the year is young and i already have a favorite book: tobias wolff's old school. i don't know where things can go from here - oh, but that there is a new murakami (steve, i am winking at you as i write) and he can make any day, any sentence, any package of ramen noodle and any mrowing cat more interesting.

i am still here, sort of. two weeks of two jobs and now training, which i fear i am not very good at (training the new girl in my old job, i mean) because i partly just want to be free of it. i worked long days and a holiday and some weekend hours and learned that i don't want to do that; i want life and work, so long as i work for someone else, to remain separate. but i do like my new job.

but stress makes me crazy in quiet ways, like i am incapable of realizing it's stress making me feel like this and instead i imagine it's that i'm not getting enough attention, or that i'm being crazy again. crazy, yes, but with a reason. i kept wanting to cry last week because everyone had band practice (in the same band) but me - i just worked and came home and felt boring and uncreative because i wasn't - am not - in the band. it's not fair for me to push that self-induced sense of failure in J's direction, though, and i know it. i just felt left out because work was taking everything out of me, and i felt as if i could barely contain the strange empty feeling that was left. and of course i imagined all the wrong things, too - that it was something other than work making me feel so messy.

i think i already said that.

i'm still feeling a little teetery. i feel smushed and like i don't have enough room for myself in this job yet. i feel like i need to make more room in my life for me and J to enjoy each other's company, and not just over burritos at the end of the day before we fall asleep at 10:30, totally worn through. he is busy too, and while i feel like i could use a little more from him, i know i'm unreasonable. i work too much, and need more attention. he works at many things and doesn't necessarily have it to give right now.

it'll all smooth itself out, but right now, it's like my shoes are too tight because my feet are bloated, or like my eyes hurt from too much wine and too little water the night before. nothing that won't get better on its own, but the strangeness of it being there is hard to ignore. and i know, i know it's only me, as always, who needs to relax, to stop worrying, to stop trying to predict the future, to stop trying to see what everything means.

i tell myself all the time to drop it. to let it go, whatever i'm holding on to or imagining. the only important thing is to do what's right, what makes me feel right, what makes him feel right, and to enjoy him all the damn time. always, always. more enjoyment, less compulsive worrying.

easier said than done, right? what am i to do with this part of myself that insists on finding something to fret over every second of the day?

take her out and shake her, i suppose.

every time i write about how stupid i'm being about him, i want to go home, smile at him, and curl up as close as i can get. if i continue to let my insecurity get between us, it's only my own fault, and only foolish, and and and, i go in circles i know.

(shut up, self. shut up and love him and relax. ultimately, that's all there is to it. let it go, whatever it is. let it go and fill up that space with good things.)