Chugging along

Work has been kind of painful lately. My group has been working on a lot of larger, more complicated projects, and there are some new people in the office so the process has been suffering. For one project in particular, someone will have us review a 45-page document, then the next day tell us we need to start over and do it all again because they had other groups review it at the same time and now there's a new, completely different version that needs our feedback. (They should have all necessary groups review and then submit the document to us, but I suppose that would be too logical.) After about the third time that happened, I briefly contemplated how much force it would take for me to break the fifth-floor office window with my chair and jump out. Ok, maybe not really … but almost.

On mornings that I know that particular project is coming in, I hesitate to get out of bed and try to conjure up a reason not to. Is that a tickle I feel in my throat? Is my forehead hot? Just a little bit? But no, staying home would just mean making my two coworkers shoulder my share of the work, so in I go. The weekends are a welcome reprieve.

This past weekend, determined to make myself go out more, I accepted an invitation from a friend to accompany her to another girl's birthday dinner. It's always a little odd to go to a celebration for a stranger, but at least I was out of the apartment. Of course, I almost wished I was back in the apartment when the birthday girl drank too much (only 15 minutes into the dinner) and threw up under the table at the restaurant with 14 of her friends watching. Dinner with strangers gets a little more awkward when one of those strangers is puking near your feet.

At the end of the night, I got a text from my ex. It just said, "Miss you a lot. Drunk right now, so feel free not to respond." It made my stomach drop a little bit, and a wave of sadness passed over me as soon as I read the words. I didn't respond. It's too depressing to engage in that kind of exchange, and much easier to just pretend he no longer exists. If only his Twitter and Facebook updates would stop poking holes in my "he fell off the face of the planet" belief system. I do want us to be friends eventually, but maybe I need to unfriend him before we can get there.