Chicago, Chicago...Chicago.

Chicago was supposed to be easy.

A long trip, yes, but doable in one day. 12 hours spent with only myself for company, passing west through states I had never visited. My iPod was primed and ready on the passenger seat, plenty of water and snacks were within arms reach, and a large coffee and two pair of sunglasses sat on the console. I even had sunblock for the driver's side arm. Truly, I was ready.

Chicago, I said to myself, will be easy.

I left DC at 6am. It was cool and the air was still slightly wet from the previous night's storm, but the sun was coming up all peaches and plums in the eastern sky, heralding a clear day, a clean start. Winding my way up I-70 through Frederick and into Maryland's far western counties, I was fine. The mist swirled as I crossed over Big Savage & Negro Mountains, and I tried to take in every detail. The fields of black-eyed Susans and wildflowers gracing the median strips; the way the sunlight sifted down through the dome of pine trees canopying the road; the eerily sinister 'runaway truck ramps'. I laughed at signs (Beware Maryland Wildlife!) I had never seen before and wondered at how different my home state seemed only a few hundred miles from where I grew up. As I finally crossed the Youghiogheny River and accelerated out of Garrett County into West Virginia, the reasons for my trip caught up with me. And my hands were shaking.

I was no longer on the East Coast; I was entering the middle. And things were different.

The plan was to plow through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana in 12 hours, and rendezvous with my sister who was flying in from California to drive the rest of the way with me. Her sister and brother-in-law, who live on Chicago's south side, were putting us up for the night and Italian Beef sandwiches were on the menu for dinner. One day alone in the car, and then onward to points west with the best co-pilot a girl could ever want.

I made it through the gently curving hills of Maryland and West Virginia (although, I only thought of them as gentle and curving after I had crossed over the Rockies) and into Ohio with nothing remarkable occurring. Truck drivers honked at me and waved as I sailed past them up hills and I waved back, feeling some sort of camaraderie with these people who already know what it feels like to drive across the vastness of our country. I was expecting the landscape to instantly seem different somehow, but Ohio seemed very similar to me. An early-afternoon thunderstorm caught me just outside of Dayton, rinsing away a king's ransom in bugs, dust and road dirt as I clutched the wheel even tighter and tried to keep my speed a steady 70mph so as not to lose any time.

The white styrofoam cooler my father had pressed me to take before I left squeaked against the back window incessantly and my tires sizzled across the wet tarmac as I raced to stay ahead of the storm. Like a chariot on fire, I burst into Indianapolis, only to be confronted with every travelers nemesis: traffic. Snaking lines of cars and trucks coughed, sputtered and choked there way across what seemed to be every conceivable roadway. I frantically tried to watch for exit signs and read my directions all with one eye, while keeping the other on the road, and inched my way along to I-65 North where the traffic seemed to...not be. No one was apparently heading north to Chicago from Indianapolis that hot April afternoon and I couldn't help smiling to myself; setting the cruise back up to 70 and cranking Bon Jovi 'She Don't Know Me' to an annoyingly loud volume.

Indiana is where things started to look different. Gone were the hills of Maryland and West Virginia, and the rows and rows of corn fields in Ohio. Indiana was...flat. Field after field after field stretched away from me on either side of the road, and even the trees seemed different. The sensation of wide open space was palpable and my energy, lagging ever-so-slightly, seemed to re-assert itself, especially when the speed limit (legally) jumped to 70mph, giving me the freedom to feel 80 wasn't such a stretch.

Indiana is also where the trip stopped being so...normal. Dare I say it? Easy.

As the afternoon wore on, signs of Chicago's impending vastness began appearing. Starbucks ...one after the other at every exit. Car dealerships, lawyers, and hospital billboards. More Illinois license plates, and endless lines of tractor trailers snaked their way into the city. It was about this time that I realized my cell phone was down to one bar of battery life. No problem, I thought...my directions are easy. North on I-65 to I-94; exit at Cicero Avenue, drive for 5 miles, and I'm there.

But, life has a funny way of testing your mettle, even when you are expecting it. As I crested the hill on I-94 to my exit, something seemed...off. I looked again: exit A, (my exit) which was supposed to head towards Cicero Avenue, instead said something else. Exit B, which was (according to my directions supposed to head somewhere else) indicated instead Cicero Avenue. Crap. With the exit upon me, I knew I had to think fast. Figuring I could always just turn around, I did what anyone else would do: I guessed.

The sky, already darkening with early evening, had been taking on an ominous shade of purple and just as I pulled off of I-94 onto Cicero Avenue (or, at least what I prayed was Cicero Avenue), big fat drops of spring rain hit my windshield...dripdripdrop little April showers...quickly turning into a downpour. Driving down the now very small, very run-down two lane main street, I was instantly uneasy. And sure I was headed in the wrong direction. Boarded up store-fronts; graffiti; groups of kids loitering on street corners (even in the rain)...calling out to cars and yes - absolutely noticing the single-female in the black SUV with DC plates. I double-clicked my doors to make sure they were locked and started frantically trying to make out street signs through the rain. None were the ones I wanted. Up ahead, a sign "Gary, IN - 5 miles" put to rest my hope that I was heading in the right direction, and I did what any respectable denizen of the nation's capital (who has been lost in enough bad hoods to know one when she sees one) would do: I pulled a U-ey in the middle of the street, cut off a moving van and a tricked out Mercedes, and gunned it back to the highway.

I wish I could say my excitement ended there, but alas, Chicago was apparently not my kinda town. Twice I turned around and entered the highway, and twice I ended up heading again toward Gary. By now, thankfully, it had stopped raining, but I was done. I was quickly approaching my 13th hour in the car. I was lost. I barely had any cell phone power left (yes, I know. The rest of that story comes later...), no map (again, huge rookie mistake that I normally NEVER make), and no fucking idea what to do because no matter how hard I tried to follow the hastily scribbled directions from my sister's brother-in-law, the roads simply did not make any sense. Street numbers didn't match up; landmarks that he assured me would be there were not...it was dark, the highway was crammed cheek-by-jowl with angry Chicago commuters, and I was sure that the 8th circle of hell had been found.

After turning around, yet-again, for the 6th time at another service station (and by now, also having asked one of Chicago's finest for directions that were as useless as Googles), I almost quit. Literally - pulled my car over on the side of the highway, and started bawling because with ever fiber of my being, that is all I wanted to do. I was sure at that moment (one-and-a-half-hours into being lost) that all of the drama...the being lost in one of the worst parts of IL, the no cellphone battery, the frustration... were all just a colossal sign of how fucked up my life was, how fucked up this move was and how fucked up my summer was going to be. What good could ever spring from such inauspicious beginnings? I couldn't even make my way alone to Chicago...how was I ever going to get through the rest of the summer?

I don't know where I found the inner fortitude to try again, and I'd like to say a beam of light cast down upon me like Frodo Baggins and helped me make my way into Mount Doom to toss away the acursed ring, but nothing that exciting was my destiny. Instead, I did the only thing that seemed even remotely right: I ignored all the directions. Knowing I ultimately had to go West, I simply kept heading west on I-94. I ignored the Google directions, said a quick prayer over the cellphone to work one last time, and called my sister; making her stay on the phone with me for the last 5 miles to her in-laws house. Slowly, the street numbers began to coalesce to the directions. Landmarks unveiled themselves and the wrongness of the past hour-and-a-half began to right itself. A sense of things getting down to business came over me and I knew I was on the right path.

However. I still refused to hang up until the engine was turned off, and I finally let my tears...those accursed girl-tears that always get me when emotions run high...spill freely down my face and through my sister's hair as she hugged me tightly, laughing.

Her smiling eyes and mischevious grin were so familiar, so missed. Just as was her first words to me, which I should've expected. She is, after all, my sister, "What kind of moron drives from DC to Chicago without a cellphone charger??"

Maybe my trip wasn't going to be so bad after all.

Coming around again

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about goals. Setting them. Reaching them. Wondering how to both set them and reach for them. And I've realized that regardless of what we plan for or how we set goals, a lot of the time, life happens outside of our plans, and it's what we do with that time that counts...not necessarily the plan.

When I was a teenager, I always thought I'd be married by the time I was 23. Twenty-three! At 14, twenty-three seemed so worldy. So old! Now I look at 23 year olds and usually think, "Kid". Certainly someone who is 23 isn't a kid...but to me now, at 37...looking back on my last few years of concentrated 'life experiences', a person who has just gotten out of college is still a kid to me. And I suppose that is merely a nice side-effect of getting older. And also why I am suddenly so focused on both setting - and achieving - certain goals. It is also why I was a little bit surprised when someone I know, but didn't really think I'd see again, showed up at my door the other day and sat down to dinner with me like no time at all had passed.

She asked for a glass of wine, put her feet up on my coffee table and then whispered in my ear...suggested I do something I should not be doing, something that will not further any goal or plan that I have lately made for myself, and will most likely only cause me pain. Yet...I listened to her. I almost followed her advice.

It was meant well, this advice. She thought she was suggesting the best thing for me, the thing to help ease a certain pain I was having and settle a certain unease that I've been suffering. She suggested I look backwards into my past and try to fix something. More precisely, someone. Try to fix a someone who I once loved...and actually still do in a way, but not real love. Not lasting love or fighting-for love. What she was suggesting I do is reach for a past love, and I almost did it.

Would it have been wrong, to contact this person? For my part, no - I don't think so...I don't think trying again for something - or someone - is ever wrong. But I've learned a thing or two about feelings, and I think the lesson has finally reached the grey matter because I'm finally understanding. Just because I think it wouldn't be wrong doesn't mean the end result will be what I imagine or would like. In fact, most of the time, when I entertain trying to change the past from the present, it means I won't even get in the neighborhood of what I want. And that must be a blessing in disguise. Elsewise, this person? This Ryane from two years ago...or 5 or 10? She would be knocking on my door everynight, encouraging me to stop making goals and seeing what is great about planning for a future in favor of focusing on what was great about the past.

Nothing has changed. I still want to contact this person and see. But then again, I also want to contact the person I loved 10 years ago and see how he is...and 15 and 20. I always want to do this, and to know because that is who I am. But I think it's finally a step for me to recognize that wanting to do something and doing them are two radically different concepts, and that I'm better off for making the goal, and sticking to it, then mucking about in the past.

So, I filled up my shade's wine glass, we settled into my couch cushions for a grand-old reminiscing about the past, and then I sent her on her way. I'm glad she stopped by; we settled a lot of outstanding issues and I think, we even made progress. But I guess I won't be inviting her back. I hope she doesn't take it personally.

All roads lead to home

When I was a kid, even random holidays (like Columbus Day) were often spent with extended family, and they were all celebrated almost identically.

My dad's parents would drive over from Oxon Hill in their light-beige and tan Buick, and arrive around 1ish. Mom would make a rather enormous bowl of French Onion dip and have it, along with a loaf of pumpkin-orange Colby Jack cheese in the fridge, awaiting the Utz chips and Club crackers already on the snack tray. Dad was on the bar. He would busy himself making martinis for my grandparents - dirty martinis w/two olives - and Mai Tais or margaritas for him and my mother.

Not allowed to drink soda on a regular basis, these special Sundays saw me and my three siblings enjoying a Coke or a rootbeer, and I remember those days just like they were yesterday. The heat of the kitchen with the stove, the grill and all-four burners going. The smell of my grandaddy's cigarettes, sieving down over everyone and hanging in the air to mellow out while the food cooked and the alcohol took hold. The sound of my grandfather playing the piano for us and the sweet taste of whatever it was my mom would have made for dinner, or even more wonderful, dessert.

I drove down to Southern Maryland on an errand this morning and arriving early, found myself in my old hometown with time to kill. On a whim, I decided to drive past my old house and see how it felt on this holiday Sunday to be back at 9515, back at the old red-brick house that was my home for over 20 years, and it was all so strange. And so familiar.

My neighborhood seemed small, shrunken even. Trees that I remembered towering over me were normal, almost diminutive and the streets seemed narrow. My house, my childhood home, was small too. Was it always that small, that tiny? I only ever remember it as a hugely welcoming space, yet today it didn't seem like anything other than a squat stack-of-bricks that surely couldn't ever have held a family of six, let alone one couple.

I wonder what's new inside and what is the same? Four cars crammed the driveway, and a bright bunch of fall mum's graced the old, cracked steps leading up to the front door. The mailbox was new, as was the antiqued-iron street number sign adorning the corner of the drive, but the tree...the 40 year old tree in the front-yard had reached it's maturity and loomed mightily over the house and street.

Everything else could have been my house 30 years ago when I was a kid and Sundays meant family dinner, the magical promise of a soda and the smell of my grandfather's cigarette smoke. I looked around the neighborhood for a moment, the Redskin's flags adorning the neighbors house the right that was never there in the past, the run-down cars junking up another neighbors yard and the sad, almost dejected curb appeal all the homes on my old street seemed to radiate. It's tired, this old neighborhhood, and I wonder how long before it slips into dejection, into serious neglect. Some of the homes weren't too far off.

I don't know what I expected to see on this trek; I've known for a long time that you can't go home again and that even when you do, things are rarely as you remember them. But for just one small, blissful moment - I was my shadow. I was 10-year old Ryane running up the street to meet the school bus. I was teenage Ryane joy-riding with my sister in an old Dodge Dart, listening to Led Zeppelin as loudly as the stereo would go...for a minute, I was safe and warm in the embrace of having grown up in that small house, so long ago, and it felt good.

With so many things in my life so upside-down this past year, it's comforting to know that some things...some things don't change. And no matter how much my old town has changed, my memories haven't.

Exhale

I do think that facts are stubborn things. I still believe that. But I'm also open-minded enough to know that circumstances surrounding facts can and do change. As have mine.

Although I'm not entirely sure that my work situation will be idyllic (not to mention not really sure I want that anyway), I do think I turned a corner today that I desperately need to turn. My breath is back. I actually got through an entire workday without once whispering to myself, "God, I just want to throw-up" and I didn't feel lost, out of my element or worse - like a fraud. Instead, I felt that subtle, blink-and-you-miss-it sensation of gelling with my co-workers and my boss that I was seeking. I'm not kidding myself into thinking that somehow, all of my concerns have magically disappeared, but I feel like I can see past my own impression of things as one thing - and one thing only - to perhaps, something else again.

In Scotland, people often say, "What's for you won't go by you", and I love this saying. It fills me with hope in all the right places and reminds me to keep the faith even when I don't want to. And even though I don't always want to embrace it, more than a few times I've lost my faith in it entirely, I am still hopeful enough to believe that the work situation I had thus far taken as unrepairable might prove me wrong. Might just be the thing for me that won't go by me, and that will help me put to rest some demons that should have left the building long ago.

Re-entering the work atmosphere after 10 months in orbit was just about the most difficult thing I've ever done. Rarely have I felt both less qualified and more eager in my entire life. And I have to say, in spite of these - despite these?? TO spite these?? feelings...I'm so thankful I didn't take Coward Avenue and bail on this job. It most definitely isn't a 'dream' or 'perfect', but I don't necessarily want those things in my career. I want challenges, growth and frankly, monetary advancement. I'd so much rather leave the 'dreams' and 'perfection' to my love life, and for friends and family; those tangibles that dust us off and kiss away our bruises when life implodes around us...that bolster us through the stubborn fact that work sometimes sucks. But it isn't everything. It isn't all there is.

I can't promise not to bitch about my job because, hey - anyone who really knows me knows I am far too sarcastic and droll to not have things to say. But I do promise to mea culpa when I'm wrong, and to own that even after a month spent crying, worrying and uriah-heap hand wringing, I was missing some of the forest for the tress. I won't say all because a few of my concerns were valid and justified. But not all of them. They all weren't, and some of it was fear, and resentment. I longed to be out of unemployment, but I'm not sure I longed to be working, ie: losing all of that free time. And those are two emotions that, when they collided, put me into a tailspin.

So, mea culpa. Ryane has left the building, and re-entered it. And from where I am standing now, I can see that even with a long road ahead of me, potential frustration and even possibly a shit-load of ballocks, I'm still in a pretty good place. And that has to count, right?

Facts are stubborn things

Oh it's just been so much doom and gloom around here I can barely take it.

I wish I had better stuff to write about...sweetness and light. Joy. Happiness.

But the truth is, I'm not really suffering from a lack of these things. More, I'm just patently aware that what I thought was going to go one way, is now going another, and I have to adapt. Fast. It's not a situation I enjoy very much. Nor is it a situation I am all that keen on having to face again - a potential search for yet again another job - but I do think it beats where I was a year ago. It certainly beats where I was five years ago and if I'm smart, and don't panic or make any sudden moves, it might prove to be a better place then I've been in a long while. But I'm still not enjoying it so much.

And that sucks. And, leads me to do things like mope and whine and bitch about how I have it so bad. In a way, I do have some 'bad' things to deal with. Job failure or misrepresentation isn't fun, no matter the reason. And it's not something anyone who has gone through a layoff wants to face. But I guess maybe it's more of a reality than I had anticipated or planned on.

Truth be told, I didn't plan on it at all. Naively, I thought I wouldn't face any such worries with this job. Was that simply foolishness, or is it the lie we all tell ourselves when faced with a new situation in order to get through it? Personally, I don't know. What I do know is that often, when faced with having to accept a situation that made me uncomfortable or forced me out of my safe place, I have historically balked or worse - run away. But not always. Not all the time. Looking back, I can see where I stuck it out on many occassions where it really counted, and that is an important distinction.

I don't know what to do about my current situation other than for now, stick it out. And I gotta be honest. That makes me both mad and wigged out. I'm stressed, frustrated and worried...almost every day...about what the next day will bring. My sleep is erratic, I haven't been exercising or even eating on a regular basis and that isn't oK with me. Not even close. The alternatives...to quit and try and figure it out unemployed...don't work either. Sucking it up and dealing with less than satisfactory treatment is my choice. It was made for me when I took up the threads of my life and expected to just slip back into my old life.

I should have known that life rarely plays out in this way. Almost never from my experience. I am grateful for my job, and I am really very happy to be working again and back in a place of authority over myself...over my choices and my decisions. And, I'm also aware that what I'm doing now? It's not my goal, my plan if you will. It's just so very...not. Balancing the reality that I'm grateful for what I have, yet don't like, is foreign and hard on my tongue so forgive me. Know that when I complain and bitch about this situation, it's with frustration that I can see what I want, but can't yet get to it and that I don't enjoy being yelled at or disdained because I had to re-write a deliverable twice. I have never faced a situation where re-writes or edits were so haughtily disdained.

I don't agree with how I'm being treated, and I most definitely don't like it, but I can appreciate that it is a means to an end...for now...that is better than most, and certianly greater than the sum of where I was when unemployed. Turning points rarely have guideposts, and I doubt sincerly if they are called out with street signs, but nevertheless, I think I got mine. And this time...by my very word...I am paying attention. A job is a big part of life, of course...but is it everything? Does it have to be everything?

I won't let my life be defined by what someone else sees or dictates, just as I won't let myself fall into the pit of despair over a job that is hard and challenging, but ultimately not miserable or hideous. There have to be other options here...options I am not seeing. Options I may be used to running from...options I am afraid to see. But options abound, and I think it's time I focus on what matters...what is, and not what is not.

Better to burn, than to fade away?

So often, I have heard people refer to their 'five-year plan', yet never paid much attention to what it meant, or how it might actually benefit my own life. Not one who is good at long-term planning, I shied away from the thought of having to reach for a goal that seemed so ridiculously out of my reach. Five years? An eternity. How could I plan for five years when at times, I felt like I couldn't coordinate five minutes.

But then as I passed through the strata of unemployment, and back in again, the notion of a five-year plan has hit me hard, in all my soft places, and I feel bruised and not a little annoyed with myself for being so far behind the eight ball. And I have finally come to realize how important having a five year plan is for me, for my life right now because frankly - I am worried about where I am.

There. I said it. Worried.about.where.I.am. My new job is everyday revealing itself to be a much different, much more stressful task than I was led to believe. And while I realize this isn't necessarily a reason to feel sorry for myself, or lament, or abandon the job, I also realize that it's no way to spend a life, or even a small portion of a life. Each night for the past three weeks I've gone to bed with a sick-stomach and a mound of stress weighing on my shoulders for what the next day would bring. I've had dream after dream of the world exploding outside and me stuck, in my tiny apartment, unable to either save myself or escape the cataclysm I can hear unfolding outside my window.

I recognize all of the good things about working at a full-time job and am painfully aware of the fact that for me, quitting is simply not an option (even outside of the money consideration). I am not a quitter. I would rather go down in a blaze of trying-too-hard glory than to just stop trying, but at what cost? If my stress continues at this level, I'm either going to implode, or develop an ulcer. (In case you were wondering, neither is an attractive notion to me.) What happens when your grand notions for a newly-minted five year plan get scrapped and re-worked as a one-year plan? One month plan. Will it work? Can you trick time in this fashion?

People often speak of getting to the bottom of things, or to the heart of the matter and for me, I think that this job not unfolding as I had hoped isn't so much my getting to the bottom of anything, rather, I think the bottom of everything in my life has come bubbling up, letting me know...the time has come for me to embrace not just a five year plan, but an instantly-implementable plan. A change in my life that will negate the need for relying upon this kind of job for my livelihood. It's trite to say life is too short, but god how true that trite little kernel actually is.

I know I sound like a whiny twat, complaining about a job I've only had for 3 weeks and feeling sorry for myself, blahblahblah. It's disheartening to me, too. I mean, I've just come off of a hard year...things are supposed to be moving upwards and onwards, not downwards and backwards. And I am grateful for my job, I am. I'm grateful for the fact that in spite of the stress, it is an opportunity for me to grow and stretch myself, and for the fact that I was able to start earning a salary again that is allowing me to reclaim my life. The inescapable fact that haunts me now is that at the heart of me, my soul's seat if you will, I don't want to be spending 70% of my life in this way, one more rat in a heartless race. And that scares me. If I'm not doing this, then what? Where? And how? I've tried on what seem to be so many careers with varying degrees of success, but no true love, true passion. Is it a failure to not have acheived this crest yet, or is it merely that life is still unfolding around me, new with possibility?

I read an article today that said Gen Y'ers are expected to have between 8 - 10 careers in their lifetime, and so - I suppose this makes me ahead of the bell curve, doesn't it? I may not have found my 'career' yet, but I do think I'm well on my way to knowing where I want to be, and what I want to be doing when I get there. Now I just have to do something about it.

Good thing I have a plan.

Funderful

Few things in life are more fun than getting through your first week at work. Especially a week that didn't, as the storybooks promise, go swimmingly. My first week at work was difficult, scary, hard, stressful and ultimately - almost a non-sequitor due to a freak outside circumstance.

But I survived, and made it through those 50 hours with just a few dings, mostly unscathed. After spending the better part of Friday night holed up at home with a large bottle of wine and a real dinner (not the Raisin Bran or PB & J I choked down Tuesday through Thursday out of desperation), I had to admit to myself that part of my problem last week was once again, my GD expectations.

Like any new relationship in Ryaneville, I had expectations of my new job. Of how I would interact with my co-workers and how my days would go...I certainly never made plans for havoc waltzing into my first week and causing, well...havoc. Which, of course, left me feeling distinctly unhappy. Of feeling like I had made a huge mistake, and that my joy at no-longer being unemployed was going to be cripplingly short-lived.

Does fun have a home in the workplace? Should new employees expect their jobs to be fun, or are we all creating dangerous slipknots for ourselves? For my part, I still don't know. I can't imagine approaching a new job thinking, "Well, it will be bearable", yet, I am very definitely beginning to think that the "Oh my new job is going to be so much fun!!" approach isn't right either.

My new job wasn't fun at all last week. And it made me want to cut and run. To just give up and quit before I even really got started because it seemed to be falling so short of my grand expectations. Some of it was outside of my control, but some of it wasn't...and that middle ground is completely foreign to me.

When I was unemployed, I read a lot of articles about how hard it was to get back into the discipline and routine of a regular job. That freshly-minted new employees should be prepared for a stark learning curve that would take all of the skills they had getting the job times 10 to master. Intuitively, I knew this. I told myself I was ready for it and still, I fumbled in the execution when I got going.

I'm trying hard not to hold it as a permanent foul or be too hard on myself because that obviously won't solve anything, or make my first week back to work anything other than what it was: pretty bad. Sure, my new job may not have presented as 'fun' at the outset, but now that I have already put a check next to the 'huge screw up' column, and now that I have managed to put my expectations once again into perspective, I am free to see that there are a lot of reasons to stick it out, aside from purely monetary. That the potential is there.

I won't say I don't still have great expectations and high hopes for my job because I do. And I think the job will meet them. But at least now, I am out of la-la unemployment land with a thump, and can get on with the business of kicking this job learning-curve in the ass.