The great Groupon debate

I've got to tell you I had the strangest morning yesterday. I blame Groupon.

About 500 years ago, there was this daily offer in my inbox for house cleaning. It was a great deal. And my fantasy - to have someone else clean up after my crazy family for once. But could I really invite strangers in to see the kind of dust we kick up? I'd click on the Groupon. Then I'd close it. Then I'd click on it. This went on all day.

Finally, I got up my nerve and I bought that fricking thing at about 11:00 p.m., right before the offer expired. So then I had this Groupon, but it seemed so indulgent. And it was kind of outside my comfort zone. And shouldn't I be doing my own cleaning anyway? So I buried it in my organizer to use, "when I really need it."

God, I'm such a dork.

Anyway, when we were on vacation last week, I started thinking of that Erma Bombeck essay that she wrote late in life about how she wished she would have relaxed more, and not put off so much and how she wishes she would have burned the candles that were too good to light but instead got put away in the closet to gather dust. That was my coupon. Oh I'd put it away, but I hadn't forgotten about it.

So I pulled out my little Groupon and scheduled the cleaners.

I wish I'd have been suave from that moment on, but baby steps, right? I cleaned the house last night, just to be ready for the maid service. We don't want them to see a crummy stove, right? Or dust on the window sills? Or...?

Gah. They arrived, bright and cheery yesterday morning and I tried to write and I tried to think of other things, but all I could think about was how wild it was to have them here. And that I wanted to see them scrub that front entry way, even though I didn't want them to see me seeing them scrub the front entryway. Finally, I spared all of us and left to run errands.

In the end, the house looks great. Better than I could have made it. And I hope I've grown a little bit. Maybe. Stepped outside the old comfort zone? At least I finally used the Groupon.

2010: A Wonderfully Horrible Year

A lot of commercial women's fiction starts with the protagonist's world falling apart. By the end of the first chapter the woman we will all soon be rooting for has lost her boyfriend/husband, job, possibly a close friend (who inevitably slept with the boyfriend/husband or usurped her in her job)  and her sense-of-self.  For the rest of the novel we watch this female protagonist  learn to cope with her new unwanted reality and eventually take all those really sour lemons and turn them into a kick-ass lemon-drop-cocktail.  By the end of the book she is stronger, wiser and more self assured than she ever was before. It's not that the protagonist is now happy that she was hurt, betrayed and/or tossed aside but she's not at all unhappy about the new direction her life is heading because of those hurts and betrayals.

My 2010 was like the first half of a commercial woman's fiction novel.  It's tempting to say that it was one of the worst years of my life.  I had major career setbacks. I lost close friendships.  There were even medical problems to contend with. Financially things were as tight as they've ever been (and that's saying something).  I was unlucky in love and was betrayed by the one guy who I turned to for comfort.

To sum up, 2010 sucked.

Except now that I can see the bigger picture I realize it didn't.  Not exactly.  The career setback led to better and more exciting career opportunities. Now that I have some space from what happened on that front I can see that the career trajectory I was on was never going to get me where I really wanted to go. To get there I needed to shake things up, something I wouldn't have done if I had continued to be allowed to be comfortable with the status quo. As luck would have it the status quo was yanked away from me and thrown out to sea. That turned out to be a really good thing.  

As for the few lost friendships, well I won't say I'm glad those are gone exactly but again, now that I've lived without them for several months I can see that those friendships were extremely high maintenance and not all that healthy.  These particular individuals who I once called close friends are now friendly acquaintances and oddly enough I don't mind that. I wish them well and want the best for them but now realize that I don't want to be in the middle of the drama and disfunction of their lives. That's not to say that those who I continue to be friends with don't occasionally have drama but the drama is not a pervasive and core part of their existence. As a result I feel lighter.

The medical problems have worked themselves out and they even led to the discovery that I'm anemic and now that I know that (and I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't had medical issues this year) I've been treating it and I actually feel better than I have in years. And a lot less hair is coming out in my comb in the morning. If I hadn't had a small scare earlier this year I wouldn't be taking iron supplements now and I'd be investing in Rogaine for Women by 40. As for the finances, well they're still tight but the new developments in my professional life should start paying off within the next couple of months if not earlier so I'm not stressed.

And as for the guy who betrayed me...well that was a blessing in disguise too.  At the time I thought he was the straw that was going to break camel's back...okay, fine, I thought he was the twenty pound brick that was going to break the camel's back with me playing the part of the humpbacked desert animal.  But that wasn't the case at all.  I actually thought that I loved this guy, even though we weren't committed. But now it's totally clear to me that I loved him the way an alcoholic loves whiskey.  I just used him as a way to take me out of a difficult reality.  He was my means of avoiding dealing with the things that I really had to deal with.  I didn't even know him all that well.  He was just in the right place at the right time.  If someone else had been in the right place at the right time and if that someone else had let me use them as a distraction from reality for a much longer period of time I would never have gotten my act together.  Like the whiskey given to the alcoholic this man weakened me when what I needed was strength and like the whiskey he wasn't really to blame for that.  It was my fault for reaching for a crutch when I needed a cure.  Fortunately Mr. Whiskey screwed up big time and that sent my ass to metaphorical rehab. And guess what? Once I started dealing with the blows life had dealt me everything started getting better.  I'm now really grateful for his screw-ups.  He seriously did me a huge favor, no sarcasm intended at all.

On January 1st of 2010 I thought everything was fine. Now on December 23rd 2010 most of what I thought was "fine" has been blown to smithereens and I'm happier for it.  I'm ready for 2010 to be over but not because it was so challenging (and it WAS challenging) but because I'm excited about the promise of 2011.  At the risk of sounding corny, I'm the protagonist in the novel of my life and it seems that we are now getting to the part of the novel where it gets really good.