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1�0�1�0�1�0�1�0�0�1 2003-04-10, 10:04 a.m.

Mindwalk


I have now been at my new job for almost seven months, and I'm just beginning to dig away at the gloss and uncover the icky stuff underneath. Though I'm not privy to much of it, there's a sadness and anxiety lurking here among my team that I'm not quite sure I understand the source of, nor want to. Me, I'm happy as a little clam, doing my work, making my mark, hiding out in my cubicle with its solitude and soft light.

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A. is out of town starting today, through Sunday, first to a roundtable and reception in L.A., then back to Oakland and off again to a weekend-long bachelor party in Tahoe. My friends decided last-minute to get tickets to see the Foo Fighters on Friday night. And this is the introvert in me: I'm rubbing my hands together about the prospect of spending a Friday night alone. I've rented the Red, White and Blue trilogy from Netflix and am fully prepared to open a bottle of Two Buck Chuck* and get some Thai food and enjoy our new house. Maybe hang some pictures. Sweep a little floor. That kind of thing.

I promised my friends I'd see the Foo Fighters with them. But I'm not really into the Foo Fighters, see. I'd rather save my love, energy, and money for Neko Case next month.

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* I read in the paper this morning that another winery commandeered the name "Two Buck Chuck" and is actually manufacturing wine using this name, now. It seems cheap and, well, disgustingly unoriginal.

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Yesterday, I bought my first bustier. I am such a non-girl that I did not even know how to spell bustier until my alterations person informed me that I absolutely needed one. Crap. Victoria's Secret is such a pain in my ass. I am not curved the way a woman is, according to our culture, *supposed* to be curved. I'm kind of straight up-and-down. A bustier is cut with the assumption that one is proportionately positioned so that if you're large in the middle, you're large on top too. Not the case with me, however.

***

I think I might have found somebody who could be a candidate for a shrink. He specializes in general anxiety and shyness, and he's right across the street from where I work. He also treats a lot of HIV-positive patients, so I suspect he's a shrink-with-a-heart-of-gold. I'm so worried about having a bad psychologist experience. But I desperately need to start therapy again. I think I'm regressing. The more I participate in meetings, the more tentative and awkward and embarrassed I am; it's supposed to be the other way around. I'm almost 30 years old and have traveled all over the world, talked to a lot of important people, done a lot of important things. And I still quiver and blush and stumble over words when I have to talk to more than three people at a time. It's like performance anxiety, because I'm not like that with one or two people. I wish I knew why, and I wish it would go away. I'm determined to enter my 30s a confident woman.



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