No Face Left to Lose
2003-01-08 � 6:26 p.m.

Tired is as tired does. That's my Gump-ism for the day, for I be one tired body, yes sir.

---

I just loaded up the ol' MP3 player with a stack full of Placebo, cracked a nice cold Sapporo (yay for the 'Beers of the World' box Mom and Dad gave me for Christmas), and I'm wallowing. I'm in one of those really deeply self-centered moods — not feeling good, not feeling bad, but certainly so self-involved as to be sickening to most honest types.

What? How is this different than normal you ask?

Hmmm. This is a good question, one I'm not sure that I have an answer to.

Perhaps the answer is that it isn't any different, and that's the problem.

---

So I feel like a complete ass for my behavior at work yesterday. I don't think that my anger or frustration is unjustified, but my behavior was about as far from acceptable as you can get. I'm better than that.

I deserve part of the blame for the situation anyway. I've been upset about this whole thing for a long time, but I haven't taken any steps to alleviate the problems. Instead, as is my wont, I just accept that it sucks and shoulder the burden, taking perverse pleasure out of it.

Yes. Egotism at its worst (or is that 'best'?) — I enjoy doing more work, and doing it better, than everyone else. I like knowing more. I like that I have to be asked how to do things, even as it frustrates the hell out of me that people cannot be more self-sufficient.

I am, as I have mentioned before, a terrible, horrible person. Apparently, to judge from my emotional reactions, my ideal co-worker is someone just smart enough — capable of doing the basics, but not smart enough to make me feel threatened. Ah, the perils of the low self-image and the ruin it wreaks amongst those unlucky enough to encounter one.

There was some kind of...of...result from the whole thing though; co-worker showed up to work today at six a.m. to finish her tasks. A simply amazing display of follow-through. Of course, I think she was displeased that I showed up there not long after she did...I got the impression she wanted to have everything done before I got there. Understandably so, I suppose.

Things are going to get interesting pretty soon, because in a couple of months there's going to be a twenty percent cut in staff at the school due to the budget problems we're having (it's funny — the state starts falling short of cash, and the educational institutions are what get chopped first). I'm hoping I get laid off, even though it's so unlikely as to be approaching impossible. I could deal with collecting unemployment insurance for a few months.

There's a job I could take now, I guess...but it's not my kind of thing. A friend of the family runs a consulting business. He contracts with waste management companies to provide certain kinds of cost breakdowns for purposes of the reports that the waste management companies are required to provide to the districts/municipalities they serve. He's got way too much work as it is right now, and it's only him. He says I could be making something like 150k a year in nine to twelve months, depending on how fast I pick it up. I sort of believe him, because he's a money guy (he was the CFO for the company my mom worked for) though, honestly, the idea of that much money is just about that: an idea. Abstract and unreal.

But...traveling up and down the west coast, staying in hotels, meeting strangers, moving into their offices for a week, and wearing a suit? Ugh...it sounds icky. Plus the numbers...I don't do numbers. Data extraction, ugh!

Still, it's tempting. He says one would only have to work as much as one wanted (which is scary in and of itself), and that he's looking to quit doing it altogether in a few years.

*Shrug* Who knows? Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and it will sound like a brilliant idea.

Ha! Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll have grown an extra nose too. I hope not — the schnoze I've got now takes up more than it's share of my face as it is.

Stay cool kids.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Placebo, The Crawl
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "Lay me down; the light will unfurl. Lay me down to crawl."

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