You're not your job

I've had more jobs than anyone I know at my age. My longest tenure at any job was 2 years. I know changing more often gets you more money, but can look bad too. I don't switch jobs that often on purpose, but it reflects my life. I mean, during college you sort of have to get a new job often--I spent a couple of semesters away and you're always looking for more experience in your field, or the job that pays rent/books better. My college boyfriend said once that I went away every-other semester and he expected me to be going to Africa the semester after the current one. I never made it to Africa, but I did move away again.

Here are the jobs I've had, some were held simultaneously:

During high school:
newspaper delivery route
piano player at the Holiday Inn

after high school:
Dishroom at BYU dorm cafeteria
*30 minutes at Taco Bell
Arby's
Diversified Plastics
Topp Travel
Avis Car Rental
Fabricland
Teleperformance
Samurai Sam's
Marketing Ally
Wirthlin Worldwide
CNA office secretary

after undergrad:
GEM School in Japan
secretary at Family History office in Church Office Building
sales associate at Sharper Image
secretary at Curriculum writer's office in Church Office Building

during MBA:
**Travel & visa agent at Missionary travel in Church Office Building--2 years
Sales rep for Dish Network

after MBA:
sales Rep for Dish Network
event-based marketing assistant for City Weekly

starting in 2 weeks: Marketing Coordinator for Nutraceutical


*I went into work but began to feel as if I might faint. Just before doing so I walked out the door and into the parking lot where I vomitted for a few minutes. Then I walked back in and said I was done. I was too embarrassed to ever go back.

**this job was the hardest job to leave even though I wanted to for a long time--I felt like such a part of the global community. I felt touched by every country I worked with and learned about and by every person. I always want to know more about the people that I know, and I want to know everyone deeply. I want to be Eve.

hooking up with the HB

The first time I met Tyler was when I went to his house with his brother and a friend to watch a movie. He called me the next day. I thought he was married--he had a son and I had naively assumed that his wife was out that night. I quickly figured out that he was not married and accepted the date. I was dating a lot at the time. A month earlier one of my good friends had proposed to me and I'd had to turn him down and break it off. I was on a breather with my long-time ex and also casually dating a guy from my gym.

We went out. I continued going out with others while we kept going out. It was hard, I always wanted more space. Tyler kept telling me to call him, anytime. I thought he wanted to hang out more, but couldn't tell sometimes. And besides when I wasn't out with him I was out with other guys, so I never really got the space I needed, a night to myself sometimes. And Tyler kept telling me he wasn't a player and wasn't out looking for action. He talked about another girl-friend often, leading me to believe he didn't want a romantic relationship at all.

I broke it off with the guy at my gym. I started spending more time with the friend I"d first gone over to his house with. Then I ended up making out with that friend and told Tyler I couldn't see him anymore. Nothing serious with the friend, but enough to make their acquaintance with each other awkward with me involved.

Then I went out a few times with a different guy from the gym. I also reconnected with my old boyfriend. And I had occasional random dates as well.

I started my MBA program. I stopped seeing the mutual friend and the other guy at the gym. I kind of stopped dating altogether--by that I mean for like 2 weeks.

Then I sent an email to Tyler, we hadn't been in touch for several weeks and just thought I'd be friendly, see what was up. I wanted to talk to him, but part of me was afraid. I think I knew in my heart that once I talked to him again there was no turning back, I knew he was the one I'd be with forever and that thought scared me a little. So, with a little help from mine and Tyler's friend Tim, we got it together and once we did, we never missed a day seeing each other. Six months later we got married.

Coping Agents

Yesterday I was rear-ended. The day before yesterday, my passenger side-view mirror blew off of my car while I was driving on the interstate. It was glued down over a year ago from being knocked off once before, and it eventually came loose. Wednesday, the HB and I had an argument before going to our first session of the marriage coaching class we're taking. And Wednesday I notified my boss that I'd be starting a new job. Though none of these things are overwhelmingly detrimental, the combination could usually get me feeling pretty emotional.

(Not that I'm not usually very emotional. One time in college I'd just moved into the apartment with a new set of rooommates, some I knew. We started talking about how female apartments often end up with their time-of-the-month coinciding because of so much time spent together. One of the girls joked how she wondered which of us we would all synchronize with and then declared that it wouldn't be her because she isn't that emotional. Shortly thereafter, everyone pinpointed me as the emotional one, the one whose period the other girls would involuntarily end up synchronizing with due to the powerful effects of hormones. Yes, I am very emotional.)

It's always good to have some coping agents though, something that makes you feel good or feel strong.

Silly as it may sound, one of those coping agents is just doing the marriage class. It may sound contrary to be excited about it, but that's because I hate not doing something about things. I hate stagnance. I'd rather do something. The truth can only emerge from error right? The truth can't come from nothing or nowhere.

Another agent or agents I should say are my girlfriends. After much delay, I finally got together with some girlfriends for dinner the other night. It felt so good, so refreshing. I need those things. Thanks Kristin and Laura!

And just because I still feel refreshed from this as well, I'll say night showers. I'm pretty routine, I take my shower every morning after my workout. I know that I like showering at night, but often when it comes around it doesn't seem worth the effort and it seems pointless since I'll only shower again in the morning. But I did it last night for the first time in months and it felt sooooo good.

There are a lot of other things out there, that make me feel good, and strong, and rejuvenated, but I'll leave it at that for now.

**and the HB is a wonderful coping agent himself--he supports me and helps me through numerous issues. I love you babe!

Job Offer

I just got a great job offer. It's doing exactly what I want to be doing, marketing, and for an industry I'm more interested in--health, rather than television. It pays over 10K more than what I'm currently making so just having finished the MBA might pay off. Now I just have to decide if I really want to change right now. My job is such a piece of cake and totally flexible. You couldn't ask for more freedom at work and easy money. So, is it worth it? I have a lot of thinking to do.

tattoo convention

I signed up to help work the Tattoo convention in Salt Lake this weekend. Got some swag out of it and watched a few people fall off the mechanical bull. I'd never get a tattoo, I totally cried when I got stitches a couple of summers ago. But if I did...

I'm not into the whole filling up space. I think less is more--in everything--in furniture, in body art, etc. At my brothers graduation there was a girl with a cool tattoo, it was the outline of a globe, just the outline of all the continents, across her back. I dug that. I also thought about doing a set of baby footprints.

Some older guy from Wyoming kept coming by my booth. He eventually told me that I was "fine". I started to ignore him after that, I mean, I like to be friendly, but I don't want old creepy guys to think I'm interested in them.

the biggest studs

The little stud gave me a Superman Valentine. He taught me how to play the new Pacman game on the XBox. He's so sweet.

If you want to know what the big stud gave me besides these pretty flowers, watch the recent SNL skit with Justin Timberlake. : ) The HB is way too manly to be called "hubby," a nick-name I despise, hence the invention of "the HB." This guy can rip up floors and build new ones, play army with his son, hold little babies tenderly, and kiss me passionately. He bought me this beautiful bouquet of roses and took me to sushi. Thanks baby. Here's a picture of the stud.

Wild Nights

Maybe it was watching the news on the shootings at Trolley Square for hours last night. Or maybe it was all the anxiety surrounding my aching LCL. It was hard to sleep because a knee injury or any sport injury is my greatest fear--to not be able to be active. I'm not sure, but I had some crazy dreams last night. My recollections are:

Being in a dorm-room with strangers as if staying at EFY or something. It must have been late in the week because I was tired when everyone else was going to go out. I just told my roommate that I was going to go sit in the hot tub and so I changed into my bathing suit.

Then I remembered that I left the bus running over at the museum/park where I was leading a tour earlier and that I had to pick up the bus because it was probably still driving around by itself. So I put some sweats on over my suit and made April drive her car behind mine over to the museum/park to pick up the bus. She dropped me off and left but then I realized if I got the bus under control and drove it back I'd still have to have her bring me back again to pick up my car.

Then I'm at this park with a building in the center, I guess a museum. And I'm chasing down this bus that's driving itself. But I momentarily lose it so I crawl up a tree that is overhanging a bridge sort of. Then I'm scared because it's dark and I'm alone and I look up in the tree and there's a sleeping bear. Then I look over and on the same branch as me is a sleeping lion. Then I suddenly feel a horse's nose nudge my back and he sticks his face next to mine and I pet him. Then along the bridge comes an older man with a group of kids he's leading. They toss me a rope to get from the tree onto the bridge, but I keep shushing them to not wake up the animals. The horse comes onto the bridge at the same time as me. We all walk away together.

Toasters

My favorite sandwich shop is downtown Salt Lake. It's owner moved here from Bosnia. He always greets me with a smile, remembers my order, my husband, and my job. The place is called Toasters. They don't quite toast the bread, but perfectly warmed and then give it some balsamic vinegar right on it. They serve their sandwiches with plain potato chips and they sell all sorts of European chocolate bars as well. He changes the art out occasionally, but there are some prints--mostly travel brochure-type posters and some art. Some of the posters were donated to him when Olympians from around the world came to Salt Lake City--I love his stuff. Plus it's small, there's a bright yellow couch, and some paper lantern-type lighting that sit against the one wall that's brick. Today the HB and I were there, and after talking to the owner he brought me over a chocolate bar. He just gave it to me. It was so nice.

Eternal Embrace

Knowing my fascination with the macabre, the HB sent me an article with these photos yesterday. The skeletons were found by archaeologists in Italy and are suspected to be 5000-6000 years old. They are the bones of a man and a woman.

I had a teacher in elementary school who used to read us books about famous people in history. One of the books was about Marie Curie and after hearing the story I told my mom I wanted to be a scientist. (This was not typical of me at all, I also remember telling her I wanted to be a waitress.) But it was because Marie Curie was a scientist and she had found gold once. She was actually famous for her work with chemicals, radiation, etc. Anyway, that was the beginning. And I'd always loved history, old things, Bible stories, and learning about the Maya. Then I also wanted to do archaeology to have an outdoor job because I love the outdoors.

My career in archaeology went as far as my field school in Escalante--it got re-buried. After excavating 2 Anasazi pithouses one summer and doing 3 weeks of archaeological survey we reburied our findings to leave the natural environment, saving only portions of what we'd found. I liked the actual work, the digging in the hot sun, not the boring archaeological reports and the speculative nature of the job. I hope that if someone were to dig up my house and find nothing but candy wrappers they wouldn't assume that was my primary means of sustenance.

Still though the idea of doing archaeology is romantic to me, it's alluring and always will be. It's not treasure, just the idea of seeing life through different eyes and learning what makes life meaningful to people. These bones say it all.

SLAMMY'S

A few months back I took on a sort of on-call job with City Weekly's marketing staff. Whenever they need some extra help they send me an email and if I can do it, I get paid in "trade"--mostly certificates for local restaurants, etc. that the paper advertises for. Last night I went to help out with the SLAMMY's competition. It's sort of like a Battle of the Bands and these were the preliminaries. The first two groups were some hip-hop groups. Who knew Salt Lake had local hip-hop groups? Sounds naive, but even though every place has local bands, I never considered us having local hip-hop bands. The first one was pretty good, but the second seemed to be trying too hard to look bad-A. The fourth band was my favorite, sort of psychodelic-type rock, they were really awesome. Throughout this, I passed out anti-smoking T-shirts to the crowds of smokers all around me and counted ballots. My throat is still sore this morning.

I seem to have a problem always over-committing myself. I love doing events because you meet new people, see live music / movies / art, etc. and all of that makes me feel alive, but when I'm doing too many things it may be better to just stay at home for once. I want to get the most out of life that I can, but only if it's meaningful.

The night before last Tyler took me to sushi for the first time. We went to Ginza with our good friend Tim who is moving soon. Ginza was cool because it was small like most Japanese restaurants are. I think that's why I like sandwich shops so much, maybe just because they're small.

Around 2 in the morning that night I woke up to loud banging on our door. Ty's brother and his friend were staying at our house that night and so I thought maybe they'd gotten locked out (they went to the store when we went to bed). Tyler went to check though and they were both on our living room floor, so he opened the door to two huge policemen with flashlights and a dog. The dog had followed the scent of a suspect up to our very front porch. I guess there'd been a drive-by shooting somewhere and after the cops followed the suspects cars and saw him crash, he took off on foot. So they searched our house, but my heart was pounding like crazy. I kept thinking, what if he's hiding in our yard? Our basement? It really sort of freaked me out.

I'm so tired today. I can't wait to go watch the superbowl to see April's new baby and play with Lanik.

Bowen

The baby's name is Bowen. He is so sweet and so soft and so cute. These are some pics taken on his birthday.