In the Circle

thingsiatethatilove:

I worked in an office yesterday. I started doing this a little bit toward the end of the summer because, fiscally and psychologically,  I needed something stable in my life.   When I started I knew I would have the day where the whole enterprise stopped seeming exotic and anthropologically fascinating and started seeming like nothing more or less than my life.  Yesterday was the day.  Winter might have had something to do with it — coming in when it’s light, leaving when it’s dark — and also  I now have a key-card to swipe at the security gate. I’m not visiting; I really (sort of, sometimes, once a week or so) work there. 

It seems miraculous that I’ve managed to support my and my cat’s profligate rent-paying, dentist-going lifestyle this long without ever having had a “day job,” but maybe this says more about my inability to compartmentalize than anything else.  Whatever I’ve done, I’ve brought my whole self to the table, for better or worse.  So it feels schizo to have a job where I just deploy a fraction of myself, and in a way, it’s kind of fun. 

But it’s also weirdly draining. Also I spend a lot of time on the Internet at my desk there, in a different way than I usually do.  I think the difference is between participation and observation, partially?   I’d thought I would come home last night and work but instead I sat right down on the couch and watched an hour of True Life: I’m Pregnant on MTV.  “We’re naming him Chance because what were the chances I’d get pregnant?” said the 19 year old who’d been about to break up with her alcoholic sketchball boyfriend when she’d learned that her birth control had failed.   By the end of the episode, Chance was three months old and the breakup had finally occurred, though the couple was still living together. 

I turned on my computer and instead of using it to work I tweeted something about 16 And Pregnant and abortion that got RT’d widely enough that right-wing loonies with cat avatars (such a misuse of cat avatars!) felt compelled to weigh in.  This spooked me so much that I finally bid farewell to the Internet for the day.  I got into bed, reread part of Elisa Albert’s wonderful black-comic novel The Book of Dahlia and fell asleep. 

Asleep, I dreamed that Molly McAleer had invited me to a party at her house, which was an impressive albeit grimy duplex condo.  But her friends were trying to punk her by flooding the bathroom, which they thought would be funny.  They giggled “Shh! Don’t tell her!”  I wanted to do the right thing so I went upstairs, where Molly was lying on her messy bed, and told her what was happening.  We both realized we were too drunk to do anything about it though and then we lay down on the bed and fell asleep.

I think this is a cautionary tale but I’m not sure exactly what I’m trying to caution you against. 

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… but it’s working.

i’m trying to think if i’ve ever had a job where i ‘brought my whole self to the table’, and i don’t think so. it seems like such a waste. i guess that’s what this change is about. 

three more weeks now before i can do whatever i want, for better or worse. i keep waiting for fear to kick in, but it hasn’t. i’m waiting now, and i’m excited and bored at the same time. three weeks is nothing but it’s a very long time.  

this is monday morning, it’s raining and i have a cold. i dreamt about breaking up with my ex-boyfriend and felt the numbness of it sitting in my chest as the alarm went off. i have to get going now and i really don’t want to. but today my biggest problem is that i feel too rough to cycle and will have to take the train. in other words, things are allright.