Love triangle

I've seen my future.

Well, okay, I've dreamed of my future. With my eyes wide open. So maybe, I've daydreamed my future.

I am dreaming of one day becoming a novelist...and not just any novelist, but one where people buy the book I write. And like it. Without getting paid or threatened to. That is the dream.

But this is not the dream that I talk about in my interviews with potential employers. The dream I talk about is different, slightly skewed for optimum brownie points, which, as we all know, make the world of job-interviews-becoming-job-offers go round.

The professional dream that I dream out loud to potential employers is the dream of being the head of a communications department - determining when and what should be communicated. Working closely with other writers and other brilliant people to send out a coherent, effective message. That is the out loud dream.

But it isn't the dream that keeps me up at night, or fills my brain with varying sentence structures and different stories. It isn't the dream that fills my mouth when I talk to my loved ones about my dream. It isn't the dream that I whisper to my slumbering husband..."You are the husband of a brilliant novelist."

I like that I have two dreams. It makes me feel like I will never tire of writing, even though that is what I'm currently doing for a living. It makes me feel like I have a barrier between the two, and they will never affect each other or cross over.

Inevitably, though, this barrier is only in my mind, and not in reality. And at some point I will hang up one of those dreams, possibly for the other. For like every other love triangle, eventually someone gets fed up with the arrangement, someone gets jealous, and someone gets too serious.

Unless, I can happily live in a polyandry world, where everyone is happy in our arrangement, because that is just the way it is.

Maybe.

Message for Britney Spears

Today is the first day in a while that I've felt peaceful.

During the end of November I went through some horrible things at work and ended up in tears and bruised (emotionally), and I quit my job. I have never in my entire life quit anything. I've taken breaks, I've taken deep breaths, but I have never quit. And I did it. I quit.

It was a horrible situation, one where I was getting yelled at for things I either didn't do or had no control over. My self-esteem and myself took a beating, and in the end I turned into this small version of myself. I didn't like what I looked like in the mirror, I didn't like what my brain was doing, and I felt impossibly incompetent and like a big fat failure. I mean, I had basically quit the only job that we had had.

I felt like a loser.

But yesterday I went on a job interview, and my credentials were lauded. The woman interviewing me even said someone drooled over them. And then the interview, which started out as a favour for a friend of mine, turned into my interview. At the end, she was giving me a tour and giving me information, and making plans to check my references.

In the end, I was back. I was competent. I was successful. I was a candidate. I was incredible.

And I realized that I had survived my month of depression, my month of not sleeping, my month of popping Tylenol everyday. And that I was worthy of a new job, worthy of being told that I was smart and savvy and brilliant.

I made it through the worst job of my life...and came out on the other side with a job offer and the promise of follow-up from another job.

That is what I'm taking into the next month, and the month after. Because I am worth more than every awful thing that that old place said. I am worth every moment of praise. Because I know I worked my butt off for 5 years in university and 10 years in total if you count the fact that I had no life in high school save studying and working and volunteering.

So now, I'm going to enjoy some nice relaxing time. Take some breathing space. And drink a cup of yummy, warm tea.

And bask in the glory of my comeback, which I feel is around the corner and much more sure than Britney's, I'm sorry to say.

Maybe I should call her and tell her that she can do it. She can make it. I wonder if anyone has said that to her yet. I wonder...