The deal with me
I feel like before I start talking about the irregular men I date, I should clear a few things up about myself.
Iprobably 100% find myself dating Irregulars because I am an Irregular myself. Mostly awesomely irregular, like that Pucci knockoff dress you find in a vintage store that fits you perfectly but has slightly gross but not completely terrible 30 year old armpit stains (and maybe when you wear it people will think they are your armpit stains so it doesn't matter anyway). But also in some not so awesome ways.
My Mini Life Story
I am 32 years old. For those that think it's important, I'm a Virgo. I grew up in a small town in Kentucky that also happens to be the state capital. Twenty points if you knew without googling that that's Frankfort, not Louisville or Lexington (neither of which are small towns, but I guess compared to New York or LA they are, so you would be excused for thinking that, in large part because 9 out of 10 Americans don't know Frankfort is the capital of Kentucky).
Anyway, so then I went to two colleges and graduated from the second one. I majored in history, which was useless, but that's another story (coming soon). I moved to Maryland for 6 months (another story) then moved back to Kentucky and worked at Starbucks for like $7 an hour but at least I got health insurance, which allowed me to continue taking my antidepressants (another story - this blog is really going to take off!) and live in a tiny apartment by myself and get some cats.
After a while at Starbucks, I realized it would be another 20 years before I got promoted to a position that would pay more than $30,000 a year, so I decided to find a new job. I picked being a bank teller. Because what right-minded 22 year old history major in the world would turn their nose up at good hours, health insurance, AND $24K a year?
After a few months telling -- no, no, I wasn't a financial psychic, which sounds amazing, actually, but nah, I'm just making up verbs -- The Bank realized I'm awesome and put me in their management program. This meant signing a five year contract, which was a little scary but hey, what was my other plan? The training program paid for me to stay in a hotel, drive a rental car, anddrink wine every single night with my bank friends educate my palate on my $32 per diem. The kids with families back at home saved several thousand dollars that summer by eating peanut butter sandwiches in their hotel rooms.
So after the training, they stuck me at a branch as a loan officer. Mostly I sat in my office and pretended to work, but on good days they were a teller short and I got to be a teller again, which was what I really liked. (Because being busy but having basically no responsibility other than counting dollar bills and working a simple computer program is right up my alley.) Unfortunately, The Bank really wanted me to be making small business loans and selling business insurance and mutual funds (what sort of weird euphemism is that, anyway?). But I didn't like doing any of that and just thinking about doing it gave me extreme anxiety to the point I would sit in my office for days on end planning what I would say when I went to a business on a cold call and had to talk to someone.
(You are probably bored with my life story right now, but I'm having fun telling it, so I'm going to keep going. If this is boring, you can stop reading and go do something more fun. But you don't need me to tell you what to do.)
So then I realized The Bank was either going to fire me or I was going to quit, which would be bad because then I would have to pay back a whole bunch of money. I talked to a lawyer and showed her my contract and tried to get her to see that The Bank is evil and not only can I quit but I can in fact sue them for...something, but she pointed out that I work for a really good company with really good lawyers who wrote a really good contract. She basically said, "You're screwed. Now give me $375." So I wrote her a check and went back to my office and googled "how to make cold calls without losing all of your dignity as a human being."
And then I met my ex-husband. We will call him X. I could use his first initial, but his first initial is a nice happy B, and using X sounds more sinister, which he was. So, X it is.
(The story of X is another post altogether, so I will just leave that part out and continue with the trajectory of the life story without all the really awful X stuff, which I will save for another time.)
X and I moved to North Carolina so I could get a job here where I could not be a failed salesperson and also not get fired for not doing any actual work. He went nuts, then we got divorced, and I spent four years doing a boring job with a boss who by all accounts hated my guts. Then I finally got a new job, which I am doing now, which is only half boring and the other half is great.
In the meantime I have been dating lots of irregulars. A couple long term boyfriends and lots of in-betweeners.
And that's it!
OK, that's not really it.
That's just the actual stuff that's happened.
The other stuff is the real me part. That's the part I don't really like to talk about or think about.
In a super fun nutshell, I deal regularly with:
Depression
Anxiety
Feeling alone more or less all the time
Feeling like my cats are the only people who will ever love me, other than my mom
Feeling like my dog doesn't love me, and feeling terrible about it
Overeating
Making excuses not to exercise
Shaming myself for basically every decision I have ever made or not made
Shaming myself for eating cheese. Oh wait -
Shaming myself for not being vegan when the whole reason I'm a vegetarian is because I believe in being vegan
Shaming myself for not talking my dog on enough walks or playing with him enough
Shaming myself for not calling my mom enough
Shaming myself for not staying in touch with my best friend
And being jealous of her for having a fun life in an awesome town in Oregon and a boyfriend and a PhD - seriously, how did her life turn out perfect?
Shaming myself for dating irregular men when there are surely lots of fully functional men out there
Shaming myself for having a job I don't care about when other people are making an actual difference in the world
Shaming myself for playing Fill the Blocks for hours a day to not think about any of this
Shaming myself for isolating myself in a town I hate when other people my age live in places like Portland and Austin and DC where they can interact with each other
Shaming myself for being clinically overweight and drinking too much wine and not being able to run a 5k and -
Well, you get the point. It's super fun being me!
Except it kind of is. There are lots of things fun about being me.
Some of them:
This is exhausting. Just trust me on this one.
I
My Mini Life Story
I am 32 years old. For those that think it's important, I'm a Virgo. I grew up in a small town in Kentucky that also happens to be the state capital. Twenty points if you knew without googling that that's Frankfort, not Louisville or Lexington (neither of which are small towns, but I guess compared to New York or LA they are, so you would be excused for thinking that, in large part because 9 out of 10 Americans don't know Frankfort is the capital of Kentucky).
Anyway, so then I went to two colleges and graduated from the second one. I majored in history, which was useless, but that's another story (coming soon). I moved to Maryland for 6 months (another story) then moved back to Kentucky and worked at Starbucks for like $7 an hour but at least I got health insurance, which allowed me to continue taking my antidepressants (another story - this blog is really going to take off!) and live in a tiny apartment by myself and get some cats.
After a while at Starbucks, I realized it would be another 20 years before I got promoted to a position that would pay more than $30,000 a year, so I decided to find a new job. I picked being a bank teller. Because what right-minded 22 year old history major in the world would turn their nose up at good hours, health insurance, AND $24K a year?
After a few months telling -- no, no, I wasn't a financial psychic, which sounds amazing, actually, but nah, I'm just making up verbs -- The Bank realized I'm awesome and put me in their management program. This meant signing a five year contract, which was a little scary but hey, what was my other plan? The training program paid for me to stay in a hotel, drive a rental car, and
So after the training, they stuck me at a branch as a loan officer. Mostly I sat in my office and pretended to work, but on good days they were a teller short and I got to be a teller again, which was what I really liked. (Because being busy but having basically no responsibility other than counting dollar bills and working a simple computer program is right up my alley.) Unfortunately, The Bank really wanted me to be making small business loans and selling business insurance and mutual funds (what sort of weird euphemism is that, anyway?). But I didn't like doing any of that and just thinking about doing it gave me extreme anxiety to the point I would sit in my office for days on end planning what I would say when I went to a business on a cold call and had to talk to someone.
(You are probably bored with my life story right now, but I'm having fun telling it, so I'm going to keep going. If this is boring, you can stop reading and go do something more fun. But you don't need me to tell you what to do.)
So then I realized The Bank was either going to fire me or I was going to quit, which would be bad because then I would have to pay back a whole bunch of money. I talked to a lawyer and showed her my contract and tried to get her to see that The Bank is evil and not only can I quit but I can in fact sue them for...something, but she pointed out that I work for a really good company with really good lawyers who wrote a really good contract. She basically said, "You're screwed. Now give me $375." So I wrote her a check and went back to my office and googled "how to make cold calls without losing all of your dignity as a human being."
And then I met my ex-husband. We will call him X. I could use his first initial, but his first initial is a nice happy B, and using X sounds more sinister, which he was. So, X it is.
(The story of X is another post altogether, so I will just leave that part out and continue with the trajectory of the life story without all the really awful X stuff, which I will save for another time.)
X and I moved to North Carolina so I could get a job here where I could not be a failed salesperson and also not get fired for not doing any actual work. He went nuts, then we got divorced, and I spent four years doing a boring job with a boss who by all accounts hated my guts. Then I finally got a new job, which I am doing now, which is only half boring and the other half is great.
In the meantime I have been dating lots of irregulars. A couple long term boyfriends and lots of in-betweeners.
And that's it!
OK, that's not really it.
That's just the actual stuff that's happened.
The other stuff is the real me part. That's the part I don't really like to talk about or think about.
In a super fun nutshell, I deal regularly with:
Depression
Anxiety
Feeling alone more or less all the time
Feeling like my cats are the only people who will ever love me, other than my mom
Feeling like my dog doesn't love me, and feeling terrible about it
Overeating
Making excuses not to exercise
Shaming myself for basically every decision I have ever made or not made
Shaming myself for eating cheese. Oh wait -
Shaming myself for not being vegan when the whole reason I'm a vegetarian is because I believe in being vegan
Shaming myself for not talking my dog on enough walks or playing with him enough
Shaming myself for not calling my mom enough
Shaming myself for not staying in touch with my best friend
And being jealous of her for having a fun life in an awesome town in Oregon and a boyfriend and a PhD - seriously, how did her life turn out perfect?
Shaming myself for dating irregular men when there are surely lots of fully functional men out there
Shaming myself for having a job I don't care about when other people are making an actual difference in the world
Shaming myself for playing Fill the Blocks for hours a day to not think about any of this
Shaming myself for isolating myself in a town I hate when other people my age live in places like Portland and Austin and DC where they can interact with each other
Shaming myself for being clinically overweight and drinking too much wine and not being able to run a 5k and -
Well, you get the point. It's super fun being me!
Except it kind of is. There are lots of things fun about being me.
Some of them:
This is exhausting. Just trust me on this one.
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