Everywhere I go, townies seem to motivate me to be a better person.

Last night I had my first dinner with someone I didn't know before I moved!

In case you hadn't heard, I'm a belly dancer. I took classes for a year in New Orleans and about a month ago I started up with a teacher here in New York. Last night after class a couple of the gals invited me to have some tea with them at this weird and cute little Japanese coffee shop. See that picture? That was dinner. It's yakisoba noodles inside a soft bread. It was...starchy!

It was nice. We talked about the crazy lady I work with, we talked about Rego Park, Queens, we talked about moving to New York, we talked about dancing, we talked about Inspaworld, and we walked to the subway. Very nice.

Maybe they would like to be my friends. (:

So. More on the crazy lady I work with. She's one of those mid-fifties single career assistants with gaudy accessories and a very thick born-in-the-outer-rim-of-New-York accent. She rarely forms a complete sentence, but expects me to know what she's talking about anyway. She gets pissed off if I don't act like I care about her new kitchen cabinets or her cabinet hardware that cost her $400 from Gracious Home. She emphasizes her points in Italian. She occasionally says things that are blatantly insulting, like "Huh. You're a piece a work, you know that?" She drives to work every day and complains about it. She talks on the phone to her girlfriends all day (she is twice divorced and has no immediate family), but fusses at me if I want to take a half hour for lunch with my friend who works downstairs. If I leave my desk, even for a moment (like to make a copy or get a drink of water or--God forbid--go to the bathroom), and someone calls she yells at me like I'm four years old. Yells! According to her, nobody can do anything right, except her. She forwards me these super retarded emails with animated .gif pictures. She watches commercials online and laughs loudly at them. The other day she actually told the nice lawyer lady in our office that her hair looked ratty. She said that! Out loud! And it didn't look bad at all!

She drives me INSANE. This is one job I cannot wait to get the hell out of, paycheck or no. There are plenty of jobs that I can do without being barraged by insults all day. I understand that she's lonely and bitter about the world, and that those feelings are probably the cause of her behavior.

I feel sorry for her, I do, but it’s not easy to be forgiving. I think she drives me so crazy because deep down I’m terrified that I’m going to wind up like her, all bitter and annoying and watching sitcoms to escape the hell that is my life, living alone in a co-op in Queens that I could only afford because of my divorce money. I don’t believe in god, but if I did I would beg not to ever end up like that.

But what if I spend my entire life in this same stasis? What if I keep sabotaging myself with this stupid anxiety and I never reach my goal? Is that my future? F that shit, man! Not me, not ever! I need to get out there and do some serious networking! Like now!