A disclaimer and an epiphany...

I'm going to start with a disclaimer. I know. It's un-ladylike, but I'm only ladylike when wearing a skirt and sometimes not even then, (as was clearly demonstrate the amazing climbing routine I performed at work yesterday while wearing a pencil skirt. I was organizing the stock room. Turns out? Getting myself on and off the chair was a little difficult. That'll teach me to wear a skirt to work), and right now I'm in a pair of ratty sweatpants and a t-shirt. (This has become my after-work uniform since I started at the business school. I think that means that I've officially reached the ripe old age of "adult"). Anyway, enough about my wardrobe and back to my disclaimer: I know. I haven't written in over a week. I know. I started a new job and haven't even said word one about it, except for the above mentioned acrobatics. I know. I'm letting you all down. I know that you've been waiting with baited breath to hear about my adventures into the land of the grown-up. But that's not the purpose of this post, I'm sorry to say. I will tell you this: I simply LOVE my job. It's not perfect, but it's perfect for me. I feel productive and happy, though I miss Amanda like crazy. No one at my new job talks about celebrity gossip with me or makes lists of reasons why Bono must be a vampire. I haven't even heard anyone say "totes". It depresses me a little tiny bit. Luckily, I became a big fat hypocrit and got Twitter (Let_sbehonest) so I can keep track of her life. I know. I know. Judge away. I deserve it. I'm judging myself. But we must press onward, dear readers. Onward to the point of this post.

When I was a freshman in college, I went on a truly awful spring break trip to Northern California. I don't blame the great state of California for this horrific vacation. No, I blame the "friends" with whom I went on this so-called "fun" road trip. I'll sum it up by telling you this: there are very few moments in my life where I literally wished that I could evaporate from the planet, leaving no trace of my former self and every single one of them happened on this trip. It was brutal. I remember chatting with a family friend about how absolutely painful this experience had been and she told me something that completely stuck with me: "You can never really know that you're ready to be attached to someone else forever until you're comfortable spending a Friday night or two alone." At the ripe old age of 18, that sounded completely ludicrous to me. Spend Friday night alone? Friday night was for parties with my friends. Late movies. Spontaneous sleepovers. Ice cream runs. Friday night meant no school in the morning which meant doing all sorts of crazy things until insane hours. I persisted in thinking this way until I was about 23. Don't ask my why, but this is when it all finally clicked: yes, I liked my friends. Yes, I enjoyed spending time with them, but in reality? If I wasn't able to spend an evening completely alone with myself how in heaven's name could I expect anyone else to? So I decided then and there that I was going to do it. I was going to hang out with myself more often. But this also presented it's own set of problems. Because, see, balance? Not always my strongest suit. (If you just started singing Aida to yourself, go ahead and add 10,000 cool points to your score card.) Ask anyone who's watched me trip over my own feet. The problem was this: I'm so awesome that I liked spending time with myself more than I liked spending time with most of humanity. (There are exceptions to this. You know exactly who you are. And if I've spent more than 15 minutes talking to you, you're one of the exceptions.) And  now, you see, I'm so comfortable on my own that I don't really feel the need to go out and do a ton of socializing. It takes me all day to gear myself up for it. Believe it or not, it takes work to be the charming, bubbly and sassy self that y'all love so much. What this all really comes down to is that I'm admitting here and now that I'm a fake. A total fraud. I pretend to be this super outgoing person, but in reality? I'd rather be at home with a book and a wine glass full of Diet Coke. Yes. I drink Diet Coke out of a wine glass. It makes me feel fancy. In any case, I'm putting all this up here because I'm really trying to be more social-like. I swear on my books that I am. Yup, I really went there. That's how you know that I'm 110% serious.