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If you absolutely must say something, drop me a line at heather.dougan@earthlink.net

Don't really know yet what I'll put here. Well, a journal presumably. Or some thoughts. I'm an old-fashioned girl so my real journal is on paper and lives at home. I don't often share those intimate thoughts with anyone!

The archive needs a little organizing but it's okay for now.

3.21.04

Testing.

1.28.04

Welcome back. My site was temporarily down while the server moved closer to me, er, cross country from CA to VA, and at one point I'd been ambitious enough to think that I'd just keep updating away and load it all at once. Nope, I got lazy. Lazy, depressed, bogged down in the bullshit that was my job, too busy doing non-computer related things, I'm not going to make any excuses. I'm back, and I will be cleaning up the site a lot, still thinking about ecommerce but mainly trying to make it a site worth visiting as at some point in the near future, I will unleash a torrent of art in Albany. Okay, not a torrent. An idea that Steven and I came up with that I absolutely plan to see to fruition.

So, what's new? I'm no longer employed by NYAPRS. This is a good thing. They were killing me. Never in my life could I have imagined such a toxic workplace but there I was, and if it wasn't for Steph I don't know that I would have made it out of there alive. She, at least, gets what it was like. There's absolutely no way in hell to convey that sort of environment to innocent bystanders, you just have to live it to believe it and hey, we're stronger for it now. As Steph told the bastard TMM, "I can work for anyone now, you're the worst supervisor I've ever had." Or something very close to that. I was reduced to nothing in that office, a mere shadow of myself, and it's taking some time but eventually I think I'll be me again.

The good news is - I'm back at OFT! Working with different peeps than before, but I still know most of them, I'm just on a different side of things than I was before. Jim, Tommy Roe, the Daves and Kedar, they all work in my building and it's so much fun to have them around, they have always totally respected me and the new people I'm meeting are great too. It's an incredible blessing to be in such a great workplace. The difference in my attitude towards employment is like night and day. (Gawd, I'm so cliche!)

I'm as close to finishing a grad school app as I've ever been. Like, seriously. This time I have transcript request forms, Jim has the handy-dandy reference thing (still have to give them to Andy & Steph), I know what the deadline is, my application is basically done and my essay (statement of background and career goals!) is this close to done. I just need to come up w/ $50 and I'm set. The cool thing is, the MSW program doesn't require the GRE. Very odd, that, but I read it several times and I'm certain that that's what it says. So I'm gonna mail it off (as soon as I secure funding for this venture!), hope for the best, schedule a GRE test date, take the bloody test again, and send off apps to all the other schools I'm considering. The MSW is incredibly versitile and I'm honestly not going to find meaningful employment until I get it so yes, I'm finally embarking on my voyage to save the world. Did I already say embark once?

And last, but not least, I just don't want to gush too much 'cause I don't know if I'm allowed to or not, there is an absolutely amazing human being in my life who has given me such confidence, such... I don't know. I feel better about myself than I have in a long long long long time, if ever, at least I'm able to recognize that now, I'm learning to be much more mellow and rational. I'm slowly getting over my hangups and getting the courage to discover me, to be a good me. I just hope that I don't drive him too crazy in the meantime. I really can be a hell of a lot of fun when I'm in the moment (and being in the moment is the best advice I've ever gotten!)

9.25.03

Oi.

Happy 30th birthday Rachael, wherever you are.

9.22.03

Had a pretty freaked-out feeling empty blah sort of day... Wasn't so thrilled about going back to work after the dreaded conference and a wasted weekend, and I've been getting this weird vibe from a special sorta someone that's had me feeling a bit unsettled... I keep trying to tell myself that everything's just fine until I hear otherwise but I can't help it, for too long now I've had this uncanny ability to talk myself into an unnecessary funk over nothing. And it's not fair for me to be grumpy when I should be supportive, I'm certainly not the only one going through a rough time here. *sigh* I don't know what to do... I know what I would say if I wasn't in the middle of this but I just can't, I'm not going to go dispensing advice that isn't requested...

In good news, I am currently making an honest-to-God attempt at writing my grad school essay. I'm pretty determined to have the application complete and mailed in the next couple of weeks, which will be a relief. I'll figure out the money part of it another time, the most important thing is get accepted. At least it's a start. I've only been putting this off for what, seven years? I could have a PhD or two by now!

And that's that. I've got to keep writing while my head is in the right place and stop focusing so much on this drama that I always create for myself.

9.21.03

Well, it's back to work tomorrow after a week-long conference and way too short of a weekend... Apparently nobody believed that any of my suggestions were valid because once again we ran around not knowing where anyone was or what they were doing, none of us attending workshops, tension high and blood pressures skyrocketing... And the "food" of course doing a number on my stomach. It was a weird conference too, in that I never in a million years would have expected to run into one of my oldest friends there or experience the sense of loss that came from seeing him not quite his old self... Thank goodness Steph was there, I don't know what I'll do next year without her. We went and got haircuts Friday night, as much as I'd been looking forward to going out I was just plain too tired so the haircut was nice, came home and took a bath after that and sat online for a while, going through the usual routine of happy/sad/frustrated/angry/ecstatic etc. I hate being stuck in limbo, not knowing what I'm supposed to be or if the veil of secrecy can ever be lifted. Oh well. I can't dwell on that right now. Last night was fun, Jim and Tommy and some friend of Jim's met me at the Lark Tavern for dinner and drinks, then we went to Bomber's to see if Tess was working... I had a couple beers there, some tequila and a big-girl drink (it's really just a blue hawaiian but Tess' version is sooooooo much better)... Jim and I went back to the Lark to see Dr. Jah and by then, had quite a buzz going... a buzz that was quite amplified by a couple trips out to the parking lot... And somewhere in the middle of all the nonsense, Dr. M appeared out of nowhere! He probably thinks I was ignoring him and I honestly couldn't have done a better job of that if I'd tried! I was like "oh, hi, didn't see you there... okay, need to go see the band!" and he spent the rest of the night giving me the hairy eyeball. I was dying of thirst at one point and just couldn't bear going back up to the bar and running into him again, so when I decided that I absolutely had to have water or more beer, I snuck out the side door and came home. Oh well. It's not like I'm the one who was a jerk here, so I'm not going to worry about whether or not I was ignoring him.

I think the difference between adult relationships and college-y relationships, especially after coming out of long-term ones, is that people know exactly what they want, how they want it, what they expect and what they won't tolerate, and it almost gets in the way of just being with someone.

So that's that. Not all too sure that I'm ready to go back to work, the week was a bust and I honestly could have used like a 3 or 4 day weekend to catch up on some much-needed rest. Trying to decide whether or not to go to Philly with Steph next weekend. If Ri comes too I'll just end up being a third wheel... I also need to figure out my schedule for the next couple weeks anyway and see about a road-trip of my own... Anyway. That's it for now.

Ciao!

Ugh. So many ideas, so little time.