halfway

I have passed my blogging two year mark. This will be my 156th post. Not too shabby. I only have one blogless month. Slacker. This blog is older than me!

Things are looking up in my private life, but my work life is getting suckier everyday. I want to move to the Netherlands. Finding a job is going to be the hard part. Jen read my blog and commented to me that she noticed I was the happiest when I was in Amsterdam. She asked me what was keeping me here and pointed out that there isn’t much according to my writing. She is right. The only thing that is keeping me here is employment which sucks, and my friends Helmi, Mari und Christi. They and the rest of the people I know would understand if I left. It’s not like I’m moving back to the states or anything. I’m not sure at this point if I will ever go back. I’m relatively sure that moving to the Netherlands would be a good decision. Why the fuck not? I wouldn’t have to worry too much about continuing treatment there.

I was thinking that I should probably look for a job while I am waiting for my evaluations and the eventual decision from my health insurance about paying for my surgery. If it is positive, I would stay to have it completed. I have invested too much time in my treatment here to walk away now. I need only maybe six more months of electrolysis to be completely clear. If all goes well with obtaining the evaluations, I can expect to receive a decision by January ’08.

If it is a negative decision, then I will probably flip out, and move away. I should just get moving now and save the time and the flip out. I have a feeling I may be going sooner than I think. Most people that I have had the chance to talk to in Amsterdam ask me “why don’t you live here?” Almost everyone has asked me that same question. I know it wouldn’t be a bed of roses in the Netherlands, but at least I would be able to visit the city more often. I have been lazy about looking for jobs there. I should get on it. I had a good experience with a headhunter to find my current job twelve years ago. If anything it is a chance to tap into a larger network.

I was in Amsterdam again this past weekend for just about twenty fours. Technically I was in Scheveningen too for a good portion of those short hours. I got to slam dance to Elle Bandita, and watch some new friends having fun rolling down sand dunes. It was all too much fun. I paid for all the fun with a sinus infection over the past few days. I am feeling better today; I think my sickness has broken. If I could do it all again I would, multiple times. I had the most wonderful experiences there that I will never forget.

I had a dream the other night that I fell into the Voorburgwalsgracht and was swimming to avoid being hit by the canal boats. I got all caught up in fishing net and started to sink. Then a talking crocodile swam under me and caught me on its tail and pulled me to a safe spot where the water wasn’t so dirty. The crocodile told me it saw the whole thing go down, and it wanted to devour me at first sight, but then it realized how helpless I was and decided to get me out of there. The croc got me free of the net and then told me as I was treading water, “now that you are free, you have five seconds head start to swim to that ladder over there, and then I will be coming to devour you.” “I like my prey to be a challenge,” it said baring its teeth with a sinister chuckle. I suddenly realized it wasn’t joking so I started swimming for my life. I turned to look back and it was getting dangerously close, I could see its big brown eyes staring me down almost paralyzing me. I managed to get my right hand on the first rung and was swinging the left around when I felt warmth just above my left hip. Just as I felt the teeth sinking into my flesh, I woke up and it was over. I didn’t actually feel any pain; it felt more like a jolt that awoke me, like the falling sensation. In thinking about the dream, I realized there is no canal on voorburgwal, it has a tram line on it. And crocs aren’t very common to see in the canals, much less talking ones with a taste for chrissy. I get chills when I think about the dream. Crazy stuff. I think that’s enough for now. I am going to sleep and to dream no doubt of canals and crocodiles.

softcore westerns

I am running my life like a crazy person lately. For just about the last year I have going through cycles of where I work myself half to death and then take a too short vacation. The demands that work has put on my time and nerves is becoming too much. Sometimes I feel so low that it seems all I have is my work. That is the sad truth however. When I sit here and think about the performance on the job that I am expected to deliver, it boggles my mind. Doesn’t anyone realize how overwhelmed I am most of the time? The VW project has had five people alone from mechanical engineering working on it. I have been trying to put out the fires so that the rest can get the manufacturing documentation completed. I am never able to finish anything before I must stomp out the next flaming bag of shit.

In the end I am just a victim of poor planning. The last project that I got shit on with wasted a year and a half of time leaving me six months to complete what would normally take eight. So much was riding on that project and it was so terribly mismanaged. That has become unfortunately a common occurrence. Internal projects don’t hurt so much, whereas customer projects like Audi and VW are too important to fuck up. It bothers me that all the things on my plate don’t get fully eaten. It seems as though everyone that I work with has become so accustomed to doing more with less that we have lost sight of what a normal work environment operates like. We desperately need to hire people, both to replace those who are leaving or have left, and all the people that were laid off.

I have been trying to keep the customer happy by showing them results. The customer lost three months in their ordering process, but they refused to change their schedule to accommodate the loss of time. I was already three months behind the eight ball before the project even started. It might be slightly easier to handle if I was given a raise at my last review.

I want more time to enjoy my life. I am very frustrated. I will be going to work a bit later, after I have finished washing my clothes. It has done nothing but rain for the past several weeks, and it figures today is a nice sunny day. It is almost 20 degrees warmer than it has been within the last couple of days. I guess I will have to look out my window if I want to enjoy it at all.

There are sewing projects that I want to work on but have no energy left over to even begin them. It’s not fair that my company puts extraordinary demands on me that leave me depressed, stressed and tired most of the time. The pattern has been repeated two times so far. The first time was leading up to Xmas where I felt like a zombie ending up in Kyoto for a week long design review. The next time was when Rach came to visit in march. Both times I got sick upon stopping to go on vacation.

I wonder if the reason that I found the blonde redhead and sonic youth gigs not so good was because I was depressed. I know that depression a factor, but it leads me to see it as my losing the parts of my life that I am supposed to be able to enjoy. Most of it but not all is due to my job. The other things are frustration with my slow moving treatment and feelings of loneliness.

On a high note, I have been invited to go to a’dam for gay pride on the first weekend in August. You rock G! I am really excited about the trip. A’dam has turned into an oasis of sorts for me. I go there more or at least about as often as I go back to the states. Four hours on a train is much easier than eight hours on a plane after all. I naturally find the city so enjoyable because I am just there to hang out. The last trip was rather utopian in nature, and it opened up new worlds for me. The amount and diversity of things to do and see there are simply overwhelming. And the mindset of the people there is for the most part refreshingly open. The subculture there is thriving. That’s where I like to spend my time, underwater as it may be. I am so excited, but a little nervous too. I am curious what this coming trip has up it’s sleeve. The pride weekend in a’dam is famed for its boat parade, but most of all for the parties that ensue. I hope to be able to relax for some time while I am there too, but I’m not sure that is going to happen. I could probably take a couple of days after and stay on the coast. I could wave to my sisters on the beach on the other side of the atlantic. But that would blow my cover, and massive guilt trips would follow.

I definitely want to buy fabrics at the cyup(sp) markt this time. I should probably bring my large suitcase half full so I have a place for the booty to take home. They have fabrics all the time that are here only seasonal. They had a much larger selection and at much better prices than anyplace around germany. It’s all good.

I’m going to wash now and then drag my sorry ass to work. I am getting dangerously close to the two year mark of my blogging madness.

zusammenreißen

I have been a total wreck for the past several weeks. I am not able to tell if my levels are screwed up, or if just all the work stress and private stress is getting to me. Could I finally be losing my mind? I have been crying way too much. I think it all started downhill the last time I went to therapy and got more bad news. I’ve noticed a pattern. I have been only going to therapy once a month since I was waiting for hours to be approved. I go there feeling alright and then the bad news drags me down. It then takes me the next four weeks to crawl out of the depression, and then it’s time to go back for more bad news and delays.

I desperately need to get a grip. The episode from last week still stings. The project that I spent the last two years working on and was moved here to do, and completed, I received no verbal credit for my efforts at the product launch. Talk about being shit on.

I did receive an email from my therapist over the weekend stating that the hours were finally approved. I received the confirmation letter from my health insurance. I got 25 hours. Eight of which goes toward covering the hours on credit and the writing of evaluations. If all goes well, I could possibly have my evaluations in hand within six weeks. That’s an optimistic estimate. I am glad that he is working on the evaluation, but I can’t help but to feel skeptical.

Thanks G! You totally brightened my day. You are certainly more than enuff, and where I come from, too much is never enuff.

I have no choice but to try keep myself together.

sacrifice

It seems in order to be able to love yourself; one sometimes must give up the possibility of being loved by another. That is the sacrifice. Is loving yourself enough to sustain? I think not. What I have done to enable me to love myself has alienated me from the human race. I am an exception, and no one likes exceptions. Am I too tall? Not convincing enough? A novelty? Is my transsexuality enough to render me utterly unattractive?

I’ve been thinking about looking for a high risk job. One that pays a lot of money with a high risk of being killed on the job. I find it more and more difficult to name something worth living for. The depth of loneliness that I feel reminds me of how I felt in my teen years. I had suicidal thoughts back then too. I had breakdowns every so often. I hid them well. The lingering ache of despair is still with me. The only thing I have ever been good at is my work, and even that has turned to shit.

I’m not sure if I am going to continue writing. What’s the point? There is none, and apparently there never was.