Forgive my silence this past while. There have been some domestic disturbances that made me not want to blog. Plus, I’m tired. I’ve entered Phase 6 of burnout recovery. It shows.

I have tried not to say anything about this but in my effort not to, I can’t even have an honest opinion here. It’s part of every day, so I’m going to say it, and I’m going to move on. But I’m book-ending with good news, so skip the massive text in the middle and go right to the end, if you’d prefer.

Here we go… starting with this week in good news…

do you know what this means? Bathroom door is open, unidentified man is here… could it be that the EXTERMINATORS came and ERADICATED! Yay! DEATH to the COCKROACH FROM HELL!!! And micro-ants!

That was a win.

Not that Marcella had the slightest issue with me using her bedroom as a hallway, but the Canadian in me felt bad about the inconvenience. Ivan, my Canadian friend Andrea’s Brazilian husband (got that?), laughs at the “SO CANADIAN” perpetual concern about inconveniencing others. He basically said to me on Friday, “look. You’re not alone in this world. We’re all together, so we should accept that and not try to pretend to be insulated.”

Now, Ivan is a SENSATIONAL human being—very genuinely concerned about *everyone’s* well-being—but this, to me, is also not just about Ivan: it’s the single greatest Brazilian trait. There’s so much that’s wrong here, and of course my next statement isn’t absolute, but I also feel safe in making this generalised comment. Brazilian hospitality and friendliness is, I think, Brazil’s best asset. Now, I haven’t been to Rio yet (but we booked a trip this week!), but I still feel that even with what scenic beauty is found here, I will miss the people’s warmth and laid-back, accepting ways the most when I leave here. People are always nice to me—even though I’m the estrangera estupida who doesn’t speak the language. There’s a fascination with foreigners, which is a nice change from the European eye-roll.

There is one MAJOR exception to the above paragraph, however (START SKIPPING HERE!), which wouldn’t matter except that I happen to (almost) live with the offender. It’s not that he’s mean to me, he just won’t interact with me, won’t include me, and that means that if there are things that happen à trois, Marcella talks to one, or the other. And usually, the one. (not me). When I think back, he never greeted me the way ALL Brazilians do (when you meet someone, however superficially, you kiss on one cheek—or two cheeks in some parts of the country). Even when I meet someone at the gym I’m not going to talk to again, same greeting.

He doesn’t look to talk to me. If I talk to him, I get 2-word answers. I’m tolerated, but that’s about it. It sets a tone for when we all do things… now, I’m in Brazil and I don’t speak the language, so I don’t expect everyone to cater to me. When we go out, I bring a book. I’ll listen for as long as I can, and then I amuse myself. I don’t need or want constant attention. But the Offender’s refusal to engage with the foreigner means that I’m always left out of discussions regarding plans, and not even told of these discussions’ outcomes all the time. If your discussions are just about whatever, I don’t need or want to be kept abreast. It’s cool if you live your lives. But when this shapes me and my day, I just like to be kept abreast, you know?

It’s come to a head a few times: a few weeks ago, Andrea and Ivan invited us to a surprise party for one of their friends, who I had met the week before. I asked Marcella if she wanted to go—and thought she might, because the resto it was at was decent and the people were lovely—I could vouch for them. She said “yes” earlier in the day. Then, when we were driving there, she said “my eyes are burning so I don’t know how long I’ll last.” Cool, I understand having allergies. I said “No problem.” And when we pulled up to the resto, I was told, “tell Andrea and Ivan I said hi.” And then I had a minor freak out. “You’re *leaving* me here?!?”

“Oh, do you want me to go in with you?” I absorbed the shock of all this and said, “no.” Paused. Nothing else was forthcoming. So I got out of the car, said “thanks”, and went in, where I proceeded to panic a little about the fact that I’d just been dropped off somewhere unknown to me in a city where I don’t speak the language. WTF was I supposed to do then!?

Luckily, Andrea and Ivan are awesome, and they said, “we’ll take you home, or you’ll come home to our place. Don’t worry!” And so I relaxed. But I began to be aware of the emerging problem.

(Turns out, Marcella and Co. joined us later on in the evening and I got a ride home. Phew. Any reason why you didn’t TELL ME THAT WHEN YOU LEFT ME HERE??)

I freely admit that I didn’t come to Brazil to be a tourist, I came to come down. My burnout was SO severe that I’m still reeling and it’s 2 months in now. I am epically grateful to Marcella for giving me a soft place to land, because if she hadn’t, I probably would have had to take my unemployed ass to my father’s house because I’m not fit for work yet. And that would not have been half as amusing as my Brazilian adventure is… So. SO GRATEFUL. SO. I consider it a huge added bonus and life lesson that I’m also being forced to surrender my Type-A control… but there are limits. Would I have bought a ticket to go to Brasília last weekend if Marcella had *told* me she was going to fly to Rio on Monday to work, making me other people’s problem? Nope. I’d have stayed in São Paulo, with my friends, my gym, and the ability to make choices about my day-to-day. I found out she was going to be in Rio when she dropped me off for my flight. “Oh, I didn’t tell you?” No. You probably said it in my presence in Portuguese, but I missed that. Like 90% of everything else.

The weirdness of the Offender’s behaviour is that much more unusual not just because Brazilians are generally so nice and accommodating, but because EVEN HIS FRIENDS make more of an effort to include me. We’ll all be sitting at the table, they’ll tell stories and laugh and carry on, and one of them will then turn to me and say, “So. Gabriel was picking up girls at the bar the other night…” and catch me up. They don’t want me to read, they want me to be a part of things. Thanks, guys!

The icing on the weirdness cake is that the Offender’s brother lives in Canada. The Offender worked there for awhile when in university. The Offender has permanent residency status in Canada, and the Offender asked Marcella if she’d be willing to move there, as he wanted to. ALL OF THAT BUT YOU REFUSE TO SPEAK ANY ENGLISH TO ME?!?

So even though Ivan tells me not to be so Canadian and not to worry about inconveniencing others, I’m getting the exact opposite message at home. BUT: on Wednesday, we leave for Peru. And the weekend after, it’s Rio. And the weekend after that, I’m going to stay with Ivan and Andrea. And that means just one more weekend left before I go back to Canada and find some kind of new life.

This won’t ruin the way I remember my time in Brazil—there’s plenty of great stuff to ensure it doesn’t—but it’s an issue. I won’t lie.

At least, into this crazy life, a little Pão de Queijo will fall…

(actually, this is the ham that made the cheese buns—Marcella here is warming the eggs…)

Yum. Marcella was disappointed, though—she said “this recipe worked for me in France, but I don’t like these”. I found something wanting, too… so I’ll post the recipe as soon as we get a better one. They’re gluten-free, you know!

And in other happy news, I blew up my bed, and we had to buy me a new one.

Went to “Sam’s Club”, AKA “Costco for South Americans”, and bought me a double:

So. Life is good, all Offenders aside.

I’m off the wagon on my photo-a-day because of my simmering annoyance, but now that it’s been said, it’s forgotten. Let’s go get happy: when life gives you limes, drown them in a caipirinha!

Oh, this week… Let me just say this—I had my interview. I had prepped and worried and did all I could, and then: not good. They asked me a big broad question, and I said “well, that’s really two questions—shall I do one at a time?” They said “no, do both, as a two-parter”.

OK.

Well, they kept interrupting me to ask me questions about my answer, and since I was on speaker phone it was like talking into a vacuum: phones are bad enough for not having any body language, but speaker takes away any of the “uh huh” / active listening noises.

So then, I’d try to go back from my tangent to what I was saying, and as soon as I hung up I thought, “oh god. I didn’t say X! I didn’t say Y! I DIDN’T SAY Z!!!!!” And I definitely didn’t sell myself enough.

I’m pretty untried in the art of interviewing—I’ve had 2 that mattered; one went well enough (hence, I have my job), the other didn’t (hence, I didn’t get a permanent job).

This one, also, didn’t.

Damn.

I’m annoyed because I think I’d have been SO RIGHT, but that I screwed it RIGHT UP and will have to wait to get my shot—and, remember how I turned 34 last week? Not old, but relatively old given that I’m starting right over again… And I still was reeling from how awful it all had been when, just three hours later, a family member told me to “suck it up”.

Well, that was unhelpful, unkind, and uncalled for. And only 3 hours later?!? How about some mourning time?

I don’t think I need to talk to that person for awhile. But now, 2+ days later, I *have* sucked it up. And googled “how much will my unemployment benefits be?”

And then I amused myself with 3 bad iPhone photos:

It’s shiny and weird, but I’m OBSESSED with pita pizza. I’ve been eating dinner at 9.30pm after work, and then working till midnight. This blend of carbs and happiness is JUST RIGHT to power me through my last burst of work, but isn’t so heavy that I can’t sleep well.

It’s a whole wheat pita, some salsa, some pesto, crimini mushrooms, and a little Jarlsberg cheese on top—just as the Norwegians intended.

Bad Photo 2:

Yes. This is yesterday afternoon, in my office. It was like a ghost town today with everyone and their mother flexing, so I did have a post-lunch sip of scotch with my chocolate, to make up for the fact that I’ve got too much on my plate for the next few weeks. Judge me if you will! I guess I’ll miss the flexibilities in my job… but as for working 100 hours a week, well, I dare say the memory of that will soften the blow.

Photo 3:

After my interview, I looked at myself in the mirror and said “wow! You haven’t looked THIS rough since finishing your dissertation!”

Now, that’s a lie. I actually have looked this rough in the Spring of 2008, 2009, 2010, AND now 2011, too. New realisation: I get really bad skin when I’m tired. PRETTY! So I decided to do the only thing I could to try to make it all better (until the sleep gods visit, that is)—I drank water. Lots of water.

I drank 8 of these 20 ouncers yesterday.

8.

Which means 5 litres of water.

Wow. I might add that I didn’t eat very much because I hadn’t brought enough food with me for the day, *and* I woke up feeling so dehydrated that I considered licking the dew off my car before I drove to work… So it was an atypical day, and I had some atypical room for THAT much water.

But while I’m still insensible in a lot of other ways, water actually made things a whole lot better. Even more than the sip o’ scotch.

Go figure.

Now, in other WAY MORE EXCITING news: Coming up on Extreme Balance…

I’m hosting my “coming out” party on 3 June! Most of you know me quietly by email, but it’s time to be a little more “real” here… it will include a game. Just sayin’.

And, even better:

On 11 June it’s my 1-year blog anniversary! Stay tuned for a giveaway!

Tomorrow, the pack-a-thon begins. And the move-a-thon. Still haven’t listed my couch on Kijiji. I’m feeling intimidated by the interweb. Better get over that ASAP…

Are you a chronic avoider, too?

I love you, Matt Damon. I love you even more as Jason Bourne.

(source)

The “more cut, less buff” Matt pleases me… but it’s actually a quote by this also delightful man in that same film that I’m going to come around to:

(source)

But let’s start at the beginning:

So I’m on a failure kick lately.

Seriously.

I am pretty smart, and I’m unbelievably strong-willed, and I have (had?) tremendous stamina. My motto has been for years, “let’s make this happen.”

And so I have ascended some heights and achieved things that, I felt, were sometimes totally artificial. I felt like I should have been stopped a long time ago, like someone should have said “I see what you’re doing. Nice try, but go back, and do it right. Because this isn’t going to cut it.”

To a certain extent, I think most PhD-holders have a little bit of a sense of being a fraud. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I have gotten by and squeaked things through, “made it happen”, as it were… and I’ve lost some respect for myself in the process.

I actually *like* that I blew at least 20% of the LSAT last month. Because I started working on the hardest section the Monday before the exam, WHILE attending to my usual fuller-than-full time work, AND having a 9.5 hour drive to Calgary. Unpreparedness, thy name is S. I *like* that finally, I hit a wall, and something said “no!”

And I epically failed at my first “focus” challenge. I picked what I would like to be doing, but nothing that was actually realisable with my responsibilities.

I was inspired by a particular blog that I read, in which the blogger has a fitness schedule like the one I kept in the last year of my PhD, when I was in the most insanely good shape of my life and felt like I rode a unicorn almost every day. *That* good.

(source) (PS: if you Google “riding a unicorn” and check the images, they’re mostly Obama on a unicorn. And then there’s the GUY “dressed” as a unicorn, by which I mean, he’s painted himself white and it’s too creepy for me to post here.)

And then, because I like the feeling of tanking, I decided to do it again—a second re-focusing with the same goals, still just as impossible with my schedule.

And I’m not done the 10 days, but I’m done—if you know what I mean.

I’ve had an intense 3 weeks, and this week was supposed to be the last of it. I woke up this morning, went to work to meet with some underlings—who I work very hard to keep functioning because that’s good for me, but in actual fact, they’re underlings and they’re supposed to be making my life easier. Yeah. It doesn’t work like that—I accept that they’re not me. They’re not even 50% me, and so if I expect that they’re going to do things like I do, or even 50% like I do, it’s going to blow up in my face. So I work hard to make sure I only ever ask sub-50% of what I actually NEED them to be doing at any time.

And YET: this morning, when we met, they decided to tell me that they were feeling TERRIBLY hard done by, that the work load was too intense, that they weren’t going to be able to do it all, and that “you’d better be ready for this not to get done any time soon.”

They don’t even KNOW what a cake walk they’ve had… which means that I’ve done *my* job so perfectly, *I* might have just turned into a unicorn.

But the substance of this whining was a MAJOR, MAJOR problem.

This caused me then to become a perfect storm of anger.

(source)

I began working SO HARD not to express myself at them that I’m not even sure what happened for the next hour… all I was doing was trying to tamp down my fury. Trying NOT to run away because I couldn’t even sit there looking their now 10% useful selves in the eye.

And I left the meeting to go to the doctor for a mundane event.

And mundane event aside, my doctor looked at me and then spoke some interesting words: he brought up “extreme stress“. I Googled it. It’s me.

Behavioural changes—like outbursts of anger or rage.

Social withdrawal—yep. I barred my mother from talking to me until things get better. I don’t interact with anyone except for Patti. And I’m pulling away from the blogging world increasingly. It all feels like work and I just can’t do it.

Emotions—strong ones? Well, I usually have these, but the anger I felt today… when I went to do my recycling, one of the bins had been taken away and I couldn’t recycle my one corrugated cardboard box. It made me so mad (OK, I was still mad about the meeting 5 hours earlier), I wanted to smash my car into the other bin. (I didn’t.)

Pain—headaches, muscle and joint aches? Well, I had blamed it on my little car accident, but what’s more likely is that that wasn’t really pain-inducing as much as stress-inducing, which led to more pain.

Health changes—weight gain? Hello again.

Which brings me back to the lovely Clive Owen, when he was an assassin called “The Professor” in The Bourne Identity. After lovelier Matt shoots him and he’s dying, he says “look at us. Look at what they make you give.”

And that’s all I can think about right now: Look at what it makes me give…

When did I become such a martyr that giving up my body and soul in a work sacrifice seemed like a good idea? That’s NOT me!

After bringing up the “extreme stress” point, my doctor uttered the words “permanent health damage”. And boy, has that ever got me thinking…

I hate consequences. I live my life to mitigate them as much as possible. But I might be facing BIG ones—life shortening ones—because of these ill-made “career” choices.

So tonight, I’m celebrating my wake up call with a little Matt Damon, a little reconsideration, and a little bubbly:

I’m not going down with this ship! I’m not! And tomorrow, I’m going to bake a lovely tart (I’ll show you if it turns out pretty) and take my first step towards a new life. I won’t jinx myself by saying it out loud until I start to lay the ground work, but it’s time to crawl back from the abyss.