My work, in progress
Night falls on the eve of my second day as a Real Person, and I’ve come to a conclusion: I’d really like to go back to being a fake one again.">
The Boss arrived today, flight in at 9 am, meeting at 9:30 that I was supposed to attend. If yesterday was vague and purposeless, today was sure to be full of direction and orders, so I wasn’t really surprised to find that when my alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 8, I was already wide awake. Slacks, shirt, yoghurt-before-toothpaste, pretty new heels which behaved themselves perfectly well once I’d pulled them away from the corrupting influence of nylons and skirts. A refreshing walk put me at the bus stop, cheerful and awake at 8:24, ready to greet the 8:28 bus -and the day - with a smile and a starched backbone.
It was a good start.
I feel as though there are only so many times one can look plaintively at the sky, and the nearest Person In Charge, and protest soulfully “but there wasn’t anything I could have done!” If there is in fact a quota, I have become one step closer to it, and began consequentially to rethink my policy on busses. I’m hardly the sort of person to condemn an entire species based on the actions of a single member, but as the sun climbed slowly above treetops and cozy apartments, I began to think rather unpleasant thoughts at my 8:28 bus.
Which wasn’t there.
All right, I thought, hardly the end of the world. The 8:28 bus, after all, was in my head already tenderly nicknamed as ‘that bus that’ll get me to work ridiculously early but hey, I’ll make a good impression’. Everyone has bad days, if the 8:28 was having such difficulties who was I to make it worse by thinking unkindly about it? No, I would simply console myself in the plush cushions of its 8:45 cousin, and get to work exactly on time.
By 8:50, my thoughts had taken a significantly less charitable start. My shoes, for one thing, are very pretty but really not cut out for just standing around for half an hour. My nerves certainly weren’t, panic slowly creeping up my spine as minutes ticked by and far too many songs looped on my iPod. By the time the unscheduled 8:55 bus crept shamefully up to the stop, I had lost any fondness I had for the breed and was beginning to understand the reports of commuter strikes I’d heard very little about.
9:13, my bus proved to be capable at least of taking me to my destination, if not in any sort of timely manner, but still had a long way to go before I’d forgive it. In the office, A had not yet arrived, saving me from having to do something silly like commit ritual suicide on behalf of public transport. I sat myself down at my desk, under Dee’s understanding gaze, and made like I’d been productively working for ages; moments later A swept in, and the day really began.
I have rarely been in a position to hear a number of engaged, politically-minded individuals chat about something they thought was important. Even if the subject (what subject?) was less than fascinating, it was still a real experience to be able to listen to the conversation. Even more so when I remembered half way through the talk one of the terms of my employment: for as long as I am at work here in Ottawa, I am to be a Conservative.
I’ve always had doubts about my political orientation. The NDP party seems overly ambitious and a little bit naïve, the Liberals are very good at maintaining things (one must at least applaud consistency?), I’m more Conservative than most of my Liberal friends, and going Green is all well and good for the environment but occasionally makes me think of things beginning to mould.
But a flat-out Conservative I am not, at least not on a normal Tuesday. Still, the moment that little blue light turned on in my head the entire political discussion I was overhearing took on a very different significance. How, I found myself wondering, do these issues (what issues?) effect the people paying the most taxes? Ambitious projects are all well and good, but where is the money supposed to come from? Am I really worrying about what a group of upper-middle-class city-dwellers might think about the lobster season?
Does any of this actually have anything to do with me?
Apparently.
Several hours later I returned to my desk, mind open, thoughts swimming, yearning to return to the tenuous familiarity of my reading, reading, more reading. My job, as outlined to me by Bea in yesterday’s phone call. Soon, I thought, I’d start to get the hang of this. A week or two, I’d settle, learn the trends, figure out my place.
A word of advice: never think those sort of things aloud. Dee offered me a commiserating sort of smile as A chuckled. Oh no, they both told me in horrifying near-unison. There’s no such thing as settling, in my office. Plans change constantly; entire schedules are put backwards, with no warning, on a regular basis. Some, or all, or none of it may involve me. In short, nothing will ever be any less confusing than it was today.
If this narrative seems to jump around, sometimes unnecessarily detailed, othertimes painfully inadequate, all I can say is that it could not be more appropriate to my life right now.
My reading was all neatly sorted in a pile, prioritized by dates due that range somewhere between this Friday and next Something. It was all instantly swept aside, so metaphorically it might as well have been physically, to make room for something I had neither heard of nor begun to understand. A report, to be read and summarized for this afternoon, 4:00. Next afternoon, 4:00. Well, one of the two.
Summarized, neatly, in bullet points, in a separate document.
Highlighted, in the same document.
Never highlighted; circled, but not in red pen.
Given as an oral report, tomorrow morning.
On second (third? Fourth? Fifth?) thought, simply read, along with seven other reports, possibly understood, to be presented in a form undetermined, at some point in time other than now.
If I didn’t have most of that down in writing (email, my love and my bane) I would swear I’d simply hallucinated the entire hour. As it stands, I’ve learned a valuable piece of information: if I follow all of the instructions I’m given as I’m given them, I will undoubtedly contradict myself at least twice and do the same thing both correctly and massively wrong.
Such, my mother would say, is life.
The rest of the day passed in something of a blur of reports, highlighting, and semi-redundant notetaking. I was shocked to realise at the end of it that in spite of dividing my time near the end, splitting my attention between Europe and after-hours-gmail, that I actually had some understanding of the general picture behind my specific articles. By the time 7:00 rolled around, I felt like I’d actually accomplished something, and that it was therefore time to crack my spine out of its chair and head to the mall in search of a surge protector and maybe a manicure.
At this point I have to say, as a Torontonian-turned-Montrealler, that there is something wrong with Ottawa. The people here are almost universally friendly. The security guards smiled as I let myself out of the office; the man at the bus stop waved to me for absolutely no good reason; the man ahead of me in line laughed in British-accented English (and French) as he tried to pawn me a coupon he apparently didn’t need; the guy in the game store seemed really sorry he didn’t have what I was looking for; the girl in the electronics store was really excited about the sale on surge protectors. The people waiting at the bus stop looked tranquil, rather than impatient, and my bus purred to a halt just as I arrived, before I could even consider abandoning it for the heavily-laden walk home.
I found myself reluctantly forgiving it for its early-morning cousins’ tardiness, so happily did it drop me off a block from A’s apartment.
A spent the evening out for dinner, which left me pleasantly alone to heat up my leftovers and make a vague attempt at a salad. Already, I’m finding that I’m forcing myself into unnatural habits to make the upcoming few months easier; my father always told me that when one is the guest, one is obliged to do everything in one’s power to make the host’s life as easy as possible (nevermind the fact that when one is the host, one would be remiss if one’s guest ever had to lift a finger). While I occasionally mutter about unfairness and double standards, I’m grateful now for having that forewarning.
I could be wrong, A is after all both kind and generous, but I don’t think much attention is going to be paid this summer to not inconveniencing me. It falls to me, therefore, to make myself un-inconveniencable. I can do it, I think; there will be a lot of keeping neat and tidy, and even more keeping out of the way, but none of those are beyond my ability. Only one thing troubles me. A brief conversation as A returned from dinner made something startlingly clear to me: life is short, time is money, there’s no sense beating around bushes.
Now, much and all as we’re all unique and special snowflakes in the swirling blizzard that is life, I am very much my mother’s daughter. That means many things at many times, but rising again and again to the surface is the notion of treating others as you want to be treated, and of wanting to be treated relatively well. Polite phrases flow from me like rivers down a mountain, qualifiers and reassurances, apologies and gratitudes, ten thousand ways of circling around the point I want to make so as to be sure that whoever I’m talking to takes it exactly the way I want it to be taken.
That’s not gonna fly here.
And at this point, there’s not much I can do other than shrug my shoulders, and much on a cookie. I have accepted that this summer is not likely to involve very much relaxing of my guard, letting down of my shoulders. I’m already going to be spending four months pretending to be a Conservative. How much harder could it possibly be to be a brash one?
Somehow, I get the impression that I’m about to find out.
The Boss arrived today, flight in at 9 am, meeting at 9:30 that I was supposed to attend. If yesterday was vague and purposeless, today was sure to be full of direction and orders, so I wasn’t really surprised to find that when my alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 8, I was already wide awake. Slacks, shirt, yoghurt-before-toothpaste, pretty new heels which behaved themselves perfectly well once I’d pulled them away from the corrupting influence of nylons and skirts. A refreshing walk put me at the bus stop, cheerful and awake at 8:24, ready to greet the 8:28 bus -and the day - with a smile and a starched backbone.
It was a good start.
I feel as though there are only so many times one can look plaintively at the sky, and the nearest Person In Charge, and protest soulfully “but there wasn’t anything I could have done!” If there is in fact a quota, I have become one step closer to it, and began consequentially to rethink my policy on busses. I’m hardly the sort of person to condemn an entire species based on the actions of a single member, but as the sun climbed slowly above treetops and cozy apartments, I began to think rather unpleasant thoughts at my 8:28 bus.
Which wasn’t there.
All right, I thought, hardly the end of the world. The 8:28 bus, after all, was in my head already tenderly nicknamed as ‘that bus that’ll get me to work ridiculously early but hey, I’ll make a good impression’. Everyone has bad days, if the 8:28 was having such difficulties who was I to make it worse by thinking unkindly about it? No, I would simply console myself in the plush cushions of its 8:45 cousin, and get to work exactly on time.
By 8:50, my thoughts had taken a significantly less charitable start. My shoes, for one thing, are very pretty but really not cut out for just standing around for half an hour. My nerves certainly weren’t, panic slowly creeping up my spine as minutes ticked by and far too many songs looped on my iPod. By the time the unscheduled 8:55 bus crept shamefully up to the stop, I had lost any fondness I had for the breed and was beginning to understand the reports of commuter strikes I’d heard very little about.
9:13, my bus proved to be capable at least of taking me to my destination, if not in any sort of timely manner, but still had a long way to go before I’d forgive it. In the office, A had not yet arrived, saving me from having to do something silly like commit ritual suicide on behalf of public transport. I sat myself down at my desk, under Dee’s understanding gaze, and made like I’d been productively working for ages; moments later A swept in, and the day really began.
I have rarely been in a position to hear a number of engaged, politically-minded individuals chat about something they thought was important. Even if the subject (what subject?) was less than fascinating, it was still a real experience to be able to listen to the conversation. Even more so when I remembered half way through the talk one of the terms of my employment: for as long as I am at work here in Ottawa, I am to be a Conservative.
I’ve always had doubts about my political orientation. The NDP party seems overly ambitious and a little bit naïve, the Liberals are very good at maintaining things (one must at least applaud consistency?), I’m more Conservative than most of my Liberal friends, and going Green is all well and good for the environment but occasionally makes me think of things beginning to mould.
But a flat-out Conservative I am not, at least not on a normal Tuesday. Still, the moment that little blue light turned on in my head the entire political discussion I was overhearing took on a very different significance. How, I found myself wondering, do these issues (what issues?) effect the people paying the most taxes? Ambitious projects are all well and good, but where is the money supposed to come from? Am I really worrying about what a group of upper-middle-class city-dwellers might think about the lobster season?
Does any of this actually have anything to do with me?
Apparently.
Several hours later I returned to my desk, mind open, thoughts swimming, yearning to return to the tenuous familiarity of my reading, reading, more reading. My job, as outlined to me by Bea in yesterday’s phone call. Soon, I thought, I’d start to get the hang of this. A week or two, I’d settle, learn the trends, figure out my place.
A word of advice: never think those sort of things aloud. Dee offered me a commiserating sort of smile as A chuckled. Oh no, they both told me in horrifying near-unison. There’s no such thing as settling, in my office. Plans change constantly; entire schedules are put backwards, with no warning, on a regular basis. Some, or all, or none of it may involve me. In short, nothing will ever be any less confusing than it was today.
If this narrative seems to jump around, sometimes unnecessarily detailed, othertimes painfully inadequate, all I can say is that it could not be more appropriate to my life right now.
My reading was all neatly sorted in a pile, prioritized by dates due that range somewhere between this Friday and next Something. It was all instantly swept aside, so metaphorically it might as well have been physically, to make room for something I had neither heard of nor begun to understand. A report, to be read and summarized for this afternoon, 4:00. Next afternoon, 4:00. Well, one of the two.
Summarized, neatly, in bullet points, in a separate document.
Highlighted, in the same document.
Never highlighted; circled, but not in red pen.
Given as an oral report, tomorrow morning.
On second (third? Fourth? Fifth?) thought, simply read, along with seven other reports, possibly understood, to be presented in a form undetermined, at some point in time other than now.
If I didn’t have most of that down in writing (email, my love and my bane) I would swear I’d simply hallucinated the entire hour. As it stands, I’ve learned a valuable piece of information: if I follow all of the instructions I’m given as I’m given them, I will undoubtedly contradict myself at least twice and do the same thing both correctly and massively wrong.
Such, my mother would say, is life.
The rest of the day passed in something of a blur of reports, highlighting, and semi-redundant notetaking. I was shocked to realise at the end of it that in spite of dividing my time near the end, splitting my attention between Europe and after-hours-gmail, that I actually had some understanding of the general picture behind my specific articles. By the time 7:00 rolled around, I felt like I’d actually accomplished something, and that it was therefore time to crack my spine out of its chair and head to the mall in search of a surge protector and maybe a manicure.
At this point I have to say, as a Torontonian-turned-Montrealler, that there is something wrong with Ottawa. The people here are almost universally friendly. The security guards smiled as I let myself out of the office; the man at the bus stop waved to me for absolutely no good reason; the man ahead of me in line laughed in British-accented English (and French) as he tried to pawn me a coupon he apparently didn’t need; the guy in the game store seemed really sorry he didn’t have what I was looking for; the girl in the electronics store was really excited about the sale on surge protectors. The people waiting at the bus stop looked tranquil, rather than impatient, and my bus purred to a halt just as I arrived, before I could even consider abandoning it for the heavily-laden walk home.
I found myself reluctantly forgiving it for its early-morning cousins’ tardiness, so happily did it drop me off a block from A’s apartment.
A spent the evening out for dinner, which left me pleasantly alone to heat up my leftovers and make a vague attempt at a salad. Already, I’m finding that I’m forcing myself into unnatural habits to make the upcoming few months easier; my father always told me that when one is the guest, one is obliged to do everything in one’s power to make the host’s life as easy as possible (nevermind the fact that when one is the host, one would be remiss if one’s guest ever had to lift a finger). While I occasionally mutter about unfairness and double standards, I’m grateful now for having that forewarning.
I could be wrong, A is after all both kind and generous, but I don’t think much attention is going to be paid this summer to not inconveniencing me. It falls to me, therefore, to make myself un-inconveniencable. I can do it, I think; there will be a lot of keeping neat and tidy, and even more keeping out of the way, but none of those are beyond my ability. Only one thing troubles me. A brief conversation as A returned from dinner made something startlingly clear to me: life is short, time is money, there’s no sense beating around bushes.
Now, much and all as we’re all unique and special snowflakes in the swirling blizzard that is life, I am very much my mother’s daughter. That means many things at many times, but rising again and again to the surface is the notion of treating others as you want to be treated, and of wanting to be treated relatively well. Polite phrases flow from me like rivers down a mountain, qualifiers and reassurances, apologies and gratitudes, ten thousand ways of circling around the point I want to make so as to be sure that whoever I’m talking to takes it exactly the way I want it to be taken.
That’s not gonna fly here.
And at this point, there’s not much I can do other than shrug my shoulders, and much on a cookie. I have accepted that this summer is not likely to involve very much relaxing of my guard, letting down of my shoulders. I’m already going to be spending four months pretending to be a Conservative. How much harder could it possibly be to be a brash one?
Somehow, I get the impression that I’m about to find out.