introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- what would mary tyler moore do? someone elses house - nineteenth of june, 2003 "the raindrops the raindrops the raindrops"~radiohead the light in the morning in this room is ethereal to begin with, let alone when a rainstorm is moving in. it makes my skin look strange shades of grey and green. i watched it for a half an hour, waiting for the laundry machine to stop. four a.m. is an ungodly hour but that was the hour that we left the house this morning...toby had been up for awhile even before that, showering and getting ready for work. there was no getting out of doing laundry today, though....so i hauled myself out of bed, donned some questionably clean clothes, and got in the car with barely any fight. and here i am. the first real quiet time i've had in over a week. true, yesterday was my day off...but it was spent on the phone with vicky for a good couple of hours...on the phone with (fucking)verizon...and cleaning up a sink's worth of soapy water that had drained not down the drain as would be expected...but into the cupboard beneath, soaking everything into a soggy pile of mush: proof that just because it happened the right way every other time before, there is no way of telling how it will turn out this time. *sigh* its been a rough week and a half, but excitingly so. with toby getting up in the middle of the night to get ready and leave for work rather than going at his newer, more comfortable time, its early to bed...and being worn out and never catching up on sleep for him. for me, its been interviews and bus schedules and skirts and dressier shoes than my feet are used to. its been running around town in torrential downpours and winding up in refrigerator offices wet and resigned like a cat with no home. and then going to my real job and seeing what may be a mirage of a light at the end of the tunnel. after a year of working in the mall in this market research biz, why do i want out? the prep answer is: its a dying breed, what with people not qualifying to even participate when they do stop because they do surveys online...what with phone blocking and do not call lists...a dying animal screeching its last before finally falling over in the next few years. yes, thats my prediction. (i believe i said the same thing about five years ago. has it been that long?) but really, its just getting out of the mall for me, i think. and into something that resembles a real job (not that mine isn't, but how many people do you know that really go to work in a mall every day and call it a career?). so when the oppertunity arose, i had to take it. i'd be silly not to. and i can't say that i don't want the job...because truthfully, i want it more than anything i can think of right now (besides breakfast). its this lush little position in the family court division downtown called 'telephone information specialist'. and there are a few positions open into which i might easily slide if the headhunter has his way. its a world i'm not sure i'm qualified for but that everyone seems to think is right for me...a world where they ask you about how many accounting classes you've taken and business courses you've passed and how you did in math...a world where nobody cares about the book you want to write or the idea for a painting you had on your lunch break the other day. and thats okay with me, i think, actually. because the more i think about the books i want to write, the more i feel like a failure anyway for never actually sitting down and finishing one of them. so maybe its khaki pants and blouses and flats for me in a cube someplace with a picture of my dog and my boyfriend in a frame and maybe a few potted plants and listening to angry people's problems and doing math for me. its like i said: i want it more than anything i can think of right now. but it was flag day the day after my second interview and then the hiring/firing sorts went on their respective vacations and i won't know until monday or tuesday but in the meantime...can he put my resume in with this other company in shadyside? its pure data entry but you do type like crazy. like crazy, i think. i do a lot of things like crazy, but yes, send it. it can't hurt. and so i keep going back to the mall slashing off days on my schedule and wishing away the wilco concert and a sunday matinee of Finding Nemo (i am a sucker for stoned turtles) and relaxing this weekend and waiting for this mary tyler moore thing to come crashing down around me...the lunch hour downtown, the bustling for busses and trains...the weekends off...the evenings free. this settling into an almost too perfect schedule where we both go to work in the morning and we both come home at night and we make dinner and eat on the porch by candlelight and laugh about how its a lifestyle and not such a big deal...this hope of slipping into something better...this thought that maybe i am better off with something a little more professional and a little less hands-on public torture. but i won't know until monday so its pondering the fantasy and working out the kinks. its taking my bike on the bus and whirling around in the city on my lunch hour. its meeting pewse for lunch and hitting the lunch hour concerts. lets hope i get it...because the fantasy...is spinning out of control. until, cats; the laundry stopped. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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