A Month In Retrospect
This journal thing has become increasingly difficult as time goes on. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I have no time to process what I have to say. As days go on, I barely have time to catch my breath and get back into the fray.
That fray, I might add, is work.
There's nothing else going on, just the job. I get home, spend a few hours trying to calm down enough to let my perpetual exhaustion take over and knock me out, then drag myself out of bed to get up again.
Sunday I almost quit. By almost quit, I mean that the only thing that kept me from quitting was because my hand was shaking with rage too much to dial the phone to tell my manager to go fuck himself. Not only are Sundays bad (we have four people doing five people's jobs, at best), but it was MLK weekend, so everything was twice as insane as usual. Throw in someone approving a day off for a co-worker (without telling anyone else), and another department fucking up their paperwork so badly that when it came down four hours late, I couldn't tell what was what because only an eighth of it was even remotely correct. At that point, the only option I had to fix it was to hand check every single machine in the system and match (guess) what they matched up with.
They acted like "Oh, that's no big deal." Sure it's no big deal, as they are not the ones who have to FIX it. I was.
And I had enough.
Thanks to one of my co-workers who did NOT want me to quit on the spot, he took over and managed to narrow the error down to a single zone (but even that took over an hour, which was in addition to the hour I had spent working on it). For the first time in four years, I needed a cigarette.
A funny work follow up, though. At the going away party for one of my bosses, I arrived semi-early. A few others were there, and we began chatting. These were all day shift people, but I knew most of them, so it wasn't awkward "I don't know you people" conversation, but friendly office joking. I mentioned how, until two days prior, no one even informed me or anyone on swing of the party, we made a joke about the person who had sent the e-mail and forgot half the department, and I even pointed out people who were and were not coming.
I then turned to the wife of a co-worker (who also works near us) and told her how just that week I had said I didn't think she existed because every time I was on days, I NEVER saw her, either because she had the day off, or we passed like ships in the night. "But everyone has a wonderful opinion of you, despite you not existing." "OH, well thank God!"
Then the guy who stapled the post-it turned to me (this is ten minutes after I get there and sit down) and introduces himself.
I then said, "We...we work in the same office." "We do?" "I've seen you half a dozen times in the past few months. There are TWO GUYS on second shift...I'm the one who doesn't sit at your desk." "Oh...I didn't recognise you with a beard." "Even more wrong."
While not EVERY person I work with makes me want to murder a busload of orphans, the few who do make up for it.
In other news, love life remains dead. I was supposed to meet up with someone after the holidays ended, but I haven't heard back since Boxing Day. Another someone (whom I like more than he likes me) flat out said "I miss you," and we have plans to meet up soon, though I'm putting my money on "just hang out as friends" and not "he wants you like that." In an amusing twist, I got over my feelings for one of my straight friends, only to have the universe immediately replace that with a clerk at a store I go to every week going out of his way to talk and flirt with me. I would rather appreciate it if the universe found something else to mess with that wasn't my emotions.
As I noticed recently, one of my co-workers, in two years, has had more boyfriends than I've had dates, ever.
I think I've played "hard to want" for so long that I'm not exactly playing anymore.
For the most part, I've come to accept that being alone happens. But the moments I can't accept it seem to pop up now and then, and it's a crushing wave that just seems to have lied in wait for all that time, waiting to nail me at once. I'll go as far as to admit that I try to avoid situation which are "couple heavy" (no small feat, as just about every last person I know has somebody, and more eerily, almost all of them are happy) given that I'm never sure if, by the end of it, I'll be back in that "I'm alone" place or not.
Alright, onto more fun shit. I've been playing God of War a lot lately. I'd like to point out the game is fantastic, and that the only time I've died multiple times in a row were on puzzles, not enemies. Seriously, the puzzles in the game are disgustingly deadly. "Walk across a maze of balance beams while rotating saw blades swing around and knock you off and you call thousands of feet to your death." "Move a large box around an obstacle in a locked room before spikes shoot up and kill you." "Jump across moving platforms with sawblades spinning in between them in less than thirty seconds, or else you have to go back and do it all AGAIN." "This entire level is made of 'You fall off this and die'." I love the game very much, but would still kick the designer in the balls as hard as humanly possible for this shit. When you die in quick succession, the game asks "Would you like to decrease the difficulty? Only combat will be affected." NO. No, making combat EASIER would NOT help me from the fucking rotating saw blades, thank you very much.
Also, if that's what Pandora's Box looked like, I would bitch-slap Pandora: did you THINK something other than ALL OF THE EVIL IN THE WORLD was in that damn thing?
I saw Sherlock Holmes, which was MUCH better than I was anticipating. Great soundtrack, too. Downey's Sherlock was a bit more fisticuffy and not as aloof as I would have preferred, but everything else was great. Jude Law as Watson was perfect.
For any Sherlockian and Lovecraft aficionado, I highly reccomend Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which you can get for freezies off Audible.com.
I also saw Avatar. And, as someone funny pointed out, it's clearly Pocahontas, because in Dances with Wolves, the white guy went for the one white girl in the indian tribe. Otherwise, I was fairly "meh" about it. There were parts where I even forgot I was watching it in 3D, which made me think "why bother?" There were a few shots that were nice, playing with the depth of space, but for the most part I think seeing it in 2D would have had the same impression on me. It wasn't a BAD movie, but the screenplay was exceptionally uninspired. In fact, there was only one moment (which was minor, really) that I didn't call from the begining. Otherwise, this was the most radically detailed ecosystem applied to the most out-of-a-box-and-paint-by-numbers screenplay.
That fray, I might add, is work.
There's nothing else going on, just the job. I get home, spend a few hours trying to calm down enough to let my perpetual exhaustion take over and knock me out, then drag myself out of bed to get up again.
Sunday I almost quit. By almost quit, I mean that the only thing that kept me from quitting was because my hand was shaking with rage too much to dial the phone to tell my manager to go fuck himself. Not only are Sundays bad (we have four people doing five people's jobs, at best), but it was MLK weekend, so everything was twice as insane as usual. Throw in someone approving a day off for a co-worker (without telling anyone else), and another department fucking up their paperwork so badly that when it came down four hours late, I couldn't tell what was what because only an eighth of it was even remotely correct. At that point, the only option I had to fix it was to hand check every single machine in the system and match (guess) what they matched up with.
They acted like "Oh, that's no big deal." Sure it's no big deal, as they are not the ones who have to FIX it. I was.
And I had enough.
Thanks to one of my co-workers who did NOT want me to quit on the spot, he took over and managed to narrow the error down to a single zone (but even that took over an hour, which was in addition to the hour I had spent working on it). For the first time in four years, I needed a cigarette.
A funny work follow up, though. At the going away party for one of my bosses, I arrived semi-early. A few others were there, and we began chatting. These were all day shift people, but I knew most of them, so it wasn't awkward "I don't know you people" conversation, but friendly office joking. I mentioned how, until two days prior, no one even informed me or anyone on swing of the party, we made a joke about the person who had sent the e-mail and forgot half the department, and I even pointed out people who were and were not coming.
I then turned to the wife of a co-worker (who also works near us) and told her how just that week I had said I didn't think she existed because every time I was on days, I NEVER saw her, either because she had the day off, or we passed like ships in the night. "But everyone has a wonderful opinion of you, despite you not existing." "OH, well thank God!"
Then the guy who stapled the post-it turned to me (this is ten minutes after I get there and sit down) and introduces himself.
I then said, "We...we work in the same office." "We do?" "I've seen you half a dozen times in the past few months. There are TWO GUYS on second shift...I'm the one who doesn't sit at your desk." "Oh...I didn't recognise you with a beard." "Even more wrong."
While not EVERY person I work with makes me want to murder a busload of orphans, the few who do make up for it.
In other news, love life remains dead. I was supposed to meet up with someone after the holidays ended, but I haven't heard back since Boxing Day. Another someone (whom I like more than he likes me) flat out said "I miss you," and we have plans to meet up soon, though I'm putting my money on "just hang out as friends" and not "he wants you like that." In an amusing twist, I got over my feelings for one of my straight friends, only to have the universe immediately replace that with a clerk at a store I go to every week going out of his way to talk and flirt with me. I would rather appreciate it if the universe found something else to mess with that wasn't my emotions.
As I noticed recently, one of my co-workers, in two years, has had more boyfriends than I've had dates, ever.
I think I've played "hard to want" for so long that I'm not exactly playing anymore.
For the most part, I've come to accept that being alone happens. But the moments I can't accept it seem to pop up now and then, and it's a crushing wave that just seems to have lied in wait for all that time, waiting to nail me at once. I'll go as far as to admit that I try to avoid situation which are "couple heavy" (no small feat, as just about every last person I know has somebody, and more eerily, almost all of them are happy) given that I'm never sure if, by the end of it, I'll be back in that "I'm alone" place or not.
Alright, onto more fun shit. I've been playing God of War a lot lately. I'd like to point out the game is fantastic, and that the only time I've died multiple times in a row were on puzzles, not enemies. Seriously, the puzzles in the game are disgustingly deadly. "Walk across a maze of balance beams while rotating saw blades swing around and knock you off and you call thousands of feet to your death." "Move a large box around an obstacle in a locked room before spikes shoot up and kill you." "Jump across moving platforms with sawblades spinning in between them in less than thirty seconds, or else you have to go back and do it all AGAIN." "This entire level is made of 'You fall off this and die'." I love the game very much, but would still kick the designer in the balls as hard as humanly possible for this shit. When you die in quick succession, the game asks "Would you like to decrease the difficulty? Only combat will be affected." NO. No, making combat EASIER would NOT help me from the fucking rotating saw blades, thank you very much.
Also, if that's what Pandora's Box looked like, I would bitch-slap Pandora: did you THINK something other than ALL OF THE EVIL IN THE WORLD was in that damn thing?
I saw Sherlock Holmes, which was MUCH better than I was anticipating. Great soundtrack, too. Downey's Sherlock was a bit more fisticuffy and not as aloof as I would have preferred, but everything else was great. Jude Law as Watson was perfect.
For any Sherlockian and Lovecraft aficionado, I highly reccomend Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which you can get for freezies off Audible.com.
I also saw Avatar. And, as someone funny pointed out, it's clearly Pocahontas, because in Dances with Wolves, the white guy went for the one white girl in the indian tribe. Otherwise, I was fairly "meh" about it. There were parts where I even forgot I was watching it in 3D, which made me think "why bother?" There were a few shots that were nice, playing with the depth of space, but for the most part I think seeing it in 2D would have had the same impression on me. It wasn't a BAD movie, but the screenplay was exceptionally uninspired. In fact, there was only one moment (which was minor, really) that I didn't call from the begining. Otherwise, this was the most radically detailed ecosystem applied to the most out-of-a-box-and-paint-by-numbers screenplay.