slippers and slippery slopes

Today is my first day not at my job. It's been a full year there and today is the first monday that I woke up and didn't have to go it.
I remember the time that we had a show in Bowling Green and I woke up Bethani and Norm at 5 in the morning so that we could start driving home so that I could be at work on time.
I remember the time that I had strep throat, not sure what was going on with me but still going to work because I was too bullheaded and broke to go to the Doctor. I remember that bug really threw me through a loop. I was in my back cubicle, in my little happy place with my orchid smiling at me, sipping tea from my favorite duck mug, trying to swallow and my boss came back to ask me to move to the front desk. It sounded like a promotion that I didn't want. He said I was going to move up to processing assistant and that I had to be in the front to do this. I told him that I would move up to processing assistant, but I didn't want to move up to the front. He couldn't understand why. I couldn't swallow enought to clear my throat and explain. I just muttered that I'm not good with people, I like my privacy back here... which he took me mean that I was goofing off in the back. Maybe I was, but I was doing well none-the-less. I was happy and comfortable and I only went up front when they needed me. So I said no to the front, and yes to the training. The next day, I woke up sweating, no sleep, just that aching feeling. I went to work. I slipped into the back and started working. Then they called me into the main office and asked me again. I was sweating and the room was spinning. I couldn't hear over the muffled snot building in my brain and restricting my ears. and I agreed. That's all that I could do was nod. And I moved the girl out without even asking her. I felt so terrible touching all of her stuff, diabetic needles and bills and all. They asked me to so I did it. I moved up there and had never felt more awkward. Brenda, my female boss was incredibly judemental and had a way about her that was accusatory even in the most simple of statements. I couldn't hear a thing and my lists and organizational tactics fell through in this muddled pile of people walking through as thought hey were treading straight on my brain. The next day with temperature rising was the Schumacher meeting. I couldn't miss it. I don't think I've ever hated myself more than when they were showing us all a powerpoint presentation on how to push small businesses out of work and take over, building more Schumacher homes than ever.
I couldn't even eat lunch. I couldn't even swallow. I couldn't hear a thing and I thought that I was just being dramatic. Then Paul Schumacher (or Schmuck-er as I called him) got up there and told us that the company is going to raise one billion dollars by 2010. Some people acted excited. Others just kinda looked at that giant number as compared with the small sales that we were pullind down and whinced. The best part of the day was when I put a sweaty piece of paper made for comments in my clammy hand and scrawled out the statistical impossibility of maintaining quality control with the gross amount of houses that the company would have to pump out in order to make a billion dollars. It's unfathomable.

In any case, after the meeting, the directions to push out family businesses, the greedy Presidents pushing his employees for more more more, the sales encouragements, the tempting cancun trip for the highest seller... I went home and cried. I curled up on the couch in a feverish, hormonal ball and cried and cried and cried until my mom came in and said that it's not that bad,.... and I cried some more. It was after a couple of hours that she dragged me to the ER kicking and screaming to the tune of a temperature of 103. Strep throat. Stuck at the front desk. and signed up for a crusade of a job that I didn't believe in.



I guess right now, I'm going over the whole thing. The slippery slope that brought me to the point of not wanting to wake up in the morning. I guess I could blame it all on outside sources, but rather, it was more of a mindset that I adopted along with it that carried me down the rapids.

It's funny sometimes how things just get under your skin and you don't notice until the wound festers, then you just medicate the fester without removing the splinter.




Here I am processing the past when I should be planning for the future, but in all honesty, I'm terrified. I'm in this limbo like I'm waiting for something. I've always known that I don't have the guts to just up and move to a random place without a dime in my pocket. But now I feel as though I am more in a corner than just being broke and scared of change. I don't remember when I started hating myself. And I'm not sure where I'm supposed to go from here.

What's going through my brain right now is this sense of urgency. This feeling that time is slipping away from me and I'm waiting at a station for a train that never comes. I just want to be alone and I'm not sure if it's just quitting my job or starting a new one or that it's sleeting outside. Jason just walked in, excited about the day. I just wanted him to leave. I didn't know what to say to make him leave, but I feel as though I need to process what I'm feeling alone. I don't know what to tell him that I haven't already before. And I'm glad that my mom isn't here. My dad walked in before Jason did and asked if we were going to finish the house this week while I'm off. I really need to get internet at my house. I muttered something. I feel like all I want to do is get away from everyone. Last week was completely consumed with doing band stuff, just going to shows and passing out demos and doing a recording in a real recording studio, which was all awesome, but I just wanted one night to myself and I'm pulled in a million different directions sometimes that I don't feel like I ever can just sit and process all the things because they are happening too fast.


Wait, that doesn't make sense. How can I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for a train, but I don't want to do the thing that are right in front of me because ther'es too much going on. I think that I'm just slightly annoyed right now as all that Norm could say about the band is all this shit that we have to do and how much he wants shows and how we need to blah blah blah. I just bit my tongue until he stopped babbling and then specified that I'm doing what I can and spelled out what I'm good at, which is talking to booking guys and chatting it up and talking to bands and trying to get shows that way... then I told him that I'm not good at sending out demos or anything with the mail as it is hard enough for me even to get my shit together enough to pay my bills... and those already come with addresses and envelopes! It just made me upset that the one show that we have and the 4 clubs that have our demo are because of me and he's pushing me and bitching about not having more! Come on, what more does he want me to do! and the four or five shows that we have already had were all from me talking to my old friends and getting gigs through them. I guess the more that I thought about it, the more mad that it made me how he just kept whining about nothing happening when he's not doing anything to make anything happen. I can't milk my friends for all that they are worth and I don't want pity shows. It's really annoying to keep pestering my friends or only calling people when I want something. If they like the band, they'll book it. if not, nothing I can do will stop that. He did a half assed recording and didn't pay any attention to the glaring details and he expected me to hand that to clubs like I was proud of it? And recently it was Joe who came through with a friend with a recording studio that did our new recording for free, which sounds phenomenal. Ugh, I just hope that he doens't keep going on about what we're not doing when he's not doing anything. He didn't even pay for gas when we went to Toledo and he knows I'm broke! He bought me a coffee when I was driving home in a snowstorm and a beer at the club so that I'd go up and talk to the booking girl. Thaaaaaaanks....

Ok, so that's what's going on with the band.

Now my parents are doing what they do best, I guess. I'm keeping my distance a lot more than before. My mom is helping with Jason's quilt a bit, which is nice. She's good at sewing and sometimes I work backwards on sewing and it's nice to have help. My dad on the other hand had been pushing me all last week to pitch this idea to my bosses that I would be an independent contractor for licensing when they needed me. He wanted me to tell them if they needed me after I was gone, that they could call me at any time and I would just come in and fill out the paperwork for state licenses and they would pay me per license. Sounds like a good idea, but my bosses are kinda not built like that. But anyway, dad kept making me explain this contractor idea to everyone. I'd be standing there and he'd make me tell mom about it, which i didn't. Then when Jason and I were over, he told Jason that I had this great idea and that I should tell him about it... I just stood there with my back turned saying nothing while my dad talked about my silence like it was me bucking the business world or something. Just a few minutes ago he came in and asked me how I was financially doing. What the hell. I'm in between jobs, literally. Am I supposed to be really well off right now or something??? Well, I'm not. Jason just paid off two of my credit cards, which was nice and one less thing to worry about. But I'm on limited funds and the band promo thing is making things even tighter along with all these projects that Jason and I have planned for my week off and his spring break.



Anyway, I'm kinda having a bit of trouble thinking about the future. I don't think that I've ever had a sense of urgency about anything until this birthday. I'm 25... or at least I will be. It seems like I should know what I want to do with my life by now. Right now, what I have is a half finished house, a very sweet boyfriend, 30 chickens... with 50 more baby chicks in the mail this week, a BA is b-s that I don't use, the loans to prove it, a severe leaking eye problem, and no long term career goals to speak of, and a band that I am severely questioning at least one of the members of as far as fortitude and passive-aggressive nature.


I think I'm just going to take this week to calm down. I don't want to think that I wasted a year. I don't want to think that I have no direction. I want to see the good that might come. I guess we'll see how the next few weeks go.

quail eggs and quitting

So, quite a bit has happened since my last post. I guess just sitting at work and blogging about how much I hate work got me thinking about working through my difficulties with... um, work.


After only a month in therapy and reassessing my goals in life, I am right now sitting at work, enduring my final 2 weeks notice. I'm in my last days here at the mortgage company and I honestly don't know what's coming. I do know that I'm getting talkative again, laughing more and there's an excitement in the air that ranges a bit beyond the scent of spring with the melting snow.

On the same day that I turned in my 2 weeks notice at the desk job, I was interviewed for a greenhouse position. I guess I just wrote down all the jobs that I would be good at and enjoy and the greenhouse was pretty high. It's creative and outside and most importantly, it's not really focused in the "business" world. I think I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the head of a company can send their kids to private schools and disneyland 7 times a year and buy them new cars before they even have licenses... but the bottom of the totem pole people just sit behind their desks, staring at a picture of their kids thinking about just putting in their time to get home to help with their kids homework - the highlight of their day.

I don't think that you should do something that you don't like to do. And it's pretty easy to slip into it. I guess it's a comfortable spot to be in with the security of having a job and whenever I would wake up and not want to go in, I'd say to myself well... at least you have a job.


But le sigh... my brain is always in overtime. I would just sit here and spend the money as fast as I could make it to try to make myself cheer up or to try to challenge myself. I kept reading about these things (wikipedia is both my best friend and worst enemy at times) and then I'd want to do them, but wouldn't have time, but would have some cash in my account, and with internet access, ebay was always so close. After awhile, my house became cluttered with unfinished projects with the best of intentions and I swear 8 hours out of your day will make you so tired by the time you get home... it's unbearable. So I'd wait for the weekends, but when the weekends would roll around, the backlog was soo thick that I couldn't prioritize.... and the vicious cycle continues.

I like the people that I work with a lot. They are nice. I just don't care too much for the job.

I also got stuck when thinking of things that I want to do. It seems as though I detest the business world with terrible loathing, but oddly enough, I also hate the creative world. Maybe because the creative world always puts that little focus on the dollars that it can make from being pretty instead of focusing on doing things for the sake of doing things. I was torn with interior design for so long because it seems to me as though art is wasted on the rich. It's not accessible. It's stale and hanging in some mansion in the west wing that's only used on the fifth saturday in may for a women's tea. If I would design a house, it wouldn't be a real house. It would be one that someone would be bored with the silk couch and want something different. No one is really going to see it. No one is really going to care.
So what about fashion design. That's fun... but I can imagine hating it and the ever changing "what's new for fall" attitude.
Even just walking around the art building sometimes made me a bit nauseous in the way that people fed into such bullshit while condemning others for the expressions.

So design is out and selling is out and brokering is out. I like playing in the dirt, but even farmers now-a-days have 9-5 jobs to support the losing industry that is their plot of land. So I guess I like hobby farming, but I'm not sure where exactly I can go with it.


Now that I've ruled out what I'd be good at, but wouldn't enjoy, I whittled down the rest into something that I can actually base my life along with my living wage. I think working in a greenhouse is a good first step. I guess I would be pretty happy working at a food co-op or at a horse barn, but I'll take what I can get. And the best part about the interview is their focus on organic gardening. I walked out of there only feeling mildly like a hippie, but we discussed PBS and DDT and orchids and I might have mentioned my chickens because it's kinda hard to go a half hour without talking about them.


But anyway, I think it's a step in the right direction. The next step is building more pens for all the new additions to the High Mill farm that are coming into fruition. I got a new kid that should be coming right around my birthday, even though my parents swear they don't want one. he's so cute, you just can't say no.


So that's what's happening. Oh, and I've found a new-found obsession with quail eggs. They are just beautiful