Hellllooooooooooooo 2013

Recap of 2012, in order:
~rang in the year dancing til 3 AM. Is there any better way?
~immediately had a couple of dates with a French boy. Didn't work out, but hey, dated a foreigner.
~lots of other failed dates
~lots of temp job interviews elsewhere
~a wonderful man comes into my life
~finally got out of temping
~arts volunteering as usual (Art in the Open, Live Arts Festival)
~assignment ended early; got a big-girl job with benefits
~lots of beach trips with the boy and his friends
~2 friends' weddings
~cleaning out tons of junk in the house
~successfully painted a room of the house by myself - more to come!

So far 2013...
~with friends, laughing hysterically and dancing again. Again, one-up me, bitches.
~Vacation plans being made for the year with the boy. Possibly Canada, Cape Cod, Key West...

Goals:
~pay down school loans as much as possible to pay them off next year. Seriously. I have a plan. 
~Finish painting of entrance/upstairs hallway at home; paint ceiling of living room...lots of other home improvement things.
~sell more stuff on eBay. And while I've curbed my impulse shopping, it still has a ways to go.
~Do SOME SORT OF PAID WORK to show off my art knowledge. Art Consultant would be great, but it's apparently hard to break into; writing is always a possibility; become a tour guide possibly? Any other ideas?

How about all of you? Got personal/career goals you KNOW you can reach this year?

Wasting time, or making time?

I've realized recently that I am...a TERRIBLE time-waster. When I was out of work for a month, I thought I was being productive. Apparently in my mind, "productive" means doing ONE major thing a week, even if it only takes me a couple of hours. Is "productive" just subjective to each person? Or am I really just lazy?

Here's what I did over that non-employed month (not counting 2 days of weekend-retail job):
-cleaned both the bathrooms & litterboxes
-vacuumed
-3 job interviews
-walked a lot
-shopped
-napped A LOT
-a friend's wedding

....and that's it. The extreme heat made it impossible to do much actual work (especially as the house doesn't have central air.) Over the last week, having had a new job for about a month, I've done the following:
-finally went through piles of papers/books/magazines on the floor of my room
-bought a wedding present for another friend
-researching new laptops
-caught up on my business class; almost done with it completely (which I'm dropping out of, by the by - while practical, I'm BORED OUT OF MY MIND. There's a reason I didn't major in business.) And I hate having to add on to my debt - time to move on with my life!
-starting to seriously clear out books in my room/the living room/playroom (i.e. where the rest of all my crap is, and all the Christmas decorations are stashed) - tossing out or recycling all the outdated guidebooks, making tons of bags and boxes-worth of books to donate to the library.
-trying to figure out how to re-organize my room, which I've been doing continually over the last couple of years. My aunt from Indiana is likely coming to visit next month, and says she's bringing my granny's vanity table, which I always loved. Question is, where do I put it?

All the clutter in the house...it'll be a nightmare whenever I finally get it together to move.

"It looks like you made it with your feet."

HEY GANG. So remember that law firm gig I talked about? Yeah, that fell through after just barely two months. It was in Accounts Payable, which for an artsy-loving person, is Hell-With-a-Nice-View-of-the-Art Museum. Like I said, the only reason I wanted it was to use my language skills...which weren't put to use AT ALL. Apart from one of the older secretaries going "You know French? Can you tell what this is?" (hands me a form that should've gone to the Brussels office.) Regardless, EVERYONE IN THE FOREIGN OFFICES SPEAKS ENGLISH. Useless.
The boss was crazy, to the point of apologizing in advance if he's "ever in a pissy mood, it's not because of you guys" - no, it wasn't due to us; it was just because he thought he was fat and needed to go on a liquid diet*. Might as well have said he was PMSing and I wouldn't have blinked apart from his lack of a uterus. I was close to calling him "Naomi" [Campbell] behind his back since we know the reason supermodels are bitchy is because they don't eat. When I got the call from my rep that he determined "I wasn't a good fit", I had to hold back laughter since he'd had to call the Philly office while in the Bahamas. Look how special I am, I interrupted his vacation!

(*"Liquid diet" to him meant only drinking water. Not smoothies, not pudding, not anything...JUST WATER. But we think he was sneaking off and eating anyway, since if he was only drinking water all day he would've been going to the bathroom even more than 5 young women.)
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After a month of unemployment and constant interviews, I finally got a big-girl job (without the interference of a temp agency finally) at an engineering firm. Been here about 3/4 weeks...and have yet to really do anything of value. Ordered office supplies, so there's a first. Boss is constantly gone and I'm the only one here, thus I can update here for the first time in months.
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Now, for the REAL update: if you've been reading since my first post back last summer, you'll know that this started out as a dating-advice/dating-rant blog. And last I wrote, I said I *may* have found someone after all my "turmoil" (a.k.a. wasting time on idiots/douchebags/emo weirdos/wannabe-fratster boys, "fratster" = fratboy-hipster.) I am here to say that indeed I found a gem: Zack. Took him to a friend's wedding upstate last month where everyone loved him; and to a giant birthday party for another friend in Philly last weekend - while I met most of his close friends on our 2nd date, he's amazed that I keep in touch with so many people that I've either known growing up or who I met in college (or through really horrible dates, as the case may be for one group of my pals.) Very sane, very cute, very silly, and certainly the smartest guy I've ever dated. Though he's an engineer, he's the first who actually has a life outside of it - close family, great friends, interests beyond engineering...those are all giant pluses, considering every other engineer I've met either wasn't close to family, or had no friends, or were unbelieveably boring. Christ, I'd had more interesting lunch dates with sculptures on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
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By the way, the subject title comes from Regretsy, which I am totally obsessed with. One of my friends from college works at their headquarters, which makes me feel slightly guilty for shitting on Etsy...BUT honestly, while I love people who make wonderful handcrafted things, the culture of stores like Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, etc stealing from at-home crafters is too unsettling. Not to mention Etsy itself not acting on resellers or people blatantly stealing others' ideas and saying it's homemade. (I could rant forever about people also trying to just sell total crap they found in their driveway, but that's what Regretsy is for.)  

Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon

Anybody have any opinion on whether karma/fate/whatever-you-call-it exists? Is everything just a coincidence? I ask because...

The very day after writing a guest post on the lovely Alexandra's blog (The Tsaritsa Sez) where I ranted about the job market, I was bombarded with phone calls while at my temp gig. The best one started as a frantic email via CareerBuilder from another temp agency, looking to place someone at a law firm. The catch: the candidate had to have data entry experience (check)...and French/German knowledge. (Check and check.) I meet with her the next day, with my resume and a letter to the law firm explaining why I was the best for the job. Then this past Tuesday I had my first REAL interview ever. Matching suit, all that jazz. Passed the typing tests with flying colors, and loved my interviewers. Lo and behold, 3 hours later, they called my girl at the agency to say they wanted me. HOLY CRAP. 

I can finally say I have "a big girl job"; no more temping. Thank goodness. I half-joked that it's rare to find a job that requires French and/or German, especially in the Philly area - as every other listing I've seen that wants somebody with foreign language knowledge requires Spanish, Mandarin, or, most recently, Arabic. While this may not be in the arts, it's using that part of my brain that hasn't been exercised in a long time...at least not in a paid environment. (There is an ulterior motive for wanting this as well: big international law firm, so I can try to weasel my way into trips abroad. I can easily see myself saying "Do you need me to do anything at the Paris office? Brussels? Munich? LONDON? ANYTHING?!")

Also, I may have found a guy to satisfy all my "4 S's" (Smart, Silly, Sane, Sexy). When I wasn't looking. You were ALL right about that fact of dating. You can all commence the "I told you so!" mantra now. 

All dull work and lots of play makes Annie a weirdly-balanced girl.

Note: I really need to know why guys are SO MOODY. What the hell? I swear, guys get PMS worse than girls. Agree? Disagree?

NEW TOPIC, that of: the endless job search. Like I said in my Passion post, I've been applying (or trying to apply) to new creative-based jobs on an almost-daily basis. I started another unpaid internship in Chestnut Hill shortly after returning from San Francisco to see one of my best friends. So far my main responsibility with this tiny non-profit is to overlook our Facebook presence, which is fun but I'm still working on trying to get more people to be active on our page. I finally had a phone interview the first week of this year for something I applied to...back in OCTOBER. So I think I botched it, not remembering even what the position was. Whoops. Applied for another two jobs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art over the last couple of months, applied for a *real job* at the same company that I'm currently temping with, but in a different department (which would be the marketing floor)...so hopefully I'll grab that.

Most importantly though, I'm going to attempt getting my MBA, with concentration in Public Administration. As much as I'd love to go back overseas, I need money for that - and I don't even want to think about how much in loans I'd need to take out. Besides, what else would I major in that would be both practical and interesting? In an ideal world it would be doing Museum Studies - but would that REALLY give me an edge in getting a job? Besides, with that sort of program I feel like I'd have to be there full-time, which I don't think I could do again without having a job on the side. Or what else...History of Film? Great. THEN what do I do. If there weren't already a billion film critics everywhere, or if there weren't already endless books about classic film. No matter that an organization is a "non-profit", they still need to make money to survive - thus, somebody with an MBA fits wherever.

Partially related: it annoys me to an unfathomable degree when people ask about what I do/want to do, then go "Ohhh I don't really care about art." Is it just because I love it so much that it irks me, or is there truly something wrong with that statement? If you like any of the following:
-TV (no matter what programs, as much as I hate to say it);
-movies of any sort;
-kitschy things like lawn flamingos;
-knickknacks, such as those damn "Precious Moments" figurines;
-and you have a certain style of what you prefer in everything...then that means you like art in SOME form.

To quote Liz Lemon: "blergh!"

I'm Making a List, I'm Checking it Twice: Dating Standards

First off, a mini-update: On the day of my date with the French boy lately, I get a text from B. for the first time in over a week. Saying the following: "Good day! I have something to tell you. We're done." I laughed, deleted the text, and deleted his number. Hoo boy, he was NOT on the ball with that..."we" never existed. Whatever this was has been "done" for a while! Boys are silly. Then the date with the French boy, M., was great. We just talked, geeked out about music and movies, and continue to do so. Only had hugs so far...but he's asked me out again. I win.

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Now, after some demand, the discussion of "being picky" in dating. I was told, time and time again, throughout high school and college that I was just "too picky". I liked a good number of boys throughout high school; it wasn't like I eternally had my nose in the air. They never went anywhere, and the constant explanation I heard from my peers was "your standards are too high". O RLY? I recently flipped through my diary (haha), and found my "standards" list from that point in time: "smart", "silly", "cute", "British", "nice"...that was about it, really. PRETTY NORMAL. Even then I knew that my fantasy Englishman may be more difficult to find. 

More recently, in all my adventures in dating, the grand majority of people I dated just within 2011 were totally not in that list. They may have been silly and cute...but that was IT. Not necessarily smart, not necessarily nice...certainly not "mature". That's been a new addition to my "standards" list. So with M. and the other retro boy I've met lately, they are the exact kind of men I've been seeking for quite a while. My standards haven't really changed; I just apparently was testing them to go "What happens when the men don't satisfy all of them..." And you know what's waiting outside of that list? DISASTER (for me, anyway.)

So, what is "TOO picky"? Here are my definitions ----

-if you have a list of standards beyond 8 characteristics. Obviously you should have things in common, that doesn't need to be in your list. Personal things like "good family & friends" should also go without saying (preferably.) But if you're including things like "money", "background", "what they wear", "where they're from", etc - then you need to trim down your list!

-I used to not like boys with long(ish) hair. Then C. came along. And a few others since then. I'm not talking waist-long hippie hair, but I'm talking length just past the ears (i.e. mid-'60s Beatle style). No boys with crew-cuts for me either; that's a giant reason I'm glad we're not in the 1950s. One should be open to change, both with yourself and a potential partner.

-A female stand-up comedian, (can't think of her name), has a routine about how "when I was in my 20s, I went through men like tissues. 'He's too poor! He's too fat! He's not rich enough! He only has an apartment!' Now in my 40s I'm scrounging through my trashcan - 'where's the guy who liked me too much?!'" Another stand-up, Sue Murphy I think, has her own take: "When I was younger, my list of standards was 'Handsome, rich, well-educated'...now I'm down to, pft, 'registered voter'." Point is, apparently our 20s is the time to be picky, but know that this pickyness will come to bite us in the ass if we don't become realistic.

Admittedly, part of the reason you (or a friend) may think you're too picky is because you're still stuck on somebody else. So if you're looking around, you automatically compare somebody new to your old flame. Due to that remaining attachment, you turn down anybody else since you want to "be free" for whenever your old boy/girl comes sweeping back into your life. HUMONGOUS PROBLEM. I'm guilty of it attempting to get over C. (though I also suffered from a crippling fear of rejection so soon after some major heartbreak.) But as time goes on, you forget all your favorite things about the old flame...and realize ALL the negatives. Then you start weeding out people who share those traits - whether it's pretentiousness (a pet peeve of mine, whereas I thought it was charming at first. Try dating somebody pretentious and see how quickly YOU get annoyed), people who aren't motivated, etc. In short: it may seem like you suddenly are *more* picky, but in fact you're focusing more on people you *do* want to date instead of people who will easily waste your time.   

WHAT I LEARNED: My standards were never high at all. Apparently they were high for the boys I went to school with (whoops), but now meeting other people, the standards are exactly what they should be for me. Each person needs to develop their own must-haves and problems within the relationship realm.

NEXT TIME: On to lamenting my job search! And boy updates, if necessary. 

Red Flags at Night, Red Flags at Night...whoa oh, whoa oh

Happy New Year everyone! So a quick update on the infamous C.: I happened to see his dating profile again (browsing anonymously; oh isn't the internet a wonderfully stalkerish thing!) - and he is ENGAGED. But then he says he's exclusively dating her obviously...so why keep the page up? WHAT THE WHAT. Oh well, if they're happy, who am I to rain on their parade? Strange how he simultaneously makes me cringe and still gives me a pang of heartbreak even though it's been quite a while since we last saw each other (where I impressed him with my makeout skills, knowing it'd be the last time, haha.)

Anyway. The boy I'd mentioned that apparently REALLY LIKED ME lately turned out to be too clingy. We shall refer to him as "B". I usually don't have to mention that I'm dating around still, except that by our 2nd date he made it obvious that he wasn't seeing anybody else. Shit. So I had to say "Cool it, I'm not exclusive". He was ok with that; and I honestly didn't find him attractive. Nice to talk to, but that was about it. I was carrying most of the conversation, and he was acting like I was the coolest girl ever (which is possible, but really?) Eventually after we finally made out (all his idea, trust me) - I was not feeling it, still. I reminded him as he got sappy that I'm still not exclusive...and he freaked out. Sending me an essay on Gchat. RED FLAG.

Speaking of RED FLAGS: here's a list to watch out for, for both girls and guys (note: these may be just my opinions, so please formulate your own must-haves and "problem" lists) ~
-if the person in question lists God/the Bible/Jesus as an important daily thing in their lives. I'm not one for religion, spirituality being something I'm still determining for myself. I don't want that pressure.
-if you start chatting to someone and they IMMEDIATELY ask about your dating past. I try to evade the questions, and if they persist...then I stop talking. Previous relationships ended for a REASON, and now this conversation is ending for a reason!
-again, clingyness. Or wanting to be in a relationship ASAP. If you both feel a connection it's a different story, but otherwise...NO! Run away!

For your well-being in the dating world, I'd recommend what has helped me deal with all this craziness: BEING BUSY. Whether with work, school, hobbies, or whatever, it keeps me from getting hung up on people all the time again, and seeing things that aren't there. It also is simply more interesting to a prospective date that you *have a life*. My only concern for myself is IF I meet a special someone finally...will I be able to keep focused on everything else and not do what I did with C. and completely lose my mind? Again I think of the Helen Gurley Brown quote - "A man should be an addition to your life, not the ONLY thing."

Currently, I already have been asked out by two different other boys - one French, the other a 2nd date with a fabulously retro gent. So we shall see where those go.

New Years' was spent with friends upstate, who I love dearly. And for the 2nd year in a row, I ring in the new year being flirted with by a guy who is very not-single - and I can't really complain since his girlfriend is like my twin. Or CAN I complain because of that?

Lastly: even with the simplicity of online dating, I'm not discounting flirting with strangers in "real life". I did so at a double-feature B-movie thing this past weekend, without speaking to the cutie. We smiled as we parted ways (after "accidentally" having our legs touching throughout the movies), and he winked as I passed in the lobby. I'm planning to go all-out at an '80s dance party THIS weekend, and to flirt continually.

WHAT I LEARNED: I'm finally putting into practice what I should've done all along - don't get too attached before you know the whole story. I did give B. numerous dates to see if I was making a snap judgement, and nope, I just was not feeling that connection. It wasn't fair to either of us to keep going, and he may have just figured that out himself. Also, flirting is awesome.

NEXT TIME: How picky is "too picky"? Why being yourself is better than being somebody who just wants to please everyone else.