The other day I was reflecting on my accomplishments so far in 2008: all 22 days, that is. But believe it or not, I felt sort of proud of myself. First of all, on January 10 we celebrated Ian's second birthday which is in-and-of-itself a huge accomplishment since it means I have successfully (well, sort of) navigated through two years of motherhood now.
Second, on January 5 I rejoined a gym and have started exercising again. It pained part of me to be "one of those" people who joined the gym right after the New Year hit, but on the other hand, it has bothered me for quite some time now (for nearly two years, to be exact) that for some reason I was never able to incorporate exercise back into my newfound life (minus one period of time when I was doing walks/runs with Ian along the GW Parkway during maternity leave before the horrid humidity of summer hit). I can't tell you how many times I missed excercising and thought to myself that I would have never thought I'd be a person to give up exercise. But I just couldn't seem to get over the hump in my mind that I was no longer able to go before work in the morning (being as how that routine has been replaced with getting Ian up and ready for daycare) and find a way to make it work otherwise. Finally, something hit me and I couldn't let myself down anymore - so I went in and joined the gym (a nice one, I might add) and I'm back at it! For now, I'm just aiming to get there once or twice a week - targeted around the weekends - but hey, it's better than nothing and it feels GREAT to be moving again!
Third, since moving to Portland (part of it due to job and insurance changes), I have been on a major procrastination kick in locating and visiting new doctors - namely eye and the dreaded DENTIST. I'm so overdue for a cleaning, I can't even think about it. But it's easy to procrastinate when you're not sure who to call. But I promised myself that I had until January 31 to make these appointments, and I'm proud to say that I have an eye appt. tomorrow and a cleaning scheduled for early February.
Last, but not least, this months marks my eighth month at my "new" job and well, things haven't been going so well. At first, despite my strong opposition to going back to a PR firm, I thought things were actually working out okay. And then sometime around Thanksgiving, for a variety of reasons I won't go into here, unhappiness started to set in it's rapidly gotten worse. Just the other week I spent the morning with the door closed crying in my office. For you Cat, perhaps just a typical morning (:-)), but this was not like me (or the old me, at least). Besides the actual work itself, the culture of our office sucks. In fact, I find it depressing to be there every day (despite my nice office with a gorgeous view - my only saving grace). And then a couple of recent things happened that really rubbed me wrong.
One of them was that one of the things Jeff got me for Christmas was a digital picture frame, which I thought was kind of silly at first, until he told me the thought behind it which was this: One of the things that had been getting me down lately was the fact that no one I interact with at work - coworkers, boss, clients - has kids. So, I have no one to relate to in that respect, and no one really ever even asks about Ian. Not that I'm dying to talk about him, but really, you would barely know that I have a kid because there's just rarely ever reason to mention him unless I proactively decide to. (Jeff, on the other end, is always coming home with how he was at work comparing toddler stories.) So, the picture frame was to take to work to have fun rotating pics up of my family and of Ian to help me smile at work, and to perhaps help spur conversation among coworkers or whomever every once in a while about my son/life outside work. So, the first morning I bring it to work, my boss is at my computer looking at something on my screen and saw the picture frame next to it and here is what it inspired her to say: "Don't you find that thing distracting? I would." I think that was the morning I started crying. (The other isn't worth going into detail about - but it happened just last week.)
My poor husband has served as as counselor to me on my job-related challenges for too long now, and as great as he's been, we both recognize it's time for me to either shut up or do something about it. So, while I've spent A LOT of time thinking about it, this past weekend I spent a particularly good amount of time reading a couple of books and doing some online research. One of the things that has become painfully clear to me is that my career is not a match with my personality. In fact, your typical PR firm job description really goes against much of what makes my personality type happy (I'm talking Myers Briggs stuff here.) Duh, no wonder I hate going to work. Yesterday, I took the additional step of making an appointment to see a career coach/psychologist I located through some research. My first appointment is not until early February, but I'm really looking forward to it and hope it will set me on the path of finding something that will truly make me happy. All things are on the table, really. One day I think maybe I should be a professional organizer to becoming an ice skating choreographer to becoming a real estate agent to going to work as a furniture salesperson/interior design person for Crate and Barrel (I do already have half their catalog, after all) to being a stay-at-home mom. Anyway, we'll see how it goes, but whatever it is, I hope it leads me on a new path to being happy and fulfilled with what I'm doing with my life. And for the time being, I'm going to feel proud of myself for finally trying to do something about it.
To end on a happy note - we enjoyed a wonderful holiday this year with visits from grandparents and some relaxing days, including an outing up to Mount Hood for lunch one afternoon. I hope you girls all had a happy holiday season as well and Happy 2008!
