Work Husbands

One mile!!! I'm going so slow.  I hate it.  I really don't know anyone who is alright with setbacks, and I know I need to just figure out a way to deal with it ... But right now this makes me super crabby.  Getting back to 100% myself is taking forever.  I'm in the middle of internship searching now, and I am waiting to hear from a really big hospital in Boston that is my first choice. It makes me so nervous to wait and wait and wait ... I've been working on this for so long ...

The more I talk to people in consulting, the more I realize that all the money, hotel status, airline miles, crazy travel plans, free amex points ... I was going to say aren't worth it, but then I realized that I really miss those things.  I have a good friend here, who was also interviewing for a consulting position and said to me, "We should both go! It would be so fun! We can hang out all summer!"  I freaked out a little bit.  We use to have a name for this when I was in consulting, "Work Husband."  You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together, you share a car, you go to the gym together, you work next to each other, you're in the same hotel ... I've made some good friends this way, but then we always go home on the weekends and after a year we live in different states.  I always had a love hate relationship with it.  I was overpaid, learning a lot, and traveling all over the world.  But "date night" ment facetiming my boyfriend while I had room service alone in my hotel.  Everytime I wanted to walk away from it, I would get a raise or a promotion or a new project somewhere awesome and stay. Being gone so much put so much space between me and my boyfriend at the time that I remember getting a huge raise (~$10,000) and not even telling him.  I'm not sure why exactly I didn't tell him, but he just didn't seem to understand.  My work husband knew though ...

Recovery from running injuries is a frustrating process ... But I will do it.  I just get up and decide it's time to run again.  Sometimes I'm fine, and sometimes my knee hurts or I am so exhausted I can't breathe when I run, but I always get through it.  Rearranging my life is the same.  I go back and forth on missing someone who I know is not good for me, and I go back and forth about a career that I also know is not good for me. I guess I need to just learn from running.  Make the decision.  Just do it, and be done.  I don't want another work husband, I think I'd be happier with a real one.

298 Miles Down 18 Miles to Go

Did he hit on you?!

I had a pretty strange experience last week.  I was contacted randomly by a manager at a big health care organization in Boston.  He wanted to talk to me about an open position in his group.  He set up some time to talk with me on the phone, and scheduled quickly a meeting with me to come in and talk with him more about creating an internship for me in person.  I figured either the group was a huge mess and needed some kind of change or this was just way too good to be true.  He wanted me to come in and meet all the different groups he managed and design an internship for me around something that I found interesting.  He worked in IT, and I'm pretty sure he grabbed my name because I worked in consulting for a few years in IT.

Well I put this idea in my back pocket and kept it on the table as an option.  Until I talked to another alumni who worked for him.  I asked her if she knew him and what she thought of him as a manager.  The first thing she said to me was, "Did he hit on you?!?!"  I was baffled.  This literally never crossed my mind, and then I realized he never even asked me for my resume and he was offering for me to design any kind of internship I wanted?  It didn't add up ...

I took that option off the table.

297 Miles Down 19 Miles to Go

A Man on My Couch

Today I had a different kind of wedding ring seeking.  I went on a fancy dinner with one of my friends here.  We were talking about how it sucks not to be able to go out to dinner and get dressed up.  I'm single, and his wife is currently living out of state.  So, we decided to get dressed up and go out to eat, along with another one of my girlfriends.  Dinner was awesome, and we went to a bar afterwards that had a jukebox.  I had a beer ... and then I woke up in my bed.  Somehow I forgot the whole night.  I immediately changed into pajamas, went to the bathroom, and wandered into the kitchen for water.  I felt like I could drink all the water the faucet could give me and still be thirsty.  And he was sleeping on my couch.  Shiiiittttt.  Hate blacking out!

After I woke him up fumbling for a cup and water, he filled me in on some pieces I didn't remember.  1.  I threw up on him.  2. I forced him to watch several episodes of Pawn Stars.  3.  We spent quite a bit of time talking about his wife, apparently I had a lot of questions.  As soon as he realized I was fine and awake, he left.  Needless to say I had a lot to think about.

294 Miles Down 22 Miles to Go

Wedding Ring Seeker

Just as I start putting consulting on the table for all the good things it has, I am reminded of all the bad things it has to come along with.  I went to a health care panel today (in graduate school they are always pushing you into "career exploration" which I usually hate, but today was awesome) and there were three women on the panel who were running hospitals in Boston.  ALL of them had wedding rings on.  I started thinking about my old gone Monday-Friday life, and I had a mini panic attack.  I don't want to put myself into a situation where I can't meet anyone.  When I think about dating a consultant, I am not even a little bit attracted to the idea because I know I'll be having dinner alone four nights out of seven.  I know I'll be sleeping alone, and I know I won't be able to talk to them for more than five minutes at a time all week.  If I hate the idea of this, how can I expect someone else to be okay with it?  Also, I tend to get fat from eating out at restaurants too much.  So there's that too ...

291 Miles Down 24 Miles To Go

Pushing Myself From the Beginning Again

When I got on the treadmill today, there was this super tiny long blonde haired girl in front of me.  I laughed, and thought for sure I could beat her.  Race was on!  And she was actually beating me!  I have to stop hypothetically racing with strangers in the gym ...  My heel was killing me  ... but I wanted more than one mile.  I literally hate recovery, all I can think about is how far behind I am from what I could do when I was healthy.

I keep thinking about a case we did in school, Coke vs. Pepsi: cola wars.  You'd think by looking at the companies that they are in strong competition with each other.  As we dove into how cola is made, concentrate, bottling, etc, we realized that the industry doesn't have strong rivalry.  You think they have to hurt each other in competition to win, but it turns out that when they work together ... They're each unstoppable.  They push each other to be innovative and successful.  This is the relationship I want, with a boyfriend and with a boss.  My professor said that one of the companies even quoted, "Without Pepsi, I wouldn't be where I am today.  They made us better."  So ... I guess that tiny stupid blonde girl (she's probably not stupid) making me upset that she could run forever was a good thing.  Because I stayed on that stupid treadmill when I wanted to get off.  I hate recovery so much, but here I am pushing myself from the beginning again.

288 Miles Down 27 Miles To Go

Waiting ...

Today I am waiting ... and waiting ... and I really hate waiting.  I went on a trip with some friends up to Maine (checking it off the bucket list of amazing places to visit).  I've had this good friend since college ... about nine years now ... and we've always been really close.  We almost dated senior year, but as soon as we got close I got a job in Chicago and he got one in Minneapolis.  So I shyed away from it, he was one of my best friends and I saw it ending messy.  Nothing more than that really ever happened, we stayed really close and vacationed together (with groups) a few times (India, Munich, Amsterdam, Back to IU ... ).  He's always been one of those guys who I knew I would date eventually when the time was right, but we just haven't been in a position to since college.

Lately, I'd been thinking about the fact that we can sit and talk for hours and it seems like minutes.  And the fact that I really want that.  And just as we started talking a lot more again, he tells me he has a girlfriend.  Naturally!  I said that I was happy for him, and started dodging his calls.  It's not something I want to get tangled in.  Then he sends me an uncharacteristic message "Can I come visit you for a night?  I had a rough day and need a friend."  Of course I said yes, and then he went radio silent.  Three days after he said he wanted to visit, we connected over the phone.  His girlfriend broke up with him.  In Korea, where he went to meet her parents.  Because her parents didn't approve of him not being Korean.  And here he was trying to prove to her parents that he'd be good for their daughter.  He was writing them a letter.  He kept saying on the phone to me, "I'm not sure I can forget how she wanted to marry me one minute, and then just walked away the next."  So she broke up with him, and then they spent 24 hours flying back to the US on the plane together.  Where he planned on getting off in Chicago ...

He ended up not, and going back to Pennsylvania with her, but not as her boyfriend.  A week later she told her parents she wanted to date him, and he was asking me if he should give her another chance.  I didn't know what to tell him, so I told him that I couldn't answer that question.  I can't tell him who he wants to be with.  So when he said that I'd been a good friend and told me he wanted to come visit me in Boston.  I said maybe.  I told him not to read too into this ... but it's a little weird when guys visit me and they have a girlfriend.  He was offended a little I think, but I don't want to be confusing.  So now I'm waiting ... which I hate ... When did dating become waiting to see who wants to visit me in Boston?

286 Miles Down 29 Miles To Go

I don't care, I love it!

I've slowed down ... I ran two miles today.  It feels like I haven't done anything.  I forgot what "recovery" was like.  And today I had a lot to think about in terms of recovery.  Two days ago was the Turd's birthday.  I went back and forth and back and forth on if I should say something.  Until I realized, this is not something worth debating anymore.  I sent him a quick note, forgot that I saved his name as "He's A Turd" and as soon as I sent the Happy Birthday message, my phone popped up: He's A Turd.  I just started laughing.  We talked for a little while, but I felt like I could just keep him at an arms length.  It's been so long, and no feelings came back up.  We talked about his job, and how he's ready to move on from it.  He mentioned he had friends in Boston and they loved it.  Great!  I actually don't care!  That sounds terrible ... but I don't :)

I turned on the song, "I don't care, I love it!" and danced around my apartment for twenty minutes.  I'm so happy.

283 Miles Down 32 Miles To Go