Priceless.

Hello, I'm back poking my head through the warm waters of the blogosphere. Hope everyone's well and leading very adventurous and amazing lives. Or lazy and relaxed lives, because that's equally fun.

What have I been doing, you ask? Well, let's see:

Work
Work
Work
Work
Eat
Sleep
Work
Work
Saw a girlfriend for dinner
Work

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

The girlfriend that I met was a girl I used to work with in New York, who still works for the same company, but in London. We know a lot of the same people, and it was good to see what business was up to lately.

She's one of those girls that is ridiculously confident and self-aware at her age (we're around the same age), and is hilarious in her black and white approach to things. In her personal life and professional life, she's fun, fair, and has a strong sense of self. A really good all-around person, and fucking amazing at her job.

I realised walking home that nothing is as important as not sressing out: just play the game at work the best you can, and appreciate that you have your health and your family and friends (yeah, I got very philosophical after a couple of pitchers of sangria).

I did get a priceless lesson at work the next day though, and my super-confidence was ripped to shreds.

I was told that...

I am a confident, beautiful woman who knows what she wants and how to get it, and that people find me intimidating and unapproachable, and that's becoming a problem, because they can't connect with me.

And my boss said that this is a problem for him.

Yes, apparently, attractive women in the business world who are trusted to run things, babysit people and their jobs, have kids, run the house- all while wearing high heels, keeping a sweat-free face and odour-free perfectly fit body, and having a sense of humour that is at once beguiling and witty- these women are called BITCHES.

Take that same description and take out the "wo" in the fourth word up above, and you have a CEO that just got handed gold-plated keys to a private jet and a yearly personal supply of Cohibas, and has three secretaries that he's sleeping with all at the same time because people find his confidence hypnotically magnetic.

What do I do? I do love my job so much, and I do really like my boss and his thoughts on what my job should be, but do I change who I am just to make sure that people like me and have nothing of myself left at the end of the work day? Or do I hope that people will learn to understand me and get over their insecurities?

I find it exhausting, this uphill battle that I sometimes have in this country, in this business, trying to figure it all out, trying to work with men that want me to be a man disguised as a woman, and seeing first-hand, in the mister's job, the amount of praise and adulation he gets from being exactly that: confident and aloof and direct.

I think I may need to bite my tongue, change my approach and be a little less-confident and more like everyone else. So be it.

Yes, you read right: A little less-confident.

Priceless.