ugh i need a therapist.

I stopped going to therapy sometime last year - I think maybe around the holidays. My insurance was changing and I wasn't super excited about my therapist and so I just dropped it. I thought it was fine at the time. Then there was blood clot and when I didn't descend into the usual depression that had consumed me when it happened in 2008, I figured I was okay not seeing anyone. Now, I'm starting to think that I seriously overestimated my mental health.

I just feel like shit most of the time. I had a really good date last night and even that isn't making me feel bad. There's a piece of me that feels like I'm descending into that teenage angst that defined my middle and high school experience. Every day is a struggle, I'm constantly tired, and I just feel so blah. More than blah, I feel unsettled and it's really difficult to explain. I don't know what I want to do with my life and it's scary. Sometimes I feel so dead inside. I know I'm not at that "I want to cut myself with a razor" stage and I don't think I'll ever go back to that, but I feel the same deadness that inspired those actions. One day, I would love to write about those experiences, but today is not that day.

Anyway, yeah. Therapy. I need to focus on that. For my own sanity lol.

i'm bored.

So I booked a trip to Hawaii for Friday. I've become increasingly impulsive in my unhappiness with work and life in general, so I want to get away. I've kind of been in this weirdly depressed state lately where all I think about it how much I want things to change. To be honest, I haven't felt this crappy since Blood Clot #1. I just need to DO something so I don't go stir crazy. I couldn't handle the thought of hanging alone in my apartment all Labor Day weekend and hotel rooms in the Bay Area were banana cakes expensive, so Honolulu, here I come! I'm staying here, and I'm so fucking giddy about it! It looks SO beautiful. I plan to spend all my time on the beach, and I also made a reservation for Morimoto on Friday night so I can be extra fancy. What is my life? Oh yeah - I'm young, single, child-free, impulsive and I have nothing else to spend my money on. God Bless America. #nevergrowingup #firstworldproblems

i've recommitted myself to dating.

For a while, I've been kind of put off by the whole dating thing. I've been more focused on sleeping around and just chatting with guys who clearly only want one thing from me. Most of it was my displeasure at work and not really feeling like I could be *all in* when it came to meeting people. I like sex, though, so I didn't want to give that up, and I enjoy sexting with various people. It's a nice little distraction. However, lately, I'm all "you're worth more than that" and now I'm trying to switch it up and date seriously. I went out on Friday night with this kid that I actually liked. Which means it will probably not happen, but I like to think we had a nice time.

JazzGirl and I decided we will call him The Activist. He's hella Portland - like the crunchy granola type. His new OKC photo is him onsite yelling at a rally - haha. I kind of like it though. He's a mental health/addiction counselor and he's liberal as hell, which I like. We spent the date talking about Ferguson, the militarization of the police, activism and sex education while we both drank whiskey. Swoon. He told me his organization is having a hard time finding people willing to risk arrest, which made me laugh. He definitely keeps himself really busy and he has a weird work schedule. Thursday - Monday, 12-8pm, which means he's not always available on weekends. I like dating men with different work schedules because it means I get to have my own life with my friends on the weekends.

Things were going smoothly at the bar, and he was massaging my shoulders, so I knew he wasn't just into my mind. He also was definitely staring at my chest at various points in the date, but I had worn this ridiculous tank top. The last time I wore this particular top, one of my straight guy friends had a LOT of comments about it, so I wasn't that surprised he would be looking. I was so damn tired, though, so I cut our date short and told him I had to go home. He was cool with it and we walked back to our apartments - we lived in the same direction from the bar. When we got to his place, he gave me a hug and then he asked me if he could kiss me. I giggled and said yes and we made out a little bit outside, until I was like - OMG I HATE PDA. ICK. I made him stop and walked home.

The next morning, I got the sweetest text from him - "needless to say, last night was awesome. can we do something like that again soon?" So I'm hoping we can go out this week before I head to Hawaii for Labor Day weekend.

Yay! Good dates!

all black everything.

Lately, all I can think about is blackness, for a variety of reasons. I'm way too tired to be writing this post, but I might as well empty my brain out a bit. I haven't been journaling a lot lately, so this is a way for me to capture my thoughts. I feel like the past two weeks have been full of things that have me thinking about race and society and sexuality and it's painful and riveting at the same time. Some things:

1. Ferguson - I don't even have words to express the fear, anger, and exasperation that one feels as a black person in this country. Shit like this makes me want to move somewhere far away where the specter of slavery and lynchings and police brutality don't exist. You just carry around this anger with you that you don't even realize is there until something like the shooting of Mike Brown happens and there it is again. Burning a hole in your soul that will never be filled. Making you question if you even want to bring new life into this world because what's the point? 
2. Twitter - Black Twitter has given me so much sustenance over the past year. The brilliance of some of these folks like @feministajones, @thetrudz, and @karnythia makes me so proud to be a black woman and also so motivated to be better - to think critically, to take action, to organize. It's a beautiful thing.
3. Nicki Minaj - The release of the Anaconda video has me so sprung for this woman. There have been a ton of critiques and analysis about the video, and I'm not nearly coherent enough right now to do any of that, but I fucking love it. She is beautiful and she does whatever the fuck she wants and it's not for the male gaze and it's not about being exploited. It's a bad ass bitch being a motherfucking bad ass bitch and looking hot while she's doing it. I get so tired of respectability politics and the notion that a woman isn't smart because she is sexual. Fuck that noise. 
4. Social media - there is nothing that will remind you how many stupid ass kids you went to high school with more than social media after something like Ferguson or Trayvon Martin or any time Obama speaks in public. It reminds me how happy I am that (a) I went to one of the more liberal schools in the nation, not that that insulated me from racism or sexism completely, but it certainly lowered the number of people who I think are completely bigoted idiots. My best friend was on the executive board of the College Republicans at Brown and as a result, I met a lot of people who identify as conservative at a school where you could probably fit all of the Republicans in one dorm room. I find it amazingly awesome that none of them have posted anything that has grossly offended me in the past few weeks. In fact, one posted a video of NWA's Fuck Tha Police as a result of what's going down in Ferguson. Dumb ass people from high school, though. That's another story. It just makes you want to defriend people you've known forever. Mostly because it makes you wonder how those people view you and that's unsettling. Luckily, it's no one I care to be friends with in real life, but that doesn't mean it isn't somewhat painful. 

Anyway, I'm rambling and this is poorly written and incoherent, but it's my state of mind right now.

lazy sunday.

I'm lying in bed, still in my pajamas, with the worst crick in my neck. I must have slept funny last night because moving my head is super painful. I'm kind of mad at myself for wasting a weekend. I've been in a really odd mood lately and I'm not sure why. I just feel... boring. Maybe it was the exhilaration of Italy two weeks ago, but I'm back to real life and I feel stagnant. Still waiting on job things. I don't have too many fun things planned for the rest of the year. My birthday is creeping up and I don't really know what to do for it. Blah.

I spent about 7 hours taking down my twists and detangling my hair. What a beast! I didn't even have the strength to wash it after all of that, so that will be on tonight's to do list. I have to go to Vegas tomorrow for work and sit through a bunch of asinine meetings with a girl on my team whose work style kind of irks me. I haven't packed for that yet... Hell, I haven't unpacked from the past two weeks. My apartment is a hot mess. Everything is just kind of low energy and I wasted this weekend doing my hair and then lazing about reading and watching TV.

I need to get out of this slump, but I'm not really sure how to do that.

interviews.

Tomorrow I have two interviews for a position I really want. I'm super freaking nervous, but I'm hoping everything will be fine. I haven't really prepared, because I'm not really sure how to prepare. I'm just praying that I can be poised, confident, and knowledgeable. Of course, because God knows I don't like to wait, I won't hear back about next steps until next week. The recruiter is out on vacation. Please pray for me. If I don't get out of this current role, I'm going to scream!

weird mood.

I know I need to blog about Italy, but getting all the photos together and writing everything out sounds like work. I'm going to table that for the weekend, when I have some time to relax. Catching up after a week away from work is kind of insane! I also just feel so strange. I have this weird pit in my stomach that I can't explain. I feel that way sometimes when people visit and they leave or when a big change is about to happen. I'm not really sure what big change is happening and maybe I'm feeling this way because I'm leaving New York on Monday, but I just feel kind of oddly melancholy. I slept until 10am today, which is SO not like me. I normally like to get up early and putter around the house.

I miss vacation. I know I take a lot of them (Holla - 7 years at my company gets me 5 weeks off and I have a shit ton of comp time!), but I miss relaxing. Most of the time when I go away domestically, I check email, I respond to things, and I'm active with work. Last week, I barely checked anything at all and certainly didn't reply to anything that wasn't personal or related to my potential job transfer. It was nice.

Speaking of job transfer, I have my final two interviews next Wednesday. SO freaking nervous. Then, if I pass that hurdle, I have to meet with the person who would be my director, who I actually already know and have worked with before. My interviews so far have been good and I'm still excited about the role. I do have some nervousness around it, though. I'm scared to go back to working in Mountain View. The commute is terrible. Although, it can be argued that I spend 90 min every day on a city bus to get to a job that is only 4 miles away. The plus side of Mountain View is that the campus is amazing, there's a lot down there, and I'd get to get out of the crummy SF weather. However, going to Giants games during the week would be a lot more of a challenge =)

I think I'm feeling odd because I know that a major lifestyle change is going to happen. This potential career change is going to be very different for me. That jetsetting travel shit I do will be gone. Although, since I've developed a taste for travel, I'm really hoping it just motivates me to take more personal trips. One thing I am kind of happy about is that my job will use some different parts of my brain. I love events and they are SO DAMN DIFFICULT. Seriously, I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone in the industry and the levels of stress that we deal with, but when you're in the moment freaking out about a goddamn piece of swag, you can't help but think WHAT IS MY LIFE?! If I got this new role, it would be working with the team that does machine learning and search and geo engineering. That shit is exciting! Also, I'd get to write. I love to write. The written word and language has always excited me. As a kid, I would read these weird books about etymology, and even now, I love finding the perfect word or turn of phrase to describe something. Anyway. Change is a'comin. I better prepare myself.

In the meantime, this weekend is all about Long Island things - mani/pedi, threading, BEACH, movies, and being outside in the warm night air. Cannot wait.

i'm back!

God, Italy is beautiful. I want to go there every year until I die. Or until I move myself there =)

I'm exhausted, so I'll post more about the trip later, but it was nice to get away with friends and take myself out of the day-to-day rush of life. I've been thinking about the life I want and how I plan to go about creating it and I'm excited. The great thing about being young, single, childless, and employed is that there is so much possibility. I just need to be willing to do the work to figure out what I want and alto to have the courage to go for it. I think I'm starting to get there -- it's taken a while, but I'm starting to realize what's important to me and how I'm going to go about getting it.

Anyway, jet lag is still killing me, so let me keep plugging away on my list!