this thanksgiving break included what was supposed to be my five-year high-school reunion. except that i didn't go.

because i wasn't invited.

either i really pissed someone off - or was really that unpopular as a teenager - or my "invitation got lost in the mail."

riiiiighhht. "lost in the mail." just like my bmw-5-series-in-black-with-charcoal-gray-interior got lost in the mail too.

to explain, my high school experience was ... traumatic. and very rarely have i taken the opportunity to "look back." frankly, when i left, i vowed to never think about it again. at least i tried.

i went to a prep school that was about half latino and half jewish ... which would theoretically make me the most popular kid in school. except that not even being a jewish latina could qualify me as cool enough to hang out with the popular kids. i guess i was never into drugs. or team sports. and despite my flirtation aptitudes, i could never get any of my middle school/high school crushes to like me back.

instead, i flew under the radar, got good grades, made friends elsewhere, and found trouble in other people's pants.

so when the official-high-school-reunion-that-i-wasn't-invited-to emptied out into the bar in which i was already having an unofficial youth group reunion, my instincts took over:

hide.

but when i accidentally made eye-contact with the kid i carpooled with for three years, i knew i had to go say hello. yet as i stood before him, he looked at me puzzled. holy crap.

he had no idea who i was.

in all fairness, i weighed a whole lot less (17-20 percent less?) than i did in high school, my frizzy curls were pulled back into a bun, and frankly, i looked goooooood. but i carpooled with josh for three years, and he still had absolutely no idea who i was. which i suppose was a little bit insulting. but a lotta bit rewarding too.

i looked at the other guys josh was standing with, including one kid i had a crush on in seventh and eighth grade (but rather than admitting he might have had a crush on me too back then, screwed with my head instead. don't all teenage boys do that?). naturally, he was the only one who recognized me. (one thing is for certain in this world: embarrassment lasts a lifetime.)

every year when my miami boys and i meet up and go out to the same bar after thankgiving dinner, we run into a whole bunch of people we know from high school youth group. which is always a mixed blessing. lots of great "how-are-you-doing-what-are-you-are-up?" catching up. and a whole lot of pretending-to-be-exited-to-see-people-you-were-
content-to-spend-the-rest of-your-life-without-ever-seeing-again.

but this was the first time i had seen some of the people with whom i went to high school since our graduation ceremony. and as we began to "catch up," it hit me.

all the animosity i held for these people - being angry about not being popular, being annoyed that i was considered a dork because i was smart, being frustrated by the cocaine done in the bathrooms - simply no longer existed. i was just curious to know how far popularity could actually take you.

five years of growing up turns out to be a lifetime of maturity. well, at least for some of us.

for me, thanksgiving weekend was laden with reunions. kids from elementary school. brats from middle school. people from high school. good friends from youth group. and even a few peers from college.

and just like many of my more recent "hey-how-are-you-doing?" catch-ups, after finding out "hey-how-are-people-like-
mark-brown-doing?," no one asks what i've been up to. the response:

"i know what you're up to. i read your blog. applications suck, huh?"

which is always fulfilling when that conversation interaction happens in the presence of people who are adamantly against this "generate a following so i can publish a book" forum.

::grin::

to be honest, it was genuinely good to see people from my past. there is something organic about reconnecting with people who we grew up with. something meaningful. something reflective. i suppose that distance changes everything. and time heals all wounds. well, most of them anyway. (let's be honest. i will never, ever, get over the "johanna" episode.)

for me, the best part of thanksgiving isn't the meaningful or not-so-meaningful discussion that happens at the dinner table. or the large family gathering. or the turkey. or the weather (although miami's 70-degrees is indeed unparalleled).

the best part of thanksgiving is the childhood reunion that happens at the bar afterwards.

and inevitably, i will probably be inundated with the same youth-group reunion next year. same time. same place. and i probably won't see most of the people i went to high school with for another five years. which is fine by me.

but i'm already looking forward to my ten-year high school reunion...

...and crashing it if i'm not invited.

there are many tough decisions we have to make as we grow older.

how much education must we pay for to feel adequate in the world? (in my case ... well ...)

who are our friends - our real friends - and who will be there when we actually need them?

what is the balance between work and play? (balance you say?)

harvard or wharton?

(just kidding. neither has accepted me. but both were fooled into inviting me to interview. haha. i mean, i am prepared to be rejected from schools - but only if i can be rejected from the best schools in this country.)

and yet, one of the toughest decisions a woman has to make when she grows up is whether or not to keep her name.

my sister, for instance, has decided to keep her name professionally, but adopt her soon-to-be-finace-but-can't-say-finance-yet-
because-it-is-bad-luck-so-just-her-boyfriends last name socially. makes sense. nice balance.

as for me, well ... uhhhh. haven't thought about it. as a younger-twenty-something who isn't ready to tie the noose ... i mean, knot, i have a bigger decision to make:

do i want to be debbie or debra beth?

perhaps raising this question in a public setting is slightly self-serving, but as i have been discussing it with friends and coworkers, i realize this is something a lot of young professionals think about. identity development at its very core. (and excellent narcissism too.)

names are extraordinarily important. i found this one website that said: [names are] how you identify yourself. it is how others identify you. the more insight you have into the powerful influence of your name, the greater opportunity to enjoy the success you are capable of achieving.

holy crap. i had no idea that my entire fate is based on understanding the influence of my name. if i had only known, i would be going to graduate school in typography, not jurisprudence. (do you think there is a grad school admissions test for that? if so, i would love to take it. and teach it too.)

growing up, i was always debra. having never been called anything but debra before in my life, i was four years-old in a department store with my mom when a nice woman asked me what my name was.

sassily, my reply was simple: debbie.

and from that day forward, i was always debbie. but when i got to college, i decided that professionally and formally, i was going back to debra. debra beth, to be exact.

unfortunately, it never stuck. despite my best efforts, my sassiness at the young age of four has forever beleaguered me.

(i don't really know what beleaguered means but it's some fabulous synonym for plagued that i just found and encourage you all to use three times today.)

curious, i did a search on the meaning of the names debbie and debra. just to see what stupid powerful influence they were talking about.

debra: your first name debra has given you a responsible, expressive, inspirational, and friendly personality. (friendly?) expression comes naturally to you and you are rarely at a loss for words; in fact, you have to put forth effort at times to curb an over-active tongue. (wrote my whole personal statement on that. why could they not tell me that before i spent two months writing it?). self-confidence has made it easy for you to meet people and you are well-liked for your spontaneous ways. (what self-confidence? and i am spontaneous ... when i plan in advance to be.)

debbie: the name debbie creates a dual nature in that you can be very generous and understanding, but you can also be so candid in your expression that you create misunderstanding. (truth) difficulty in accepting advice or admitting that you may have made a mistake causes you to appear to be stubborn and set in your ways. (woops. accidentally did a search on a different name ... nevermind.) even though the name debbie creates the urge to be artistically creative and original, we emphasize that it causes an emotional intensity that is hard to control. (speaks highly of my pms.) this name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success (wtf?).

anyway.

so here i am. a young professional - faced with all the huge decisions that every maturing kid has to make - and i can't make a decision on anything. i can't even pick one grad school to attend. (so i'm going to two.) and when i finally made a decision about my name, i could not even make it succeed. so i'm stuck with one of the only nicknames in this world that is actually longer than my formal name.

... for the time being, i'm okay with that.

daniela rodriguez, young professional and over-achieving student. has a nice ring to it. makes sense. nice balance.

but i am going back to debra one day. debra beth, esquire jd/mba, that is.

they're young, smart, brash. they may wear flip-flops to the office or listen to ipods at their desk.

such began an article last week written by usatoday.

oh my gosh. i had no idea that they were writing an article about me. heeeeeyyyyyyyyy. that is great publicity for my new book. (oh wait. they did not happen to mention me by name. or my not-yet-written-but-oft-spoken-about-book.)

damn.

well you know they were thinking of me while they were writing it.

maybe. but probably not.

i mean, i have black reefs and brown reefs to color-coordinate accordingly with the different suits i wear to work. could they not be talking about me?

unlike the generations that have gone before them, says the article, gen y has been pampered, nurtured and programmed with a slew of activities since they were toddlers, meaning they are both high-performance and high-maintenance.

activities, bring em on. but high maintenance? dude. all i want is to be able to wear my reefs to work.

... with a freshly painted french-pedicure, of course. but that does not make me high maintenance, does it? (don't answer that.)

generation y-ers …don't like to stay too long on any one assignment. this is a generation of multitaskers, and they can juggle e-mail on their blackberrys while talking on cellphones while trolling online.

... and working a part-time job. and volunteering. and grad school applications. don't think that our multi-tasking is so limited, dammit.

they want to work, but they don't want work to be their life.

oh.

really? crap.

despite my best efforts to the contrary, work has become my life. that is, when grad school applications are not my life. and here is the difference between the two:

at work, i have constant feedback: you are late on this, this needs to be rewritten, this piece has a lot of typos, do you do anything worthwhile in your office? as for grad school applications, i have turned in about 17 damn applications - all with typos and mistakes - over the last 3 months. and have heard nothing.

until today.

ladies and gentleman. today, i was offered my very first invitation to interview at a business school. granted, it is only at this little-school-in-boston-that-no-one-has-ever-heard-of- that-begins-with-an-h-and-ends-in-arvard. but whatever school it is does not even matter. what matters is that someone out there must have taken pity on me after reading about how crappy my monday was. and offered me an interview. because its not like they are going to accept me.

they also believe in their own worth, says the article.

well, okay. but they were right on the other stuff.

(the rest of the mildly interesting article - and i stress mildly - can be read here: http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-11-06-gen-y_x.htm)

yesterday was one of those days.

well, not one of those days.

one of those days.

(right. i mean, common. big difference there.)

for whatever reason, it took me forever to shower. no matter what i did with my hair, i could not make it look like i pretended to care. my first three attempts at applying eyeliner resulted in a picasso portrait. and to top it all off, i woke up with full on acne. i felt awful. and fat.

it was as if someone put me into slow motion while the world continued on without me. and for any over-achiever who has not yet completed her grad school applications, is behind at work, can barely keep up with her part-time job, has not been a very good friend or girlfriend lately, and still needs to write a personal statement to get into "my" rheumatology fellowship, the thought of moving even-slower-than-normal was alarming.

so i had a quick panic attack. i just did not have time for a full one.

when i finally decided what to wear, i changed. twice. when i ultimately felt comfortable in wrinkled khakis and a heavy turtleneck to hide feeling fat, i walked outside to discover that it was almost 70 degrees. i waited for the bus, and when it finally arrived, i remembered i left my cell phone upstairs.

then the metro broke down on the way to work.

i got to my desk at my office and realized that a package had to go out that morning. when i went downstairs to the building's mailbox, a notice said that anything over a pound (which i was. and the package too), had to be sent out from the post office. so off i went.

while walking to the post office, i tripped on a curb in front of the white house. thank goodness lots of armed officers and protestors came to my rescue.

when i got to the post office, the very nice postwoman told me that she could not accept the $6.85 postage label that was on the package because it was dated from last friday. she told me i would have to go back to my office and reprint a new label. i asked about other options. i begged her for other options. she was persistent.

instead of crying, i paid her a second $6.85 and left.

by that point, it was only 10:15am.

the day proceeded as my morning had. i screwed up something huge at work. i requested a northwestern interview from a local alum and spelled northwesten [sic] wrong in the email subject line. i learned that although i requested my gmat scores be released to business schools almost a month ago, they never actually were.

naturally, when i finally got home after a full day of work and teaching a three-hour lsat class, i could not fall asleep either.

had i been smart, i would have turned around and gone back home when i left the post office and hid under the covers while watching oprah and eating a tub of ice cream.

when i was little, my mom used to read me "alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." (if you have not read it, you should. i still own a copy; for days like that.) the narrator has a day like mine and keeps saying that he wants to get away and move to australia. at the end, his mom tells him that "everyone has bad days like these ... even in australia."

maybe.

but i bet the postal workers are more friendly there.

i learned last week that when you type in "daniela rodriguez" into the google search bar and hit the "i'm feeling lucky" button, this site comes up.

actually, if you type in "daniela rodriguez" and hit the "i'm desperate and need to get lucky" button, i come up too.

(don't lie. you know you google yourself too.)

of all the daniela rodriquezes in the world, i am the prevailing one! in fact, of the first five sites that come up, four of them are about me. that means that not only am i the dominant daniela rodriguez, but my accomplishments constitute 80% of all the top daniela rodriguezes in the world. in a search of daniela rodriguez, even downstairs amy's blog comes up as number 20.

:: insert evil laugh here ::

it was a profoundly exciting moment for me.

until it became a profoundly terrifying moment.

if someone wanted to learn about me -- without knowing me -- they would find the following: 1) the creation of this deeply self-deprecating website; 2) my presidency of the jewish student union; 3) my job description; and 4) that article that outlines an israel advocacy campaign i created on campus where we handed out condoms that read: "israel, it's still safe to come!" (with a picture of me wearing a condom shirt next to the university chancellor.)

ummmmmmm

holy crap.

while promoting this website has been my obsession for the last four months, it took becoming number one to realize that this sort of visibility comes with an overwhelming amount of responsibility. anyone - my former and future bosses, coworkers, professors, and grad school admissions staff - has an immediate insight into who i am and what i have to say about them.

would it helped if i posted my resume?

don't get me wrong: i have no regrets. but we have all been in situations where we have said something just a little too loud.

if i was smart, i'd keep my mouth shut.

if i was smart, i'd write really nice things about everyone i don't really like.

if i was smart, i'd have actually already written and published my book so that this website would only serve to enhance the subject matter and give timely materials to devoted readers and fans.

and it's not that i'm not smart (i am). it's that i'm stubborn (and the book is taking a little bit longer with 30 graduate school applications).

and really, i'm just saying what you are all thinking.

too often, we are faced with decision between expressing ourselves and saying what someone else wants to hear. too often, we choose to remain silent, to parrot our elders, and to say one thing when we want to say something else. and perhaps too often, we continue blabbing when we really should shut up.

i suppose that making this decision is part of growing up.so what do i do?

maybe i should tone it down.

just a little.

bi - atches.

google that.

i'm sorry.

be right back.

swear.

in a continued effort for this blog to be not only a forum for exploring the real issues of today's twenty-somethings, but also a source of education and praise of those who cleverly manipulate the english language, today's post is brought to you by george carlin. and the letter z.

I'm a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I've been up linked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I'm a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!

I'm new wave, but I'm old school and my inner child is outward bound. I'm a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I'm interactive, I'm hyperactive and from time to time I'm radioactive.

Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I'm on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I've got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I'm in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I'm a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial!

I've got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can't shut me up. You can't dumb me down because I'm tireless and I'm wireless, I'm an alpha male on beta-blockers.

I'm a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I'm a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I've got a love-child that sends me hate mail.

But, I'm feeling, I'm caring, I'm healing, I'm sharing -- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I'm gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.

I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the "F" word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore -- no soft porn.

I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I'm toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I've been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity.

I'm a rude dude, but I'm the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I've got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don't snooze, so I don't lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I'm hangin in, there ain't no doubt and I'm hangin tough, over and out!"

while frustrated by my lack over over-achieverness as a young professional, my exhaustion this weekend helped me put it all in perspective: i am working a full-time job and a part-time job, volunteering on weekends and occasionally on weeknights, trying to produce and perfect 30 grad school applications, traveling to law schools, attending business school presentations, entertaining a boyfriend, and trying to have a social life.

trying to have a social life. i never said succeeding.

did i mention the grad school applications?

apparently, there are a lot of adults who cannot appreciate my application drama, and as such, the director of the youth group i volunteer for has informed me that i'm less-than-adequate at my job.

so for those keeping score, i suck at my full-time job, my part-time job and my volunteer job.

despite not being voted "most likely to be a loser when he/she grows up," i'm an advisor for the jewish youth group that i participated in during high school. it's not because i have nothing better to do (i don't), it's just that the organization profoundly affected me, and i feel i should "give back."

whatever that means.

turns out that notwithstanding my belief that a dozen high school ladies don't need to be babysat when they get together to watch "pretty woman," the youth group administration thinks they do. i mean really, i can't imagine what sort of trouble they could really get into.

oh wait. yes i can.

yesterday, we had an advisor training to discuss some of the serious issues we may face as advisors with our high schoolers. which essentially boiled down to

every
single
thing ... i did in high school.

i thought about it. well really, i thought about all the really bad things i did in youth group. "borrowing" signs from stores, starting food fights in food courts, driving at least twice the speed limit -- not to mention the co-ed sleepovers, the "unofficial programs," the skinny-dipping.

the one program that kept coming to mind was sweetheart parties. in youth group, there were girl chapters and there were guy chapters -- which were essentially frameworks for doing jewish things together. and not jewish things. and sometimes illegal things.

only sometimes.

sweethearts were "honorary" guy members that girl chapters elected and vice versa. i assumed sweethearts were a well-conceived plan to balance out the testosterone and estrogen imbalances that all high schoolers suffer. but apparently it's really a well-conceived plan to produce jewish babies.

to elect sweethearts, we'd throw a killer dance party during which we would privately video tape interviews with candidates "running" for sweetheart. but the interview process never really included questions like "tell us about yourself" or "how do you anticipate this mba playing out in your future career plans?"

let's just say that many of my interviews may have involved a banana, cleavage, and a an imploded coke can.

as high schoolers, we could not wait for the parties to begin at 8pm. we could not wait for them to end at 11pm. we could not wait to watch the videos and vote until 3am. we could not wait for the honor to drive the infamous 5am sweetheart caravan. we could not wait to be so tired that we'd collapse by the time we got home at 8am.

now that i'm an advisor, i learned that some of my favorite memories from high school are not only against policy -- but also quasi-illegal.

so when i got home last night from the advisor training, i called my mom and asked her how she let me do all these awful things.

"debb, awful isn't staying up late. or having sleepovers. or doing stupid things occasionally," my mom said. "awful is putting a gun to someone's head. awful is killing someone. you guys weren’t awful. you were just doing what kids do when they grow up."

oh.

"more importantly," she began. "what do you think it means that now you can look back at things you did and realize how stupid and unsafe they were?"

crap. hopefully she is not implying that i'm becoming an adult with better judgment.

i thought for a long time about our conversation. sure, we definitely did things we shouldn't have done. but we didn't do drugs. we didn't drink and drive. we didn't kill anyone (that we know of). we were just doing the mischievous things that mischievous kids do when they're growing up.

testing boundaries. pushing the envelope. making mistakes.

and i guess making bad choices, dealing with the consequences, and learning for the next time is part of growing up.

because look, i turned out alright.

(sorta.)

today is the first day in almost two weeks that i've left my office before 7:30ish pm. granted i was there before 7am. and it's not like i'm getting paid overtime. while i wasn't paid OT at my last job either, the difference is that 1) here, they at least offer; 2) they pretend to genuinely appreciate me; and 3) it's not just ... expected ... of me. so i do it.

what can i say? i'm a pushover.

in celebration of the first two huge communications pieces i've completed and released since i started as communications department (ones i've been working 10-12 hour days for the last two weeks to write, help design, and print for today), i was given 5 minutes to present at today's national board meeting.

as a point of reference, we don't just have a board of some people we found through an escort agency. among the likes of ralph nader and dozens -- literally, dozens -- of harvard law alumni (with connections to the majority of capitol hill and the supreme court), we have the top partners, founders and chairmen from most of the top 100 law firms in new york and washington, dc.

i even blew my hair out. which in my book, makes anything a big deal.

i was set to be introduced by one of the board members i work closely with. given that he tried to set me up with his son on our last conference call, (insisting i take down his number and call "to just to do lunch or something"), i assumed it meant he liked me. him, not his son. who i didn't call.

then the introduction began. for obvious reasons, i can't quote it word for word. but here's how it basically went:

"as chair of the communications committee, we've made some changes in our organization's communications tactics. for one, we've decided to stop spending resources on someone in-house worth a lot of money and have instead out-sourced our needs to a talented and experienced firm ... ... but anyway, here's our in-house communications associate, debbie rosenbaum, to discuss and present the materials that the consulting group has worked to develop for us."

those are my materials.

he said some other things in between, but i have no clue what.

this guy just called me cheap. i mean, i joke about them "not being able to afford someone legit" which is how they wound up with me, but this guy just legitimized that to -- the entire board. are you kidding me?

nothing like introducing someone by touting their strengths despite their weaknesses. oh wait, strike that; reverse it.

look. i'll admit it. i'm young. i don't have extensive professional experience. but i've also met a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of experience who are still a whole bunch of morons. i may not be old enough, but i "get" it.

and i have a lot of shit i want to get done in this life so i don't have time to be held back by the fact that i'm young. indeed, my learning curve is steep, and i screw-up a lot (more on that another day), but i'm faking my job pretty-damn-well.

anyway. the "stellar" introduction threw me off my game, i can't really recall how my presentation went.

i remember it was fast. probably cheap and easy too.

just like me.

(postscript: and five lawyerly board members handed me back my blood-sweat-and-tears-communications pieces noting two small typos and the rest of the text fully edited. thanks guys; "good job" would have worked too.)

as an adult (okay-not-really-an-adult), i'm learning that friendship is a funny thing.

in college, everyone is at the same level: single or kindasorta dating/doing someone, dependent on friends to substitute for family at meals/birthdays/holidays/nervousbreakdowns, with average hours that run between 10am and 3am. and everyone, everyone, is undersexed.

then everything ... changes. the people who were once our indispensable friends ... just aren't anymore. they get married. live in different states. travel to different countries. move in with their boyfriends/girlfriends/fiancés/spouses. work. continue onto grad school. wind up stripping.

and what it comes down to is that indispensable doesn't become dispensable so much as it becomes not having the same professor with erect nipples teaching calculus (true story) to connect us to each other.

a very good ... friend (yeah, friend) once labeled me as a "tactile" person. just as a point of clarification, i, for one, do not make fabric. but it turns out that he was right. i need to touch and be touched -- friendship and otherwise. i touch people when i talk to them (it's a latino thing i'm told). i touch my food before i eat it. i touch whatever's in front of me. and it's not that i'm a pervert (i am), but rather, in my superb lawyerly skills i have deduced an alternative hypothesis: because i grew up with such poor eyesight, touching was my way of compensating for my lacking vision.

this has turned out to be quite fortunate for many guys.

so if you're not here for me to touch you, it's hard for me to remember that you're real. i know you are there, it's just that you're not ... here.

and we're left to connect to each other emotionally on the memories we share: "christmas shopping," the loft at dean's house, monkeydoolittles, red sneakers, who made what chicken, the kiss in london, broccoli.

but we've grown up since then; they're all wonderful memories we are forever connected by, but we're different people now. and i can understand that you're too busy studying for your midterms to talk to me right now. but then don't call me at 1 am, because guess what -- i'm sleeping.

i can ask you how your midterms are (shitty) and you can ask me how my job is (crappy), but when we hang up the phone, close our email, sign off instant messenger, it's the people who stand, sit, kneel (if we're lucky) before us who understand us.

some of us (a category in which i do not include myself) are better than others at "keeping in touch." it's hard. and it gets harder as the past fades and the tactile opportunities -- sexual and casual -- diminish.

and it's not that i love you any less. or don't miss you. or don't care. or don't still want to sleep with you. i do. i really, really do.

it's just that ... it's just that ... it's just that ... you're not up in my grill everyday. you're not just an arm's length away; you're just away.

don't get me wrong: in my mind, i'm touching a whole lot of people (sexually and not) everyday. because if we can't hold onto each other, we can always hold onto our memories.

and sometimes, when it's all we have ... it can be enough.

late last week, i was sitting down with my heroes at the consulting firm i conspire with at work to discuss the execution of our ever-changing, ever-failing, ever-sucking communications strategy.

when we were finished, one of the associates and i were hanging out, killing time before we were forced to do anything resembling work on a friday.

"do you think you'll always do communications?" she asked.

"not sure," i said. “doubtful, actually. why?"

"because you're good at what you do," she replied.

my heart fluttered the way it does when a gorgeous guy looks my way. the way it flutters when someone tells me i look like some beautiful movie star that bears no resemblance to me whateversoever. the way it flutters when i see a sale at abercrombie.

really? really? do you really mean that? i wanted to ask. instead, of course, i played it cool. "well thanks," i said. "i guess i'll see what happens."

despite my bitching, complaining, kicking and screaming, i do have a great job for someone my age. but don’t ever ask me to admit it (again). it's a position for which i am way under-qualified and not nearly experienced enough to do. but they needed a communications associate. no wait, they needed an entire communications department. they probably couldn't afford someone legit; so instead, they got me.

suckers.

either they were strapped for cash or i overinflated my abilities; i guess the 200-page, colorcoded portfolio with opeds, press releases, media advisories, advertisements and published articles i’ve done was a little much.

many of my friends are doing what, by all reasonable standards, i should be doing too. afterall, these days, a college degree gets you jobs that you probably could have done straight out of high school. like answering the phone. or taking messages. or keeping someone-way-more-important-but-is-actually-a-moron's calendar. or getting lunch. or making copies and coffee.

you know, the jobs that are hardly worth the thousands or tens of thousands or in some cases, the hundreds of thousands, we paid for higher education. because guess what? i could do all those things before i paid a shit load of money to get an education.

i maintain that my head is worth close to $200,000 ... and i mean that in all senses.

and i don’t think it’s asking too much to be reasonably compensated for it.

but get this, at my current job, they pay me to look busy. and to tell them that the media is a closed entity/impossible to penetrate with news about social justice – thereby allowing me to ... not do my job. i’ve screwed up more here than i ever screwed up in school. and a whole lot more than i screwed up at my last job … it’s just that i was yelled at a whole lot more there.

but no way did i suspect i was actually doing an okay job. or that someone thought i was.

either that or it's some evil, deceiving plan being employed by higher-ups who are working hard to convince me to put in more effort by making me think that they think that i think they actually think i’m doing a good job.

and from my personal experience (minimal) and in my professional opinion (negligible), i have yet to come across anyone who has the time to implement such a plan ... and really, no one would work that hard.