Key things to note are: I got two new tattoos with Dadda over Christmas; my (non)boyfriend kind of dumped me soon after; and I got so overwhelmed by the responsibility of accounting for nearly 200 thousand unspent grant dollars that I had a breakdown at work. (And by breakdown, I mean I started crying in front of my boss's boss and another male co-worker and had to leave.)

These three items pretty much encapsulate everything. My new-found closeness with my family, both my Mom and Dad's sides. The oppressive sense of isolation I've been feeling. And my balls-to-the wall efforts to transition to having a boss I can cry in front of (namely, me).

I am so far from my family, and for the first time in ten years, I actually care. As more of my friends tie the knot, are in serious relationships, or spend more time with their own families, I'm starting to feel the absence of siblings, aunts, uncles -- really anyone who has to love you unconditionally -- quite keenly.

This is second time in my life I've really disliked being an only child. The first time was when my parents divorced, and I was just exhausted hiding things like Dad's cancer, and being a constant support for my mom. The people who know me the best, friends from college, all live in other countries now. I have wonderful friends here, I really do. But I'm learning, as my Mom is, painfully, that friends can rarely take the place of family.

I wonder sometimes if this is part of why the deterioration of romantic relationships is so hard for me. My good friend, Mary Brigid, once said that love isn't so much about romance or butterflies, as it is about wanting to make that person a part of your family. And so... well yeah, I concur. 'Nuff said there, I suppose.

On to the break-up... The hardest part of that situation - after the fairly standard feelings of rejection and "why doesn't anyone love me?!" - has been all the stuff about me that I'm discovering and having to admit. Pretty steep learning curve there, actually. Many curves, in fact, like a roller coaster. Like, did you know that I have a difficult time telling people I care about that they hurt my feelings? Me neither! Whoosh! (Yes, that's the whoooooshing of my emotional roller coaster.) Just as I get my head around that - whoosh!!! - I realize I'm actually quite devasted by feeling ignored and un-prioritized, and I cope by giving more and more and more... Hence my present state of romantic (and professional) exhaustion.

Then there's the stuff I have to admit. Turns out, I do want to be in an intimate, long term relationship. Who knew?! It doesn't have to be a marriage, or a house in the suburbs, or anything involving children. I just want to know and be known. I'd like to help someone achieve their goals, and have them help me reach mine. I want someone that I'm attracted to to cook for and to travel with. Relatively simple, right? And yet these seemingly undemanding hopes are consistently dashed by the Universe. Because my life is a cosmic farce, no doubt.

And so I throw myself into work. Not my day job, so much--like my current romantic entanglement, I'm trying to inject a healthy dose of not-caring into the Job That Made Me Cry. I mean my freelance writing.

The other morning I had what my mother called a Prophetic Dream, during which, after a series of garbled events, I proclaimed this manifesto to the chochy businessman, who was putting together an ad-filled magazine about the crisis in Haiti:

"Scholars say that the Holocaust is a disconnect--literally a hole in human cultural history. The only way we can begin to comprehend crises of this magnitude, whether they are man-made or natural disasters - is to tell the story of this earthquake through as many voices as we can. The children who felt the earth move, the elders, the medical relief workers... That is the only hope we have of even beginning to understand devastation like this."

I felt weird when I woke up. Like I had found My Life Purpose, if indicated only by the fact that I have an extraordinarily articulate self-conscious, and managed to remember what I said. My mother, a charismatic Christian, also attached all manner of epic, spiritual significance to the thing.

The sense of purpose and direction lasted a few days. Now I just feel overwhelmed. I have all the ideas and no idea what I'm doing at the same time.

And that, my friends, brings you up to this very moment, where I am mitigating the feeling of overwhelmed-to-the-point-of-drowning by writing something relatively inconsequential for my blog.

An ENFP, I've decided that it explains everything that is not going well in my current relationship with an ESTJ.

Apparently, we are like the least compatible types. On the plus side, I think both of our personality types enjoy a challenge.

As ENFPs go, I'm fairly rational and practical. This is possibly due to the fact that I surrounded myself with male physicists in college. Fairly certain they were TJs.

I keep thinking that if my ESTJ manfriend knew just how emotional, sensitive, and illogical the other ENFPs were, he would realize... how amazing I truly am? how good he has it? Wait... that doesn't even make sense. The more logical thing would be for him to go out and find himself a pretty INTJ. She'd be able to intuit the feelings he's not expressing, and, as an introvert, she'd always let him be the center of attention.

While researching personality types, relationships, and depression - all of which I currently suffer from - I came across MBTI's Types Prayers. Here are ours:

ENFP: "God, help me to keep my mind on one th -Look a bird- ing at a time."
ESTJ: "God, help me to not try to RUN everything. But, if You need some help, just ask."

I can make a four million ingredient Thai green curry from scratch without a recipe. I can have a few drinks, and rollerskate, while balancing a Cosmopolitan that's full to the brim. I can change my own engine oil without ruining my manicure (hah! like I ever have a manicure...), and I can decorate a Christmas tree like a hufflepuffer. I also have very, very good taste in shoes.

But of all the things I love about myself - and there are clearly many - I love that no matter how hard I party, dance my face off, or drink myself near oblivion, I can ALWAYS MacGyver up a a greasy treat before I hit the sack.

Right now, for instance, I am eating a three-cheese grilled sandwich, made of flattened hamburger buns, low fat sharp cheddar, and Swiss. And I timed that business so that it would arrive at a perfect state of gooeyness just as I was finishing my shower! (I went to Mulligan's. Mulligans!) I even shaved my legs.

My late-night culinary expertise usually takes the form of savory treats. However, I have been known - with the help of Merbear, the love of my life - to whip up double-chocolate chip cookies from scratch, sans recipe. God, I wish I had some of those now. (Week-old chocolate pudding! That is the huffle-puffin' secret!)

As I reflect on my past relationships (and non-relationships) there have been two men that consistently made me feel amazing. I never felt their interest wane over the entire course of our, admittedly brief (6 and 9 months, respectively) relationships. When we started dating, I felt like they felt privileged to be in my presence. And I felt like that at the end, too.

One of them told me once that his father taught him that when you marry, your wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. He said, "But, Dad what about..." His father cut him off, saying, "No. She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Period."

He must have taken these words to heart, because I always felt beautiful when I was with him. Even when our relationship spiraled into absolute disaster, it was because he cared too much, and I was too young to value that more than the independence I felt logically entitled to. Boy did I feel great afterward knowing I had the logical high ground. Oh wait...

The really annoying thing about The Slack is that all the things men bitch about, e.g., Relationship Talks, would happen far less if they merely put forth a modicum of effort to make their partner feel like a princess once a day. I can't speak for all women, but for me a well-timed surprise - a little flower, or even a tweet - is far more valuable that an evening of duty hanging-out. (This is probably only true if your lady doesn't suspect you of cheating.)

The worst thing so far about the non-relationship is the fact that you go from "princess" to the human equivalent of a broken-in baseball glove, without any of the security that comes from a committed relationship, in an even shorter period of time. It seems that relationship milestones - The Talk, engagement, marriage - delay the Slack because there is still something the man is potentially working for. Though I don't personally see the practical necessity of such milestones, I am forced to concede that there is a psychological necessity to them. He makes you feel amazing for longer, and by the time the Slack is upon you, you are enjoying reduced rent, fewer leftovers, and a weekend playmate.

Michigan Radio just started a new series related to this topic.

While in general, I'm a fan of dialogue, do we really need any more studies on this?

We ALL know why people leave: There are no jobs! There are no opportunities for young knowledge workers! There are some cultural and outdoorsy things to do, but it's really not enough to fill the void a dearth of opportunities for fulfilling, challenging careers with growth potential has left in the hearts of yuppies statewide.

I love how I keep hearing "Friends! Family! Natural beauty!" cited as incentives to stay in Michigan. As if other states don't have these things.

You can make friends everywhere, except possibly New York City and Los Angeles, where the natives are reportedly mean and fake, respectively.

For those of us with families in other states, it's incredibly inconvenient and costly to fly out of West Michgian to see them. With 10 vacation days per year and $350+ tickets to Minneapolis, New York, and D.C., I'm starting to resent it.

And, no, I'm not going to drive 45 minutes to two hours and pay for parking to get a cheaper flight from Kalamazoo, Lansing, or Detroit.

Michigan is pretty, y'all, but the Lake ain't all that. There are other Great Lakes. Wisconsin and Minnesota have equivalent natural beauty from what I understand. And oceans... they're even more impressive! And lovely as I'm sure the Pictured Rocks are -- so are the Blue Ridge mountains and the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.

People also consistently cite "the four seasons" as a reason to stay here. Perhaps this relates to Michigan's educational deficit, but --hello! -- we are not the only state that has four seasons! Unless, you're in Alaska, Hawaii, SoCo, or the Deep South, you probably have all four seasons. And, actually, based on my Northern Exposure viewage, I think Alaska might too. Yes, our midwestern colors are delightful, but they don't hold a candle to the seemingly endless gold of hazy, warm Indian Summer days of Mid-Atlantic states like Virginia.

Admittedly, the possibility of a White Christmas every year is nice, and it's non-existent in Virginia. But after growing up with magical, fragrant air plants like wisteria that spontaneously bloom in the spring, forming lacy purple canopies above tall forests... the Michigan spring leaves a lot to be desired.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm exhausted every morning, but can't seem to get to bed before 1 AM. And not for any particularly good reason. Last night I was looking up furniture on IKEA.

She observed the damaged highway beneath her as she drove from her office to the gym. The road sank under yellow center dashes as if the paint had suddenly become massively heavy.

There were cylindrical potholes, too, about five inches deep. They looked as though they'd been rasped out, like grey decaying flesh, by the jawless teeth-rimmed mouth of a cement-feeding lamprey.

Her mind strayed. She reflected on her own strengths and weaknesses, suspecting that every weakness was a strength taken so far it had collapsed in upon itself.

Method actors practice a form of empathy: they draw on past experiences that corresponds to their characters' in an attempt to better understand them. Her empathy was often considered her greatest asset, though she suspected this was due more to its rarity than its inherent worth.

She didn't have to channel her past to empathize. She simply slipped into another's devastation, elation, frustration, the way she would a glove or a cardigan.

Or did extrinsic emotion fit itself to her? Sometimes, when she entered a broken neighborhood, the collective sorrow of the inhabitants would impress her so strongly that she'd feel all at once deflated.

She found that this additional perception weakened her. She had trouble differentiating between her own feelings and those that had attached themselves to her. In past relationships her own emotional state had been so interconnected with her partners' that she could not trust her feelings to help her make decisions.

Over the years she had developed work arounds. She became intensely logical, which proved beneficial professionally. At work she did express emotion - usually frustration with illogical systems and the ineptitude of middle management - but her co-workers knew it was rigorous internal deliberation, not fleeting emotions, that informed her decisions and guided her actions.

She was a reluctant trailblazer, preferring a spectrum of established models to choose from. Unfortunately, she was also too neurotic to settle.

Her personal life suffered from a similar paucity of alternatives.

Sex and the City: the Movie suggests that (SPOILER ALERT) only 25% of women reach contentment sans partner. All the women she knew were planning weddings and house hunting, nesting, or home improving with their significant others.

That fulfillment required partnering was simply not a logically defensible position, she felt. But, then again, there was no use lying to herself; she too had been quite disappointed by Samantha and Smith's breakup.

She began to feel marginalized by a system she never even wanted to matriculate into.

Upon awakening, she decided productivity was far more likely following a protein-rich (and usually labor-intensive) breakfast--steak and eggs, cheesy mushroom risotto, or similar.

She knew the whole day would be wasted should she remain in her pajamas. We are who we pretend to be, after all, and, as any dramatis persona will tell you, costume is absolutely essential for convincing pretense.

Always fascinated by the Method, she tried to recall a day when she felt entirely effectual as an employee. It was not recent. In fact, she could not remember any such day. She was certain, however, that had it actually occurred, it would have begun with her arrival at the office feeling and looking her most professional, probably in purple suede Marc Jacobs pumps.

Through further imaginary deduction, she determined that efficacy depended on cleanliness. She allowed the pouf to linger languorously on every part of her body as she washed. She cleaned behind her ears and between her toes, noticing the deplorable state of her pedicure as she did so.

By noon, she was dressed for success. She was also quite hungry. Her office had a full kitchen, so she felt it was just as likely that she would be cooking a meal for herself there as in her own home. Besides, the law did require a half-hour lunch for eight hours of work. And who was she to fancy herself above the law?

She arrived at the coffee shop at 1:36 to work. As a salaried worker, she could take a long lunch, she reminded herself. There was no need for guilt, a rather unproductive emotion at best.

Her primary role was writing proposals to secure program support from various institutional funders. Business writing, though perhaps not as creative as flash fiction writing, was still an imaginative exercise, and would undoubtedly benefit from a stream of consciousness warm up.