Current status

4 more weeks before 2015
I have now a new house, all mine
I have $400K debt
I have $4k in my account
There will be 4 people living in the new house
Hope another one will move in soon
Everyone depends on me
I am tired. Have been doing a lot to get in the house
I bought a lot of new things, starting the house from scratch
I carried them all inside the house by myself or with some help
I am giving myself a second chance in love
I have told very few people about my separation and new house
I haven't told yet my daughter about the separation and this is the thing that concerns me the most now
Should be drinking but will go sleep instead

A big change in my life

Last year I attended a conference at this time of the year. This year I went to the same conference again.
Last year, when I returned, I went with my husband and daughter for dinner before going home from airport. This year we went for dinner to the same place on the way home from airport.
Last year I met a guy at the conference. This year I met him again and I introduced him with my daughter (she came with me this year at the conference)
Last year, during the dinner on the way home from airport, I was talking to my husband and my daughter but I was thinking about this other guy and feeling unsure on how to go on with him. This year, during the dinner on the way home from airport, I was talking to my husband and daughter but I was still thinking about this other guy and feeling sure about him and about what I had to do with my husband.
Last year, on the way back from the conference I felt like a cheater. This year on the way back from the conference I felt that my divorce was necessary.

Yes. Divorce. It is such a heavy word and comes with so many emotions. I had thought about divorce before but was something that "other" could do it, not me. Raised in a traditional family, divorce was a tabu to even think about. My mom has put a lot of bad things about divorce in my head that had made me lived in a marriage where I wasn't happy, completed or growing. But I continued staying and pushing days by, thinking this will be worth it at some point, that this is good for my daughter to grow up in a family that stays together, that all marriages are like this, that at the end of the day my husband loves me although he doesn't show it. I had brought up this topic before with my family and they did their best to push this idea down and tell me all the benefits of staying married. At the end they did say that if things were really bad then I could divorce but was not the ideal solution. I had brought up this topic even with my husband before but he never took it seriously. He thought I am the kind of women that tries to fix things, not break up. He was right. I did that for 13 year we have been together. But he didn't see that things kept breaking and breaking and they were at a point where even Crazy Glue wouldn't help much.
And then I met this guy. I wasn't looking for anybody. From what I know now, he has been looking to find someone compatible for a long time. Just like me he was in an unhappy marriage.
But he has a fine sense of knowing people. And he knew right away that we were pretty compatible. I didn't. My female senses let me think that he was someone worth meeting, talking, getting to know close, but I was not looking for more. I had put myself in a box where I was keeping myself away from guys that would be interested in me in ways that were not professionally related. He came close, he insisted, he found ways to talk to me and make me talk to him, he found ways to get to know me and to let me know about him. He decided to change a lot of things in his life and make his path walk toward mine. During the past year he divorced, lost a lot of weight, changed his life style, and keeps making plans to bring his life into mine. During the past year, he got really close to me, he covered me with dreams and hopes, he made me look ahead to better ways of being with someone, he made me believe that my daughter will be ok, he made me believe that I am beautiful, smart and worth it. He gave me courage, support, love and a new look at life.
During the past year, I went through a lot of stress. And now I am here, completely open to everyone. I told my husband about all this and I told him that I want to split. It was liberating to get that out of my chest. It did bring other kind of stress. I had to now go through the process of bringing my husband to the same level of understanding how broken our marriage was and that our daughter will be ok if we handle this in a friendly way. For a while I was in a place where I had two men that loved me and that were doing their best to make me pick one of them. Sounds great but it rather is a great stress. And then my husband gave up and accepted that it was over between us.
Now we are in the process of separating. Who keeps what, when will we move out, how will our daughter spend time with both of us, splitting finances, etc. One thing we agree is to not use lawyers. We are hopping to manage to do all this in a friendly way and in agreement. It will be tough because at some point one of us might feel hurt or find something unfair. It's a process that needs patience and considerations.
I am ending one big chapter of my life. It was an important chapter. A lot of things happened to me during this time. No regrets at all.
I will start a new chapter in my life. I am excited and cautious at the same time. I don't want to mess up again. I don't want to end up in a relationship where I will stay just because splitting is a lot of work to do or because I would lose my self confidence in being able to have a relationship. I have a lot of lessons learned from my last 13 years that I hope I will be smart enough to not repeat the mistakes again. At the end, I want to be happy and I want my daughter to see how a good relationship looks like.
Wish me luck!

A trip and a memory

We decided to have a short family vacation, going to visit the in-laws. They live in Nova Scotia, so that should be enough to say that they are ok and deserve the in-laws rather than out-laws label. Took a flight on Friday night and spent the Saturday in Halifax. After that, we drove to their place, about 40 minutes and spent 4 days there.  

Halifax
If you have never been there, it might not look like anything special until you go by the harbor front. That is because they are doing a lot of constructions around the city now. We started with a trip to Citadel, the fortress at the top of the hill. A star shaped fortress that was build to protect the city. As a matter of fact, Halifax was never attacked. Nobody has tried because was a loss from the beginning. The tour guide, Mr. Adam, was really knowledgeable. He has been writing a book for 10 years and he promised us that it will be published in the next 20 years :). We happened to be there at noon, and as per the tradition, the canon was fired and, as per what the locals say, nobody is awake after that in Halifax. Then for lunch, we met an old friend that we used to work with. Was so nice to see him and catch up. He looks happy and I am happy for him. He moved there, after 1 year got divorced, and after another year started dating someone that sounds like a nice girl for him. They build their own house that we went to visit on our way back and was really gorgeous. You could tell that he put a lot of love on that house, on every corner of it and on every detail that was still to be finished. After that, we went down to harbor front. It is so beautiful there. Maybe because the weather was also sunny and warm, it just made that area so inviting. We went on a museum boat, on the real museum and then took the tour with Harbor Hopper, an amphibian vehicle from the Vietnam war, now changed and dressed up to be used for tourist. US made 900 of them for $900M. The guide was Max, a student at the Halifax Uni. He really knew a lot about the city. A couple of times he made me cry with the stories he told us.

 Story 1
Captain Cornwallis came from Cape Breton to find a place where to build a strong fortress. When he landed to the harbor, he walked up to the hill and decided that that was the best place to build a fortress and a city. But he needed people. So he went back and he started recruiting. "I will offer you free land" - nobody came. "I will offer you free food for 1 year" - nobody came. "I will offer you free Wifi" - nobody came :D. "I will offer you free booze for 1 year" - next day 2500 people were ready to follow him.

Story 2
The most respected Mayor, had his own brewery, called after him, Alexander Keith. When the city was celebrating something I forgot, the Mayor at that time, decided to close the bars and pubs so the people wouldn't get drunk and make a mess. People got angry about that and went around the city and started destroying bars and shops. Until Keith decided to open the doors of his brewery and people celebrated in peace. I thought that was a dumb decision from that Mayor. The city was build by people bribed with booze. How can you expect them to celebrate something without booze??!!! Alexander Keith's grave is on the graveyard across the Garden. We went there and we found a lot of beer cans that people had put around :)

 Story 3
During the war, the city would put a net on the water to keep the boats from offloading on harbor during night time. The net would be removed in the morning. On December 6, 1917 a french boat full of ammunition rushed to get to harbor after waiting all night behind the net, hiding what they had on board. A boat full with medications was eager to leave because missed to leave on time the night before and now was late. During the rush, the two boats hit each-other and the french boat went BOOOM. The biggest disaster ever happened to the city. Thousands of people died, thousands were injured and thousands were blinded by the flying glass. On top of that, that day the city had one of the worst snow storms of the history. Someone, Morse-ed out a message for help. People in Boston caught the message, filled up a train with medications, doctors and even Harvard students that were not doctors yet, and came to help. As a Thank you sign of appreciation, every year, on Christmas time, Halifax city sends to the city of Boston, the biggest Christmas tree they have on the forest nearby.

Story 4
Howe was a journalist that called out a lot of the corruptions going on on the government. So they arrested him. He decided to defend himself and for 6 hours, he spoke non-stop, giving examples of what was going on. At the end, the Chief Police apologized to him publicly and he was a free man. After some years, he became the Premier of Nova Scotia.

Story 5
Remember the canon that goes Boom every noon? That happened during G8, when all leaders were lined up to have a picture. They all thought they were being attacked and they were halfway to Peggy's Cove by the time they explained the tradition. Needless to say, they will not have another gathering of World Leaders there anytime soon.

Back to Halifax. Another thing to try there is donairs. Max told us that when Bill Clinton was there, he liked it so much that he got a lot of it, frozen, back with him to White House. But I had decided to eat only seafood.... and beaver's tails .... and awesome ice cream. Have to say, it is a city with a lot of history, comfort food and during winter, full of students.

At the in-laws 
They live in a small town, that during night is very quite and doesn't have very bright lights. You can stare at stars at night and feel small like a grain of sand. The goal was to spend some time with them and get my daughter to understand that there are more people in the world that love her and that she should love and respect. There is an aunt there that is very sweet to us. She never forgets to send a Christmas card. So we decided to go and visit her. Tuesday was what worked best for all of us. So we went for a visit to Peggy's cove, stopped for a nice meal at a cute restaurant by the side of the ocean and then drove to her house. Her house is on a small strip of land surrounded by water on East and West. She and her husband were so happy to see us. They took us around for a tour to the backyard that was at the Indian harbor. Just amazing view! She is 72, full of energy and ideas for future. She paints, a hobby she found late in her life but she is now a real painter. She took us around her lovely house and showed us the paintings all over the walls. We got one of her paintings and she signed it on the back, with the date and with a sweet message about our visit. She told us a lot of history about the family tree. Some stories not even my in-laws knew! We asked her to put all of those stories down and create the family tree. She promised she will do that! Around 7 pm we left her place. We hugged and we waved bye. The next morning, her husband called to tell us that she passed away last night, at the hospital, after a fall.
I still cannot believe she is gone. I still have her in front of me, hugging her husband and waving us goodbye while we were driving away from her driveway one night before. I cannot understand how all the energy in that women, all the plans that she had to visit some new places, all the paintings that she was planning to make .. are all gone just like that! The painting we got from her is now in our house and her writing is on the back, with her lovely message and the date we visited her, one day before she passed away. I know she is in somewhere nice, peaceful and by the ocean. It will be the first Christmas we will not get a card from her. RIP!

Spending time with in-laws is good. We got to cook Clam chowder and that was an event where everyone did something. Food always gets people together. 3 generations contributed into that chowder and it came out to be really yummy.
One day we went to a corn maze. One day to the pool. Every night we had deers visiting the backyard and eating the seeds left on the bird-feeder. One night when the sly was clear we saw the International Space Station flying by.  Now I know where my husband's first girlfriend house is, where he got drunk before prom, what window did he use to sneak out at night, and what did he used to do to get out of mowing the lawn.
We played darts, we drank, we ate, we cried and we laughed.

A Blah day

What a day! In the morning, everything went fine, like a well oiled machine. I woke up, prepared the lunch bag for my kid, chose what to wear, left home at a decent time, read some nice articles on the train and went to work at a decent time. Answered some emails, started some work that I had on my To Do list, scratched a couple, had a nice lunch and then my manager told me that he has a good news. I will be promoted to Signor level and my salary will go up. Me and a couple other people on my team, have been asking for an increase for a long time. Although this is a good news, it is not as good as we expected because the increase is not where we were aiming to be. So I am left with a desire to move out of this place. On the way back, I didn't read anything on the train, I was just thinking about my options and what to do. Start finding another job, I am tired of that. Continue staying with at this job, hurts me when I think that there are people at my work that can't select text, and make more than I do. Arrived home and my kid said: I think the hamster is dead! I said, let's go to karate and will check later. So we ran to karate class and I was thinking what to tell her when we get back home. While she was at the dojo, called my husband and asked him to handle the dead hamster before we get home. I kept thinking about my job. We came home and my husband had put the hamster on a small plastic box, wrapped with tin foil and inside the freezer. We can keep the hamster there until we decide how the funeral will be done. While checking my social stream, I noticed that I had an answer from Space!! A couple of days ago, I asked Col. Chris Hadfield on Twitter to put a picture of my country from up there. He is on a spaceship that orbits Earth 16 times/day. And today he put a picture of my country!! It was really cool, very nice feeling! I thanked him and shared the picture with a lot of my friends.

Looking back, this day was a roller coaster of emotions!

Scanner Daybook

While in a meeting with my team, I confessed that I can't make up my mind where do I want to spend my next 10.000 years of my life. PM? Developer?Coach?Communications? People skills? Until now I have been like a student, learning a lot, never caring about certifications and moving from one career to the other, worried that I do not have a strong future ahead. One of the Senior guys in my team started smiling and said; You are a Scanner! He brought me this book, "Refuse to Choose" by Barbara Sher. I started reading the cover and the Prologue, and I started crying! It was me all over. I have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed until now. I have been beating up myself until now when thinking that I am not good at something, I am all over the place and I am scared about my career. Well, apparently this is something that a lot of people have. Before 50s, people like me were appreciated. But then there was the need for professionals and very focused careers. People like me were seen as unable to commit, unable to focus, not trusted. We were offered methods to find what we should choose and keep being focused at. But how can a Scanner do that? I have always found myself interested in a lot of things, and I can't say which one the most. Because, typical for Scanners, at some point the interest is lost and we move on to something else that is interesting. People like Da Vinci, Aristotle, Ben Franklin have been like this. They were amateurs (meaning lovers of something) but never specialist to it. The things is that, we do not want to finish everything we start. As soon as we become knowledgeable on a field, we loose interest and want to move on to something else. This explains how I feel happy when I start a new job but then I am bored of it and want to change it. One of the exercises to do is to create a Daybook, where every time I have ideas on what to do, I would sit down and write them. When I stop writing, I should put down the reason for stopping. This for 2 weeks. Then I should do a list of things I want to do that are small enough to be done in a period of 6 years. I can write down here the list of things I want to do, and I will write Daybook ideas on other posts. As an extrovert, I need external input to feel motivated :) Here a list of things I would like to do in 6 years: - Learn to play guitar - Visit at least 3 of these countries: England, Spain, China, Japan, Vancouver, Israel(Jerusalem), Sweden, Australia, South Africa - Go through some really good sessions with a psychiatrist (alone or with my husband for couple sessions) - Go through some good sessions with a fortune teller - Sing a song and recorded - Make another dress for myself that I can wear - I would know more about Mars atmosphere - Go to some classes about Quantum mechanics at any University - Throw a Christmas party with a lot of special food I have cooked. - Been to a Lang-Lang concert - Write 2 more short stories - Have the stories that I have written put together on a book - Go on stage on an improvised show - Improve my French - Learn more German - Get back to exercising 3 times a week (karate/swimming/core/yoga) I know, it's all over the place! But I like them all.. and maybe some more that I can't think of right now. I am just glad that at least there is a name for people like me, and I have more to read on what to do about who I am

Update: Jobs I found interesting for me: - Coach. I can talk with different people, teach them something, learn something from them - Speaker at Discovery channel. While I do my job and I read a script, I learn a lot about cool stuff they show on that channel

Vinegar

I am noticing myself lately becoming bitter and assertive. More. Maybe I have always been like this but maybe I have been in different positions when people have expected different things from me. I envy this girl in my team, she is all organized and very on top of the process. I can't be like that, it clashes with my personality. My way of working is to get things done, rather than measure a lot of metrics. I do lack academic-ism and for sure I am more hands on and I value practic-ism I know I am doing something wrong, but for everything I identify as something I did wrong, I can find also a reason behind why I did it so I can justify myself. I am worried that I am working against myself, I am becoming like that strong vinegar that ruins its own container. Until now I have seen the role of a psychoanalyst as a hobby. Now I need it professionally. More for a focus, direction, a simple technique on how to keep my mouth shut, on how to be happier and less grumpy. I hear that a lot of people in my new profession, do have personal coaches. Not just for professional coaching but also personal. I think I need one. It might cost but I can pay it as long as I have a job. Maybe will help me stay in a job. So I am thinking to ask some of the guys that have tried a lot of these coaches to recommend me someone. I don't know what this makes me. Desperate, psychotic, complicated, intellectual, crazy or just plain aware that my brain needs more than what is getting right now. I will try it.

Synonyms

My manager is very creative. When he tries to explain something, he likes to use examples that are supposed to explain a complicated situation in an easy way for someone to understand. "There are different ways to skin a cat" is just one of them that is most common. Here some more:
- Business doesn't want to buy a cat on a box!!! (what he means is Business will buy an application that they know what it does and what supports)
- We need to pave the road so the goat doesn't pee on the rug !!!! ( what he really means is that we need to put a clear road map ahead so that teams are not confused and take over work that is not valuable from the business point of view)
- We must make the cow jump the fence so it can eat the grass!!! ( what he means is that we must guide these teams to focus to what is really important for them in order to be efficient)
- We will not spill the milk from the box, but will use a straw!!! (what he really means is that we will not tell to others everything we know, but bring our knowledge out slowly, when requested or when in need)

He is driving me nuts!! One of my colleagues has found a way around and asks "Can you explain that to me in a different way, please?".
Stay tuned to this post as I will be adding more as soon as I hear it from him!

New Additions
- Tell them what you want, developers, PMs, red leather shoes size 73 by Sunday...(What he really means is that you should make it clear what you need in order to deliver what they ask)
- If no requirements, and they need an axe, build them a bottle and if they don't like it build them another one (What he really means is that you start building something until they realise what they need)
- Need to keep the cat in the box. (What he really means is to keep some secrets and not tell everything we know)