Prepoceros

Huzzah! Today was a wonderful day. We were hit with a couple of good-sized crises at work, in addition to the usual end-of-the-month crud, so I got to work at the office all day long and had many fun and exciting things to do.

I like the crazy, hectic days much more than the ones when everything goes well. (Do those even exist?) When the gears are turning smoothly there’s so much potential for me to do something wrong and cause problems for everyone else, but when things are going to shit all around me, the only way to go is up. Pretty much anything I do will help, and I like that feeling. It makes me want to work harder and do the absolute best job I can cleaning up messes and dealing with as much as I can on my own so the full-timers will be free to tackle the real disasters.

Anyway, I was in a positive, focused mood all day long, which is rare. So today gets a two. The rest of the office seemed to be in a cheery mood, too, especially considering the circumstances. Everybody had at least three ugly things to deal with that they could’ve whined about, but the feeling was all, “Yay! Problems! Let’s get to it!” and they buckled down and did cringe-inducing but fabulous things, and the world didn’t collapse. Without sounding too cheesy, I was impressed and inspired. I love my office—these are good people.

Or maybe everyone was grumpy and I was just projecting, as I’ve been more or less exploding with happiness all day. These jeans! They’re my favorite! I wear them so often I’ve worn massive holes in the crotch, but I’ll keep wearing them forever because they make my legs look skinny! My sweater! It’s too long for my arms! Fantastic! Chinese food? I love it! This cooler weather is lovely! Gosh, you look pretty today! And so do you! What fabulous taste in Friday-casual clothing you all have! I get to put paper in the copier? Sweet! I love the way a fresh ream of paper looks—it’s wrapped up so neatly! What’s that? More essays to grade? Oh boy oh boy! The crazy angry parent called again? Haha, people sure are funny! You have a miserable raging ear infection? Ok, that one actually doesn’t make me happy. Very sorry, and I hope you feel better soon, Toni. But you get the idea. I was a veritable cheer machine, spraying tiny golden droplets of joy around the room like so many germy sneeze bullets.

Remember the up? And the down? The up and the down that is my life and my crazy moods? This is them. I think what made me happy today, unless it was just coincidence, is the fact that I had nine solid hours of new, structured problems to work on that have virtually no impact on the rest of my life. When it comes to schoolwork, cleaning the apartment, or prepping for lessons, I’m on my own. I have to make my own schedule, and no one’s going to be let down if I don’t finish this right now. (They’ll be let down eventually, but I’m not good with consequences more than an hour in the future.) In my office job I’m also privileged, I think, in that I’m there mostly in a support position. I help people out on a bunch of different projects, but I’m not ultimately responsible for any of them. That’s not to say that I can blow my work off—I like my bosses (all four of five of them), and I don’t want to add to their stress—but it frees me from having to deal with a bunch of specific goals and deadlines and allows me to work on whatever people have chosen to assign me or whatever I feel will be most helpful at any particular moment. It’s a good set-up—I lucked out with this one.

Similarly, the problems I deal with at work aren’t *my* problems, they’re *work’s* problems. This means that they’re self-contained, which is important. I imagine it as a work “bubble.” I can go into the bubble, follow the rules there, and try to solve the puzzle. If I do well, that’s great. If I don’t, that sucks. But I can step out of the bubble any time I want, and the problems won’t follow me out. An angry parent whose child’s test I forgot to grade can’t bother me at home, turn my friends against me, or keep me from graduating college. In that way, work is a lot like math. If I can’t solve a math problem, that’s a pity and probably frustrating, but it’s frustrating on a different level than screwing up my credit rating by forgetting to open all those bills, or not having any dishes to eat off of because I haven’t washed them. I like math.

Oh, and on a vaguely-related note, remember yesterday’s packages that I was going to show you? Check this shit out:

Footie pajamas! For grown-ups! Have you ever seen such a wonderful thing? I don’t remember being young enough to wear footie PJs, but I remember when my brother wore them, and they always looked so comfy. I can’t wait for the weather to get colder (December, maybe?) so I can try these out. They’re from BigFeetPJs, who deliver superfast. They’re maybe a little expensive for pajamas, but…footies! They have footies! Why didn’t I think of this?

Tags: miscellany

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 1st, 2005 at 1:03 am and is filed under miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.