Fun Vacations

Yesterday afternoon at work, a coworker asked me a question about something I had given the coworker to do. It was an innocent enough question to which I responded something very charming like: "You goddamned idiot. Can’t you fucking read? I clearly outlined my request in my email. Do you think that I am an idiot and don’t know what I fucking want? Asshole.” And then I got fired.

Ok, I just said: "I meant that I need you to do this..." And I didn't get fired. But the question wasn't even stupid. I was just freaking out. So what's wrong? Why am I hypothetically cursing out innocent co-workers? Well, I’ve decided to go out of town this weekend.

Oh great! Going out of town is fun, you say. Well, not if you are an insane person. Here goes. I have to get out of Houston. I just need to leave and do something fun. And as fun as I think going to Akron in two weeks is going to be. I want to, you know, do something else fun before I go there. (Aside: I told my boss in a moment of seriousness, “I would really like to go to this conference in Akron. I think it will add greatly to my knowledge of the tire market.” Of course, little did I know at the time that several of good bands would be coming to town ahead of ACL while I was off listening to papers on the state of Pakistan’s tire industry).

So, going out of town. I decided to go to Fredericksburg, TX. Fredericksburg is this quaint little town in the Hill Country that thinks it’s all German and sells pastries. The decision to go was something like: “Oh yippee, it’s all fucking German there, big deal ohmygod they have pastries” (and I've heard coworkers talking about the town's general disdain for children in public which is a bonus for me... "Pastries and they don't like kids...."). But then I’m tooling around the internet checking out this band that I’ve read about here several times, (and whose songs on myspace make me happy), and they are playing in Austin this weekend. So I think, cool I’ll go to Austin and see them instead. Achieves several goals: 1) Getting the fuck out of Houston 2) Checking out new, potentially cool band 3) Exploring Austin more. Enter crisis.

I’ve lived alone for a long time. I first had my own place when I was 19 (then I was sort of on again off again with roommates). But I have lived alone consistently since I was 23. And I’ve lived in towns where I know only a few people for three of the last five years. So, the point is, I do a lot alone. It’s fine. It suits me. But I don’t really like going to bars alone. I don’t really like going to bars at all; however, going alone exposes me in all my social anxiety glory. So that freaks me out. In addition, the fact that I don’t have anyone in Houston to call up and go, “Hey, let’s do Austin Saturday” gets me really down. Like really a lot down. Like crying on the way back to work from lunch, sobbing on the phone kind of down. Yes, I’m melodramatic.

Now, I’m a solution girl. Generally, I don’t like wallowing in my problems. However, this afternoon, I spent 10 minutes sobbing in the phone to Anu and every time she offered a helpful solution, I would say, “I don’t want a solution, I just want to complain.” That’s bad. Also bad is the little situation I now face. If I go out of town and go to this show, I will leave feeling sorry for myself and will probably cry, so I want to avoid that. But if I stay here and hole up in my apartment for three days in order to avoid afore mentioned pain, I will feel even worse. So I’m most likely going. That’s just the kind of headstrong jerk I am. But ugggggg. Be my friend. Call 1800Biggestfuckingloserever.