I would be upset. However, I would have to take some responsibility for what happened. The party concept was public... And needed to be shut down

Yay, Jilli-dad!

Another academic job search question -- one of the people who wrote a recommendation letter for me last year said that she can't do it this year. So, I need one more teaching reference. Is it OK to ask a colleague, or does it have to be a supervisor? One of my colleagues has been running a weekly teaching discussion group that I've been a part of, and I can ask him to observe my class one day so that he'll have that to put in the letter.

No idea, Hil, in your world.

Being upset about the lack of clean up is totally legit. The rest? Eh.

I actually went out and was social tonight, and even talked to strangers! Beer helped with that last part. And then I came home and started panicking about the job search. And now a guy on OKCupid who seems pretty awesome is messaging me, so now I can freak out about that, too.

OK, this CRACKED ME UP--the Go Fug Yourself recap of the first ep of How to Get Away with Murder--both for the tone (because they kept emphasizing the MUUUURRRRDER, in the same way my sister and I kept asking each other if the butcher knife in the street might be a MURRRRRDER knife), and because if you scroll down in the comments, there's some hilarious discussion of how one of the associates was Ben/Glory on Buffy!

[link]

Hil, also not familiar with your field. However, if someone submits several reference letters, it wouldn't raise my eyebrows if one came from a more senior colleague.

However, my work world involves a lot of group projects where senior non-supervisors take informal leadership roles in group projects. Your work world may be different.

My reference list is half-and-half supervisors and high-level work colleagues, Hil. I'm looking mostly in academic staff and non-profit workspaces.

Musings on stuff

It’s been a quarter of a year. The turn of the seasons. I’m doing OK. That first month is a bit of a blur, but the wildly swinging pendulum of emotions is slowing down and the new landscape is becoming clearer.

I do want to move in the next couple of years. I don’t want to take care of a house, and I have no emotional ties to this place.

The biggest hurdle is learning how to do things for my own satisfaction, not for the pleasure of sharing them with him. I can do day-to-day survival, but my own pleasure and satisfaction has rarely been enough for me to justify doing special things.

Another big reason I did things was to make Hubby proud of me, to get him to be impressed by what I could do. He was notorious for saying “I would have done that this way” or “It would be better like this.” His reasoning was always “But don’t you want to do it the best you possibly can?” without seeing that most people don’t appreciate only getting criticism. It’s wrecked friendships, his need to always be right--and the disheartening frequency at which he was right. So brilliant, so socially clueless.

I wanted him to see me as a competent grown-up. I’m not sure he ever did. He admired my brains, called me the smartest person he knew, tapped me for information he was missing. But if I showed off something, it was always with “Why didn’t you do it the way I would have done it?” from him.

So I’m never going to get that unqualified appreciation from him now. I have to make myself keep doing things I enjoy without having someone to share the minutiae of the projects with. I don’t want to make things for charity, I want to make things for my husband.

But I can’t. I have to learn to be happy making things for myself instead. And my subconscious never learned how think of myself as reason enough.

I have to learn to be happy making things for myself instead. And my subconscious never learned how think of myself as reason enough.

Well, now is the time to spend some time on pleasing Connie and letting that be enough. I think you're ready to value yourself that much.