Time to Write

Every morning I wake up and ask myself, "Is today the day I will post on my blog so Carmen doesn't have to worry about me?"

One day last week I noticed a #blognow chat happening on twitter, and they asked "Why do you write?" and even though I wasn't really participating in the chat I posted: "I write because it's the only way to quiet the ongoing narration in my head."

(And I was pleasantly surprised by how many people retweeted that with "OMG YES!!")

But the thing is, the voices in my head kind of silence themselves when I am working a full-time job. Especially one that requires a great deal of hours/ concentration/ creativity.

I'm not sure if the voices get tired of narrating my life or if they are somehow compartmentalized like a file you stick on the bottom of the pile and think, "I'll get to that later..."

And then one day,  you're driving home from work on the 45-minute drive through the country and the story...just starts...telling itself...again. And you figure it's time to write. The day that you will post to your blog so Carmen doesn't have to worry about you.

I guess the honeymoon is over now and the real adjustment period has begun to settle in. I am absolutely in love with where I live.

My street. What's not to love? 

But there are times that I desperately, desperately miss the friends and family I left behind in Memphis. I suppose that's normal. I guess everyone who moves to a new place ends up wishing they could just bring all their old people with them to the new location.

And I could talk about how hard it is to make friends when you're an adult and you work all week blah blah blah but the truth is, I'm not especially interested in making new friends. I want my old friends.

Frankly, the lack of friends isn't nearly as upsetting to me as the fact that I moved to the North Shore of Louisiana AND CAN'T EAT POBOYS AND BEIGNETS. I'm glad to feel better but I guess I'm passed the honeymoon period of this gluten-free diet, too, because I'm starting to feel a bit deprived. Did you know that McDonald's coats its french fries in a beef coating that contains gluten? Yeah, pretty much the only thing I can eat there would be the salads, which kinda defeats the purpose of going for fast food. My next mission is to find really tasty gluten-free cupcakes in New Orleans. Surely they have them, right?

Because some days you just need a damn cupcake.

Like the day that someone at work told me that a women said about me, "She's not really that cute, she's just new." I don't know what her purpose was in telling me this -- to score points for defending me or something? But it's kind of bothered me ever since. Not because I want so badly for people to think I am cute, but because I didn't come here to be cute. I came here to do a job -- a job I do rather well, by the way -- and it pisses me off that this is the standard to which I am judged because I'm a women.

I bet if the new communications person had been a man, the guys wouldn't have stood around and considered how "cute" he was.

I have a dream that someday, a woman will say about me, "She's not really any more professional than we are, she just has a job that requires suits and heels."

Until then, pass the gluten-free cupcakes, please.