May you get what you wish for

So I realize that's a grammatically incorrect title, but it's an ancient curse of some sort, so I'm leaving it as is.

Anyway, the other day I found a great pair of pants at the mall, but they weren't available in my size. I went to the same store at another mall, and still no luck. I decided I'd try to find them online, but then stopped myself, because maybe these pants are simply not meant to be.

About a year ago, I enlisted Minnams as my personal shopper as I searched for the perfect wedding rehearsal dress. We started off at Nordstrom, where I, just for fun, tried on this incredibly overpriced dress, just to get it out of my system, because I was sure that I'd hate it on me even though I loved it on the rack.

And of course, it was perfect on me; it was THE dress. It fit beautifully, the color didn't wash me out, it was not quite plain and not quite flashy. But it was still a million dollars, and I simply couldn't justify spending that much on a dress, because I'd already used up my one free "I'm only getting married once; I can overspend on a dress!" rationalization on the actual wedding dress. So back on the rack it went, and of course nothing else the rest of the day measured up to the perfect Tocca dress from Nordstrom's (although a trip to Cold Stone Creamery made the day feel successful nonetheless).

So then Minnams introduced me to the beautiful world of Bluefly, and I checked at least once a week to see whether my rehearsal dress was available at half price, because then I could justify it, and I kept going back to Nordstrom's, hoping for a sale there. No luck.

I finally found another dress by the same designer on Bluefly, one that I ended up really liking, and that I've worn several times since. But just for kicks, about a month after our wedding, I went back on Bluefly and there was my beautiful, meant-to-be rehearsal dress, at deep discount.

And when it arrived on my doorstep a few days later, I was so happy; I tried it on right away, ran to the full-length mirror, and HATED it. The material looked thin and cheap, it gathered funnily in weird places, it was totally unflattering. I am so loathe to return things I've ordered online or from a catalog, because I just find it to be such a hassle, but this went straight back in the box, no turning back.

My sister recently had a longer-standing, bigger dream crushed: for ages, she has been saying that all she wants is an eternal lap pool. Now that she and her husband have finally finished medical school and residencies and have jobs where they're actually paid well to be doctors, they bought a house, and she went to try out an eternal lap pool that they'd add to the new home. And, of course, she hated it. It only worked well if you maintain a constant speed, which she neither can nor wants to do, and the reality of it was just nowhere close to the ideal in her mind. So now they're getting a canoe instead, which I expect is considerably cheaper than a lap pool, but still.

I think that this curse of getting what you wish for is why I've been scared to find a new job; the one I have is pretty darn good (and I'm here for at least another year-ish, anyway, since my new job here is still pretty new, and I'm not quite ready to abandon it), and what if my dream job ends up sucking the life out of me? In my high school yearbook, we did a poll of what jobs people hoped to have in 10 years, and mine was to be a writer for Sesame Street. I actually applied for an internship with them in college, but was told I submitted my application too late and that the position had been filled, but hadn't thought much about it since that time.

Recently, though, I met someone who'd long worked for Sesame, and I told her about my dream deferred. And she said, "Oh, I still know plenty of people there; I'd be glad to send them your resume." And I just froze, because I'd heard her talk about the bureaucracy and the politics of the place, and I just thought I wouldn't be able to stand it if I actually got a job there and it didn't live up to my expectations, which it never could.

I know this is sort of pathological, and luckily I don't -- yet, anyway -- seem to have let this type of thinking affect other kinds of decisions in life, I guess because I'm not generally a head-in-the-clouds, pie-in-the-sky kind of person. Sometimes I think I lean toward cynicism and pessimism, maybe so I'm not disappointed when the perfect dress looks awful, or the dream job sucks.

Although, in reality, it took me a good couple of years before my wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm about my current job faded, and I still like it even though I've realized it's not perfect. Maybe the trick is just need to modify one's expectations along the way, because it has got to be awfully depressing always thinking that this is as good as it gets, no matter how good it is now.