Day Zero
Hi, how have I been? All right...not bad. Been around, but been busy.
That's the conversation with myself I have when I think about getting in contact with friends because I haven't already. I don't know what better way to explain my absence than to "blame" it on work. What else can I "blame" it on? I don't know either.
I've been swallowed up by work essentially since my last entry. Getting used to all that is BU and ARAMARK, put together. I'm finally at the dining hall that I'm supposed to be at, it's called Myles Standish, Myles for short. It was a hotel back in the day, until BU bought that and everything else on Commonwealth ("Comm") Ave. I was at Towers, another dining hall for a few weeks "filling in" and doing closing shift duties, which meant 11am to about 8pm Tuesday to Friday, and 9am to about 8pm on Saturday. The place is in a basement level, with no windows and no cell phone reception. I had no idea what the weather was like outside unless I got to escape that box for enough time to see out a window upstairs. For the time I was there, I was the manager at night and in charge. Honestly, I didn't care as much as I do now that I'm at Myles and there's no one else that's supposed to be there as the assistant. So it falls on me for real, unlike before, where I felt compelled to treat my role as a testbed for the "real thing," and anything that happened felt like a red check mark on a grade school homework assignment.
Friggin' long Saturdays if you didn't get it already, but I was rewarded with a trip to see Becca for the weekend. The best part about Saturday was closing the last door of the kitchen and then literally running up the stairs to the exit to get to my car outside the back door, which is on the fringes of Kenmore Square. I couldn't wait to get on the Pike because I knew at that point I would be there in Pittsfield in 2 hours or less. After that, I didn't give a fuck what happened around me, as long as I was with her. We did a lot out in the Berkshires together, from going to the lake to swim, to seeing museums and botanical gardens, to spending the best quality time together. That's all that mattered. Today, she came home from the cottage with the creaky crooked steps and the king-sized bed made from two twins. Of course, I am happy for her experiences there and I hope she can find a theater job, and she made friends with at least one person while there. Just that I'm also elated to have the end of the day to look forward to with the possibility of driving only 20 minutes to her house.
That isn't to say that I didn't miss any of my friends near and dear to me...I mean, I'm in one romantic relationship, not 143, or whatever my FaceBook friend count is...ha. I suppose summer is like that sometimes. You leave school and you don't get to see your friends as often because they live farther away than down the other end of Southwest or in a nearby apartment complex, or that you don't see them at 4:40 every day. Or that they're on the Vineyard starting their real job. It sucks even more when you graduate and you don't know when you'll get to see them next because now you're a bitch to your job. No matter what, the best 50 hours out of the week are taken from me and I really can't do anything within reason to fix that right now. I already missed two parties in Amherst, between the one at Rolling Green to the night out with the Tenors tonight, but I guess that's the rule of the game. At the least I hope to get to a football game somehow and see friends there, of which many will be there in the Tenor section. Next Sunday I'm supposed to be seeing the Sox at Yankee Stadium with a bunch of them...what's the latest on that?? Someone fill me in!
One thing is for certain, though. I know I have learned a lot this summer about a lot of things besides my job. It wasn't as epiphanic as USC, but was a lesson in time. I was away for an extended period of time from someone I truly care about for the first time since...well, last year. The "real world" is as I was hoping it not to be, and that I have to loosen up around people at work. I'll tell you this, I'm nothing like you know me as when I'm wearing a tie. But I'm working on it.
In short, I miss you all and I hope to see/hear from you soon. UMass starts up in a couple days and then we're all back in the cycle.
Here we go.