I’ve been unreasonably grumpy lately.
Rather than build a wall of excuses as to why it’s permissable to act like a douche, I’ve decided instead to focus on the myriad ways today ruled.

1. Tomorrow is my last shift at the bookshop and although I’ll miss the endless sass battles between management and staff, I am elated to leave behind the robotically repetitive scripts one falls into whilst cashiering.
Would you like a bag with that? One moment while I print your receipt. Blarg.
These customers have nothing to offer converationally. Bartending I heard endless interesting stories and watched dramas unfold.
This job, I mostly hear jovial ouch! reactions to the cost of text books.
Yes, you law students have to spend a pretty impressive amount on text books, but I don’t have much sympathy as you’ll likely come out a LAWYER in the end. Suck it up toots. I’m 31 and work in a bookshop, I’m not going to be the best source for professional sympathy.

2. After I finish with my last day at the bookshop tomorrow, I’m getting picked up by two girlfriends and embarking on a weekend holiday to the Gold Coast. For you non-Australian readers, the Gold Coast is to Australia what Los Angeles or perhaps Miami is to the US. Full of big-boobed bottle blondes and surfer dudes. It’s renowned for being culturally superficial and Schoolies Week, the Australian equivalent of spring break (WOOOOO!) is held there. Me and the ladies are planning on drinking lots of wine, talking trash and swimming in the pool at our hotel. Lofty goals, I know.

3. Despite having eaten a giant lunch today, it mysteriously wore off at 4:45 and I spent the time between that point and my 6:40 homecoming in SHUT UP I’M FUCKING STARVING mode, my personality nosediving right alongside my bloodsugar.
Thankfully, this all turned around with my arrival home and discovery that the fridge was stocked with an unlikely but delicious combination of foods.
A spinach, feta, and currant salad left over from last night’s dinner, a cold beer, and a pack of mi goreng, which is essentially super tasty Indonesian ramen.
Internet, you can get all foodie if you want, but THAT was a beautiful meal.

4. I found an ironing board on the sidewalk. I am, perhaps, unreasonably excited about this particular item. I’ve been trying to convince the mister that the purchase of an ironing board is a necessary expenditure in our meager budget. Much like many men, he’s never ironed a thing in his life and as such has not been very agreeable on the topic of ironing board funds allocation. My discovery of a sidewalk ironing board means all we have to pay for is a new cover and I can press things!
WHAT? I have a lot of wovens!

Have a good weekend kids, I plan to.

It is still very much hot-ass beastly humid summer here in Brisbane, with all the frizzy hair and sweaty eyelids that go with it.
When you grow up in a climate famous for rain, you totally romanticize warm climates with their sunny skies and, well why go past sunny skies?
It’s all just bragging after that really.
Growing up in Seattle I remember making an effort to never complain about the heat of summer, don’t take it for granted, savor it as best you can because during those nine months of grey that stretch from October all the way until June? You’re gonna rue the day you stayed inside to watch TV in July that one time when you were 6.

Anyway, still summer. Yes. I had a point.

I think I’ve been wanting a season change not just for a release from the life of eternal sweat-stache but also because a season is about four months and I know that the first four or five months after a move are the hardest part. The dreaded transition.

When the mister moved to the US, it took about four and a half months for us to figure out the basics. Who’s got what job, what bank accounts pay what bills, what shelves or chairs will make everyone feel like they have a hand and place in their home, enough knowledge of the neighborhood map that one person doesn’t feel totally reliant on the other and so on.
I knew in my mind that we were going to face this difficult period again. I knew that we were going to have many of the same arguments with the “Think of my position!” flipped around from him to me, but wow, living it sure is different from knowing it.

I’ve been getting desperate for a season change because yes, it’s brutally hot and that’s not very awesome, but also because omfg I’m so tired of being a beginner that has to ask my husband to explain everything from where that place is to what that guys means by that. Being a beginner totally sucks.

Our life back in New York was made easier on nearly every level by the fact that I earned a VERY healthy level of income for the amount of time I worked.
My work wasn’t easy and it ATE MY SOUL and rendered me useless during most of my off time, but I only had to work about 25-30 hours a week to earn it.
We had enough to never worry about paying for flights, for our wedding planned in a week, for the deposit on a rental or whatever really.
We weren’t rich by any stretch. I’ve guess I’ve just always been flat fucking broke so to go four or five years with enough money to buy any expensive cheese I want whenever I want, well, you get soft. When you have multi-thousands of dollars in savings and no real big expenses, you forget.

So we had this pretty substantial savings built up.
I knew that the move would bring an end to my position of significant cashflow, but I was excited!
I get to have a life! Overseas! I’m gonna be an expat! Look at me all glamorous and worldly!
I can go back to working in the arts because I don’t need to worry about health insurance in universal-health-care-having-Australia! HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND!

So we got here, got an apartment, bought some furniture and went out for lots of incredible Thai food. I was confident about getting a job and getting by and settling in.

But a month or so later when I ramped up the job-hunting efforts, nobody called. A couple emails here and there but nothing panned out.

I’ve never had a problem finding a job. Never. I’ve had more than one period in my life where I’ve had 3 or more jobs concurrently. I’ve learned to scale it back to avoid burnout, but for real, I’m one of those suckers that just likes a project.

By the holidays when it was clear I wasn’t even landing seasonal retail sales work, reality set in, our bank balanced loomed a lot lower than it has in recent history and the blow to my confidence was complete.

The last two months have seen a lot of moaning about homesickness on this website. Hindsight now shows me that although yeah, I really miss New York, most of what I’ve been feeling isn’t about that city or missing it.
It’s about having the basics. Rent paid. Food in the fridge. More than anything, the harmony and comfort of your relationship when everything is pretty much fine.
It’s not that I miss things back in Brooklyn, it’s that I miss having a relatively stress-free home life.

The mister and I still aren’t totally broke. We’re not quite at each other’s throats.
But the pressure. The pressure that we’re living a life unsustainable, that I MUST land a job or we’re going to be looking at a life of toil for him and serious brokenness for the both of us, well, that pressure is good enough.

A month ago I realized that my phone number has been incorrect on my resume this entire time. I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t memorized it yet.
I can assure you that the magnitude of the meltdown I had that day blew fallout as far as northern New South Wales. Perhaps some of the South Pacific islands even felt ripples. It was that bad.

Suffice it to say, I did my best to backtrack on positions I had recently applied with and wonders that be, got a call the next day and was working four days later.

All this leads me to today. I’ve been working at in a local University bookshop as a start-of-term temporary employee. I’m currently on my third week of a four-week assignment.
Everyone knows the one of the biggest pains in the ass of getting a new job is getting on the goddamn pay schedule. It’s nearly impossible to get that magical timing where you start working and actually get paid something! anything! on the next payperiod. In my experience it takes two, sometimes three pay periods to actually get any freaking money flowing.

I’m not looking for a career in bookshop minding, but I’ve really been enjoying the job while I have it. The people there are all really great, the work environment is really organized and efficient, I get to chat all day and even the broke-ass students don’t seem that stressed out over their threefourfive hundred dollar textbooks.

Tonight as I was leaving another excellent day of work, the boss of the bookshop informed me and a coworker that due to university bureaucracy we wouldn’t receive even the start of our pay until a week after the entire assignment ENDS.
Oh wow, awesome. And stressful. Because now it matters. Now there isn’t enough savings to live on and yes the Mister is making money, but he gets paid in big chunks and another one isn’t due for probably around a month.

So yes, in short, YIKES.

As I walked off campus ignoring the stunning sunset and swirling of thousands of bats leaving their garden homes for the evening sky, I sent a frantic text message to my husband telling him of our impending brokeassity.

I reached the intersection and waited for the crosswalk signal to change and checked my email on my phone.
Inside was an offer. A position that I didn’t even apply for. I woman I met months ago, a friend of the Mister. A cool lady I’ve been trying to figure out how to make into my friend. She’s got a job for me, one I’m very excited about.

So I face a week or two of meetings. The hammering out of details. Figuring out schedules and all that. The Mister and I can limp along until the pay thing works itself out and that’s ok for once. Because now I’m back to that point of feeling that this year will be full opportunities and excitement.

It may not be Autumn yet, but it seems that the season is changing regardless.

Some time ago, I made the decision to not share any bad news or talk about difficult topics on this website.

I don’t want to worry my family when I’m so far away.
I don’t want to come off as unprofessional or emotional to potential employers who decide to type my name into a search engine.
I don’t want to share so much of myself because what if some weirdo reads all these details of my life and decides to stalk me?

I’ve experienced a range of privacy invasion in my life before. Drawing up boundaries is incredibly important, so I thought I was making it easy on myself when I declared only fluff and chatter for the website.

Rereading entires, I realized yesterday that I’ve been crossing that self-imposed line and touching on some issues that have serious weight in my life.

And you know what? The world hasn’t exploded.

My mother is a regular commenter here and judging by her responses and our skype chats, she worries about me no more or less than she has for the last 30-odd years.
Potential employers are still calling and scheduling interviews. I get the feeling many of the types of jobs I’m going for aren’t the sort of organizations that would even think to google an applicant, but even if they did, what will they see?

I tried it myself for the first time recently. I was nervous to do it. I know that sounds silly, but google name search results are shelved directly next to credit report scores, back taxes owed, and dental maintenance needs. Aka, things I REALLY don’t want to think about.

I ponied up the courage and did it. I looked and was surprised at what that potential employer would see.
This website came first, next I saw my memberships to various social networking websites, photos of me taken at gallery openings, tons of quotes given to street press on various arts and music organizations I used to be involved with, photos nabbed from my flickr account and a Seattle Times article from 1998 that reports on one of my earliest projects and quotes me about third wave feminism with all the passion and ideological fury of adolescence.

At first all that information was a bit shocking. Perhaps I am sharing too much?
Analyzed from a different direction though, my google search results returned this:
I use the social web.
I go to art openings and concerts.
I have a history of involvement in non-profit organizations.
I have a history of volunteering.
My photos are decent enough to steal.
I am articulate enough to be quoted.
I organized a 200-person young feminist convention when I was 19 years old.

These are all things I can be proud of, or at least stand behind. I mean, I’m not PROUD of my facebook profile, but yeah I have one, I’ll cop to it.
The convention I completely forgot I put together? The 31-year-old me is pretty amazed that the 19-year-old me pulled that off.
It was totally a blast too.

Lastly and most notably my Internet footprint reveals that I maintain this website.

I’m in the midst of a difficult transition right now. I very recently got married, moved around the world, and am trying to figure out a whole host things on my mind.
Other than my relationship with the Mister, I’m very far from any sense of home, routine, comfort or security.
Sometimes this process of transition is exhilarating but much of the time it totally sucks.
I do know the magnitude of suck will decrease with time, but in the mean time, I deal with it as best I can.

Maintaining this website has been a buoy for me. Something to keep me busy as I struggle with idle time, a connection to friends and family far away, and a line to new connections, new friends, new projects.

If a potential employer reads this and decides that I’m not the right fit for their job, well that’s fine. Because I wouldn’t have been the right fit even if this website didn’t exist. The self I present here is an honest one.
While it’s true that I don’t tell everything, the parts I do share are genuine and if someone doesn’t like the tone of my writing, they aren’t going to like the matching one that happens every time I speak.

I’ve read many instances of bloggers raving about the amazing people they’ve met via their websites, I always figured that access to this network of awesome people wouldn’t happen until you have a boatload of readers.
Since I don’t make any traffic-growing efforts, I would be cut off from that network. Thankfully I was wrong.
Thank you readers and friends for coming here, for commenting the most on the posts that are the opposite of fluff and chatter, for sending me emails and tweets and passenger pigeons with messages.
Where I’m at right now, your efforts, however minimal they seem to you, are momentous to me and I cannot thank you enough.

In conclusion, the weirdo stalkers are a risk I’m willing to take. Drawing boundaries on what I’m willing to share isn’t a black-and-white thing. As an optimistic extrovert and former complainer, it’s particularly difficult for me to figure out what to do with crappy news and anxiety.
So I’m not going to figure it out. I’m not going to analyze it and write a list or five.
I’m just going to let it be. If I want to talk about something, I’ll trust myself to write it in a way I feel ok with.

The rewards are too great to throw away. Thank you, again.

At only 31, I’ve already had a huge number of totally divergent careers paths. I’ve worked in support of the arts, fixed cars, poured drinks, written copy, sold things, designed logos, planned events and managed innumerable employees and facilities.
I’m that person that’s always hungry, never satisfied. Too often I’ve allowed my job to take over my life in pursuit of total competence as well as the imaginary A+ and validation that I’ll gain if I can just be that one completely indispensable employee and colleague.
I know now that the unhealthy and obsessive part of this stems primarily from insecurity over not having a post-secondary education.
Somewhere along the line I told myself that if I work my ass off and become invaluable, than that will negate the feelings of failure that I have about not attending university.
I’ve succeeded a couple times in obtaining that indispensability, but it’s always come at a great cost to myself and never seems to follow through on it’s end of the deal; that A+ that I now know doesn’t really exist.

I made some poor decisions as a rebellious angst-filled teen that barred my potential entry to university via high school, not that I was at all interested.
University was for suck ups and rich kids.
University was advanced fingernail chewing and remedial basket weaving.
University isn’t everything; lots of people have awesome lives without it you know.
University was a colossal waste of time and money that my family simply didn’t have.
I already knew how to think, thank you very much. I didn’t need some $50,000 philosophy lesson that wouldn’t even get me a job.

I know, I KNOW. I cringe at my glaringly naïve declarations now as well. Hindsight also shows me that many of those pronouncements were not my actual opinions at all, but ideas that I was taught. Armour provided by various adults who didn’t think I could possibly amount to anything (10th grade English teacher, I’m looking at you) to protect me from the feelings of inadequacy to come.

At 20 years old, I started to realize that performing with my band in dingy Olympia basements wasn’t going to cut it in terms of a life path. My friends and roommates were all attending Evergreen State College and paying for rent and bass amps with scholarships and student loan money.
I paid mine with wages from my telemarketing job.

I shrunk in shame when asked what my major was and finally decided to attend a vocational certificate program at my local community college. You know, the kind of college that actually gets you a decent paying, health-care providing, blue-collar job.

Less than a year after finishing an Automotive Repair training program, the point of no return came in the acquisition of a crushingly large medical debt.

At the time, I had a new job in an auto parts store. Because I was still a probationary employee, I was not yet covered under the company health insurance plan. The $7.00 I earned per hour found me unable to pay even a quarter of the minimum required for my hospital bills after the costs of my very basic life expenses.
Somehow, my income was declared high enough to be disqualified for charity care and my debt went into delinquency.
I figured that as long as I could convince potential landlords that my bad credit was not due to financial negligence, I’d be ok.
It took me a little while to realize that with a massive delinquent debt my creditworthiness was ruined and the option of obtaining a student loan to attend University disappeared. This, of course, came right as I started to realize that I wanted more than a future selling piston rings and engine degreaser.

So I hopped from job to job searching for a boss who would tell me what to do with my life. I found many happy to give me direction, but none who offered fulfillment. Surprise!

I found one of those bosses when I got a job in the production and assembly of beautiful hand-made artist portfolios. I loved the product and that it was work in the arts. I loved that the building was beautiful with exposed brick and big windows. It was airy and clean and close to my home.
The owner taught me to use quark and I spent personal time on library computers looking up tutorials so that I could impress him with my quick mastery of a clunky program.
The company was a small one, and because I spent much of my time dealing directly with the owner I was able to work hard, kiss ass, and over the course of a year go from hired assembler to production facility manager and graphic design assistant.
As often happens in work-up-from-the-bottom situations with insecure people afraid to speak out, my job title and responsibilities changed, but my pay didn’t. I was “laid off” from that job two weeks after refusing to make a 5-year commitment to a job that paid less than 25k a year.

I tell you all this history, not to make public excuses, but to attempt a sort of personal catharsis. I’ve had some bad luck in life, true, but many of the crappy situations I was dealt were made much, MUCH worse with my own subsequent mishandling.

Over a decade later, my debts are nearly paid off, my credit score grows less embarrassing every couple of months and most importantly, my attitude is changed. I’ve learned to recognize and value my skills, my willingness to learn, and to appreciate my quest for the A+ for what it is; a fucking awesome work ethic.
I’ve wanted to attend school for a long time and now, I finally have the means to do so. I even know what I’d like to study. But one of the many things my experiences have taught me through all this is that everything comes at a cost.
What would be the cost of my going back to school?

The Mister and I are newlyweds. We have no plans on having children in the immediate, but it is something that has been discussed as a possibility for the future.
If I started school a year from now, I would be 36 or 37 at graduation, 34 if I did a short program.

Does this mean I have to choose between learning the skills for a fulfilling career and the option of parenthood?

Is it too late to start over?