Crayons

A few years ago, I started a weekly blog:  "Musings of a Former Social Butterfly Turned Cat Lady".  It was my first attempt at writing anything that someone might read, and I thank that "one" for reading it.

My initial desire was to start writing about the adventures I had in my late teens through my twenties, and compare those wild days to where I was in my life now.  It didn't really work out that way.  The more I started to write, the more I decided that my childhood held some damn funny moments, and my day to day - while corporately mundane - held its own, compared to my carefree youth.  Plus, it's best not to put too much craziness online.  I might want to run for political office one day, you know.

A few years later, and now I've decided to try and resuscitate this blog.  Maybe resuscitate isn't the right word.  Maybe breathe new life into is a better term.  The same skeleton, but a different beast.  Franken Butterfly, perhaps? For things have obviously changed since 2013, right?  Right?!  right.

That bring us up to the Autumn of 2013. In wine, it would be called "L'annee de la folle"

"The Crazy Year"

In brief, I lost my sanity at the end of 2013.  I won't delve into the nitty gritty, but I will say it wasn't pretty.  I went on a leave of absence from work and started attending group therapy sessions.  I feel no shame or embarrassment in this.  I did what was required of me in order to not lay in bed all day and contemplate how my navel was actually the center of the universe.

Group Therapy.  What a term.  In essence, this is where the powers that be take a bunch of people they have no idea how to deal with, and shove them in a room and hand them crayons.  I kid you not.  Crayons.  If you aren't staring at your crayons, you are sharing your feelings about crayons.  Or deciding why you prefer pencils to crayons.  Or why markers are FAR SUPERIOR TO CRAYONS, DAMN YOU.  I kid, sort of.  But we did use a lot of crayons.

Group meant sitting around a long cafeteria table and discussing a topic that the counselors brought up.  "Who are you?", asks Jane.  "What do you feel about [insert anything here]," questions Tim.  "Not sharing is your option, Ellen."

If you didn't go into Group scrambled, you certainly came out scrambled with cheese.

Not that it didn't help.  I learned a few things.  I learned that I am a person that other's feel comfortable holding on to when they are at their lowest.  I learned that I wanted to protect the people who had no round hole to fit in.  I learned how to lie to the therapists, in order to help a "friend".  

I was repeatedly spoken to about how "I was there for myself and while people might look to me for a shoulder, this is not something I can adequately provide.  These people needed professional help, and I should focus on my own well-being."

I agreed with one of these statements.  I should have focused more on my own well-being.  Everything else they said was crap.  It was clear that some of these lost souls just needed to hear someone say they care.  Just needed to hear someone say that they understand you're going through hell.  Healing is wonderful.  Learning tools to heal is amazing. But a person has to know that someone cares for them.  That someone gives a crap that they exist.  Group did not provide that for anyone I saw.  Then again, I was scrambled.  What do I know?  They're the experts.  I just know that I didn't swallow what they were offering, and if people are coming to me for help, they didn't swallow it either.

Regardless, I did my time and went back to work with my signed medical letter and a grin on my face.  It might have been a snarky grin, but that I can neither confirm nor deny.

2014

A year of nothing to report except a bad relationship and a lot of unfortunate choices.  I suggest that you do not drink Absinthe with someone who does not want to hold your hair back while you have a love affair with the commode while hallucinating about Sylvia Plath.  I'll leave it at that.

January 2015 - October 2015

Work sucks.  My boss is a socially inept woman who feels that saying hello is equivalent to a royal bow.  So she doesn't bother saying hello.  Well, not true.  She doesn't bother saying hello to me.  If this were Group, she'd be the guy in the corner who says nothing but stares at you like Quint....whispering "Dolls Eyes".  Shiver me timbers.

October 2015-December 14 2015

A wonderful communication is sent 'round declarin' that the office will be experiencin' some layoffs.  Oh no.  Not "some layoffs", me boy, rumor has it, layoffs that amount to half of the company.  

Rumors and insanity abound.  No work is to be done because, why?  Fuck you!  Am I working towards my pink slip?  

December 14, 2015

The stage is set.  All at the Company are told to arrive no later than 8:45. At 9:03, my phone rings from a random conference room number.  My immediate thought it is, "That's odd.  Someone must be lost.".  

Yes. I am an idiot.  But in one brief moment, I have shown that I can be a positive idiot.  Mark that down for posterity.

I'm called up, My VP is there, along with HR.  Any time you asked to attend an unannouced meeting where people's titles are reduced to 2 letters, beware.  This cannot be a good thing.

I'm dealt with in the quickest and most efficient way.  I'm handed off to a lower HR representative and told how to handle things while at my desk.  I have never received such service at any hotel I've stayed in.  And I've stayed in some nice hotels!

I am granted the opportunity to say goodbye to my coworkers and boss. Only one of which I give a shit about, and am thus ushered out of the building I've worked in for almost 10 years.  It took less than 15 minutes.

Well.  Maybe I should have given more attention in Group, after all.  And maybe political office is out.

To Be Continued....