As usual, I start this thing with no purpose in mind, just that I want to write something.
Upstairs, my brothers and their wives chat with my brothers' friend. I'm down in my room, in the dark, listening to music and hearing their din. Across the way, the dryer is spinning, zippers http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbanging against the drum.
A few years ago, Thanksgiving, I flew with my parents up to Oregon to visit with my brother and his (then) girlfriend. We went with her parents out to a beach so people could look for agate. I climbed up on rocks and watched the waves roll in, shatter against the rocks, then slide back out. Someone caught a picture of me out there, looking and I was asked what I was thinking. I thought of nothing, just the ocean. Later that week, I overheard my brother, while he was looking at the photos, say that that picture was exactly how he thought of me.
I still don't know what to think about that.
I'm sort of officially my niece's godfather, without all the god stuff. Not sure if I have to sign anything or just agree to it. I'll probably see her once a year, twice if I'm lucky. There's no way to know for sure, though. I don't know what my role really is other than really hoping that nothing horrible happens to her parents. To be fair, even before this I hoped that nothing horrible would happen to my brother and his wife, so that hasn't changed.
'Night, all.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Of Work and House
The second week of October I started a new job, sort of. I have the same title. The same pay. The same lack of respect. I'm not scheduling nurses anymore, though. I'm scheduling inmates for dental appointments. Inmates can't come to me and bitch about why they're scheduled when. They can't make bizarre demands. (No, I can't just schedule you for four days this week. You have to check with your supervisor.)
The problem (and I always have a problem since I, apparently don't know how to be happy) is that I don't use my brain much. Scheduling the nurses, I was constantly solving minor and, too often, major problems. I was always creating alternate plans. When I presented a supervisor of the director of nursing with an idea I had to think though what I was saying to try to convince them that I was right. My job now is just me inputting information into the computer, scheduling guys to see my doctor, and double checking what I just did. It's boring and thoughtless.
It is less stressful, though.
Of course, I'm not really happy and I'm stuck in a small room that has no windows with a lady who's tired of all the bullshit she's had to put up with for the last four year but tries to put a positive spin on things and a lady who just hates her job and her life and is willing to share loudly and in detail. Our boss sticks her nose into everything, and she's nice and all, but she doesn't really know what she's talking about because she doesn't do the work on a daily basis. Sure, she had the basic training and looks at the program every day, but since she doesn't do the work she doesn't know or understand all the details. (I don't either, since I've only been there for four weeks, but I'm learning quickly because I spend most of my eight hour days doing the work.) I ran into this problem when I worked entering data up in North Bay. I don't expect the boss to know I the details of the work I'm doing, but I like it a lot better when the boss trusts his or her subordinates.
Oh, and to top all this off I'm still fucking living with my parents. In a room where the shelf space is taken up with other peoples' crap. And it's been over a year. [sarcasm]Joy![/sarcasm]
Why am I still living with my parents if I don't like it? Well, it all started about eleven-or-twelve-or-thirteen months ago when I decided that I hated the job I was in and had to get out ASAP. That's when my plan fell apart. My original plan was to stay with my parent no longer than the new year. But when I started looking for a new job I thought it logical to not get stuck with a lease when it was possible I'd be working somewhere an hour or more away. (I don't like to drive thirty minutes, why would I drive an hour?) I figured that I'd throw out applications, get a few interviews, and be moved along no later than June. Come June, no fucking interviews. I was still sending out applications, though, to jobs that would be a promotion and jobs at my current level, so by October, for sure!
During the summer I had one interview. It was hundreds of miles to the South and near-ish to the coast. It was a long interview. A good interview. I knew when I left, though, that I wasn't going to get it. They knew that I wanted to promote and this was a job at my current classification level in a city hundreds of miles from my family and the friends they assumed I had. In the end I didn't get it.
A month later, I interviewed, at my current level, for a secretary position for an AW where I work. About six weeks after that, I interviewed for another position at my current level where I work. Eventually, after another week I get offered the first position, I was their second choice, but would rather have the second one I interviewed for. I talked it over with some people and decided the second one was a better choice for me and made sure I was still in the running before declining the first. (I hope this is clear.) When I was finally, officially, offered the second position, I started pulling listings and looking for a clean, well lighted place of my own.
Then, the week before I started, I was asked to an interview up in Cowcity for a promotion. (Last week, which was 3 weeks after the interview, the guy said they still hadn't decided. I'm afraid that he's just a coward and won't tell me that I'm forever trapped where I am.) With the chance of a promotion to a city 100ish miles away, as the car drives, I really shouldn't be thinking of getting myself trapped into a lease. Two weeks after that interview I interviewed up at a prison in Far North Coast. Also for a promotion. (I didn't get that job, but they said that I was would be really good at doing it and should apply for the position again, somewhere else. Of course, there are only 35 positions like that in the whole fucking state and too many of them are in places that I ain't gonna move to.) This week I went and took a test in Cowcity for a different classification. It would be a little less money, but it would get in away from lay-offs and into a place where they do good work and I could show that I work hard and well and they should FUCKING promote me to a higher level.
Hence, I'm stuck in a room where there's a 10-year old computer my pop still uses to load his iPod with. (He won't sync it with his newer computer for some dumb-ass paranoid reason.) A room that has two giant, probably broken, speaker sitting on a half file cabinet. A room with piles of empty boxes because you just never know. A room where I have books and movies in boxes on the floor because the shelves are all taken up. A room that I am continuously told is "my room," but I can't use most of it.
And yet I haven't looked at any kind of place to move, locally, because there's some bullshit optimism in me that keeps telling me that I'll be out of here soon and on to somewhere different, maybe even better.
And so I wallow in myself and I don't do anything. I'm just so very tired, you know? Tired of trying. Tired of hoping. Tired of working. Tired of thinking. Tired. And not in that funny Madeline Kahn way, either.
The problem (and I always have a problem since I, apparently don't know how to be happy) is that I don't use my brain much. Scheduling the nurses, I was constantly solving minor and, too often, major problems. I was always creating alternate plans. When I presented a supervisor of the director of nursing with an idea I had to think though what I was saying to try to convince them that I was right. My job now is just me inputting information into the computer, scheduling guys to see my doctor, and double checking what I just did. It's boring and thoughtless.
It is less stressful, though.
Of course, I'm not really happy and I'm stuck in a small room that has no windows with a lady who's tired of all the bullshit she's had to put up with for the last four year but tries to put a positive spin on things and a lady who just hates her job and her life and is willing to share loudly and in detail. Our boss sticks her nose into everything, and she's nice and all, but she doesn't really know what she's talking about because she doesn't do the work on a daily basis. Sure, she had the basic training and looks at the program every day, but since she doesn't do the work she doesn't know or understand all the details. (I don't either, since I've only been there for four weeks, but I'm learning quickly because I spend most of my eight hour days doing the work.) I ran into this problem when I worked entering data up in North Bay. I don't expect the boss to know I the details of the work I'm doing, but I like it a lot better when the boss trusts his or her subordinates.
Oh, and to top all this off I'm still fucking living with my parents. In a room where the shelf space is taken up with other peoples' crap. And it's been over a year. [sarcasm]Joy![/sarcasm]
Why am I still living with my parents if I don't like it? Well, it all started about eleven-or-twelve-or-thirteen months ago when I decided that I hated the job I was in and had to get out ASAP. That's when my plan fell apart. My original plan was to stay with my parent no longer than the new year. But when I started looking for a new job I thought it logical to not get stuck with a lease when it was possible I'd be working somewhere an hour or more away. (I don't like to drive thirty minutes, why would I drive an hour?) I figured that I'd throw out applications, get a few interviews, and be moved along no later than June. Come June, no fucking interviews. I was still sending out applications, though, to jobs that would be a promotion and jobs at my current level, so by October, for sure!
During the summer I had one interview. It was hundreds of miles to the South and near-ish to the coast. It was a long interview. A good interview. I knew when I left, though, that I wasn't going to get it. They knew that I wanted to promote and this was a job at my current classification level in a city hundreds of miles from my family and the friends they assumed I had. In the end I didn't get it.
A month later, I interviewed, at my current level, for a secretary position for an AW where I work. About six weeks after that, I interviewed for another position at my current level where I work. Eventually, after another week I get offered the first position, I was their second choice, but would rather have the second one I interviewed for. I talked it over with some people and decided the second one was a better choice for me and made sure I was still in the running before declining the first. (I hope this is clear.) When I was finally, officially, offered the second position, I started pulling listings and looking for a clean, well lighted place of my own.
Then, the week before I started, I was asked to an interview up in Cowcity for a promotion. (Last week, which was 3 weeks after the interview, the guy said they still hadn't decided. I'm afraid that he's just a coward and won't tell me that I'm forever trapped where I am.) With the chance of a promotion to a city 100ish miles away, as the car drives, I really shouldn't be thinking of getting myself trapped into a lease. Two weeks after that interview I interviewed up at a prison in Far North Coast. Also for a promotion. (I didn't get that job, but they said that I was would be really good at doing it and should apply for the position again, somewhere else. Of course, there are only 35 positions like that in the whole fucking state and too many of them are in places that I ain't gonna move to.) This week I went and took a test in Cowcity for a different classification. It would be a little less money, but it would get in away from lay-offs and into a place where they do good work and I could show that I work hard and well and they should FUCKING promote me to a higher level.
Hence, I'm stuck in a room where there's a 10-year old computer my pop still uses to load his iPod with. (He won't sync it with his newer computer for some dumb-ass paranoid reason.) A room that has two giant, probably broken, speaker sitting on a half file cabinet. A room with piles of empty boxes because you just never know. A room where I have books and movies in boxes on the floor because the shelves are all taken up. A room that I am continuously told is "my room," but I can't use most of it.
And yet I haven't looked at any kind of place to move, locally, because there's some bullshit optimism in me that keeps telling me that I'll be out of here soon and on to somewhere different, maybe even better.
And so I wallow in myself and I don't do anything. I'm just so very tired, you know? Tired of trying. Tired of hoping. Tired of working. Tired of thinking. Tired. And not in that funny Madeline Kahn way, either.
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