Crossing the line?

Looking back at my 30th birthday, I find it humorous how far off the mark I was when I daydreamed about my 30s as a young, naive 20 year old.  The dashing husband was not waking me up with steamy, hot coffee.  Or sex. (sorry mom).  I rolled over and onto Eeyore.  Yes, sometimes Eeyore sleeps in my bed. I realize that may be part of why the dashing husband isn't waking me up in the morning but that's another blog for another day. It was casual Friday so I put on cute cropped jeans, a black lightweight summer top and mused if I could get away with flip-flops. I mentally ran through who could be in my office that day, decided to take the risk and stash a pair of heels in my bag-just in case.  Arriving at the office, I was nearly solo, so I could get away with flip-flops, which let's face it, are way more comfortable and desirable. Another lie from college. We would not be dressing in fabulous, smart outfits constantly.  Although, this lie was perpetuated by popular movies in the early 2000s. Yes, many opportunities to dress fun and fabulous at work but I never expected to try to "get away" with wearing flip flops.  Or that the first thing I like to do when I pull into my parking spot, dash up the stairs to my apartment and throw my overstuffed bag on the floor is to find my pjs and immediately discard my work attire. I wondered if this was normal, then after realizing how many stores sell "lounging" clothes to women my age I realize it is another phenomena that is not discussed but regularly practiced. Although, I did realize the ridiculousness in that certain managers looked as if they were slightly um unkempt (read: fraying pants, shoes falling apart) and that I could be reprimanded for not wearing my work emblem polo on a jeans Friday, but who was I to say anything? I kept the flip-flops on and began my day.

While mentally stapling things to someone's head that I was mmhhmmming (aka actively listening to) on my attractive (read: airline pilot) headset, my mind wondered to the deep dark recesses I had been able to avoid for awhile. Dating.  Not a surprise since the dashing husband didn't wake me up that morning, however, I had come to some harsh realizations.  I was and am happy to not be married at this point. Dating, while something we all complain about, can be ridiculously fun and heartbreaking at times.  Running a mental calendar in my mind of the men I dated from 29-30 I realized I had grown as a person, if not a woman.  I knew sooner than ever before if I wanted to see someone again; my bs radar was near perfect and I knew what my absolute non-negotiables were (thanks Patti Stanger). I had dodged some major psychos I mean bullets.  

But something I never foresaw was that the heartache of relationships would carry over into the doldrums at work.  In college, heartbreak could be easily fixed with a 90210 marathon, Late Night and 10 of your floormates promising to bash his head in while simultaneously scrolling through their AIM buddy list to see who was single and fun and a potential new date for you. Not so in the real world. Although you still receive plenty of sympathy, everyone has a job to finish.  Skipping work would render you with more guilt induced anxiety than any midterm and some of your friends are now married and forget how to relate (the ones who remember us single ladies thank you and the ones that don't we still love you). Depending on your office environment, if a manger found out one of two things could happen: your male boss would try to avoid any discussion and anything that could upset you or your female boss (similar to mine) would try to share stories with you, tell you your fabulous, and then talk about her sex life in college and you'll wonder wait a minute, I thought we were talking about me? And ew. Please don't say those things ever again. What we really want is to be left alone, allow us to trudge to Starbucks to be comforted by the scent of mocha and our work girlfriend's sympathy and to go home and order takeout and turn our phones off so we don't have to keep checking for the apology text that may never ding in our inboxes. So bosses of the world please heed my advice:  save the stories, especially if they involve anything that makes us think of your sex life, don't send us emails with smileys in them and please let us do the jobs you hired us to do without interjecting that we will get back to normal soon.  Or, we will be forced to get our staplers out.