mrtee in 3.3.

It’s already late Thursday. This week has flown by, interestingly enough, even though I’ve been working extra time every day to make up for the half day I’m taking Monday to pick up mrtee from the airport.

It hasn’t been such a good week though. I find myself somehow inexplicably discouraged. There is nothing to be discouraged about – everything is going right and my best friend of all time is coming to visit in just a few days and after that I’m on vacation for a month – but somehow I still am.

I just find myself feeling distinctly unlikeable. And I don’t know why that is, as I haven’t done anything annoying to anyone recently (except perhaps for swearing inappropriately on a couple occasions on the weekend). I just… feel… unlikeable. I can’t put any other word or description on it.

It is an annoying, uncomfortable, miserable feeling. And I’ve been thinking, perhaps this is just kirilisa’s particular brand of loneliness? Not being a person who is used to being lonely, even given my stand-offish nature (I’ve always been quite happy with the ‘company I keep in the empty moments’ a la Oria Mountain Dreamer), perhaps what I label as feeling ‘unlikeable’ is what other people would label as feeling ‘lonely’.

I don’t know.

I do wish, though, sometimes, that I had that mysterious and elusive (for me, at least) ability to fit in that seems so effortless for most other people. It makes really no sense to me that I can’t. What is it, exactly, that makes me alien? I cannot put my finger on it and yet I know it is there. People are never mean to me, they never exclude me or dislike me or ridicule me or treat me badly (indeed, I was even always, to my puzzlement, utterly free of being teased or bullied in my childhood even though my eccentric habits would have damned anyone else) – but I can still see it when they look at me or talk to me. They have stamped me as alien, and I don’t know why.

I try hard to be friendly. I try hard not to frown all the time (my natural facial expression: I can’t help it, I’m always concentrating on something!). I don’t wear weird clothes or use strange expressions or smell funny or paint my lips black or talk nonstop or walk around without shoes or giggle in a high-pitched tone or deliberately show off, and as far as I know I’m not particularly funny-looking. I don’t think that I am boring or prosaic (although feeling unlikeable also makes me feel drab and dull and plain); in fact, I think that I usually have pretty interesting thoughts/experiences/opinions. I know I’m not completely or even halfway socially inept. I’m shy, but lots of people are. So what is it? What is this alien scent I give off?

It actually amazes me that someone actually married me.

Normally I don’t mind being heteroclite but sometimes it really hits me hard. I just wish I could see it, understand the why of it because try as I might I can’t can’t pinpoint what sets me apart.

Went offroading on Fraser again this weekend with S & M.

It was awesome. Clyde pulled through with flying colors – not a single bog down, even though we were 4 people instead of two and the sand was really deep and soft. He roared through the sand pits and climbed over giant tree roots like a champ.

Lost some of his underside armor in the process, though.

Fraser is so beautiful, I can’t get over it.

Pictures to come!!

Soooo… I have a JOB.

I don’t start until Monday March 12th, but it’s all set. 6-month contract doing web development/PHP coding for Creation Ministries International. I’m psyched! So I’ll be mucking around doing web stuff/coding, which I love, for an organization that I highly respect, on a topic that I am passionate about. The pay is pretty abysmal but I don’t care! It covers the mortgage and then some, and thus will easily take care of a bunch of the house fixes that really need doing ASAP.

This is the only job I have applied for recently. I had planned to wait till after returning from Europe to job hunt seriously, but when this one came along, it was so eerily perfectly what I want to do that I HAD to apply!

I had hoped to find part time work since I have so much other stuff to do on the side. While the job ad said they would consider part timers, they had changed their mind by the time my interview came around and so I will be working full time for the next 6 months, barring the month of April, which I will spend first with mrtee (who will be here in 23 days!!) and then in Europe, and a bit of August, which I will spend in the States for Zaubi’s sister’s wedding.

There are two bad things:
1) The first week mrtee is here I will be working full time (and I’m talking 8:30-5 here, plus commute time). This is the thing that troubles me most by far, and nearly kept me from applying. He comes all this way to see me, and I am going to be working for a bunch of it.

2) The place is extremely inconvenient to where I live! Public transit would take at least 1.5 hours, biking would take even longer (far away), and driving promises to take over an hour given Brisbane’s horrible road planning/rush hour traffic problems. The father of a friend of mine showed me a sneaky back route, but I expect that even that will be frustratingly time consuming and exhausting.

Most of you know how I feel about commuting.

I’m nervous about starting, already a little homesick for my unemployment freedom, apprehensive about commuting, and altogether sad that I will be missing time with mrtee. I’m also worried about how I will still manage to practice 3 instruments, study, participate in Youth Group and orchestra etc., and also do all those domestic chores that are significant enough when single and noticeably more so when you have any sort of family, even if it is just one other person – shopping, cooking decent meals, keeping house clean, laundry (esp. since dryers don’t exist here and the weather is fractious), and care & maintenance of pets and house and garden, without becoming utterly worn-out and grumpy.

One thing I know for sure. I’d better finish all these side web projects I’m doing for people in the next week! Of course, that’s impossible, but I can at least give it a shot.

Nevertheless, (and don’t get me wrong) I’m not complaining! I am thankful to be working again and thrilled that it is with this particular organization! All other anxieties will pass.