Unemployed

I left behind a well-paying, professional job with great perks and benefits last week.

I quit by choice, abruptly, an animalistic act of self-preservation sparked by a continual state of fright, fight or flight I could not turn off.

I was overwhelmed by the amount of stress and work that hung over me, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I can't really say whether that's how it always had been there. All I know is that that amount of stress was not something my body could sustain. My health was suffering. We all know that regular exercise relieves stress and depression. But I couldn't find the time or energy to exercise regularly because I was working and traveling so much, thus perpetuating the problem.

I've run through What Went Wrong over and over again in my head. Basically, the job just wasn't what I expected, and in the end, I decided I couldn't adapt to what it really was before I ended up in the hospital. I was surprised and discouraged at how much is done on the fly there, like a huge project that is plopped in your inbox at 4:59 p.m. on a Friday. And that's How Things Are. I then concluded that no one ever really gets ahead of the workload there, one only gets used to it. And I didn't think I could before something terrible happened to me.

I did like some parts of the job; namely, the networking, installing, software testing and tinkering. But most of the rest of it just didn't fit well with me, and the amount of that was more than I could take. Part of my job was giving presentations, something I am not good at. There were times when I felt like I could, over time, get used to doing them and perhaps even become proficient at them. But a horrific experience in which nothing went right, alone, in front of a customer, completely rattled my confidence, and I had little time after that to regroup before I was thrust into a similar but more stressful situation.

Other things happened during my travels that were not the fault of the company for which I worked, such as lost luggage and missed/canceled flights, that further added to my stress. The travel woes happened to me with such frequency that I'd gained a rep in the office as the one with the bad travel karma, and co-workers joked they were afraid to travel with me for fear of being stranded somewhere overnight. I also got into a very minor fender-bender leaving work one day. Those outside, out-of-anyone's-control stressors were a small contributor to my ill-fated ending, to be sure, but they happened often enough that I truly began to wonder, "Is someone trying to tell me something? Is this a message?"

In the end, I regret leaving the way I did. But I don't regret leaving. I'd made up my mind I was going to, but I didn't know when.

I'm just trying not to think of myself as a failure. I've heard many kind words from supportive friends who shared similar stories of how they left a decent job after a short time, and I am so thankful for their empathy. I'm also extremely grateful for my loving boyfriend, who put up with me and my mood swings these past couple of months and supported me in my decision.

As for what's next: I'll find something, whether it be back in publishing or massage therapy. The door is open.

Current mood: Peaceful

Typo personalities

They fight a losing battle, an unyielding tide of misplaced apostrophes and poor spelling. But still, they fight. For the last three months, they have circled the nation in search of awkward grammar. They have shone a light on typos in public places, sleeping on the couches of college friends. They are like a pair of Kerouacs with Sharpies.

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Lost parrot tells veterinarian his address

When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught — recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help.

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Creepy factoid learned day

Pepsi and Coke aren't available at vegan restaurants.

In rubble, Chinese couple clung to each other, and to life

At the moment of greatest despair, Wang Zhijun tried to kill himself by twisting his neck against the debris. Breathing had become harder as day turned to night. The chunks of brick and concrete that had buried him and his wife were pressing tighter by the hour, crushing them. Their bodies had gone numb...

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NMT 35.5?

In the spirit of early 1990s, college nostalgia brought on by fellow music lover Uptown5 in his latest New Music Tuesday, I present a couple of songs by The The (Matt Johnson). This first song, unfortunately, probably is best known to you and all the Kids These Days as the music behind an M&Ms marketing campaign. I was bitter at Johnson for a while for selling it out to The Man after seeing the commercial for the first, oh, 20 times, but then again, if The Man were dangling a million-dollar check in my face to use a song I wrote 25 years ago, I'd probably say, "where do I sign?" too. Anyway the song just isn't the same without the lyrics, which aren't in the commercial. Ever since I heard The The back in college, Johnson has been, hands-down, my favorite songwriter. Dark, truthful, relevant, brilliant. So I present to you, the original, nostalgic "This is the Day":



Well, you didn't wake up this morning
'Cause you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red
The calendar on your wall
Is ticking the days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world
Couldn't buy back those days

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

You could've done anything
If you'd wanted
And all your friends and family think that you're lucky
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like
Glue

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

This is the day
Your life will surely change
(repeat)

---

This second song is perhaps the most depressing song I've ever heard. I can't even listen to it without tearing up, and I've heard it hundreds of times. It's a duet called "Kingdom of Rain," about two lovers who have grown apart. She did not appear in the video, but Sinead O'Connor sang the female lead. God, now I'm depressed again. :/

I'm still here -- barely

I have struggled these past couple of months with a profound case of nervousness, insecurity and self-doubt, primarily brought about by my New Job, which is why I've been absent from your life for so long. I owe you an explanation, if you'll lend me an ear.

The New Job is nothing like I have done before. That's not to say I'm not familiar with the tasks associated with it: I now work for a newspaper software company, of which I am experienced in both sides. I worked in a newsroom of a Large Daily Paper for 15 years, and before that and during that time, I dabbled in scripting and programming, worked for an online news site and, on my own, learned some rudimentary HTML. On face value, I'm the perfect fit for the New Job.

What I was not prepared for were the intangible skills required: a flair for conversation, a flair for persuasion, the ability to think on your feet, the ability to get things done on the fly, talking loud and confidently, nonlinear thinking, presentation skills.

I think like a computer: Words, ideas, concepts are either true or false, black or white. Yes or no. There is no gray. Gray is inefficient. Perhaps that's why I was good at what I did at the Large Daily Paper. I turned raw data into beautiful, symmetrical columns; kerned headlines so that the space between each letter was perfectly balanced; lined up blocks of type down to the point. Not a hair out of place. To the bean-counters, I was called a designer. But honestly, I was good at it not because I had artistic skill but because I was precise, clean, timely, efficient. The copy desk of a newspaper is a white-collar assembly line, and I was a good fit at my station.

To say that the New Job has taken me out of that level of comfort would be the understatement of the century. I am now a business traveler, blindly feeling my way from airport to job site to job site to airport, hoping -- stressing -- that my next flight isn't delayed or canceled. But moreover, I'm meeting-and-greeting; gripping-and-grinning; pretending to lead a group of cynical, skeptical journalists through training sessions on software that's buggy on a good day; struggling to come up with polite words to explain why Adobe InDesign crashed for the nth time.

When I ask coworkers how something is done, there are 10 different answers and 20 different ways to do it, depending on who you ask and who the software customer is. As I said, my brain doesn't work that way. My brain thinks there's one answer to every question. It treats every situation as if it were a Trivial Pursuit card: Sports: Who was the only player in history to win four major NHL awards in one season? Bobby Orr. (Aside: If you're playing that game and you get a historical NHL question to which you don't know the answer, guess either Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr.) Anyway, as I said, I think linearly. I was successful in school because there was typically one answer to a question. You either got it right or you didn't. I might have taken the long way to get there, but eventually, there was only one right answer. As for essay tests, I can say with confidence that I had enough spelling and grammar and regurgitation skills to impress. I might have gotten the answer wrong, but I spewed enough well-written and well-crafted BS to earn a B.

So when I am faced with No Right Answer, or there are 10 different ways to do it depending, I am paralyzed. I cannot proceed. And I am not allowed time to analyze the myriad outcomes and deduce the best course of action. I am a deer in the headlights. And my confidence is shaken.

I hate asking for help to get from Point A to Point B. At the Large Daily Paper, I'd been there so long, I rarely had to ask for help. And I wouldn't anyway if I needed it. I'd just figure it out. At the New Job, I am forced to continually ask, "What does this do?", "Where should I save that?", "Where did that go?," "Why is that in the manual when it doesn't work the way it should?" (Answer: It does -- in the next wersion. Forehead, meet keyboard.) It is incredibly humbling and demoralizing.

I've always struggled with severe insecurity. The New Job has not helped that condition.

Here's what I'm not, never have been and always prayed to God I were: Talkative, eloquent, loud, confident, jovial, witty, thick-skinned, popular. And those are the skills I am reminded I don't possess every single day at the New Job.

I'm sure the insecurity and the "what I'm not" list are inextricably tied.

"They" say it's good to take yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then to develop new skills, to make yourself a better person. The They who said that either must have been in a cushy job they would never leave, or retired.

So now you understand when I say I wasn't prepared for the New Job. I don't possess the necessary intangible skills. My comfort zone hasn't just been taken away. It has been obliterated. For the second time in my life, I have been longing for professional help, either psychological or medicinal.

Current mood: Depressed

Why the cyclone in Myanmar was so deadly

It was Asia's Hurricane Katrina — though with a reported 100,000 killed, it was many times more deadly. Packing winds upward of 120 mph (193 kilometers an hour), Cyclone Nargis became one of Asia's deadliest storms by hitting land at one of the lowest points in Myanmar (also called Burma) and setting off a storm surge that reached 25 miles inland.

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Tetris theme played on glass bottles

Our obsession with Tetris is probably only matched by LEGO, Star Wars, and Futurama. However, this video of three synchronized bottle-blowers interpreting Korobeiniki — the famous Tetris theme song — shows that a) our fetishes are really not that bad, b) we are too lazy, c) we don't have as much free time as we would like to do silly things like these.

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