Work (or Why So Light on the Posts?)

To the astute observer, which would be anyone who takes the time to skim this blog, I haven't exactly been putting much substance into this here blog.

Oh, sure, I have the photos to keep my post count going up and up, but unless I go out somewhere interesting and remember my camera and then remember to take pictures, I'ma gonna run out of them photos in 'bout two weeks. Then what?

The problem is my job. (Christ, I can already hear the eyeballs rolling and the see the people sighing.) I'm at a point in the hatred of my job where it's what I mostly think about and it's what I want to talk about.

Jeez, did I find out how much I wanted to talk about it last weekend when I went to Cowtown. Nearly everyone I visited asked me how work was going (Thank you, Heels, for not.) and I'd start talking. And I had to try real hard not to just let it all go at once. It's like when you have diarrhea. Sure, you could just loosen up your sphincter, push, and let everything rush out at 65 MPH, but if you do you risk ass-plosions on the seat and severe splash back on your butt. The smart way to handle the diarrhea is to use your sphincter and let it come out in short, controlled bursts. I had to exercise that kind of control while talking to people about work. If I hadn't I could have, easily, talked about how much worse this job has become and how it's effected me for thirty minutes, and the other person wouldn't have had to ask a question during that time because questions would have just kept me going even longer.

I don't think I went on and on about my job while visiting family and friends. I hope I kept things short and to the point and never sounded like I wanted to crawl into a deep, dark hole, cover my head, and just wait until it's over.

In the end, work is all I really want to write about, too. Well, I don't really want to write about work, but it's the only thing that's going through my head. If a bomb went off in the park killing twenty kindergarteners and fifty homeless puppies and kitties, I'd still only be able to write about the crappiness of work.

Because it's always there.

Always.

I don't enjoy reading or watching TV/movies/plays like I used to.
Music isn't as fun to sing along with.
Things still make me laugh, but they aren't as funny as they used to be and I never seem to laugh as long or hard as I used to.
I have trouble falling asleep -- sometimes my brain races, sometimes I have a hard time getting comfortable, sometimes I'm comfortable and my brain's quiet but I still have to lay there and just wait for sleep to come.
I sleep through the night, with a pee break sometimes, but I don't feel as though I've slept much.
My neck aches.
I always feel tired.
Conversations are harder. Thinking is harder. Doing is harder.
My insides feel heavy.
My fingers look fat.
I don't feel cheerful anymore.

The general solution, I know, is to get another job. And I want a new job. Unfortunately, in the past two-ish years there have been nearly twenty interviews. I think I got called three times to be told I didn't get the job (and I only know of three times that my supervisor was called and asked about me). There were only five or six letters sent to me saying I didn't get the job. The rest I never heard from again, but since I haven't interviewed since July it's pretty safe to assume I didn't get those positions, either.

Now, I'm just to worn out to try. If I didn't make a good impression while I was feeling good and feeling good about myself, what kind of an impression would I make feeling the way I feel now?

There are people out there who would read that and want to tell me to hold on, to keep trying, because something good is coming. It's unhelpful to hear that, though, because I'm not even asking for something good, just something better. "Better" doesn't mean good, either. "Better" would be my job the way it used to be -- boring and thoughtless. Plus, I'm not a big fan of fate; it makes me uncomfortable.

(An aside, Geewits did this post basically describing her idea of life in a picture. All I could see was a tangle. Don't know if I would have seen it that way three months ago.)

All this is to explain, to those few of you, why I don't write as much here as I used to, but I'm not sure if I have, so I'm just going to say it:

Work is all that I want to write about, but I'm tired of writing about it. All I do is repeat myself because the problems haven't changed. Nothing's gotten harder. Nothing's gotten easier. Communication is still non-existent from the way higher-ups. The more I think about it, the more confusing work gets. If I don't think about it, though, I can't do anything that's expected of me.

I'm tired of writing about work and I'm tired of thinking about work and I think that you few are tired of reading about my job. But work is all that seems to be in me right now.