I got promoted! So why am I sitting still?

I should be ecstatic, elated, exploding, and all other e-descriptors that befit triumph. But I am not. I am still, even stoic, and terribly alliterative. This is due to the fact that my newly acquired title has done more to confuse than to clarify my place in the world.

Interactive Technical Manager, mhmm. I won't even try and explain it. I'll just say it involves advertising on the web and leave it at that, since I've never once met anyone outside of the industry who has the slightest idea what I'm talking about. But this is me. This is Alex, Interactive Technical Manager on Tuesday, September 16 at 8:35p MST. (Yes, I'm working from the Boulder office again.)

It's 8:35p MST and I'm thinking there has to be something wrong with me. Not because I worked close to 28 hours this weekend, or that I've barely slept since last Thursday, but because I'm walking around with a smile on my face that I'm actually beginning to believe.

I'm an Interactive Technical Manager, which is important. It even sounds important. A lot of people would love to have my job, kill to work for my company. Having said that, how is it possible that I find myself, yet again, dissatisfied?

Chronic dissatisfaction is becoming such a theme in my life that I'm beginning to have flashbacks of my grandmother, Dorothy.

My grandmother suffered from chronic dissatisfaction and blue eye shadow, a lethal combination. Nothing seemed to make her happy. Years of dissatisfaction – with her kids, her life, and my father’s white carpet, which she found so absurdly impractical that she constantly snipped at people for dropped crumbs and dirty shoes – had twisted her face.

I mock the blue eye shadow now, but looking back it actually complimented the steely, immovable expression she wore. Like she was tolerating a constant flow of lemon juice beneath her tongue. I imagine that expression began as a smile, shape-shifted through the years, and hardened.

Dorothy was a woman who, upon her death we discovered, had closets filled with at least one of every item the Home Shopping Network ever sold. CLOSETS FILLED! It was absurd and we laughed endlessly about it, as if her bizarre hoarding was some quirk we’d remember fondly. Looking back now it was just sad. I close my eyes and see her sitting in the little world of her apartment, placing orders and filling spaces. My grandmother attempted to plug giant holes with jewelry, figurines, and toasters – junk that seemed only to fill her closets in the end.

Now, I'm not a fan of the Home Shopping Network but I've been on a buying spree lately. A buying spree that culminated in three absurdly overpriced, ceramic jars that read: Prozac, Uppers, and Downers.

I know my grandmother’s closets seemed a bit extreme, but if my last purchase wasn't a subconscious cry for help, I don't know what is.

Conclusion: I'm not happy. Or maybe fulfilled is a better word. I'm not sure. I just know that I'm wearing a skirt that fits like a glove, makes my ass look great, but at the end of the day just isn't me. So I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm not me. Or I’m wearing some poly-blend version of me that itches while I move through the day, like a scab.

Me. I find the number of times I use this word in a day laughable, and not because it proves I’m self—centered – as an only child, I’ve been at peace with that trait for some time - but because I don't have the slightest clue who Me is.

There are layers I've yet to penetrate. Currents beyond what my parents wanted me to be and what I think I'm supposed to be. Like cells invisibly surging, desires course through my body soundless. I know they are there. I sense them. Little lives scratching their way to the surface. I cannot identify them.

I reconcile that everyone in their 20’s goes through the same struggle. I know a group of mature (dare I say older) women who would argue that this struggle is a persistent one. But c’mon, I have to get to a door eventually, right? Or one of many doors throughout the course of life? That’s fine. I could deal with that, if I wasn’t the moron who kept leaving the house without the damn keys.

Can someone please tell me where my climactic movie-moment is? I'm ready!

Hey Universe, can we cut to the part where you reveal my innermost desires and true identity, so I can strut down the busy street in any-town with an expression of satisfaction on my face that passersby envy? C'mon. My hair looks great today! Oh, and Universe…. just so we’re clear, I'm thinking more Devil Wears Prada and less Mary Tyler Moore. I’ve never been a beret girl.

Silence?

Hmmm. I guess I’ll just have to be patient? By the way Universe, patience is not an only-child trait.

Got Milk?

I walked into a coffee shop in downtown Boulder today and was instantly assaulted by the image of a rather large woman flaunting an even larger breast, that melted down her chest and into the mouth of an eager infant. There's nothing shocking about a breast in broad daylight - hell, we've all seen much worse on Cinemax - rather, it was the sheer enormity of the breast in question, and the fact that its owner carried on her feeding in a busy coffee shop as if it were the most natural thing on earth that struck me as odd.

Public breast feeding is still the subject of heated debate and I would never suggest a mother withhold milk from her famished child. (The last thing I'm looking for is hate mail from a group of seething lactivists. Yes, I said lactivist. Look it up. An almost laughable term and as real as the giant boob I'm grappling with.) But aren't there discretionary guidelines these mothers should adhere to, particularly when their bags border on the pornographic? 

Most women discreetly slip a nipple out while keeping the bulk of the breast concealed. Not this Lady au Lait (I couldn't help myself). She let it lie and not at a corner table either, but right smack in the middle of the crowd. She seemed so comfortable with her exposure, chatting up a friend I half expected her to lean over and offer the patrons next to her a squirt or two. 

Maybe it's because I'm not a mom, I don't know. I just find it particularly difficult to see something as brazenly hippie as that woman's breast and then enjoy my iced cappuccino. I can't be alone on this one. I just can't.