The Post I Wrote Instead of the Post I Already Wrote.

Two weeks ago I started seeing an acupuncturist for my work-stress. One week ago, I completely overhauled my to-do list and work schedule (again), and this week I tried to fight Dave in Sizzle Pie because obviously I am so together.

I thought I was going to publish this hilarious post about how funny that was. But according to my boyfriend, who is not about to have a panic attack, it was not funny so much as it was “desperate” and “weird.”

I keep thinking I’m fixing the problem. But I am the problem.

As a twelve stepper, that’s not a new concept. And yet, it always feels like it is.

I am the managing director of two entities. Managing should be my job, it’s in the title, but I am obviously having a very difficult time with that.

You guys know this story. I used to think that a college degree would make me happy. Then I thought a good enough job would make me happy. Then it was better pay, better projects. Every time, it alluded me. Every time, I was forced to conclude that happiness can only come from internal worth; that it has nothing to do with external factors.

Then I started working for myself, and like a June bug in a light fixture, I began to think that if I just had enough of whatever I needed, I’d finally be happy. And I wasn’t. So I started another business. And now I have two things that will never fulfill me.

On top of that I am so homesick. It took me a year, but I miss my friends so much. The people up here don’t know me. In part because I won’t tell them. I haven’t made a single effort to make my own friends outside of professional connections because working is so much easier than being emotionally honest with people. That’s why I can count the people who actually know me on one hand.

I realized awhile ago that no amount of money would make me happy, but it’s time to come to the further conclusion that no job can make me happy either. My old job got terrible, it’s true, but it was destined to go south based on my completely unbalanced emotional investment.

My realizing that fact was why I started my own business. Finally, something I could be 100% emotionally invested in without any negative consequences. Oops.

If I was a more nurturing person, I probably would have had a baby and that would have been so much worse. There is no such thing as total emotional investment. In anything. That’s just me trying to re-create the codependent relationship I had with my mother, but this time with a business, because surely a business will not hurt me.

This is a lesson I will always never learn.

Back to the drawing board.