novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- welcome to the working week the world hasn't ended. nor has it sprouted wings and flown away, dazzling its inhabitants with glitter and fast money. i'm in oakland and i'm working again. eight to five every weekday. one hour lunch complete with either thai food or subway salads and bust magazine to occupy my eyes. pants that aren't jeans. gooseflesh and blow-dried hair. there are six offices that belong to the pr firm i'm interning for. i share an office with two others: stephanie, the secretary who is obsessed with fish (not the band) yet hates stevie nicks, is out today. roy, the twenty year old computer whiz with a voice deeper than stephen merritt's and a spoken vocabulary half the length of the shortest ever magnetic fields song, is behind me, yawning every half hour on the hour. his head was recently shaved. it is one in the afternoon and stubble is already showing on his chin; it matches his scalp. and my legs. tricky to keep up the girly nuances of office work in order to pass under the boss radar. joanne says working eight hour shifts every day makes her so tired that she never leaves her house once she gets home. she goes to bed at nine thirty and wakes up in time for work. but everything is feeling possible. i didn't think i was mentally capable of holding down a regular time, office-esque, boss-enforced job. i lost my last one and that was only three hours a week. now i'm up to forty and doing fine. and it makes me realize that i like routine. that if i establish routine i can do basically anything; as long as i leave myself enough space to bounce around inside the routine. so maybe i can become a college professor after all. summers filled with writing and sleeping, falls and springs with students, winters filled with writing, and sleeping, sleeping. i just learned that the spoils of victory are much more rewarding when you actually work for your prize. i think i was supposed to be taught that in kindergarten. "motivation? what's that, teacher? my dad is a dead end car salesman and my mother sleeps all the time. my grandparents are retired but they taught me how to play gin." it's kindof like eating when you're hungry, and not the other way around. i just learned that, too. told you i was backwards. money isn't bad, either. money doesn't make the world go round, but it helps you figure out how to spin it. everything feels possible. ps. go read muffie's entry about the house across the street from her apartment building. it's stellar. http://sheepiekins.diaryland.com 12:54 pm - 6.11.01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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