Time After Time

I feel pretty good about the weekend. I feel like I've gotten somewhere with Craig. Am seeing what I think I am supposed to see. Sure I still have doubts. My life is a great big doubt fest.

But the really good news is that even better news was lying right around the corner on the employment scene. Finally my biorhythms (remember them?) settled to a dull roar and things began to align in my favor. Perhaps the Earth veered off course and was no longer doomed to crash into the sun. Maybe in some cosmic sense I had sufficiently paid my dues or had drunk from the Cup of Humility or had adequately adjusted my attitude in such a way that the Employment Fairies deemed me worthy of a good job.

And not just a good job. A fabulous, Oh My God Pinch Me job. A sexy, fun, electrifying dream job. Cool company everyone has heard about. A West Coast mystique. One of those jobs that when people at a cocktail party or the orthodontist office half-heartedly ask what you do for a living not really caring whether you say "I work for the IRS" or "I dance at a strip club near the airport" and I respond, they actually suddenly really are interested. Curious. Fascinated. It's kind of cool.

And I wonder if it isn't the Employment Fairies at all, but a guardian angel of another sort. Perhaps it is really just one more miracle performed by my Dad and delivered to me with the beat of his downy angel wings. Maybe this was all his scheming from the start. Maybe he'd decided it was time.

Dad and I had a good relationship. Not always easy; I did actually become a teenager at some point and become the worst version of myself for a few snarky, eye-rolling, how-did-I-get-stuck-in-this-family? years. But I've said it before: We GOT each other. Our flaws. Our peculiarities. Our senses of humor. Our hurts. Our pride. All understood.

What bugged him most, I think, was that I didn't need him enough. Didn't ask for anything. Needed no help figuring out the myriad social crises and professional mazes and misogynistic bosses, and bad boyfriends (saving one...) and financial pressures and the usual challenges of youth. Good thing. My idiot brother was so completely hapless and lacking in common sense that Dad would have been stretched pretty thin had I demanded the slightest bit of search and rescue effort.

And maybe now, as the summer has tried me and forced me to evaluate all that I know and all that I am, he's seen his chance. The miracle shot. All that Help banked away for decades cashed in Big Time. I spent the summer turning a corner with Hil that had sent me into the guardrail when I'd been her age. I'd spent my time and my money and my effort wisely. And Dad perhaps saw the time to cash in the chips and give me the jackpot.

True or not it feels right. Whether I earned this myself or it landed in my lap from heaven with a big blue bow on top, it is mine. And I could not be happier. It is a job that feels like it was designed for me personally. Like someone took all the personality tests and aptitude tests and What Kind of Tree Are You quizzes and went into a lab and whipped up a perfect chemical match for my DNA. And then surrounded me with people I don't actually want to set on fire when we're forced to work together. People to whom I say "Good morning" and actually hope they are having one. Even my commute is good. A scenic ride. Not a lot of traffic. My road rage is on hiatus. I don't need to take deep breaths and think pleasant thoughts about birds in flight while hoping to return to a resting heart rate before getting out of my car in the parking lot.

And maybe this is the start of a really good year.

Or the end of a beautiful transformational one?

Scott left and catalyzed so much. If not for that I would not have started seeing Craig. Or spent so much time with friends I never knew I had. Or had the guts to take the changes at work and turn the lemons into lemonade. Or had the time to walk 1,000 miles. Or spent so much meaningful time with my children. Or launched a job search that eventually ended in career bliss.

I feel like it is all a beginning. But I can't help looking back and thinking, "Wow!" What an amazing year it has been, and hoping it is not the end.

And as always, I know in my heart that only time will tell. But what is different this time is that I am not as inclined to simply see which way the wind will blow and which way it will take me.

This time I am at the helm.