Listen to Your Heart

I was reading The Xanadu Adventure and listening to the American Top 40 re-run in bed this morning (they were doing mid-January 1984 today) when I got a phone call. Yes, it was the Acme. Could I work 12-4? There was a call-out. No, no, no, I wanted to scream. I want to go to the gym and the bank and drop off my donations! My brain scolded me you need to make money. You'll feel guilty if you go over to that gym right behind the Acme when you should have been working. Of course, I said "yes."

I didn't mean to run so late after the Top 40 ended, but I got to a late breakfast. Then, I put on Tangled and got caught up watching that. I had to round up the bags of donations to take to the Logan Presbyterian Church. I had to pedal it all to the Church on my bike, on a day that was sunny but still cold and windy. I wanted to talk to the lady who owns and runs Desserts By Design before work, but she was really busy. I ended up just getting two small heart sugar cookies from her instead. I bought a spinach and turkey wrap from the Market Deli and just barely made it to work riding down Nicholson Road.

Work was pretty normal for all that. It was busy, but that's to be expected on a holiday weekend. I just didn't want to be there. The fact that my allergies were acting up and I spent most of the afternoon sneezing was no help, either. (On the other hand, I was able to get a lock for my gym locker.)

After I got off, I rode the long way down Nicholson Road and over the train tracks past Newton to the White Horse Pike and the bank. They were long-closed by that point, but I needed to drop off my paycheck in the ATM machine. When I finished there, I rode straight home. I was happy to find the first of my last four DVD orders I plan to make for a while in the mail. I only have one Valentine's Day special, so I got three more on Amazon.com, two Peanuts specials and one of the Looney Tunes hour-long shows made up of bits and pieces from various theatrical cartoons. (I also have the last Looney Tunes Golden Collection I didn't have coming, which I used my eBay gift card on.)

When I finally got in, I put the DVD away and went on the laptop. The Career Reinvention book has worksheets in the back that allow you to brainstorm, write down ideas, and keep track of your search. I did the first "law" today - creating a vision for my life and what I want to do. Oh, I know what I want my life to be like. I want to either work in a nice, quiet nine-to-five job, or a job that will allow me to make my own hours and rules. I'm sick of the revolving door of bosses and people changing the rules every five minutes. At least when I change my rules, I'll know it.

The problems are my hurdles. I have no experience, no portfolio. I know nothing about running a business of any size. I haven't worked anywhere but a grocery store in a decade. I don't know what skills from my cashiering job can be transferred to business and/or freelance writing. I have a hard time talking to people period, much less business people and other writers. I don't like to ask for help. I grew up assuming that help was for children, not adults. If an adult asks for help, that means they're not good enough to make it on their own. And there's the matter of, yes, as Mom said a while back, I do lack confidence.

I did learn something important today, related to Law 2: Listen to your gut, not your head. If I'd listened to my heart this morning, I could have lost some pounds, met some new people, gotten to to drop off those donations and talk to the lady at Desserts by Design without rushing. Instead, I spent four miserable hours doing the same old boring thing I always do, and my stomach is still in knots. I now know that I need to stop tuning out my body when it's telling me something.

I cheered myself up by trying one of the recipes in the natural sugar-low-fat baking cookbook I bought from a yard sale last summer. The recipe was supposed to be for Blackberry Upside-Down Cake. I didn't have any blackberries, so I used pineapple with orange juice concentrate. The result was a little more like a cobbler than the cake in the book, but it was still pretty tasty. Another lesson learned - not all mistakes lead to disaster. Some lead to a very sweet Pineapple-Orange Cobbler.