to his own interests.

I will probably see Apple one evening next week. He is flying out on Monday, and the 2.5 week trip was originally scheduled as a visit, but now, because it’s a non-refundable ticket, he will be coming out and going on his own Californian vacation. We have both flip-flopped on whether we should see each other. There was some talk of postponing the breakup until after the trip. Then he said that maybe he could spend half of the trip here, and half of it doing his own thing. Then I thought that maybe I wouldn’t want to see him at all, because it would just make things more difficult. And now we’ve sort of decided that we’ll meet up to exchange a few gifts that we had for each other, and to say goodbye. I’m hoping that seeing our real, flawed selves, instead of our remembered, ideal selves, and having a real goodbye, rather than the open-ended goodbye that we had in May, will make things better, but I’m afraid that they will make things worse.

Who knows, though, as that’s five days away, and I’ve never been able to figure out how my heart works. As the years go by, I sometimes worry that I have become heartless and less human. I deconstruct the world into logic and rules, and when things get bad, I put all of my energy into shutting down and quarantining my heart, and letting my head go on auto-pilot. It minimizes emotional costs in the short run – I routinely have a new relationship before the previous one has been dead for a few weeks (or days, as the case may be). When I don’t like what my heart is saying, I snuff it out and kill it as quickly as possible. It seems cruel to let it suffer, so I put it out of its misery.

I’m not convinced that it grows back all the way each time I kill it. Maybe I only have half as much as I used to.

As time has passed, I realize that I almost approach love like a drug. I love being in love, and I sometimes let myself fall in love just for the sake of getting that high, without respect to whether it’s really worth doing. Then, when the relationship ends, I force myself to fall out of love as quickly as possible, just so I can go after my next fix.

Sometimes I have felt love ebbing so quickly that it made me question whether it was really love to begin with. Maybe it was just a delusion. If it felt like love, and I was convinced it was love, then how could it die so easily, just because I asked it to? Is it an indication that it wasn’t really love (in which case I need to take another look at my ability to analyze my own feelings), or is it an indication that I’m not really capable of love (in which case I need to take another look at my humanity)?

With that thought in mind, I sometimes almost relish the pain of heartbreak while it’s there, because it is some shred of evidence that I really do have a heart to break, and that the emotion that was there was significant enough to cause me pain through its absence. It hurts now, which means that maybe I really was feeling something real, but it hurts less than it did a few days ago, and if it really was love, would a few days really change my perspective on it that much?

At this point, I am starting to have a bad taste in my mouth about the whole affair, enough that it sort of leaks out and taints my time abroad, which I really don't want to happen - I don't want one small failure to besmirch a four-year period, that just isn't fair. So I'm thinking about it as much as possible to try and separate the two in my mind and throw the spoiled parts out to minimize cross-contamination. There I go again, facing my problems with all head and no heart. Old habits die hard.

I feel less and less human as I get older, and I think that love and loss, two of the most human experiences there are, are the only reminders I have that underneath all the logic and analysis, there is something real. So it’s just disturbing when I question whether I’m really experiencing love, if the loss of it fades so quickly, because then maybe there isn’t anything real underneath it all.

What if I've inadvertently deleted parts of myself that were worth keeping, all those times I stamped out things I wanted to get rid of?

Seeing how far my friend has fallen, and feeling myself teetering on the edge of the same brink, the question that arises is, "To medicate or not to medicate?" Am I going to be able to pull back from the brink on my own, or will I start skittering down the same slope I have gone down before? Could I possibly slip as far as he has?

How much do I need to factor in all the other things in figuring that out - my friend's situation (which terrifies me every time I think about it, because that could be me - I always assumed that things would either be the way they are, going back and forth between normal and black, or they would end in the Big Nothing, but his hellish situation is far worse), the scariness of a job I want but can't do, the empty social scene, the situation with Apple (which is going from bad to worse), and my own general inability to control the chaos.

How long can I hold off before starting? How badly will the delay hurt me? Can I really handle another ride on this stupid merry-go-round?

Ugh.

Sometimes I wish I could just go away for a while, let someone else come live my life and sort it out, and come get me when it's all fixed.

So when it comes to relationships, I'm fairly cynical. I truly enjoy dating (I do my fair share of it), but I think I just like the process of falling in love more than anything else. I never really believe that anything will last forever - for me, at least - so I just throw myself into relationships under the assumption that they will one day end. It's fun when it goes well, and awful when it goes badly, but I know that when one relationship tanks, another will soon pop up to replace it, and some heartbreak in the interim can only make me stronger.

So when it comes to the kind of love that lasts forever, till death do us part, my money is on my friends. Not all friends, not the short-lived friendships that are sort of like crushes that spring up and burn too fast, too hot, then trail off like smoke, but the ones that are built slowly and solidly with a lot of care, and are more like granite than fire. The kind of friends that you eventually say "I love you" to, without any of the agonizing or doubt that comes with the same statement the first time you make it in a relationship, because it's just as obvious as saying hello or goodbye. And then they say it back, with just as little worry, because it's the most comfortable, steady kind of love there is. No stress, no "is she going to love me tomorrow, does he love that other person more, will they love me if I gain weight."

With that kind of friendship, you know that you will love each other today, tomorrow, next week, next year, even if you don't talk every day, because it's there. It's heartening to have that kind of stability in the midst of the cluttered chaos that I call my life.

I'm extremely fortunate in that I have more than my fair share of "I love you" friends. At each stage of my life, I have had groups of friends who have come and gone, but I have also had a few special friends who have stayed with me through to the next stage and the next. If romantic love is a pair of wings that lifts you up in exhilarating flight, platonic love is an anchor, a compass, and a map that remind you how to find yourself when you've lost your way.

I can also say that my dearest friends are not your garden variety fair weather friends. Some of them have unfortunately had to withstand a trial by fire of sorts on my behalf, and they stood by me to the point that I still can't believe what they would do for me. It's pretty incredible, having friends like mine.

I sometimes think that my inability to stick with one guy for too long is partly due to my excellent exes, whom they can't compare to (they set the bar so high), and partly due to my excellent friends, whom they can't compete with (who could be more reliable, more fun, more interesting than my friends?). And partly due to my extremely short attention span and inability to settle down. It's a pretty hopeless combination.

So my favorite ex, FX, got married on Sunday. Like me, FX is Chinese-American. We met in college, because he sang in my all-women's choir's brother choir. His sister sang with my sister at Yale. We grew up an hour away from each other. His dad knows my uncle, because they are both physics professors. We dated for about 2.5 years, and in many ways, that is still the relationship I use to measure other relationships. We stayed good friends afterwards, and he used to come to my place every week to play cards when I was still living in New York. In fact, he even bought the apartment three floors above mine, just as I was leaving, because he knew the building well and liked it enough to buy a place there.

In any case, he started dating this girl a couple years ago, and when I met her, I have to confess that I wasn't terribly impressed. She is plain, quiet, and didn't seem all that smart or interesting. They met because she is an HR person at the hedge fund where he is now a VP. She is also Orthodox Jewish, meaning that she keeps totally kosher and doesn't use electricity (including elevators) on the Sabbath. Observant Jewish and pork-eating, 40th floor-living Chinese don't really seem to be the ideal combination, but greater obstacles have been overcome by many couples, so that difference, while it makes me wonder how compatible they are, doesn't really worry me too much. I was more concerned that she just didn't seem good enough for FX - I want him to be with someone smart, funny, interesting, who is able to share his love of card games and music, someone who "gets" him. It's not that I am jealous or dog-in-the-manger-ish or want to be with FX - I have been happily dating since I broke up with him eight years ago, and we have been 100% platonic since then. It's more of a sisterly concern, the same kind of sentiment that siblings have when wondering if someone is "good enough" for their favorite brother or sister. I'm not opposed to the idea of him getting married, per se, I just want him to be married to someone who is as smart and nice and interesting as he is, and I'm not convinced that she meets that standard.

I think she was similarly unimpressed by me, as FX and I have fallen into having only occasional contact since they got together.

So he told me that they got engaged over the holidays, and I congratulated him and wished him the best. I wasn't sure that I would be invited to the wedding - although FX and I were very close, I know how weddings can be, and know that you can't always invite everyone, especially exes. But I was surprised that he didn't even tell me their actual wedding date - I found out through a friend.

OK, so I wrote him an email just to say congratulations and asked if they were registered somewhere, so that I could get them a gift. He told me where they were registered, and I went to check it out. Most things were already bought, but one of the few things that remained was the silverware. They registered for 12 place settings of sterling silver silverware at $400 a setting. The FX that I have always known was practical and frugal, so he would never pick forks that weren't dishwasher-safe and cost $400 a setting. Or if he did, he would pick a pattern that was simple and modern, and also get a set of dishwasher-safe everyday flatware. But nope, the registry only had a rather unattractive, flowery, old-fashioned pattern of silverware for 12 people that can't go in the dishwasher and will tarnish, unless used by 12 people every day, and then washed by hand. That was totally her pick, I just know it.

Yes, I judge people based on their wedding registries.

So now I don't know what to do. I'm pretty averse to the idea of buying a $400 place setting that I don't like for a girl who doesn't like me. But there isn't much left on the registry. So I guess I'll just buy them something random that isn't on the registry, and assume that it's the thought that counts. Maybe if I get them something, she'll like me more. I'm not sure what to do about my reservations about her.

Despite the somewhat depressing tone of my last entry, I know that I'm lucky. I've lived a generally charmed life, and it's sometimes hard to remember that when I'm in the midst of it. I lose sight of the big, green forest because I'm so focused on a few sickly, stunted trees. So sometimes it's nice to get a reminder of how much forest is out there to enjoy, once I get out of this scrubby patch.

I had a phone call a couple weeks ago. I spent the summer after my junior year in high school on an exchange program to Japan, which was an awesome experience. Fourteen years have passed since then, with very little word from the organization, and all of a sudden they're trying to get in touch with all of their alums to put together a directory of who's who, where they are, and what they've been up to since then.

So the guy was asking me all these questions, and I filled him in on my life for the past fourteen years, and after each tidbit, he would say, "Wow! Congratulations!" and he sounded like he genuinely meant it. It was sort of strange, to be congratulated for living my life (it feels a little bit like being congratulated for waking up every morning and breathing all day, although I guess there was more effort and choice involved in living the life I've been living), but I realize that on paper (or over the phone) to someone who hasn't been immersed in all the mundane details of living it, my life sounds pretty good - Ivy League college and law school, four years in Europe, and a job at the "#1 Place to Work."

So yeah, I have been really lucky, and it's good to be reminded of that sometimes, especially when I'm feeling a bit lost and discouraged. I just have to keep telling myself that so far, things have worked out, so there is no reason to think that they won't work out in the future as long as I stick to it and keep trying.

So I’ve
been working for four weeks now, and my new company continues to baffle and
amaze. I had my first massage at work yesterday, and it’s a great perk, but I have
to admit that it felt a bit odd to come to the office, review a couple of
contracts, then go to the massage room and take off all of my clothes. Work and
nudity don’t really mix very naturally, unless you’re a lingerie model, which I’m
not. But my co-workers who use the massage service say it’s one of their favorite
perks. 

I think
that my favorite perk (other than allowing dogs to come to the office, which I
got used to over the past four years) has to be the food. I’ve been here for a
month, and there are eighteen cafes on campus. I am lazy, so I almost always go
to the one in our building. With the exception of our weekly sushi day
(Thursday), I haven’t seen a repeated main course on the menu in the four weeks
that I’ve been here, which is an impressive feat, given that they offer two or
three main courses every day. I don’t know how they do it, because I think I
would have to repeat after less than a week. I guess that’s why I’m a lawyer
and not a chef.

Anyways, today I had my first one-on-one with my boss (which we will do every two weeks). It's just a way for us to tell each other what we're thinking, what I'm working on, what I should be working on, etc. I basically told him that I feel a little bit lost and useless, and asked him if it is like this for everyone who starts, if it's because my background is unconventional (my work experience is mostly Holocaust-related, which has little to do with commercial law at a modern tech company), or if I'm just missing something. He told me that it's normal to feel like a fish out of water for the first few months, and that even the people who come from more relevant backgrounds flail around for a while. So even though I stlil feel like I'm trying to walk on the moon without a spacesuit, it makes me feel a little bit better that other people didn't always have their spacesuits. I can continue to feel and be comparatively stupid for a while without cause for concern.

That said, I continue to really enjoy interacting with my coworkers, even if I feel a bit out of my depth. At lunch, we talk about completely random things (we were trying to define cookies today, and determining whether the meringue my boss was eating violated his self-imposed ban on eating cookies at work), and I genuinely enjoy their company. They make me laugh, and it really feels like college a lot of the time - the people are smart and funny and interesting. Then reality hits when I remember that we're working (and I don't know how to do the work) and that unlike most of them, I'm not married with kids. It's sort of weird to suddenly be in such a "settled" environment - almost all of my friends in Europe are like me - legally unattached, so it's disconcerting to realize that most of my coworkers are a few years older and that they go home to spouses, kids, and potty training at night.

There isn't really a point to this ramble except to say that I still feel like a fish out of water, but that maybe that's OK for now.

***

I'm all moved into my new apartment, although there are still a few kinks to be worked out, like figuring out which storage unit is mine, getting keys to the fire doors, and so on. I've been hemmorhaging money on the deposit, rent, furniture (even at Ikea, the cost really adds up), and will continue to bleed money as I get a TV, set up cable, and buy whatever else I'm still missing. The place is beautiful, though (will post pictures once it's a little more furnished and a little less pathetic), and I'm looking forward to making some friends in the area so that I can have people over.

One of the things I was looking forward to, coming here, was getting back in touch with friends in the Bay Area, but now I realize that living down near work, I'm about an hour away from the people I know (and those who know me, Kanga, for instance, know that convenience is very central to how my social life works), which means that I'll have to meet some people down around here if I ever want to do anything with anyone. It's just tricky figuring out how to meet people, since I work all day, and sit around all night. It will happen, eventually...

***

Apple will be here in less than four weeks, and I'm really looking forward to his visit. It's hard. We knew it would be hard, but it's still hard. We were talking today, and I think he's feeling rather discouraged - he said that it feels like months since I left (it's been just over one month). Being me, I'm not discouraged, I'm just worried. I like knowing what's going on, why, and how, and it's impossible to know those kinds of things when knowing would involve knowing exactly what's going on inside the head and heart of someone other than yourself (and to be honest, sometimes you can't even know what you yourself are thinking and feeling, so it's pretty much impossible to expect to have that kind of knowledge when another person is involved). 

It's strange to do this long distance thing for a relationship that is still relatively new. We had been together less than four months when I moved away (although it felt like longer because we spent so much time together, lived together, and traveled together in those four months), and by the time he comes to visit, it will have been two months since we last saw each other. Two months apart compared to 3.5 months together is a pretty high long-distance-to-local ratio. And we don't even have an idea of what we're trying to do. So without deep roots or a clear goal, it's a bit tricky trying to figure out what the hell we're doing.

As I mentioned, Apple was saying today that it feels like it's been months since I moved away. The strange thing (that I didn't mention to him) is that I feel like it has only been a couple of weeks since I left. The first four weeks flew by, filled with new places and people, things to do, forms to fill out, and so on. The first week was really tough for me, but after that, it got easier as I dove into all the stuff that I had to do. That was for the first few weeks. Now time has suddenly gone from warp speed to slow motion - so far, this week has been long and painful, full of worries and doubts about everything - my job, my social life, Apple, whether I've made the right choices, whether I can actually stick with them and make them work. If the first month flew by, I'm worried that the second month will drag on interminably.

It's strange to try to stay involved in each other's lives when we're nine hours apart, and he's constantly traveling. It's also hard to try to stay involved with the other friends I left behind. As much as I like the people and things I've got here so far (and sometimes it really strikes me how lucky I am and how well things have worked out for me), it is still difficult, sometimes, to tell myself that the life I will have will be adequate compensation for the life I gave up, and that the work I will do and the friends I will have will be able make up for the loss of my former life.

I think I found an apartment - I'm supposed to move in on Friday - and
I hope I like living there, because I don't anticipate many chances to
escape in the foreseeable future. I've been so frantically trying to sort of scope things out and find a soft place to land that I only realized today that wherever I land, I'll probably stuck there for a while. I don't have as much vacation time as I used to, and there aren't any other countries within a two hour flight, so I'm pretty much stuck here until who knows when.

This thought makes me extremely nervous and restless.

I've gotten so used to the idea that "here" is a temporary, ignorable kind of thing, less a fact and more a suggestion. Living in Europe for four years, with my generous vacation days and piles of countries nearby, just begging to be visited, I got used to being able to go to Paris for a weekend, Brussels for dinner, London for a party, Ljubljana because it was there.

Now, by contrast, I don't know when the next time is that I'll leave the country. In fact, I don't know when I'll get to leave California. June is almost over. July 4th weekend would be a possibility, but I think I'll be so busy trying to furnish my apartment, sign up for cable and internet, unpack my things, and so on that I won't leave town. Apple shows up in late July through early August. I have a get-together with college friends, then Kanga comes through town, and by then it's late August. If I stick around town for a weekend to clean up and recover from the past weeks' frenzy of activity, then we get to the end of the summer - three whole months without seeing the inside of an airplane.

The only possibilities at this point are around Thanksgiving or Christmas - although one of my coworkers told me yesterday that our office basically explodes around Christmas, and that although people leave town for the holidays, they still work the whole time they are gone. Welcome to America, land of the free and home of the slave.

The thought that I might not have any international travel for the rest of the year makes my feet itchy. I think the only reason I was able to stay put for four years in a relatively sleepy little European city was because I was constantly scratching the travel itch, one weekend at a time. I'm not sure how I'll adjust to this non-mobile lifestyle. I shudder to think of when my next dive trip might be. Maybe not until 2009. Oof.

I guess I'd better invest in a good couch and TV, because I'll need something to distract myself from the alarming (for me, anyways) fact that I'll be spending almost every night boxed in by the same four (very expensive) walls for months on end, after spending every work day boxed in by another set of unchanging walls.

I admit, the apartment and the job are both pretty amazing, so there are worse walls to be boxed in by, but still. Walls are walls, and boxed in is boxed in.