Suzy Says

My brother and I decided to get the all steel carport for Josephine. We think it will be a better shelter for her, and cheaper than replacing the plastic covering of the other carport for the next 25 years. Thanks to Babs for her advice.

Here’s my dilemma du jour.

In January every year (inconveniently coinciding with MacWorld, so I can never see Candi and Brian if they come here for it), we have a meeting of our staff from around the world. It’s a huge, wasteful expenditure as far as I’m concerned — our bonus pool is at 35%, and they’re holding the meeting at the Four Seasons Resort in Dallas, where the rooms are $300 a night — and basically just an excuse to drink. I have absolutely no interest in getting toasted with co-workers, local or foreign. And believe me, if you do, you never live it down. People still laugh at the guy who got so drunk one year that he peed in the manager’s office of a bar, being temporarily unable to distinguish it from the men’s room.

I hate to fly at the best of times, and the last time I flew was home from my father’s funeral. It took 3 valiums and a bottle of champagne to get through that 11 hour joyride, only days before the September 11 disasters. So I’m not jumping for joy at the prospect of flying to Dallas, the site chosen for January’s annual debacle. No good has ever come of going to Dallas. Just ask JFK. Also I have managed to avoid Texass, as my friend Dawn calls it, my whole life, and I don’t think I’m missing anything.

My boss came into my office yesterday and asked me if I was going. I said I wasn’t sure, and she said that if I don’t go, it will look like I’m not a team player, don’t care about what our firm does, it will create a negative perception about me within the company, etc. Now, I do consider myself a team player and I take pride in doing my work well, but it is just a job to me. But that’s not why I don’t want to go to Dallas. I don’t want to go because I’m afraid to fly, and I feel too emotional right now to be able to make a rational decision, but I have to, before the end of the month.

So I just laid it on the line with her, and told her about the demons I’ve been fighting since August 18, what my days and nights are like, the things I have had to go through, all this while not missing one single day of work, even when I break down crying. She was pretty floored, and gave me a really big, sincere hug. I was ready to let go before she was. Wow. Then she said it was completely up to me, she’d understand whatever I decided.

So that’s the problem. I can get out of it now, but don’t know if I should. The flight to Dallas is just a little over 3 hours, so it could be a good way of easing into flying again, especially since I will be doing a fair bit next year. I’d like to go to Maine for my 40th birthday in June, and at some point we should visit Rufus’ folks in Ontario, Canada, and finally, I will need to go to England at some point next year, so I should try to get over it. But it does scare me, a lot. I hate having to act like a grown-up. I still don’t feel like one, and I don’t know what to do.