THE co-worker

So, I know everyone talks about their office mate that is just awful, but I've personally never had to experience it, so it's meant very little to me... until now.


I have this wonderful co-worker - let's call her M. and she royally hates me. As a result, I am often so flustered and upset due to the abrasive, passive-aggressive way she speaks to me, that I generally mess up one, if not more, things that I send to her. This only results in her being more upset, and I hear from my other co-workers (primarily because she basically refuses to talk to me - and I'm not complaining) that she's basically bitching the EVERYONE about me. Furthermore, if I do forget something, rather than asking me to fix it or sending a reminder, she sends an email to our next in line that she has taken care of my mistake... just so I know.





As if I don't hate this job enough - I get plagued with anxiety the second I realized that I have received an email from her, or that one of the items that a vendor is having trouble with is hers, and I will have to let her know about it.





Good thing I'm medicated for panic attacks. You know, there's really nothing better than being stuck at a shitting job doing stressful yet unrewarding work and having a woman working with you that tries, everyday, to get her name pasted next to the definition of BITCH in the dictionary.





Hope everyone's job(s) out there are going better than my. If not - it's time to look for another job. Even on medication, I'm reaching my limit. If this keeps escalating - as I'm sure is her plan - she'll probably have my fired in no time. Being stressed about money has to be better than being stressed about a job you don't care a SHIT about, right?





On another note, my father just sent me a gorgeous pic. of Bayou St. John in the morning on the way to his ride. It calmed me down in the morning - well that and a dose of meds!

If only I could be there - home - right now. Things were easier then and there....

gone

Another Monday

The weather is getting better. By better, of course, I mean overcast with showers and no sun! At this point, anything beats the snow!

I just got back from the gymnastics team's Big Tens Championship. It was a conflicting meet. While I was so proud of what the team did, I was frustrated because they could have done so much better. We did really well on three events, and blew vault. In post-season, you can't blow an event and expect to still prevail. Turns out that we got 5th instead of about 2nd. (We would have beaten Penn State - damn it!) On a positive note, Larissa received the honor of Big Tens Coach of the year (even though she had to share it with Bev.!), and there seems to be a lead into why the teams 2 lowest scores are such....

It became apparent to me on the bus ride home from the meet after a specific conversation, that there is one coach that seems to correlate to the low score of the meet. Originally on beam this season, she was pulled from it because she was doing such a poor job and put on vault and floor dance. As a result, our beam scores went way up (we havn't counted a fall yet) and our vaulters have forgotten how to vault - they are now doing vaults of lower values with just as much deduction - great!

I was happy to support the team, and it was really good to see some other alumn and Larissa's parents, I am still not comfortable with my spot in this show. I feel distanced from the team, while my better half is becoming closer to them. It is a weird pull for me, and really hard to commuicate between the two of us. As much as I am happy that I went, I find myself constantly questioning if it would have been better if I had just stayed home. But enough of that....

Our new addition to the family is doing really well. He spent a long weekend with his new friend Gunner (a Great Dane). My better half has great pics of our kids, Odin and Baker, on her blog. It was just updated with pics from Odin's sleepover as well!

Enjoy....
Here's to the beginning of yet another stressful week.

Redefining Me...

The other day, I agreed to be interviewed by a PhD student here at the university about my experience as a college level athlete. I was very eager to talk about my experience. I've been through a lot, but I left the sport sad to go and still loving it, which is more than most gymnasts will admit to. I walked into her office with thousands of ideas I wanted to make sure I conveyed. All of these vanished like a scared cat meeting a new "friend" with the first question.

"So Danielle, let's start with something easy.... How would you say you define yourself?!"

Silence.... Define myself. Images started flashing through my head. My 8 hour day job where I sit at a desk, on the phone, fixing the problems the wonders of technology have brought us. Well, I think health is important, but lately, I'm lucky to get a 30 min. workout in every other day or so, and showering has become a luxury that I usually only partake in when the hair on my legs starts hurting underneath my pants, or I start to notice a strong odor when I point to a map I want any of my little gymnasts to go get for practice. So, how can I sum up who I am and differentiate it between who I would like to be?...

In the past, it's always been easy to explain who "I" was. I was, primarily, a gymnast and a student. Now, I am left with a blank spot after the question mark that I'm scarred to fill in. I'm a clerk in Procurement? I'm a gymnastics coach for a team that barely exists?
I suppose I could always fall back on the, "I'm gay" statement, but I feel as though that show very little of who I am since the gay culture is not something that I have been much a part of.

Now, I have to look deeper into myself (scary!), and find out what I am past the labels that are so easy to place on each of us. Can I consider myself someone who lives a healthy life? Do I work out enough, do I take care of myself mentally and spiritually enough? What about a loyal friend. There was that one time when.... or that one person who....

In the end, I gave her a list of adjectives that I hoped described who I was - or at least what I hoped I was viewed as (hard worker, etc.). But, even after the 45 min. interview, this question was still bouncing around in my head. I am....... I am a...... I can be........ Never completing the sentence.

So, I ran around, chasing my tail for days, trying to find the right combination of adjectives and nouns to fully describe what makes me, well, me. As of now, I've come to the decision that I am in transition (and no, my breast will still be in tact when I am through). Just as much as I a physically in transition between graduating from undergrad and looking to further my education, I am also emotionally and spiritually in transition. I still plan to strive for the parts of my that I believe in like working hard and caring about the people close to me in my life, but I no longer feel like I swallowed an apple whole on an empty stomach when this question pushes its way to the front of my conscious. I am who I am. I will let the rest of the world work on defining what that is, and I will simply just be for now!

1 more venting session accomplished

ah, blah, and humph!

I feel like shit. No physical reason for it however. I've not workout in days and coaching is about the only other movement I get. Exams are looming ahead of me, and I can't see to get motivated. Instead of getting focused I get tired. So, I decide to take a nap. Then I get anxious because I'm not working. This all ends with me running circles around my work, building anxiety as I go. I've managed to completely blow off what should have been my most productive day before finals. Great. And, to boot, I'm starting to feel like a second wheel to Shannon around everyone. I feel like she has created this small network of friends, and I have become this quiet partner. That's probably the first time I have been in that situation, and I'm sure it's not going to get better any time soon. I'm dating an amazing person and people are finally starting to see that. I just wish my team, coaches and even athletes would not seemingly invite me just to invite her to do things.

I hate not having gym. I hate not having the excuse to stop thinking for a little while and focus on something that is instantly gratifying and enjoyable on the worst of days. No, I've lost that part of my life and the friends that go with it, and, instead, I spend hour sulking around the house trying to replace gym with food. Amazing - Getting fat will surely get me out of this pit of self-pity that I have drug myself into -sure.....

Good thing no one knows that I have a blog, huh?! Might lose the friends that Shannon still has....
later

Off

I had an amazing weekend. I took my girlfriend up to Chicago to go shopping at the outlet center and then spent all day coaching and hanging out with my old team and coaches. It was the perfect weekend. Now I feel a lot like I do after a particularly good meet... off. I've got work looming ahead of me, and responsibilities back on my plate. I'm not stressed about the work I have to get done or the week ahead of me, but I'm not motivated to get any of it done either. I'm more motivated to sleep, but since I didn't get up until about 11 this morning (mostly due to a 2am bedtime after a night out with an old coach and friends), I am trying to convince myself to find something to do other than shut down.
My girlfriend has been up for hours, stressed about finishing her edits for her proposal, and is now making breakfast for us both because.....
chicken and cheese on a English muffin.... got to go....
my girlfriend is amazing. Changes my day with a smile and a shuffle back to the chicken.
later

dysfunctional morning

I woke up today, optimistic about what was in store for me. I got dressed quickly and headed downstairs to print off my notes. Alas, our teacher is clearly up to something and there are no notes to be printed. So, I went to check my email instead. This is a fairly simple process that can be done while, as I was, eating breakfast. As my diet Pepsi loomed over my keyboard, I did not expect the source of my malfunction to come from within the computer. It seems that every time I try and open up my email, Internet explorer crashes and I've lost whatever it was I was doing. The logical individual would have done one of two things: given up until the problem could be solved or tried to fix said problem. I, on the other hand, decided to check my email in about 45 sec. intervals between crashes. This process, while amusing, only added to my dysfunctional morning. So now, with about five minutes before I have to leave for my first class of the day, I can't help but think that I have missed something about this upcoming class with no notes and I am about to walk into something catastrophic. Ah.... Tuesdays!
later

Strangling Curtains

In two hours I have a test. The information is simple and I know - to some extent - what the test is going to look like. Our first test gave me an easy A. I should be ready for an encore, but I'm not. I can't focus. As I read the words on the page and beg the lists to cement anywhere in my conscious, my eyes grow heavy, my body heat increases and my stomach begins to turn. I push thoughts of the rest of the day, tomorrow, post-graduation out of my head, but it only delays their inevitable re-entry. My future has always been an exciting endeavour and one that I was ready to embrace. Now, without gym, that bright future has turned into a impenetrable dark curtain; wrapping itself around me, tighter and tighter until there is no escape and no hope of seeing the sky again.

I was good at gymnastics. I had confidence as an athlete and as a leader. Here, in the soon-to-be real world, I have no confidence and can't seem to figure out what to do with the things I am good at and enjoy. Everyone is asking questions I don't have the answers to, and I can't seem to find anyone to help me with those answers. There is only one constant, my girlfriend. For that, I can't be more grateful. She keeps me in one piece, even when I want to be torn apart. She's simultaneously by my side and holding me up when I need it most. But, as much as I would like it, she cannot mold my future for me. She cannot find me a job or admit me into grad. school. She cannot venture into the world and encounter the things I fear the most for me. She can only support me and for that, I am grateful.

Being in the adult world, with all of its trails and tribulations, cannot be as difficult and anxiety striven as my attempt to make it there.