Dog days are over

In a fit of something I can’t quite define, I have decided that the only way I’m going to really start blogging again is by simply starting.  And not stopping.

So I’m sitting in my office, contemplating a variety of tasks all up to me to plan, a close-approaching trip to the Finger Lakes and the general path of the last few years of my life.  Grooveshark has helpfully provided a soundtrack that I’ve always found encouraging: .

Non-Jeffersonian explanation of recent changes

Possible that I’ve been spending some time watching John Adams and was thus moved to declare my actual career independence rather than simply stating that I’d quit my job.

So, in plain English, I’ve quit my job.  And will be back to the corporate communications grindstone May 5, far away from the wretched conditions here.  Which hardly warrant re-hashing more than to say they have been painful.

And in this particular slice of time, I am quite happy.

Throw your hands up at me (or how I’ve declared independence)

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one woman to dissolve the employment bands which have connected her with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that she should declare the causes which impel her to the separation.

Everywhere you turn is luck

My favorite line, from my favorite poem, oft excerpted here yet somehow still not often enough.

Because this morning I woke up singing oldies and drinking songs and missed Ireland, but would rather be here.

Don’t call it a comeback

If there is anything satisfying about making a comeback, it is the exact moment when you close the door on misery, and stride confidently into the day.  I like to imagine “Good Day Sunshine” strumming in the background.  You smile, and put it all in the past.  A  new beginning.

It’s a good forumla for emotional victory when there is a finite end date in sight.

Trying very hard, because I promised to.

As I’ve said in the past, my old go-to in terms of coping with an impending day of misery was to imagine myself past it.  To conjure how I’d feel in the future, perfect-tense, looking back on the dread moment.

It’s not a mechanism that lends itself well to the sixth of February.  There is no magical perfect-tense date on which to perch and cast a wary eye back.  In fact, there isn’t even really a dread moment, either.  Every moment is the one I fear, and the sum of all the moments I spent in fear of so long before that.

Dulce et decorum est

Nine dollars can do a lot of things. And I don’t even mean feeding-a-kid-on-a-quarter-a-day things.

I mean, it can buy really good hummus and some cucumber, tomato, and pita. It can buy a shirt on sale at the Gap outlet on Chestnut. It can buy a Belgian beer with change to tip. It can buy the Juno soundtrack on iTunes. But Sunday night, I used my nine clams to cry.