divine order and the universe conspires

Due to the presence of some aforementioned blog spies, I've been keeping some stuff under my hat. But today? Today it must be told.

My life is so fan-freakin'-tastic at the moment that I can hardly contain myself. I'm a puddle of needless giggles. I'm tickled an effortless pink. And all is as it should be.

Today, I accepted an offer for a job at which I'll be making 35% over my current salary. Today also marks the day on which my promotion at my current job was supposed to go into effect. The raise accompanying my promotion does not equal my new salary-- nor does it make up for the fact that I've been operating within the position delineated by my promotion for the last nine months without being compensated for that work. Beyond that, my current job has required that I make regular and arduous pilgrimages to the Midwestern wastelands of Puke City, aka Columbus. It requires that I put in a minimum of 9 1/2 hours daily (meaning, they get about an extra day, for which they do not pay me, every week). My new position requires a sacrifice of only 7.25 hours of my day -- and I might never have to go back to Columbus ever, ever, ever, ever again! Career-wise, this is something of a lateral move as I'll be performing many of the same editorial tasks that I've been doing for the last year and a half. However.

However.

I GET TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL!!!!!! Yes, reduced hours and reduced travelling mean that I get to pursue yet another useless degree so that, eventually, I can drop out of corporate America altogether and become that legendarily weird professor you all had in college-- the inappropriate one who showed too much cleavage and wore the big unflattering hats. The one who delivered utterly unintelligible compare-contrast monologues about the penises of different animal species. Or on the penises on classical sculptures. Or on penises she's loved in her day. It would be something about penises, you can be sure. You DO remember her, right? And you secretly went out an bought all her books and didn't tell anyone in your class because you didn't want to seem sycophantic, right? Well, my genius plan is to, eventually, BE her!

I suddenly feel as though several different aspects of my life are clicking into place in such a manner that I might begin to fulfill my potential for this lifetime. Having passed through my clothing designer phase, my artist phase, my poet phase (please note that I never actually found gainful employment through which I might have profited from any of those phases, settling, instead for the retail-clothing-window-dressing-phase, the dog-servant phase, the grad-student-grunt phase, the-reader-of-4th-grade-essays phase and finally, the torturer-of-children phase), I think I've finally zeroed in on an actual career aspirations. Everything I want just feels so darn attainable right now. For the first time in my life, I think I know where I'm going. No, really. I do!

Now, no one's ever accused me of being less than driven. But wanting to get somewhere, anywhere, and knowing where you're going are two totally different ballgames. You know what the strangest thing about suddenly seeing your whole life's trajectory come into focus is? Worrying about the future-- as I've done pretty much non-stop since I graduated college-- seems like such a supercilious pastime. What I mean is if you know where you're headed, you can finally stop for a minute and recognize just how effulgently, effusively, spastically, volcanically happy you are right now, this very minute.

God, I'm nauseating, aren't I?

Me? Happy? WTF? A friend responded to one of my inordinately upbeat emails today, telling me she did not like the new non-snarky version of me. I apologized and told her I just couldn't think of anything about which to wax venomously... and wondered, somewhat rhetorically, what happens when mean girls get happy? She responded, saying that it's just that I was never really a mean girl in my soul-- only a bitter hag! Does that mean that if I've got nothing to be bitter about, I'm actually a very nice person?

Yeah, I'm not buying it either. Happy me is still bratty me. Happy me might actually be even more bratty me, as I can feel the veritable helium of the cosmos filling my ego even as I write to you tonight, fair readers. Good god, I must be obnoxious. No wonder she likes bitter-hag me better.

I beg of you all: bear with me while I ride this cresting wave out.

And, there is even more goodness in the offing. Last night I had a conversation with my dad (in which he repeatedly said, "I'm just so impressed with you!" *sigh* Isn't that just exactly the kind of parental approbation of which you dream when you're a dog-servant at 23, a poet at 25 and a gigantic fuck-up at 28?) about this being a good time to look for a condo. The market's obviously favorable, it looks as though I'll be hangin' out in DC for a bit (despite my typically Sagittarian flight-risk-ish personality traits), and, well, who wants to wittingly hand over $20G/year in rent to a French-speaking Senegalese giant? So, that should be a really fun project for over the summer! The house-hunting, that is-- not the moving. Moving really blows goats when you're a bibliophile. And when your mother has stocked your Hopeless Chest with every kitchen gadget/utensil/electronic gizmo/schmancy pan and/or knife ever invented.

And, well, there *might* be an actual singular person causing some tentative excitement on the horizon, too, but frankly, he's a reader and I'm too big a pussy to own anything beyond a skittish optimism. Sagittarian flight risk, remember?

But still! I'm just so ass-over-teakettle excited. I could burst. I could just burst. And then there'd be l'il tickled-pink flecks of me every which way.


And it's SPRING! And the days are longer and my S.A.D.-related listlessness and crying jags have been replaced with spontaneous fits of laughter and some fairly uncharacteristic euphoria-- I know it's all chemical, but it's so much FUN to feel my serotonin levels regulating themselves again.


Now, people! Show me some comment love! I demand to be congratulated. I can do that. 'Cause today, I am one hardcore badass.

And if you don't feel like commenting, you can always buy me a glass of champagne.