Long absence explained

It feels like a billion years since I've blogged. My personal life has been in a tailspin. Or, to be more accurate, my professional life has been in a tailspin. And since I don't have much of a personal life, when my professional life is on tilt, I am on tilt.

And honey, I have been on a full-blown, woozy, dizzy, shouldn't-have-eaten-that-damn-cotton-candy-before-I-jumped-on-this-stupid-ride Tilt-a-Whirl.

I won't bore you with the gory details, except to say, remember my rosy, hope-filled post of three months back about my glorious new job?

Not.

Not even.

Hell no.

Wrong turn.

Oh sh#t.

And a thousand other cuss words come to mind.

I've been working an absolutely insane amount of hours, 10-15 a day. I took 2 days off the entire month of January. As in one Saturday and one Sunday, what most people call a weekend.

But that's not the worst part.

I work for an asshole. The biggest horse's ass I have ever had the displeasure of working for in my life. Someone so cartoonishly asinine, I will one day shamelessly lampoon him in the most ridiculous situation a writer can ever conjure up for a hated buffoon. One day, I will roast and skewer this dude so badly in a piece of fiction I will laugh myself hoarse and pee my own pants while I type. And I'll include just enough real-life characteristics that he'll know it's about him. And I'll send it to him, along with an autographed picture of my middle finger.

Or maybe I'll just send him a sincere thank-you note, because I had an ephiphany.

As someone who has had a lifelong history of verbal abuse and of surrounding myself with abusive boyfriends (until I just gave up, got fat and stopped dating), I developed a pattern. A pattern of believing all the bad things people said about me. A pattern of believing that when other people dissed me, it was somehow all my fault.

And for a split second, two days to be exact, I started believing Asinine. I started believing maybe I wasn't good at my job. Maybe I didn't have what it takes. Maybe I could have or should have done something better to win Asinine's respect.

And then, in the midst of a fitful sleep, which has been an all-too-common occurrence as of late, it hit me.

None of what Asinine was saying was true.

Very little of what was going on is "my fault."

I'm not to blame because some dumb asshole treats me badly.

I deserve better.

Funny how the life lessons repeat in every area of your life until you "get it."