Living to work or working to live?

As everyone already knows, I tend to be a little bit of a workaholic. I work and work and work and sometimes I stop to play. However I think I always work because usually I have nothing better to do. Once and awhile something better comes along and changes that perspective. Today I took my Hindi quiz (epic fail anyone?). Shailesh gave me an extra .5 points as a benefit of the doubt. He said he knew I know the material, I just have a hard time showing it. Eh. I guess that's mostly true. I do know a lot of the material, but sometimes it's really hard to get it to come out. I should know by now to concentrate on the new words we learn, but I think that'll be changing really quickly. Now there are more rules and things of that nature to learn.

But today was nice. After taking my quiz, I stayed around to chat with Shailesh about India and traveling. Then I ran through the Hail storm to my apartment and just chilled. Soon it was time to go to the ARC for rock climbing. Almost everyone was there. Myself, Stacy, Julia, Steve, Julia's friend Mike, Jenna, Bre, Billy... it was a party on the wall. I feel bad cheating as much as I do climbing, but by golly, I just love climbing. It's so fun to feel that challenge. After running with Nick and biking/lifting with James, my muscles are killing me, but eh. It's good to work out and kick one's butt every so often.

So now Eric's here and we are just chilling on our computers, not really talking, but just being near each other. It's nice and peaceful. Reminds me that I work to live, and work isn't everything.

Hand-Off

So life sure can be funny. Eric mentioned to me that he's used to having a lot of female friends. And I said that I have a lot of guy friends, so not to worry. Case in point... Nick and I had class till 6 and walked home. Then we met up at the ARC and ran 2 miles together. As we were leaving I ran into James and biked with him for another 30 minutes. Then we did upper body lifting and a quick abs workout. James offered to take me home, and I ended up making dinner for him. Eric showed up to get his bike while James and I were eating. And now I'm off to Eric's. It's weird. I like being alone, but I have a penchant for hanging out with a lot of my guy friends. I just want a night to myself. Ugh. And yet... maybe I don't.

80% huh?

SO what is it? What it 80%? Is it good enough? Is it not good enough? Will it matter? Why does Dr. Phil say as long as there's 80% then the other 20% doesn't matter? I just don't know. There are so many things to think about. Too many things to know. So many unanswered questions. Where are we? Where am I? What does the future look like? What would our relationship look like? Would I love it or would it drive me crazy? How weird is too weird? What battles would I fight? How easily would I lose myself? Am I strong enough? How can I be a "good patient" and not even remember it? Why did those graham crackers taste so dang good today? Why do I.V.'s make me cry? How come my mom drives me crazy but is the one person I trust to make sure I'm fine when things get tough? Why did our relationship suck? Does she know how much I love her? Why am I so unfeeling and harsh sometimes?

Houston ahoy!

I mentioned in my last post that I'll be moving to Houston. However, what I didn't say was that I'll be moving down in June to begin a job with Shell. I'll be working at Woodcreek, which is on the far west side of Houston. It's rather close to Katy, which is in my head the Geneva/St. Charles part of the city. I'm not quite sure, but everyone says it's a beautiful place to live. Also, I'll only be about 4 miles from work. I could bike that. That is if I end up living where I think I want to live.

Isn't it funny. I'll be making a butt load of money working and will have all sorts of free time to do whatever I want. I could go sailing, rock climbing, running... anything! I think I'll save my money for travel though. There are quite a few places I'd like to go and working for Shell will hopefully help me get there.

I have all these fancy ideas of what Houston will be like for me. And I think, much like college this will be an adventure that continues to change and warp. Maybe I'll meet my future husband down there. Maybe I'll be come a millionaire in Houston. Maybe I'll learn sailing, get a puppy, make tons of friends; who knows, the world is my Oyster.

Also, I have no idea how I'll be telling Bruce that I leave April 29th for India. It'll be: 28th - sign and hand in all my papers, 29th - leave for India, 30th - acclimate to Indian time, 1st - begin my journey. It's going to be CRAZY! I'm so excited I can barely contain all of it.

I'm curious to find if I'll actually publish all my random ramblings one day. Eh, you never know.

Stream of consci...

I recently took a quiz that told me my personality is an ENTJ: the executive. I can't help but wonder if I created that monster or if the monster created itself. I'm going to have the hardest time in the world finding someone to love me, deal with me and make me feel loved and respected and cherished. And in the meantime I just let people walk all over me. Just walk and walk and walk. But it's not friends that walk all over me, it's men. Which is funny because I used to let my friends do whatever they wanted and put up with everyone's shit. I guess I felt like I was just lucky to have a friend, lucky that someone wanted to spend time with me. And because of that, I was willing to sacrifice myself to figure that out. And now, now I have that all together. I have me together. I have my friends. I have my freedom. I have my own time, my own way of doing things. And as my dad said, you are making choices that create a life that you can't un-create. You are making your future one choice at a time. And even not choosing, well that's a choice now isn't it? Choices are so scary. They can consume me. I hate making choices because logically I can think through something but then I just let my heart decide what I should do and come up with reasons to support my heart.
My heart. Wow. My heart. I think I'm broken, or screwed up. Who knows. I feel like I carry my baggage around like crazy. Yes... all these boyfriends, with all these pasts. I feel like I should make a pact with myself. Once I move down to Houston, no more talking about past boyfriends. No past stories. I'll recreate myself. I can make my own image of myself to make myself happy. I can be skinny, successful, a dog owner. I can run trails around my house. I can live in a lush area in a cute apartment. I will be me, but better. I'll be an image of me that makes myself happy, that makes myself proud to be myself. I'll be an image of the woman I want to be so that when I find the man I want my future me to be with, he'll want to be with me also. I keep trying to tell myself that, but it's SO hard. I can meditate on my own images, on my own thought process. God Hindi is such a hard language to learn. I left class today thinking I was a failure. All I could see was why high school was so hard for me. It's brutal.

Anti-Vibrational Table

So because of the condemnation of the lovely building that I get to work in. (Well 1/3 of it anyways.) I will be forced to move my office a total of 3 times in the course of 3, possibly 4 months. Due to this atrocity, I've packed up a lot of my things, and have decided to keep them in a box where they may stay until I'm procrastinating enough to put them away or until I graduate and am left wondering why I saved my notes and crap in the first place.

Although, in and of itself, moving certainly sucks, trying to find where to put my CL microscope has been the more difficult endeavor. I have the option of moving it to the survey where it will be under lock and key and in a very nice room. Or I can move it to IGB next to a room with vibrational issues due to refrigeration units next door. Bruce is against moving it to the survey because it won't be under his control. He wants it close by and where he can supervise it. He then suggests getting an "anti-vibrational" table to remove the issue of the room moving around.

All I know is if I'm the one responsible for clearing out that room before getting the CL scope in there... I may throw a fit.

Harmony

So, I know that in January I tried online dating. I was excited, exuberant and ready to do something good for myself. I know that I was lonely and feeling down on myself. However, I think one of the reasons it didn't work for me was that I just wanted to be with someone to make myself feel better. I didn't "need" them per-say. I just wanted to feel good enough for someone to like me.

And in the process I met Kevin. Now, Kevin is an amazing person. He's kind, considerate and an overall good person. The only issue I had was that the spark wasn't there. I wasn't intrigued. There wasn't anything about him that I needed to find out more about. I think I let it go on a little too long, although it was only a month or two, so maybe 6 or 7 dates. I kept trying to find that spark, but it just wasn't there.

In theory, that spark is some natural chemistry that makes you irresistible to each other. And I can't but help wonder if it's the spark of the unknown or the unsure or the confused. But either way, I've spent the last 6 months working on me. I've began working out, trying to look on the positive side of life. I've cultivated my friendships in the department. I've maintained my friendships with Kayla and Amy. I also let go of Brett as a friend. I knew he is somewhat caustic and probably a horrible person to have in my life, but our friendship was addictive on a whole new level. I liked the support and the degradation that littered our somewhat bantered friendship. I knew he had my back and I also knew he didn't take me seriously. Basically, attached enough to find the time to make fun of me, and selfish enough to really not care that awful much.