Working in San Francisco: Ninety three and a half square inches of neurosis...
Two weeks ago I was tripping balls.
Back up.
Rewind.
What?
I get insomnia from time to time.
When you have insomnia life begins to turn into a movie with every fourth frame cut out.
You feel scattered, detached, incomplete.
You have the reflexes of a retired lab monkey and every other sentence ends with a question mark.
Huh?
The clipboard was digging into my thigh.
"What other factors do you consider when looking for a job besides salary and benefits? Size of company? Casual environment? Level of creativity? Flexible hours?"
Click click click. The pen as a barometer of the indescribable inside.
Factors?
I look over at the stack of Kiplinger's with a smiling guy in a tie on the cover.
Teeth white as cocaine.
Dress shirt which probably costs more than my rent.
What would grinning dry-clean only cocaine teeth boy write?
"No pantyhose."
I think some more...
"No dress code."
The pen won't stop.
"No insurance company, no real estate, no banking, nothing investment, no telemarketing, no..."
It's on my agent's desk.
Eight and a half by eleven inches of verifiable history.
Ninety-three and a half square inches of neurosis.
I readily explain that monotonous or repetitive work doesn't bother me.
It's the lack of personal fulfillment, however trivial.
Then I go into a two minute speech about my ability to de-skin a fryer in under eight minutes and extensive typewriter experience.
Candidate has strong skills in rare wireless manually operated word-processing/printer system.
The woman smiles, "So what you're saying is, nothing corporate?"
Nothing which makes me feel like I have insomnia even after 480 minutes of interrupted sleep.
Twenty eight thousand eight hundred seconds of bliss.
I smile back and think about zombies.
The routine of everyday life is potential petri dish for a kind of walking zombification. We go about our day, no longer requiring conscious thought.
How would we know something is amiss if we've stopped looking?
I'm not immune.
Mental masonry is effortless.
Working in San Francisco you become tranquilized to certain things.
For example, I don't think I would be able to tell if the SOMA homeless population turned into zombies tomorrow morning.
I mean I could...but it would take A WHILE.
EDIT: After several months living of below poverty (and embracing the ghettofabulous life of a welfare mom without the kids or baby daddy drama) I finally got a no-dress code job which I love. I'm happy to report that I am back at poverty. Yeehaw! No longer do my fish fry in the kitchen nor do my beans burn on the grill.
Back up.
Rewind.
What?
I get insomnia from time to time.
When you have insomnia life begins to turn into a movie with every fourth frame cut out.
You feel scattered, detached, incomplete.
You have the reflexes of a retired lab monkey and every other sentence ends with a question mark.
Huh?
The clipboard was digging into my thigh.
"What other factors do you consider when looking for a job besides salary and benefits? Size of company? Casual environment? Level of creativity? Flexible hours?"
Click click click. The pen as a barometer of the indescribable inside.
Factors?
I look over at the stack of Kiplinger's with a smiling guy in a tie on the cover.
Teeth white as cocaine.
Dress shirt which probably costs more than my rent.
What would grinning dry-clean only cocaine teeth boy write?
"No pantyhose."
I think some more...
"No dress code."
The pen won't stop.
"No insurance company, no real estate, no banking, nothing investment, no telemarketing, no..."
It's on my agent's desk.
Eight and a half by eleven inches of verifiable history.
Ninety-three and a half square inches of neurosis.
I readily explain that monotonous or repetitive work doesn't bother me.
It's the lack of personal fulfillment, however trivial.
Then I go into a two minute speech about my ability to de-skin a fryer in under eight minutes and extensive typewriter experience.
Candidate has strong skills in rare wireless manually operated word-processing/printer system.
The woman smiles, "So what you're saying is, nothing corporate?"
Nothing which makes me feel like I have insomnia even after 480 minutes of interrupted sleep.
Twenty eight thousand eight hundred seconds of bliss.
I smile back and think about zombies.
The routine of everyday life is potential petri dish for a kind of walking zombification. We go about our day, no longer requiring conscious thought.
How would we know something is amiss if we've stopped looking?
I'm not immune.
Mental masonry is effortless.
Working in San Francisco you become tranquilized to certain things.
For example, I don't think I would be able to tell if the SOMA homeless population turned into zombies tomorrow morning.
I mean I could...but it would take A WHILE.
EDIT: After several months living of below poverty (and embracing the ghettofabulous life of a welfare mom without the kids or baby daddy drama) I finally got a no-dress code job which I love. I'm happy to report that I am back at poverty. Yeehaw! No longer do my fish fry in the kitchen nor do my beans burn on the grill.