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.

I've actually gone out and done stuff nearly every night this week. Trivia on Tuesday, Young Professionals happy hour on Wednesday, and tonight, went with a friend to see the Humans of New York guy speak. (The tickets to the HONY guy were supposed to be for students only, but my friend used to be a student here and still has a student ID.) I feel like I actually have a sort of social life.

So I've had three transfusions in the last three weeks, and my hemoglobin is still below 8 after yesterday's transfusion. The current theory is that I'm one of the 1% of patients on this chemo who gets GI bleeding. I have an appointment with a gastroenterologist tomorrow.

My oncologist told me yesterday to make an appointment ASAP, but I can only talk to the main scheduling office. The phrase "potential life-threatening GI bleed" had no effect, and the earliest appointment I could get was in three weeks. I sic'ced the oncologist's office on them and got the appointment for tomorrow. Of course it's at the Kaiser facility that's half way to Chattanooga.

Feeling like crap is bad enough without its being such hard work.

Feeling like crap is bad enough without its being such hard work.

wrod

Oh no, Ginger! So sorry you're feeling awful, and that they're buttheads. Glad you at least got an appointment for tomorrow.

To add insult to injury, the next transfusion they could schedule is on Saturday. The type-and-cross for yesterday's transfusion expires at midnight Friday, so I have to have that done tomorrow. All they do is draw one vial of blood. Last time I waited an hour and a half. For yesterday's transfusion, I waited more than an hour before there was a chair open, and I was there two hours before the blood showed up.

I hate them.

I'll grant that these facilities are probably very busy, and there are so many processes that have to occur, but the organization seems so haphazard.