Why do I always get so close to happiness - and then freak out about the commitments involved?

Thank you for all those who participated in: Everyone-Gets-a-Text-Message Day!!

This new holiday was birthed from my recent switch to Unlimited Texting, in combination with my enrollment in the most mind-numbing training program of all time.

I spent the first 3 days at my new job reading a four inch technical manual cover to cover; and the last 5 hours and 33 minutes watching my Windows screen saver, playing M*A*S*H by myself, drawing clocks with the current time, sending everyone in my phone a text message, and drawing clocks with the time I wish it were (5:00; or more accurately - 5:00 on Friday in the year 2012, when I'm living a much more glorious life - one that I dreamed up in a cubicle in 2007.)

The days utter boredom was only briefly interrupted when Betty, my elderly cubicle neighbor, tried to pull a hair off my sweater in a very grandmotherly fashion; only it was still attached to my head - so she just pulled it out. It gave the whole moment a subtely creepy feel. It seemed accidental, but I can't help wondering if she doesn't have a filing cabinet full of single strands of new employee hairs...

...and someday millenia from now, that filing cabinet full of hairs will be used by the chimpanzee scientists of the future to create a "Jurassic Park" for 3042. They'll use our DNA to bring human life back to the planet - and Betty and all of us in the office will live together in a zoo of the future...

...This is the sort of thing your mind thinks about when left alone with a technical manual for 8 hours every day.

I erased 51 New Orleanian phone numbers from my cell phone today. I think sometimes you have to burn bridges just to keep yourself from running back across them... And lately I'm spending much too much time mourning the Crescent City Connection and the Louie P. Long.

The cruelest truth I know: The grass is always greener... on the other side.

I remember those last few months in New Orleans. I remember that panicked feeling you carry around in your chest all day. I remember the stress, the network bullshit, the constant desperation... I remember feeling like I had to get out or I would just - implode - from all the pressure.

But the truth is - except for the fact that there are now people in my life who are affected by my instability -- I would go back. In this moment I would.

I have to let go.

Of the phone numbers... of the lifestyle. It's over. and now I need to embrace this place. I need to love my cubicle, and love how easy and unstressful my job is. I need to appreciate quiet places and non-desolate landscapes. At least for the next year or so - I need to settle down... Can someone help me settle?? I don't know if I have it in me.