Still No Real Posts

My life right now is pretty much focused on surviving my job and looking for a job. When I’m doing good, I can usually count on a blog topic to pop into my head every few days. When I’m doing bad and/or not-so-good, I suddenly get what all those people mean when they talk about writing being work. I wouldn’t call myself overly spoiled in a lot of aspects of life, but as far as my writing goes, I always have been. I’ve never had to work very hard, I rarely get writer’s block, and the “work” I do always feels like fun. Which means when I hit a bad personal patch like this, I am completely unprepared to actually work. I remember my first grade teacher totally had my number after one semester. She told my dad, “Harriet is so intelligent, she is way above the other kids. But someday she’ll hit something that doesn’t come easily to her, and I don’t know if she’ll be able to deal with the frustration.”

My bear once told me that his mom told him about some books about gifted children she read while he was growing up. One book took the position that gifted children aren’t actually overly or unusually intelligent, but are especially intuitive and emotionally sensitive. A “gifted” child is extremely perceptive, can sense what parents and teachers want, and are too willing to provide it. That’s not necessarily intelligence – fulfilling other people’s needs isn’t the smartest thing you can do – but it is an overdeveloped ability to sense the rules of the game and play it.

I’ve been thinking about that lately, and another conversation I had with the bear about going to the gym. I’ve been trying to work out daily because it really helps release my stress, helps me sleep, relaxes my back, and gives me at least one thing a day that I am doing for myself. My bear is having a pretty stressful time at work right now. He wishes he was working out more, but because work is such a drag, every moment away from work is a moment that needs to be hoarded and saved, and not spent on other errands or chores. I was advocating a paradigm shift, where you don’t think of things what you do for your health as a “chore,” but as a worthy necessity. I talked about setting aside a time that is just for him, to accomplish something that benefits him (not necessarily working out, but that’s where the conversation started). I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about gym motivation lately, and keep hearing something I really like. That is, you have to stop viewing the gym as a thing you do if you have the free time, but have to prioritize it as a thing that nothing else gets to interfere with, the way we prioritize work, which is something we do for others and usually kind of hate. Viewing your health – physical and mental – and the time and energy that must be budgeted to maintain your health as inalienable rights that nothing else can take priority over is a good way to re-center your internal world, focus it on something that is about you, instead of having the main focus of your life be the thing that sucks your time and energy out of you.

So as soon as these words leave my mouth, I realize I am not really doing this at all. I’m trying. I’m doing the gym thing, and that’s good, it really has helped. But when I come home from the gym, all I do is sit around thinking about how much I hate my job and how much of a soul crush it is to try and find another. Sometimes I think, “I’ve got to distract myself, do something for fun,” and then I realize I don’t know what I do for fun. Usually I end up watching movies all night, which isn’t so bad, but feels like a real mind suck. Sometimes I pull out an Al-Anon book and try to find some peace. Oftentimes I sit around and beat myself up for not doing something productive. I’m doing what I always do, which is put my life on hold until I find a solution to whatever I feel is the predominant problem.

I know there are certain things you can do to increase your success on the job market. But most of those things seem like magic moontalk – brush your hair in this way! Eye contact! Smiles! Do the proper dance in the proper order and you will summon the headhunter! I feel, at heart, it’s mostly a matter of luck. Which leaves me sort of adrift. I’ve got no external cues for how I should be behaving. I’ve got no ability to discern the rules of the game and play it properly. If I did have those rules, if I could assure myself that I was doing everything I could as right as possible, then I feel I could set aside that extra time to be doing things that satisfy me. Because that’s part of the game, yeah? That’s part of the “I am a well-rounded person” game. I have a job I do well at and I work out and I take cooking classes and I am interested in 19^th century American history. I am a person that can be described in a short story. Instead of: I have a job I hate and I take out my anger on a treadmill and then I go home and watch 6 hours of TV and go to bed feeling bored. Oh, yeah, and I have a blog I don’t write anymore. Ugh.

I usually don’t like to write a blog entry unless I have some kind of conclusion I’ve come to. Something I’ve learned. I don’t have that. I just have a bad patch. I’ve stopped thinking about “one day at a time” and I’m moving “one minute at a time” now. Just one foot in front of the other, until I get to the other side of this. There’s not much else to do.

I do try and take joy out of what I can. For example, Mina is pulling out my favoritest power struggle in her little designer bag of power struggles. She sometimes pulls power struggles that are really offensive, derailing, bullying, and abusive. But this one is just pure entertainment.

She will eavesdrop around the office, skulking in corners, until my boss, Sherry, talks to me about some assignment she wants me to do, which has nothing to do with Mina or anything Mina has ever worked on. I take the assignment and head back to my desk. Ten minutes later, Mina comes by with an imperious swagger and says something like, “Yeah, Harriet, soooooooo Sherry wanted me to tell you to do (assignment Sherry just told me to do).”

“Uh, yeah, she told me that. I’m on it.”

“Okay, good, ‘cause I know it’s really important.”

“Uhhhhh, yeah. Okay. I’m on it.”

“Sherry just wanted me to make sure that it was going okay. I know she really wants it done. So if you could let me know how you’re doing?”

“I’ll let Sherry know when it’s done.”

“Yeah, great. Just, get on that, okay?”

“Still on it.”

“Glad we talked. Just keeping things smooth, you know?”

“Rock ‘n roll.” *throws devil horns*

I love this one so much that I sometimes go and talk to Sherry about my work, asking questions I already have the answers to, just so Mina will later come to me and ask how I’m doing with buying spray cleaner for the dry erase board, because she knows that’s really important to Sherry and Sherry has spoken to her about it before, you know?

And now that I am tracking everything I do all day, I get to add: 10:15 am – 10:20 am: Updating Mina on status of spray cleaner, at Mina’s request.

File that one under “Using a Solution With No Relation To the Problem.” Problem: Boss tells you to work hard and efficiently. Solution: Work hard and efficiently Pull rank on the secretary.