I got off work early today. Despite my lack of effort to look especially horrific, they sent me home because I "didn't look well". That always cracks me up, but I was still grateful anyway. I have a lot to do to prepare for our trip this weekend and I want everything to be as perfect as possible. I haven't planned a camping trip for a few years, and I think I've done a piss poor job so far. I booked the site last weekend and bought everything I could think of yesterday. I still forgot the essentials...like batteries...and managed to remember the ever important...like cheddarwursts. Work was much better today. I don't know why, but I have the worst freak outs before work sometimes. It used to be this way with school when I was a child...the majority of the time. There were a few years when I was excited to go...and it was either when I was pulling a 4.0 or needed to get away from my family in any fashion possible. Although, even during the latter I would ditch with my best friend of the moment and smoke cigarillos behind the supermarket down the street. This morning was one of the worst so far. I was panicking...my stomach was churning, my heart was pounding, I was sweating. I couldn't put my finger on why, and as soon as I sat at my desk I was fine. Everybody likes me very much, and even when BossLady is being a bitch from hell, she apologizes to me or tries to clarify that she's not upset with me. I just can't stand the general feeling of anxiety in the air. People are pissed off because they're overworked and underpaid, BossLady is furious because nobody can seem to do their jobs without bothering her...and I'm sitting in a cubicle in the back of an office as quiet as possible so that nobody comes to bitch at me. I don't want to hear the drama. I don't give a damn about the gossip. I just want to come in, do my job and go home to my family.
It's back to packing for me. I've got the outdoor necessities in OC little piles in the garage, and the indoor necessities are screaming to be organized in their respective receptacles. I forgot how much I love camping. My Fruit, I can't wait to spend a relaxing weekend with you and the Magster. I love you.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Playing Hooky
I woke up this morning with a familiar ache in my stomach that dictated immediately the fact that I should not go to work. After my two cups of coffee and an hour of reflection while watching the news, I broke down and called my boss. Whenever I am new to a job, the first time calling in sick is always the most difficult. No matter how true or untrue my illness may be, I always feel that the first get out of work free card will result in a downward spiral ultimately leading to the demise of my performance and employment. The same is true for other such behaviors as well...such as scribbling personal notes in my work-issued notepad or reading get fuzzy in the morning over my third cup of coffee. I have had these obsessive kinds of feelings since I was a child at school, and whether they be psychological, superstitious or otherwise have pretty much always held true. The first call is the point at which I believe I begin to sabotage myself. I often wonder if this is true for others as well.
My second measure is whether or not I am called by said employer. This tells me just how available a resource I have made myself...how dependent on me I have allowed them to become. I had hoped that I would not be summoned, but, considering the fact that I was promoted on my second day and have become their virtually free IT support, this was way too much to hope for. The first call came at eleven from the girl who had originally trained me for her position on my first day. Apparently it is my job to configure her PC Anywhere connection while she is on maternity leave and I miraculously know where the software is kept, being the former IT guru I supposedly was. I abandoned system administration for a few reasons. One was that I wasn't really very efficient and the other was that I was so damned burnt out and stressed that I had become a monster...a stranger to myself and my wife. Unfortunately, I have managed to become the "computer girl" again. The second call was around three thirty from my boss. She had some issues with her email yesterday that I fixed for her, and I switched her from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. I am kicking myself for that now. I could go down the list of all the reasons to switch to the Mozilla package, but the truth is that I really don't care anymore. This is all from my past life and should have stayed there. I don't know why I always feel the need to help in any way I can. It makes them way too dependent on me, and I really just wanted a simple and mind numbing job to recover from my geek years.
The store I work for is a very peculiar kind of crazy. Bosslady takes her business as seriously as parents take their children and becomes very angry if someone is not "smart enough" to do their job as she would do it. She throws tantrums, she storms around the office...she leads people to quit after a few weeks or months of employment and offers no benefits other than a discount if you happen to last three months. The store sounded perfect in the interview...all animal lovers and honest, hard working people. I can understand the personalities I work with and I thought that it would be easy for me to be happy here.
Three weeks later, I am missing my time at home...longing to be a happy housewife again. I drink...I twitch...I snap at my wife. I get pains in my stomach and suspect germs crawling all over my body at the end of the day. There is a layer of filth on everything in the office from the dirt lot outside. The bathroom reeks of urine and mildew, and the office equipment looks as if it belongs in a museum rather than chugging away to process reports. It's an obsessive-compulsive's nightmare and leaves me looking at my paycheck and asking whether it is worth it. Is anyplace else really any better? All workplaces have their own brand of crazy, and it's really just a matter and figuring out which one you can deal with. I have yet to find mine. The longest I've worked anywhere was three years. At each job, I think that I should go back to school to do what I really want...and then I spend months trying to figure out what the hell that is. I suspect that most people spend the majority of their working years asking themselves that question. I never wanted to be one of them, but then, who does?
As a child, I thought I would be an artist of some sort...or perhaps a therapist. The problem is that I never quite feel good enough at anything I do. It seems to be the law that there is always someone better, and the chances of making any real money as an artist are pretty slim. A therapist, not so much, but I just don't have the discipline or the resources to finish school. I have changed my major at least five times, and despite four or five years of trying have only completed fifteen units. I haven't a clue how many of them are transferable and of those fifteen, at least half were simply a result of flying under the radar or guilting the teacher into giving me a C. It's nauseating the amount of excuses and rationalizations I could come up with.
In retrospect, though, this day off has done me good...and has also done the opposite. I spent time with my wife and took care of some things I needed to do for our trip this weekend. On the other hand, the little voice in my head is nudging me to call in sick again tomorrow or conjure a way to be sent home early. After all, one must look their worst when returning from a day of playing hooky, right?
My second measure is whether or not I am called by said employer. This tells me just how available a resource I have made myself...how dependent on me I have allowed them to become. I had hoped that I would not be summoned, but, considering the fact that I was promoted on my second day and have become their virtually free IT support, this was way too much to hope for. The first call came at eleven from the girl who had originally trained me for her position on my first day. Apparently it is my job to configure her PC Anywhere connection while she is on maternity leave and I miraculously know where the software is kept, being the former IT guru I supposedly was. I abandoned system administration for a few reasons. One was that I wasn't really very efficient and the other was that I was so damned burnt out and stressed that I had become a monster...a stranger to myself and my wife. Unfortunately, I have managed to become the "computer girl" again. The second call was around three thirty from my boss. She had some issues with her email yesterday that I fixed for her, and I switched her from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. I am kicking myself for that now. I could go down the list of all the reasons to switch to the Mozilla package, but the truth is that I really don't care anymore. This is all from my past life and should have stayed there. I don't know why I always feel the need to help in any way I can. It makes them way too dependent on me, and I really just wanted a simple and mind numbing job to recover from my geek years.
The store I work for is a very peculiar kind of crazy. Bosslady takes her business as seriously as parents take their children and becomes very angry if someone is not "smart enough" to do their job as she would do it. She throws tantrums, she storms around the office...she leads people to quit after a few weeks or months of employment and offers no benefits other than a discount if you happen to last three months. The store sounded perfect in the interview...all animal lovers and honest, hard working people. I can understand the personalities I work with and I thought that it would be easy for me to be happy here.
Three weeks later, I am missing my time at home...longing to be a happy housewife again. I drink...I twitch...I snap at my wife. I get pains in my stomach and suspect germs crawling all over my body at the end of the day. There is a layer of filth on everything in the office from the dirt lot outside. The bathroom reeks of urine and mildew, and the office equipment looks as if it belongs in a museum rather than chugging away to process reports. It's an obsessive-compulsive's nightmare and leaves me looking at my paycheck and asking whether it is worth it. Is anyplace else really any better? All workplaces have their own brand of crazy, and it's really just a matter and figuring out which one you can deal with. I have yet to find mine. The longest I've worked anywhere was three years. At each job, I think that I should go back to school to do what I really want...and then I spend months trying to figure out what the hell that is. I suspect that most people spend the majority of their working years asking themselves that question. I never wanted to be one of them, but then, who does?
As a child, I thought I would be an artist of some sort...or perhaps a therapist. The problem is that I never quite feel good enough at anything I do. It seems to be the law that there is always someone better, and the chances of making any real money as an artist are pretty slim. A therapist, not so much, but I just don't have the discipline or the resources to finish school. I have changed my major at least five times, and despite four or five years of trying have only completed fifteen units. I haven't a clue how many of them are transferable and of those fifteen, at least half were simply a result of flying under the radar or guilting the teacher into giving me a C. It's nauseating the amount of excuses and rationalizations I could come up with.
In retrospect, though, this day off has done me good...and has also done the opposite. I spent time with my wife and took care of some things I needed to do for our trip this weekend. On the other hand, the little voice in my head is nudging me to call in sick again tomorrow or conjure a way to be sent home early. After all, one must look their worst when returning from a day of playing hooky, right?
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Mixed Nuts
I have been through therapy for many years...and still not quite as long as I should have been. It always seemed odd to me, sitting on the proverbial couch and picking the scabs from my emotional wounds before a wide eyed stranger. Like my dear fruitofnut, I have been newly angered by a fellow blogger on this site...the only small difference being that this blogger is my brother. Together, we endured very much the same childhood, and yet just distinctly different enough to enlist opposite views of the world and our current situations. BloggerX and I have danced around many a topic in our adulthood...I thought desperately trying to avoid the conflicts that would send me into a rage, beating his head and wishing that he had never breathed his first on this peculiar little planet of ours. Recently, he has informed me in no uncertain terms that I, alone, see the world through the filter of our dysfunctional childhood. I think sometimes that I had it harder...because I am "the girl". Our parents are very irrational individuals with their own flavors of neuroses. Unfortunately, and fatefully (I presume), I have a distinct flavor of my own.
With my Fruit's gentle, maybe not quite so gentle, nudging, I saw a psychiatrist yesterday. This was the first time in a couple of years that I have seen a specialist. The last time bought me three years of sitting on a couch once or twice a week with a buffet of antidepressants that supposedly rendered me a functioning member of society. Part of me always believes that this is simply my being a hypochondriac with the ability to perceive the set of symptoms the doctor is looking for. I can't really be crazy, right? Regardless, I am still unable to make decisions...from as small as what to eat to as large as what to do with my life. Usually, I will get overwhelmed with over-thinking the complexities and opt to do nothing. Perhaps this is a product of being raised in the paranoid and self serving world of Los Angeles...and perhaps I really do have the buffet of primarily genetic mental disorders that my psycho-doctors scribble frantically on their well worn pads of paper. Perhaps my brother somehow escaped unscathed...or maybe he is in the tell-tale stages of denial. No matter, I feel that we will never truly see eye-to-eye.
Sitting down on the chair in his office, I remembered fondly the times I would sit on my last therapist's couch. Sometimes she would put her hand to her chin thinker-style and furrow her brow at what I had to say. Others, she would merrily grab her pad of paper and scribble down the dreams I was dictating or the memories I was reliving. I grew very fond of her...and I think to an extent would regale her with the most obscure of mental drudgery just to predict her ultimate reaction. This, however, was my first time sitting before the male of the psycho-doctor species. I get a different diagnosis every time. I get a different flavor of crazy with each specialist I sit before...and I spend the next series of days pondering just how the new brand of medication and number of "diagnosis party mix" will ultimately affect me. Maybe this time, the overlapping thought processes in my head will be honed down to one. Perhaps in a few months, I will be able to make simple decisions...and the more complex will follow. Maybe I will be able to count the register at work once or twice with confidence, rather than four or five times in the hopes of writing down the exact same outcome each time. Hopefully, I will be able to accompish tasks in the time it takes an average person...and respond to my brother in a timely fashion, concisely and effectively communicating my stance without self-doubt and fear of having to defend myself in a more effectual fashion.
I love my FuitofNut dearly and fervently wish that things had gone better with my ever disappointing blood. I promise, despite brain chemicles and genetic inadequacies, to right the horrific wrongs that have transpired...and to communicate more clearly and more frequently the processes that take place in this mangled mass of gray matter I possess. FruitofNut, you are my everything.
With my Fruit's gentle, maybe not quite so gentle, nudging, I saw a psychiatrist yesterday. This was the first time in a couple of years that I have seen a specialist. The last time bought me three years of sitting on a couch once or twice a week with a buffet of antidepressants that supposedly rendered me a functioning member of society. Part of me always believes that this is simply my being a hypochondriac with the ability to perceive the set of symptoms the doctor is looking for. I can't really be crazy, right? Regardless, I am still unable to make decisions...from as small as what to eat to as large as what to do with my life. Usually, I will get overwhelmed with over-thinking the complexities and opt to do nothing. Perhaps this is a product of being raised in the paranoid and self serving world of Los Angeles...and perhaps I really do have the buffet of primarily genetic mental disorders that my psycho-doctors scribble frantically on their well worn pads of paper. Perhaps my brother somehow escaped unscathed...or maybe he is in the tell-tale stages of denial. No matter, I feel that we will never truly see eye-to-eye.
Sitting down on the chair in his office, I remembered fondly the times I would sit on my last therapist's couch. Sometimes she would put her hand to her chin thinker-style and furrow her brow at what I had to say. Others, she would merrily grab her pad of paper and scribble down the dreams I was dictating or the memories I was reliving. I grew very fond of her...and I think to an extent would regale her with the most obscure of mental drudgery just to predict her ultimate reaction. This, however, was my first time sitting before the male of the psycho-doctor species. I get a different diagnosis every time. I get a different flavor of crazy with each specialist I sit before...and I spend the next series of days pondering just how the new brand of medication and number of "diagnosis party mix" will ultimately affect me. Maybe this time, the overlapping thought processes in my head will be honed down to one. Perhaps in a few months, I will be able to make simple decisions...and the more complex will follow. Maybe I will be able to count the register at work once or twice with confidence, rather than four or five times in the hopes of writing down the exact same outcome each time. Hopefully, I will be able to accompish tasks in the time it takes an average person...and respond to my brother in a timely fashion, concisely and effectively communicating my stance without self-doubt and fear of having to defend myself in a more effectual fashion.
I love my FuitofNut dearly and fervently wish that things had gone better with my ever disappointing blood. I promise, despite brain chemicles and genetic inadequacies, to right the horrific wrongs that have transpired...and to communicate more clearly and more frequently the processes that take place in this mangled mass of gray matter I possess. FruitofNut, you are my everything.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Sore Spot
I am creating this blog on the back of pure anger for another blogger at this site. I never imagined that I would want to spew my less than cynnical views with a public voice, nor that anyone would even give a rats you know what, but here I am. A changed woman bleeding in public, advertising my life for all to see.
I can feel my views on life changing with each word I paste on this page. The cynicism I fought back for so long rising through the ranks to become my primary view on the world. Stepping on honesty and laughing at Karma, my views become less about hope and lean towards anger and self preservation.
Let the evolution begin!
I can feel my views on life changing with each word I paste on this page. The cynicism I fought back for so long rising through the ranks to become my primary view on the world. Stepping on honesty and laughing at Karma, my views become less about hope and lean towards anger and self preservation.
Let the evolution begin!
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