Fresh, New and Bonus-y! in These Foolish Things

There really is nothing like a fresh, clean slate now is there?

I realize that not much has changed with regard to how hard Covid is hitting now and how sucky my job is and how I have no love life.

BUT (and this is a big BUT…)

I just feel like we are actually rounding a corner. It’s wild! It’s like the whole world celebrated together on New Year’s Eve. We are all wishing, hoping and leaning towards a better year. I can feel the energy in the air! Can you?

New Year’s Eve was a funny one for me, but I enjoyed the heck out of it, alone with the dog in my little apartment with the TV tuned to CNN for Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper’s New Years Eve show and alternately I think ABC’s version of the same thing. They had a lot of the same entertainers on and I was flipping through back and forth. I loved watching Anderson Cooper get wasted and giggly on tequila! Priceless.

I was also texting all night long with a cute guy in the UK who’d slid into my DMs! I can’t tell you how much fun that was. I suppose it was because it was so random and he was so funny and flirty (and drunk!). He literally stayed up all night with me until after the ball dropped at midnight - which was after 6am his time!

[side note: nothing going on with this guy - it was fun and flirty - and I found out he’s only 29 years old! Yikes. We both laughed it off and it was just a fun way for both of us to end a weird year]

Had a bottle of Moet & Chandon just waiting for a “special occasion” such as this - and I splurged on a Chick-fil-A for dinner! It truly was the quirkiest New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. And it was perfect.

Yesterday, January 2nd, I’d made and appointment for a haircut and style, a botox refresh and an outdoor brunch with a friend I haven’t seen in a few years. But last week I started to worry that maybe I’d planned too much time with people.

I debated on what might be the most dangerous event of the day and decided to cancel the haircut. My reasoning was that my stylist was the most likely to go out and party on New Year’s Eve and my injector is a nurse practitioner who’s in a settled relationship and she’d likely have stayed at home. I also knew that the brunch would be socially distanced.

And I was RIGHT about all three. I saw on IG that my hairstylist was out partying with friends on NYE and the nurse stayed in with her boyfriend (AND she’s extra, extra cautious in a sterile environment), and brunch was wonderful and quiet and outdoors…

Brunch turned out to be more fruitful than I had expected. My friend was a former work colleague who’s actually worked at two of my former places of employment. We’d gotten kind of close at my last job, going to lunch and happy hours occasionally. I really like her, but she lives in a town that’s pretty far from here. Good thing she likes to come to my neck of the woods.

Anyway, we decided to split a bottle of prosecco, have a fancy but healthy lunch and shoot the shit. As it turns out, she JUST got a job at a company that I’ve decided to target quite heavily! AND, she was like, “you are IN!”

It’s a fast-growing company and they need a lot of help, and she was super excited to hear that I want to work for them. I think she was more excited than I was! But I think it’s more that I know it’s not that easy just to get IN with a company and that it’s going to take more than just her putting in a good word for me. After all, she doesn’t even START her new gig until January 11th.

BUT. I am encouraged. I am launching my campaign to get hired immediately! It would really solve a couple of problems for me: (1) the current situation I’m in with work right now, and (2) the approximate location of where I’m going to move - even though they probably won’t be going back to the office until at least spring or summer, and (3) just a major change that I desperately need!

So, lunch was a pleasant, happy surprise.

And then, after lunch was another surprise (well, the actual surprise was that I’d gotten a text from S.S a few days ago (remember him? He’s the guy who came on strong with me - and I liked it - and then disappeared after blowing off my birthday dinner he’d insisted on). Anway, he had sent a text to apologize for all of that, telling me that he’d had a freak-out moment because a million things were happening at once (me, his promotion and the request for him to move to another city, etc. etc) and asked if I would meet him for coffee sometime to talk. We agreed to meeting this weekend and yesterday was such a beautiful day that we decided to meet then.

It was good to see him and he started out with small talk, but I wanted him to cut to the chase. I wanted him to tell me what happened! He rambled a bit about some background stuff that had nothing to do with us, or maybe it did, but it didn’t make sense. So I got frustrated with him and told him to get to the point! He finally did - bottom line, the move fell through for various reasons and he’s able to stay here for the time being and he wanted to see me some more.

I don’t know what to think because I feel like he’s lacking a bit in the communication department, but he’s still the closest thing I’ve had to any kind of relationship in over a year and I really, really liked him a lot in the beginning. We had chemistry!

So he asked if he could take me to dinner sometime this week and I said yes, but I am not making it easy. I’m not going to do the planning of this one as I’ve always done with him. I told him to figure out a safe outdoor place and then let me know.

We’ll see with him. I’m cautiously optimistic. Just like I am about this fresh, new year!

OK! It’s time for a good dog walk and then a trip to see the fam for lunch. 2021 has been very interesting so far. I do like the feeling of new beginnings. It’s time for the sun to shine on us all.

Happy New Year!
GS