Onward and Upward

My life is about to change again in a lot of ways, most of which I'm not even sure of myself, yet. Let me explain.

On Friday, I put in my two weeks notice at my job. I'm very grateful that I've had a job for the past couple of months, I have a little more money saved up now and I've been able to pay for a lot of my own things, including my first month of student loans which should disappear on Monday, hoorah. But this job was not right for me right now. In fact, it was pretty awful. It was "in my field" in that it was at a laboratory, but it was much more of a blue-collar job than I had first thought. I think the majority of people who worked there hadn't gone to college, and it seemed that for the most part they didn't know or care too much what exactly they were doing to the dairy products or what it meant, other than following what they'd been taught and getting results that were about what they were "supposed" to be. It was annoying for someone who has spent four years learning lab sciences. And not that I'm judging them or anything, just that it is not exactly helping my career to work there.

The days were long, and the commute was very long. I woke up early and came back after dark most days, meaning that both on the way there and on the way back it became very difficult for me to stay awake and alert. I really honestly think that if I took them up on their offer to work there for six months to forever that I probably would have died on the commute at some point, especially once it starts snowing. I hope and pray that that won't happen sometime in the next two weeks. *knock on wood*.

The long days and long commute also meant that most days by the time I came home I would fix dinner, collapse onto the couch or at most come over to BSFFA and collapse on Alexander's couch and watch something until it was time to go to bed. Going to dance classes kept this from happening every night, or rather delayed it another two hours. Not having internet at home during this period means that after dinner I have to get up and go somewhere and sit in public to get anything done like searching for a better job or an apartment or just reading the latest Cracked article, and the fact that I don't get to the internet on a daily basis anymore means that every time I do a lot of my time is spent catching up on things like the latest Cracked article instead of starting to search for jobs and whatnot immediately (it is also why I've been replying to your blogs like weeks after you post them. Sorry, guys). Not that this is a travesty, but it means that if I decided to take this job on a more permanent basis that it would be harder to get out of.

Oddly, the thing that made me want to quit the job the most was also something I'm somewhat thankful to this job for, and that was one of my coworkers. I don't want to sound super petty or anything, I know every job has coworkers you don't like, and it wouldn't have been so bad if I had had friends and allies with the other coworkers, but while they were all nice most of them were a lot older and they all lived in the same little area of the middle of nowhere and knew all the same people, so for the most part no one would talk to me and instead they would talk to each other about small town gossip. Even when they did talk to me it was often about their kids or some small town event, not that I mind hearing about those things, I just really don't have anything to respond with, which makes it really hard to hold a conversation. Even the younger girl who was not much older than me and had been to college doesn't have much in common with me. She moved to Monroe to be with her boyfriend, whose dad runs a cheese factory (it is a cheese town. Seriously, their high school sports teams are The Cheesemakers. I would not make this stuff up). I asked her if she was going to do anything in the long run with her college degree, which was Environmental Science or something like that. She said, entirely seriously and straight-faced, "Nope. This is it." To be able to say that about ANYTHING in your early twenties, much less about working in a cheese laboratory in the middle of nowhere in the frozen north...it just makes me want to scream and pull my hair out. I did not want to get trapped there. And the woman who was trying to convince me to stay kept saying "Oh there's such a future in it, you could be working here for a long long time, you know, there will always be cheese to test..." and that prospect kind of made me want to cry and drive away from that place as fast as possible.

But no, none of these things were the worst. The worst was the coworker I have been working with the most. She is the bitterest old woman I have ever met. She is miserable and seems to want to stay that way. She is also the most passive-aggressive person in the entire world. I thought Minnesotans were the worst, but I am ready to hand over the trophy to Wisconsinites for this woman alone. She hated me from the get-go. I think it partially has something to do with the fact that I am young and has opportunities she thinks the world should have laid at her feet without having to work for them. Admittedly, I have been extremely fortunate but...it's not like she couldn't have changed anything in her life to end up somewhere else. And it's certainly not my fault. Anyway, I have been nothing but respectful and helpful, but this woman seems to require that I read her mind and anything less is unacceptable. She will get mad at me for asking what she wants me to do. She will get mad at me for doing something that I think needs doing without asking her. She will get mad at me for doing too much of the work she feels is "hers". She will get mad at me for standing around doing nothing when no one needs my help. She will get mad at me for not leaving at 5:00 exactly. She will get mad at me for leaving before she is done with things. She will get mad at me for doing whatever the manager tells me. She will get mad at me for asking her what I should do instead of the manager. I cannot win. And the way I can tell she is mad, besides the venom and sarcasm in her every word whenever she speaks to me, is that she will talk about me behind my back. To herself. Loudly enough that I can hear. About how terrible I am at everything and about how nobody helps her with anything and about how I am trying to take over her work or working too fast or not working fast enough or whatever. Once I even heard her mutter "somethingsomethingcollege graduatesomethingsomething" with the same bile in her voice that I would reserve for saying "neo nazi" or perhaps "baby puncher". She talks about her problems constantly punctuated by long-suffering sighs and seems to think that everything is awful, nothing will get better, and there is nothing she can do about it. She told a story once about her husband saying to her, "Let's be happy." and she scoffed and said incredulously, "How?". Long story short, she is everything I hope to never become. She makes me miserable and I cannot wait to stop being around her, but I am glad that I met her because I do have a tendency to get pessimistic or overly worried or to take my little problems and make them huge and feel like I am powerless to change anything, but those habits lead to the dark side as I have now plainly seen, and I will do everything I possibly can to not end up a bitter angry old woman who takes it out on everyone around her.

There is a quote from Avatar, the Last Airbender (yeah yeah, I'm a nerd but it's a great show shut up), a fortuneteller tells Sokka that his life will be full of "struggle and anguish, most of it self-inflicted" and I have often been worried that that will be my fate, as well. I have a hard time letting go and enjoying things, being positive and just letting things happen. Sometimes I feel like I miss out on good things because I'm so worried about when they will turn bad. But I see that this woman is what happens when that fortune comes true, and I do not want it. I don't think that the secret to life is to be constantly positive and then everything will work out alright, but I do know that I need to work on hoping instead of worrying, or better yet letting go of the future and being happy with where I am. Letting the little things make me happy and focusing on the positive so that even when negative things happen they don't seem so huge. I know it can't happen all at once but I also think that seeing what life could end up like when you don't have that mindset is going to help me a lot, even if it's been thoroughly unpleasant to be around for the past couple of months. Also, every time I was dishes at work and the soap container spits out a bunch of tiny bubbles as I set it down, no matter how awful my coworker is being, it makes me smile. I think as long as I don't lose that I will not end up like her.

So I have quit my job. I'm going home for Christmas and for maybe a week or so afterwards, and then I am moving to Madison. I found a fairly cheap apartment pretty close to all the cool people who live in Madison. I do the application and lease stuff starting on Tuesday, but it's a sublet so I think it should be a pretty done deal? I hope? We'll see. It's an efficiency which is scary because I've never lived alone but I think it will be really good for me, even if it's hard. I'm one of those people who tends to try to make everyone else around her happy all the time and I think it will be good for me to be alone and figure out how to make myself happy, get to know myself, all that sort of stuff. Plus, when I get lonely there are people all around. I'm not sure on a job yet, although I'm getting farther in Epic's screening process, so fingers crossed! I am staying close to Alexander, but I realized that staying in Beloit would be almost entirely just to be with him and that is not really a good decision for me or a fair strain to put on our relationship, so hopefully the short commute won't be too much of a strain, either. I'm nervous and I'm still concerned that I'm not jumping straight into my ideal career, but I also think I need some time to make a little money and have enough free time to even figure out what my ideal career is. While it is scary, I think it's a good decision for me and if it turns out awfully, well it's only until August. That sounds like a long time now, but in the long term...it's a good amount of time for an experiment like this. No matter what, I will experience and learn and I will have friends and those are the most important things in my life right now.

Sorry every single post is SO long. I will try to make the next one short enough that people are actually likely to read it.