Good Day
I intended to write this at the end of yesterday before I went to bed, but I only have so much energy and I overdrew on it at about 9 pm, so when I got home at midnight I was beat.
My good day began shittily. I’d completely disjuncted my sleeping schedule from anything anyone could consider normal. This is not good for me; from November through about April my body likes to default to sleeping if you give it the chance. Unless something very important is happening I’ll sleep. I make up for the drop in productivity during November through April by being a busy beaver during May through September. So while the origins begin in a haze, all I remember is I forced my way to sleep the day before my good day, because, well I was trying to keep a sleeping schedule.
My body listens to me too well. I slept right through the beginning of work. Given I’m currently competing with several post office workers for most disgruntled employee, I decided not to come in. I know it hurts me, but its the only way I can give them the finger. (I tried actually giving them the finger, but standing in front of the company sign throwing birds, well lets say I think the sign won, it didn’t flinch while I eventually got tired after four hours.)
So following my policy I called in about 11 minutes before the end of my shift, since the company thinks calling in 89 minutes before the beginning of your shift and 1 minute before the end of your shift is the same, I decided to take advantage of their confusion.
By the time I called off from work and hid from the world, it was almost midnight. Starting your day at midnight is akin to starting a race the week after it has finished, everyone else is done and you gotta plot your own race to run.
I settled in to piss away another day. I did though do my laundry and make Christmas gifts, so in that regard I was anti-piss.
Come 4 or 5 am, somewhere thereabouts the crowd who went to go see Lord of The Rings at midnight, in a misguided attempt to atone for not seeing Star Wars one during the the first three hours it was released, came home. While I had been looking at jobs in Cincy, one of the atonement seekers made mention of a job for Citicards in the Cincy area. So like a good internet connected computer, I searched and applied for the job before I was planning on going to bed.
Then I hopped in the shower to keep my newly washed sheets clean, and I realized, “Wait, I’m not tired, theres a testing session for the job today. Eh, what the hell. its only a job who cares if I’m cracked out and slightly tired?” So in a half naked rage getting out of the shower, I got everything together (from the Internet of course) and hopped on the road to Kentucky.
Traffic Sucks.
Despite a net loss my planned speed of arrival into Cincinnati of 65 miles per hour, I managed to arrive to the testing session only 5 minutes late. Not bad. First thing I noticed, this call center well, was clean, and it actually was kinda beautiful, they’d actually gotten an architect to attempt to do something beautiful, instead of my utilitarian call center. I had left Russia and come to America!
While there was lots of company drivel, by the end of our three and a half hour odyssey, I had passed the initial screening, and realized that, hell they’re a big old for profit evil bank, and they actually seem to care about their employees. Where the fuck was my little quaint non-profit employer who assumes employees are in the toilet coming from?
On my way out, I called a friend who lives in to have our prearranged lunch, and since I got his cell phone company’s computer, I spent an hour trying to coax from my memory where the Apple store was located to get a foot pad for my laptop. (oh, and of course I stopped at Starbucks for a battery charger.)
While I was there I had a great little conversation with the Genius Bar guy, got online exchanged email with a support rep in NYC, set up my lunch online, and consulted on Amazon’s shipping habits. All courtesy of free wireless in Apple’s store.
So after yet another odyssey of getting lost in Cincinnati, I arrived late at TGI Friday’s well before my friend, who was running really late.
I waited.
And Waited.
And Waited.
And Waited.
So finally my friend arrived and our flare starved waitress (the current “corporate” look of Friday’s sucks.) got to the fun part of serving us. We had a great lunch and after some, err well frank conversation, I ended my odyssey to Cincinnati.
My good day got a bit mundane. I got gas, visited the library, chilled at home for a bit, opened my mail, and went to my post office-esque crappy call center job.
Changing jobs started to settle in. I began to think of how much I’d miss this bunch of people. I mean the job sucks, the work is bleh, but theres a group of the people there who are golden. I’ve begun to miss school/community/regional theatre’s structure, where you build a community around a show, with the knowledge that it is going to end, that the show won’t go on forever, and come closing night, everyone is going to say, well it was great! Then, pack up their bags and go home, and get started in the next direction. Its not one person packing their bags leaving the group, its the group ending. Its a tacit acknowledgment of the ethereal nature of life, our communities aren’t permeant, but instead of continually reformulating them, theatre just gets rid of them.
After struggling to stay awake in the call center oven, I finally got off work and got home at midnight. Not to ever be undone by having too much of a good thing, I got online for a little wind down, and got dragged into helping Tommy debug some javascript. I love that boy, but he definitely asks a lot.. He owes me a few blow jobs when I see him next.
I made my bed, hopped in its cozy entrapments, and slept quite soundly, drifting to the next day, where promise and opportunity awaits.