Curiouser and Curiouser

After three and a half years, today was my last day at PetS*.

I'm reflecting on this here as my exhausted dog sleeps in my lap after being groomed this morning. I wonder a little if she would have been less of a tool about trimming her feet if she knew that today was her last day there. She likes going in with me in the mornings.

Anyway, I've learned more things there than I could ever count. Basic retail skills, like working a register and assembling a planogram, and more specialized skills, like the correct husbandry for dozens of species of critters in our care.

One of my favorite jobs I'd had was making sure all the chinchillas got to take a dust bath. Best. Morning. Duty. Ever.

I formalized my dog training style, and met hundreds of students and their dogs. I felt like I got to make a difference in a lot of lives, and educate a lot of well-meaning-but-confused people along with their equally well-meaning-but-confused dogs. And met some of the best and worst dogs you'll ever see.

I also learned a lot about dealing with customers and, perhaps more importantly, managers.

But as much as I'm grateful for all that, I think the wistfulness and mourning isn't really for the job itself (and again, I don't think I'd be the person I am today without it!) but rather the period in my life it represented.

When I first started working there, I had just made the Big Decision that I didn't want to be a chemist anymore, and accepted the fact that forcing myself through WPI was making me miserable and was the main source of depression. I was caught up in a whirlwind of "Now what?" and becoming a trainer was like the directional arrow pointing "this way." So that's where I went.

I was pretty much transformed. I went from a terrible struggle to pull myself up in the morning to being chipper at 6am, when I had to leave for my shift. I became motivated for something, which had long been lacking in my life. I suppose, looking back, that I had sorely missed that kind of drive.

Of course, there were times when I hated working there. Sometimes it was horrible students. Other times it was frustration at the conglomo-mind-borg structure of corporate retail. Sometimes it was just angst. And I had plenty of that, too - I was in an unproductive rut, my relationship with elenuial was at its most volatile, and my self-esteem was pretty low. Sometimes the thought of spending my break playing with baby chinchillas (or teaching a class full of enthusiastic four-month-old-puppies who were sponges) was what kept me sane.

And so began the Moping Rut phase, where I questioned my future, my abilities, my relationship, and pretty much anything I had stock in. I stopped doing anything creative, elenuial got frustrated with me constantly, and I gave up on my attempts to find a school to go back to and stick to it. And more negativity. And more nosedives. And more labels, like "failure" and "dropout" and all sorts of other lovely things.

This lasted forever. Seriously. The lows stayed low for years. And I began to associate my job with what I perceived as a waste of a life and sat and stewed for a long, long time.

Then, about a year ago, things went on an upswing. I realized (through my little brother, ironically enough) that I had done the right thing by leaving WPI. He told me that even though I was miserable, I looked happier than I ever had at WPI. And he used me as a measure as well, saying that he wants to be like me - someone happy and successful despite not having a degree rather than someone who got a degree and hates their field. It was thanks to that smack in the face that I realized that he was right - how many people got to do something they loved, change people's lives, face challenges that keep them busy, roll around with puppies, and get paid for it?

I started doing creative things again. Jewelry. Photography. I cut back on other commitments. I put down a deposit on an unborn puppy that I had budgeted for, planned for, and dreamed about for (my whole life! but, realistically:) two years. I started taking better care of myself and really socializing again.

And, seeing the change and my newfound identity based on confidence and self-respect, elenuial said he wanted to marry me.

I got the dog. I went to cons. I said "yes" to things that Mopey Haz in a Corner would never have agreed to. More stuff happened. I agreed to move to Japan. I got married. There were lows, sure, but overall it's been a steady crawl out of the ditch I'd willingly buried myself in.

While my personal life has been great, work has been stressful over the last six months. We had three groomers quit, a waitlist 30 miles long, broken equipment, and no end in sight. I felt bad giving my notice, despite it being months in advance. Still, I did what I could to help by things like picking up extra hours, blocking off time to fix what I could, and taking on a lot of cleaning duties so that stylists could accept more dogs. I was told time and again how, without me, the salon would've been screwed. Which made me worry more about what would happen when I left.

And as of today, we have three new groomers, two new bathers, and a host of new fixtures out back, all resolved within the span of two weeks. Things are looking bright, and morale is hugely improved. It was like the universe saying "...aaand this is okay now. Cool, you can go."

So I left without any real fuss (although the cake from Coldstone was nice!), just saying goodbye to the managers and the other employees I'd known longest. I left a note for those not on staff today ("Thanks for the last few years PS TRY NOT TO GET BITTEN OK"), did some re-stocking of Elsa treats, grabbed my keys, and walked out the door.

And this just adds to the feeling like something is about to start, or has already started to move. Big Life Things. And leaving this job just pulls everything into perspective. I'm not who I was three and a half years ago - with short black hair and a bleak vision of the future.

I've accepted that that I might not finish my degree (though I still intend to), and that getting one for the sake of getting one will not guarantee my happiness.

I've accepted that I am responsible for my own happiness, and that nothing will be handed to me. A lot of things come with some form of a fight if they're really worth it. Like elenuial.

I've even accepted the fact that I might be a tiny bit blonde.

So, 3:10 today marked the end of an era for me as I punched out for the last time. I might do something tonight to celebrate. But for now, I'll let the dog I raised from a baby sleep, edit some phenomenal photos of my idiot friends dressed as supervillains, and marvel at how awesome my life has miraculously become.

I'm coming to think that I'm a pretty relaxed gamer. My object in games (tabletop, LARP, even board games) is to make it interesting to play. If my character gets horribly boned but totally had it coming or it was in a spectacular way, I'm good. Or even if it's something otherwise mundane. It sucks if you have to retcon to make the players happy. What happens happens.

One of the major rules of improv: "Yes, and..." = You take what happens, and go with it. There's no "no, I don't like that, I call mulligan" in improv, which is the major way I like to game.

So when other players express butthurt over something I'm cool with, it takes me a minute to understand why.

Maybe I'm just easy.

(no, not in that way. ask your mom about it.)