DumbFunnery

Lean, Mean Crying Machine

The past few weeks have been very stressful to me, and I’m about to whine about stuff like I did before (blah blah blah), but I’ll try and keep it interesting (read: I’ll make fun of myself).

Last week (le what?!) I found an apartment. This week I started at my new job. Today my co-captain of the move left. The co-captain was more commonly called: mom, ma, and her favorite, lady (she has proclaimed this website “the greatest space on the internet. period.” Note: my brother and sister do not have websites).

When I moved to California about 2 years ago (Feb 5, 2008), my mom came with me to do much the same as we did this trip. Apartment hunt, furniture shop and drive me to work the first day (this mama’s boy tradition dates back to my first internship).

When she drove me to work the first day in California, she then drove around and did some errands, and finally caught a flight to go home – all before I got home from work. So, as she dropped me off for work (a little ways away from the location so my co-workers wouldn’t see that my mom drove me to work – I’m an ADULT now!) it was our final goodbye. I saw that she was upset, which made me upset. And that, combined with the scariness of my first real job, a new home where I knew pretty much no one (except Anna and Whitney) … made me cry like a little girl.

I don’t deal well with emotions. I’m a boy. I’m an engineer. And at 25 I’m living in my 11th new home. I am one emotionally stunted monkey. When people see me interact with emotions it’s like watching a calf take it’s first few steps – it’s awkward, you want to help but don’t know how, and you crave veal (kidding?).

Anyhow. I decided crying like a baby was a good tradition, so as I left to walk to work today (my hotel is across the street from my work) I cried like a baby. Thankfully I walked to work looking into the sun which made it more socially acceptable. Or maybe I’m just very passionate about my first week of work.

Just a reminder, I’m an adult!

The weird thing for the crying this time was it wasn’t started by SEEING my mom be upset. I think it’s a fair guess she was sad to go, but usually my emotions are reactive – they start up when I see others emotions in action.

I think this is because I am much more stressed about this move – I feel bigger expectations (and my boss confirmed this by saying, not in these words, “this is Brad, and he thinks he’s a hot shot”), and I have an outside work project going on. Let’s just hope I don’t take to crying all the time, because that would be annoying.

But don’t worry for me – there are two bright spots.

At my work there are a lot of acronyms, and an acronym finder. When I was reading through some documents today one of the acronyms I came across was my brother’s name. I found this funny so I ended up looking up acronyms for my and my family’s initials. This is surprisingly entertaining to me, but that is maybe a bad sign.

The real bright spot is this. I work in Texas. And one of my co-workers names is … Peggy Hill! Are you serious!? How great is that?