I woke up this morning feeling sick as a dog, and after stifling that with much medicine, avoiding soda, and trying to get to sleep early, I tossed and turned for hours until I woke up at 2. I haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Which is a pity, considering I told Signius I'd work a surprise shift tomorrow at noon.
Okay, it's only from noon to 3, which is practically only enough time for me to scratch my balls, yawn, and wonder what to do next. But still, once you get in that "day off!!" mindset, it's tough to reconcile with yourself if you give it up.
Tonight was the first night I really got to break in my cubicle, after spending the past two weeks floating around to train. (Once they decide they're fed up with Win98, I'll be totally happy in any cubicle.) But anyway, I like mine. Tonight, after waking up and realizing I wasn't getting back to sleep anytime soon, I went through iPhoto and printed out some 4x6's to keep me amused during the day. Surprisingly, the whole process took a lot more thought than I ever realized.
When you walk by someone's cubicle, and you look at the photos they've got up, you subconsciously try to extrapolate some kind of story from those photos. Personally, I don't care if I'm right or not, but it's fun to look for details and start fabricating entertaining lies. If I see a picture, I see a teenage son, a girlfriend that the mother's not too entirely happy about, but they're both smiling, so she feels bad for having her doubts. I see a family at the beach, and I think, wow, they look happy, but I totally remember all my family vacations and the squabbling about where to go for dinner. If I get as far as to wonder the potential dinner spots those people in the photo squabbled about, chances are I've looked too long.
Does anybody else do this? I'd like to feel like I'm not completely insane.
So, whilst looking through my photos, I feel like I was thinking about it entirely too much. I was thinking, what stories do I want people to make up from my photos? I figured the following- no pictures of just me and someone, because a) I'm not dating them, and b) Shelly would ask why we don't have any ones of just me and her. And I'd have to tell her that she forbade me to print any of the pictures of her that I particularly care for, because she feels like she doesn't look good in them. Furthermore, I was careful to avoid pictures of any of my friends with beer bottles in their hands. (That one made things especially tough.) Then I thought, is it too transparent to have tons of pictures of friends? There's a lot more to my photo collection than that. So I picked a few of my favorite landscapes. Then I wondered, is that transparent? If I walked past my cubicle and saw those pictures, what would I think?
The pictures I chose tell the following story: this kid travels a good bit. He's got a lot of friends. They all look so happy. I wonder if they're all still happy? I wonder how long ago that was taken, do they all still talk? Would they all still appear in another picture looking just about the same? He's also got quite an eye for scenery. I bet he thinks he's some hot-shit photographer. I wonder if he even took those. Seriously, who prints on non-glossy 4x6's? I don't see any girls he's hugging, he must be one of those gays...
And I'm okay with that story. Because, ultimately, my life is interesting, for better or worse, and I'm fine with people noticing that.
Saturday is the work day from hell. 8-4 at Signius, 6-close at Apple. I've never worked that long a day before. I'm both excited and terrified, thinking about how it will turn out. Sure, I've partied that long, but that's a much more free-form activity than general purpose customer service. Will I get off work and go out, desperately needing to unwind? Or will I go home, crash, and wake up sometime Sunday afternoon? I guess only time will tell.
Speaking of time, I've got entirely too much of it. No matter how hard I try, I haven't been able to get myself to sleep. I don't even know what my body's telling me to do. One voice says "sleep!" Another voice says "Seek more cold medicine!" Then the "That would be dangerous" voice quickly puts that one to rest. If the chorus of "You're hungry!" and "You're nauseous!" and "Drink more water!" and "FIND SOME CAFFEINE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!" doesn't stop, well, at least one voice will win- I'll eventually tire myself out, thinking about what I'm really thinking.
By the way, the "You have to work today, bastard, because you're responsible and said yes when they said they needed you, and you're not in bed yet, muhahaha!" voice is really bugging the hell out of me.
That paper Jaime was writing, remember that? I proofread it the other night, and sent her a couple notes she later hailed as brilliant. Then she informed me that I have way too much potential to ignore college, but not in a condescending way, rather in an encouraging one. I then spewed out a little insight that's rare for me to spew out anytime before midnight:
10:49:57 PM danny c.: here's the official story on me and college: i'm working now, just so i can get my life in order before i attempt to take college seriously again
10:50:21 PM jaime b.: yes...
10:51:44 PM danny c.: here's the unofficial version: i've already screwed it up twice. i hate being there, and i hate essex, but i don't have a choice. it's there or nowhere, with my high school GPA. the last two semesters i went, all it took was a couple nice large emergencies, which in my head i blew out of proportion and was able to rationalize as an excuse for losing all interest. so in all reality, i'm waiting because i need to be more mature and self-motivated if i'm ever going to make this work, because i couldn't take screwing up again
I went on to talk about how my home situation and ailing car seem like they're significant emergencies waiting to happen. For clarification, my home situation isn't, like, bad. It's more along the lines of, I'm getting older, and my parents are getting older. Our relationship is just fine. But we're on opposite sleep schedules, and my dad's got a worsening case of real, clinical insomnia, so when I'm here, I have to be practically silent. I can rarely ever have company, because the parents don't like the idea of surrending their house to a bunch of kids. Which is fine. Hell, it's their house, and I'm at the age where I really need to stake my claim on my own living space and get on with it. But, it's just really inconvenient to have to live like I'm a guest, rather than a resident.
Jaime said it's good that I wasn't being a bitch about it. I told her, all the years of thinking that way landed me nowhere.
In other news, I feel like life without MySpace is a lot more rewarding than life with it. I've been forced to stop using it as a crutch for my bored and uninspired mind, and thus, been forced to give my noodle a little exercise. (Please refrain from any masturbatory references, because I'd like to take the high road for once.)
(LOL, just kidding.)
But seriously, I like it. I feel slightly more alive, and slightly less like I don't exist.
Would it be unprofessional to ask if I could bring in my own keyboard and mouse, to make the working experience more pleasant? I doubt they'd let me, but would it hurt to ask?
Meh. I think pretty soon I'm going to find something to eat, and try sleeping again. And maybe some more cold medicine. The voices are starting to organize, and rally against the "stay awake and keep blogging" voice. So on that note, goodnight. Or good morning.
(DB) out.
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