An approximation of a conversation I had with my boss

Boss: Tash, how are you with Excel?

Me: Um. Well, we used to have one, but we gave it to this friend of ours who lives in a commune. But I acutally don't have my driver's license, so...

Boss: ...

Me: We have a Subaru now.

Boss: (in the careful tones of one speaking to a possibly violent crazy person on the bus) No... Microsoft Excel.

Me: Oh. Um. I'm really good at it! (accompanied by an unconvincing rictus grin)

Boss: Great! Now, what I want you to do is (what followed was white noise. Something about currency conversions). Does that sound OK?

Me: No problem!

Now, you may be totally unsurprised to learn that I know nothing about Excel. I spent the rest of the day faffing around with a spreadsheet, getting ever more frantic as the hours ticked away and I had still made no discernible progress. Eventually I confessed all. My boss was slightly bemused, and showed me how to do what he was asking me to do. Which I promptly forgot, and today I had to do it all again and I was far too embarrassed to ask him for help again. 

By the end of the day today I was in the calm oasis that precedes having to demonstrate incontrovertibly that one is a total dipshit when my fellow woman employee walked past my desk. 'Oh', she said, after a quick glance over my shoulder, 'you want that to be like this'. A click and it was fixed. 

My boss was pleased.

I still don't know how to do whatever it is they're having me do with Excel.

How long can I keep up this deception? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Hubris

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, mainly because I'd sort of lost interest in this whole thing. But now Jo is at some uni do, and the parental units have gone somewhere (who cares where? The important thing is that they aren't here), so obviously I am bored and my thoughts turn to writing something of great social and political import. 

Ummm.

Maybe I need to ease into this.

Here are some ducks that have been hanging out in the fields near my work;

Not pictured: adorable ducklings. They always hide when they see me coming.

Gosh, Virginia Woolf was right. You do need a room of your own if you are to write - if only everyone else would piss off for the evening more often. Now we're getting somewhere.

An update.

Things are good at the moment, which is probably also why there has been very little activity around here. This is my outlet for when I feel like I'm one strong drink away from obtaining a firearm and going on a killing spree. This is where I come to vent. And I don't really have anything to vent about at the moment. 

I like my job. The people are lovely and I like the actual work a lot. It's varied enough and busy enough that I'm rarely left with nothing to do. On Fridays we go to the pub and naughtily squiffy, then go back to the office to stare, glassy-eyed and headachy, at spreadsheets and order forms. There is regular cake, and there is a rumour that we may be about to get a Nespresso.

I'm healthier than I've been in my entire life. I go to pilates and kickboxing once a week, and I actually - brace yourselves - jog a couple of times a week. I'm fully vegan now, and don't drink except on weekends, and then nowhere near as much as I was when I was in my last job. And I feel great. The depression that has nagged me my entire life is sulking in the corner, just waiting for me to get lazy so it can swoop back in and make me miserable again. But screw that. I don't want to go back to wallowing-in-misery Tash. She's boring and sad. Exercising Tash is much more fun to be around. 

And all of this has turned out to be great timing, because I've just been invited to my ten year high school reunion (the horror, the horror). I thought about not going, but then I thought nah, fuck that. I'm happy, I'm proud of my life and where I am. I have nothing to be ashamed or emabarrased about (living with the parents notwithstanding). I'm going. Not in a showing off, look-at-me-now way, but with genuine good will. I'm curious to see what everyone else is doing with themselves. Who's married? Who has babies? Who's fat/skinny/much better looking/much uglier?

There are still some people who run a very serious risk of being on the wrong end of my new ability to roundhouse kick the crap out of anyone who cares to take me on. But I think I'll probably just try to avoid them and catch up with other people. 

Anyway, that's about it. Not much else really has happened, but that's the way I like it.

Employment ho!

No, not that kind of ho. I have not turned to sex work out of desperation. That's 'ho!' as in 'land ho!', as in what delirious and scurvy ridden sailors would scream in relief when they finally saw something other than ocean after months of drifting aimlessly in becalmed waters. 

What I am trying to say in a metaphorical sort of way (the ocean represents unemployment, just in case you hadn't caught that) is that I have a job. Huzzah!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a friend at the bookshop where I used to work who gave me the phone number of a guy who runs a small publishing company here on the Northern Beaches. He had just taken on a lot of new business and was looking for someone to go in for a couple of weeks to help out with some admin stuff. So I called him, and at 8:30 the next day I presented myself to start work. Somehow or other he must have got the impression that I am in some way not a complete waste of space, because by Friday he had offered me a full time position.

I was a bit ambivalent about starting work in another publishing company, given that my previous publishing company job had left me with severe stress issues that made my hair fall out. So I was cautious. 

And I had been pretty apathetic about looking for another job, because I just could not stand the thought of working in an office environment again. But by the end of my second day I started to realise that either this place is absurdly nice or  - and this is what I'm leaning more towards - my last job was just flat out toxic. In my previous job at X Publishing Company, no one talked to me for the first month. I had no idea what I was doing, or who to ask when I had problems. People who were supposed to be my colleagues treated me like I was the enemy, and gave me no support. I had four bosses, none of whom took any interest in me other than to tell me they were disappointed in my progress. I'm reading a book at the moment which has a great description of this feeling. The character is talking about her experience working in a publishing company;

I used to cry, every night, literally, I would get a milkshake and put vodka in it and cry because I thought I must be stupid. I had these dreams, every night, where everybody speaks some foreign language and I don't know it.'

I hated every minute of my time there. 

And now at this new place.. I feel cautiously optimistic. During my first week there, if anyone was walking past my desk they'd stop and ask if I needed anything. On my first day I had three people offer to show me where the shops are. I was introduced to someone who was my designated 'question answerer', who I would go to with any problems.

And what is more, instead of being an hour's journey through the rush hour traffic, my office is just twenty minutes up the road in an area that feels almost rural. There are small farms behind the business centre where I work, with horses and ducks and alpacas. Alpacas! If I so choose, I can walk through the bush instead of along the road to get to work;

There's a garden centre with a nice cafe a block away and the beach is a ten minute walk down the road. And the warehouse attached to the office is full of thousands and thousands of books. All that separates me from more books that I could read in a lifetime is a flimsy door that the suckers don't even bother to lock during the day!

All in all, it seems pretty good. In fact, I am slightly suspicious. Is it too good? What nasty surprises are  lurking in wait? Maybe I'm being ridiculously pessimistic. But hopefully this will turn out to be a good thing. Please let it turn out to be a good thing.

Updated Doings

So, here's how things stand at the moment;

Job
Ain't got one. I was on a four month contract at The Job Which Shall Not Be Named, and I was fully expecting to get a variation of 'don't let the door hit your arse on the way out!' on my last day. So imagine my complete and utter bafflement when I was asked by my boss to stay on. Huh. Maybe I wasn't the world's most hilariously underqualified and useless employee. Would have been nice if someone had mentioned that to me at some point while I was still employed there - that may have stopped my from hiding in the toilet in tears, convinced at my own uselessness, on what got to be an almost daily basis.

However, I truly despised that job, so rather than deigning to accept the offer I told my boss to cram it with walnuts, and I flounced out the door, pausing only to give him the finger and dispense a few choice insults amongst my former colleagues. I'm kidding of course. Though there was a small amount of flouncing. What I did do was go to the pub with D and the Hair Hamster, and get nicely sozzled. We had a very long, very boozy lunch, during which we cackled immoderately and were very bitchy. Then we went back to the office and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at this website and giggling like the drunken idiots we are;

(click the picture for more)

I think my ex-boss was genuinely surprised that I didn't want to stay, but I don't think I could have taken another day of it. It wasn't a bad job, and it wasn't especially difficult, but Heavens to Betsy it was tedious. I ended up so utterly stressed out by trying to fill the painful hours between 9 and 5 that I literally could not eat during the day. I always thought people who claimed to be too busy or stressed to eat were full of crap, because I pretty much live for food. But for the last four months I have been getting by on toast for breakfast and crisps and wine for dinner. I haven't started looking for another job yet, though I have started sorting out my resume today, and I plan to start the job hunt over the next few days.

Hair
Either it's slowing down, or I'm freaking out about it less, but either way I'm feeling better about the hair thing. I went to the doctor to get checked out, and he couldn't think of any good reason why I should be losing my hair, so he tested me for everything - 'I am throwing the book at you, young lady' were his exact words. I got my results, and everything is normal. Better than normal. I'm practically the bionic freaking woman, especially considering how appalling my diet has been lately, and that I haven't eaten meat in six months and have a more less vegan diet these days. Iron - awesome, cholesterol and blood pressure - exemplary, hormones, thyroid, vitamin levels - normal, normal, normal. Huzzah!

But doctor, why oh why is my hair falling out? His reply was '....ummm....stress? Yeah, probably just stress.' Because my hormone levels are normal he's pretty certain that it's not female pattern baldness - he thinks it's telogen effluvium, and he said that things could be back to normal within a year or so. Which seems like a very, very long time when handfuls of hair are falling out everyday, but it feels a lot better to be able to put a name to what's going on. The problem is that one of the triggers for telogen effluvium is stress. Guess what makes you stressed? Your hair falling out! Which causes more hair to fall out and so on ad absurdium. So I'm basically just trying to get myself back on track now. I'm having a sober month, I'm eating veggies til they come out my ears* and walking every day, and I'm starting to realise how tightly wound I have been lately. I was reading a book review the other day, and this quote from the book really struck me;

I was nothing but tension. . . . I brushed my teeth ferociously, as if I wanted to file them down. I yanked on my socks as if determined to thrust my toes right through them. . . . When I pushed a command button, I did so as if it was my personal strength that must send the elevator to the sixth floor, or raise the door of the garage. While I shaved I tensed my jaw, while I read I tensed my throat, while I ate (too fast) I tensed my forehead, while I talked I tensed my shoulders, while I listened I tensed my neck, while I drove I tensed everything.

That could be me he's describing - I had a tiny panic attack in the pub the other night, which hasn't happened in years, and my shoulders have been hovering around the level of my ears for weeks now. So the plan for the immediate future is to calm - the - fuck - down and get myself together (by the way, don't think I'm not aware of how appallingly middle class and privileged my problems are, because I know that 'I'm feeling a bit stressed' is pretty much the epitome of a first world problem, but I'm not going to apologise for that). To whit and thusly, I will be reading Game of Thrones, practising my Spanish grammar (there's something unexpectedly soothing about the mindlessness of conjugating**) and spending a lot of time pottering about in the kitchen.

OK, so that's the updated version of things at the moment. I have a story about a BBQ, and another one about seagulls and crazy ladies, both of which I will get to soon. Until then, you must wait with bated breath - can you stand the excitement!?

*which may point to a more serious medical problem than that of my hair falling out
**that's what she said

Ping pong helps me ignore the caffeine-induced voices in my head

What did you do today? Did you go to a jewellery supply shop and help pick out a soldering iron, and then play ping pong in what was possibly an art installation? Huh. That's a coincidence.

To explain. Since Monday, my boss has been saying to me in an ominous sort of way 'we need to talk about your progress'. The progress meeting was initially scheduled for 10a.m. Monday morning. Then it got pushed back to Monday afternoon. Then Tuesday morning, then Tuesday afternoon, and so on and so forth until this afternoon (Thursday) when the meeting finally happened. It was less of a 'let's all tell Tash how terrible she is at her job' affair than I had thought it was going to be, but I'll get to that. The point is, for the last four days I have been working myself into a state of COMPLETE AND UTTER TERROR that I was going to get shouted at. Because, and I'll let you in on a tiny little secret here... I'm terrible at my job. Like, painfully bad. I also hate it with a passion, which goes a long way to explaining why I'm so bad at it. The only thing that stops me from completely checking out and just playing Minesweeper and googling pictures of baby dormice all day is that my fear of getting into trouble slightly outweighs my sense of miserable apathy towards my work.

By this morning, I was a jibbering mess. I just wanted to get the shouting at over and done with. I drank a giant coffee, then went and got a second giant coffee because someone asked me to go to the coffee shop with them, so by midday I was a jumble of nerves and anticipation, and hallucinating slightly from all the caffeine (that's a thing, it's not just me being melodramatic).

L, my work buddy (also known as the Hair Hamster) noticed that I was verging tears and/ or magical laughter and asked me to go on an outing with her so she could spend her birthday money. We went first to a jewellery supply store, where she spent an inordinate amount of time taking to a man about soldering irons. While waiting for her I checked out the sale table, which is always dangerous, even when there is nothing there that I could conceivably want or need. Nevertheless. It took a bit of work to convince myself that I do not really need an economy pack of white cotton gloves (it was only $5 for 50 - I'm sure I could have found a use for them) or a jewellery display case in the shape of a book, just because it was half price.

Then we went to Gaffa, which is absolutely lovely, and you really have to go there if you're in Sydney. It's a tiny private art gallery split over two levels of an old office building in Clarence St., and it shows very small collections from an eclectic bunch of artists, though the focus tends to be on jewellery. I saw some absolutely stunning pieces, and I'm definitely going to go back when I've saved up my pocket money.

Kyoko Hashimoto

Momoko Hatano

There was an installation composed of a sculpture a little man hunched up in the middle of a room swathed in black cloth, which visitors to the gallery were encouraged to write their sad thoughts on. L was all for drawing a picture of a penis, because she is just a simple being, but I convinced her to write 'I am worried that I will never feel happiness' (geddit? hahahaha) instead, because I am just as immature as her, but, as I said above, more scared of getting in trouble. Then we went downstairs to the cafe, and there was a little glassed in room off to one side with a ping pong table in it. So we played some ping pong. A few people stopped to watch us, which made us paranoid that it was actually an art installation that we were defiling, but no one shouted at us, so it was either an interactive piece, or it was just a ping pong table.

By this stage I was feeling much better, so we headed back to the office, just in time for the meeting. My boss went round the table. The advertising manager got told off a tiny bit. Then the online editor got a little bit of a talking to. Then came my turn. I had to explain myself, which I did by shrugging, letting my bottom lip wobble a little bit, and saying 'ummm, I don't know. I'm sorry'. There was a moment of tension... and the conversation moved on. And that was it. I mean, I definitely got the feeling that I am not going to walk out of this job with a glowing recommendation, but I also didn't actually get told off, so I'm putting the progress meeting outcome in the positive column for today. Only just, but still.

What else.

Oh yes, my hair is still falling out with reckless abandon, but either I've come to accept it, or I am in denial about it, in which case there is almost certainly some horrible emotional outburst in the offing when I finally come to deal with it. I think it's the former, though. I've been looking at other women's hair a lot over the last couple of days (in a totally non creepy way), and I've noticed lots and lots of women my age with partings that are slightly too wide and patchy, or who have thin or even bald patches on the back of their heads, or with sparse patches around the temples, and I feel much better. I have also made an appointment to get my hair cut next week - I've realised that the thing that is freaking me out more than anything else is that I have totally lost control over what my hair does, and I am - it may shock you to learn - quite the control freak. I'm hoping that if I go and get a style more flattering to my hair-lite situation, it will make me feel slightly more in control, and stop me from completely losing my mind.

And that's more or less it for now. I've got an evening entirely to myself for once, so I'm indulging in a dinner of beer and crisps, and later I will eat a banana paddle pop. I will also watch last night's First Tuesday Bookclub, and stroke the screen tenderly every time Jennifer Byrne speaks, because I love her and I want to be her. OK, that last thing was a bit creepy, but my reasons for loving her have nothing to do with her hair, so the creepiness is mitigated a tiny bit. 

It's hard to mope when you're choking on bubble tea

Dear me, but the last few days have been a bit grim, haven't they? I should just change the title of my blog to 'Tash Tells a Sad Story' and have done with it. So, just for a change, I'm going to tell you about some things that won't make me cry as I write about them.

Yesterday I had lunch with some people from my office, which was nice, except that someone decided we were going to go to the seventh level of food court hell and eat bain marie Chinese food. Jesus Mary and Joseph, but it was awful. For one, there was the whole bain marie aspect - call me crazy, but I have a tiny problem with eating food that has been stewing in a warm bath of salmonella and grease since the dawn of time. My philosophy of eating is that I should never have to pay money for a prepared meal that I would be embarrassed to serve to someone if they came round to my house for dinner. If I'm paying money for you to give me food, it should be because it's something I can't make myself - I'm not saying everything has to be Michelin standard. I'll happily eat a McDonald's apple pie, because, as much as it only barely classifiable as food, I couldn't make it myself because I lack a deep fryer and access to industrial chemicals. But this Chinese was just crappy. They had about 16 dishes, only one of which was vegetarian. How did I know it was vegetarian? Why, because it had a sign floating in it that said 'Vegetarian Food'. It was spectacularly awful. But while we were having lunch my friend told me some VERY BIG NEWS that I am not allowed to tell anyone, so I won't. Rest assured that it was VERY BIG indeed, and I am honoured that I am among the handful of people who are privy to it.

After lunch we went and got EasyWay drinks, which are billed as 'Australia's healthiest bubble tea'. I will take their word on that. Mine was a taro milk tea, which is a worryingly vivid purple colour, and in spite of the fact that it clearly says on the side of the cup 'beware of choking', I choked on my bubbles. I know what taro is, but I wasn't expecting the flavour, and I can't quite describe it. 'What is that taste?', I asked D. 'I don't know, but I like to think that it tastes like carebears', he replied. Which, somehow, is actually not far wrong.

Then we had a good long bitch session about people from our office, or the others did at any rate. I don't really know anyone else well enough to have anything in particular against any of them, though I did venture the opinion that the Talky Designer Man is a bit of a wanker, and this was solemnly agreed to by all parties, so I feel as if I held up my end of the social contract.

There, that's a much nicer post, now, isn't it? It's hard to be sad when you're badmouthing your colleagues and pretending to drink a carebear.

An uplifting story about chemo, crafts and cheese

This is kind of gross, but I have to make sure that this story goes further than just me. I was telling my friend at work about my hair-woes today, and she told me that when she was recovering from chemo a few years ago and was unable to walk, she would sit in bed, watching TV, obsessively combing hair with her hands, and collecting the hair. Which she then felted into a hamster shape, and glued googly eyes on. God, I love working with her. I was appalled, but I also just about bust a gut laughing. That story really cheered me up, because though I might feel wretched at the thought that I may be losing my hair, in a few weeks I could have my very own hair-hamster. (Blogger is being a little bitch about posting pictures, which means I can't post the picture I found of - non-human hair - felted hamster. It's worth taking a moment to go and Google it though. Go ahead, I'll wait. Back? Good)

I'm going to be sad to leave my current job, mainly because I really get along well with this woman.

Yesterday she was showing me pictures of a Turducken she made last Christmas. But it wasn't enough for her to just ram various pieces of poultry into the orifices of a larger bird, oh no. She detached the drumsticks and wings from the duck and chicken, and used skewers to attach them to the turkey so that what she ended up with was a nightmarish six-limbed avian creature that would have looked perfectly at home in an illustrated edition of the collected stories of H.P. Lovecraft. It looked utterly horrifying, and yet strangely alluring.

Last week she was saying that she wants to get married a second time, and have a cheese themed wedding. If I didn't already think she might actually be my birth mother, this alone would probably convince me. Her dream cheese wedding would be held in Bega, every course would feature cheese, and the cake would just be  wheels of cheese balanced one on top of the other (I seriously considered that for my own wedding, but I was eventually talked out of it - apparently not everyone loves brie as much as me).

And the pièce de résistance? A cheese dress. She's got it all picked out, and all she needs is a bloke.

I might have to ask Jo for a divorce just so I can marry him again, but this time in the dress of my dreams. Maybe being friends with this woman is enough to make me want to ask to stay on when my contract finishes... probably not. But then that's why we have the internet, so that the people in our lives that we take a liking to are stuck with us.

Replace 'make my ears pop' with 'Googling Game of Thrones'

and this is pretty much how I look on an average work day.

People who have been on the TV do not want to meet you

I'm back from my work trip to the conference about...computers? Or whatever. 

It was on the Gold Coast, the most depressing place on earth. I know it's all sunny and beachy and stuff, but my God is it grim. Nothing but tract housing and golf courses and this abomination. Happily, I was confined to the hotel for the three days I was up there, so there was very little chance I would have to interact with anyone called Tayhnee or Brayndyn.

My role was to stand at our booth and try to get people to sign up to the newsletter, which I did for three days running, from 8:30am to 6pm. I did have five colleagues there (whose names I am still a bit hazy on - in my head I think of them as Shouty Bald Man, Smiley Bald Man, Sad Potato Man, The Earring-Suit and Captain Bland) who were supposed to come and give me a break at points throughout the day, but the only time I saw any of them was when the drinks came out in the evening. But it was fine, I made my own friends and coerced them into bringing me me snacks and freebies from other booths, which they duly did - behold my loot;

And I managed to get myself on the front table for the awards ceremony, right next to The Talent - Tripod and Corrine Grant, who I tipsily introduced myself to; she wrote quite a good article about female comedians and I wanted to tell her I thought it was quite good, but as I started talking to her I suddenly felt embarrassed about accosting someone at random - not because she's been on the telly, just because it feels like an odd thing to do to anyone - and ended up rambling a little bit then trailing off mid sentence. Then I drank some more wine and went to the bar where I made some more friends (or at least got talked at by some people for a while). Then everyone decided to go into Sufers Paradise and keep drinking, and I decided to go to bed. I managed not to embarrass myself or the company, and it all went as well as could be expected. All in all, not a bad junket.

To finish, here are some slogans from t-shirts I saw at the conference, which will give you an idea of the kind people attending;

• Weapons of a Security Warrior
• World's #1 Hacker
  
• Earthling
• Ethical Hacker
• Resistance is Futile
• A great Han Solo and Chewbacca as Calvin and Hobbes shirt that I have to have

Junket! Junket! Junket!

For reasons best known to himself, my boss has decided to send me to the Gold Coast to some sort of conference about....computers? Or something? It involves security. Um.

Luckily, I will not be attending the actual conference; my job will be to man the booth for the company's computer magazine. I was not aware until Tuesday that my company produced a computer magazine, so I don't really know what I'm going to do if people ask me questions. I think my job is mainly to hand out flyers, talk to people, and bribe them with lollies to sign up to some sort of newsletter. My boss actually used the word 'banter' when he was explaining what he wants me to do. I am not good at banter. Why is he sending me, someone with no knowledge of what the magazine is actually about, and whose social skills have been described at 'non-existent'?

There are two interpretations for why I've been chosen to go to this. One is that I'm the most junior, least vital member of staff, and if I'm out of the office for three days, no one will be inconvenienced. The other interpretation, and the one I'm choosing to believe, is that I have been chosen because I'm the prettiest and the hardest working member of staff, and I deserve a three day break from the office to go and do a cruisy job in a nice hotel where I will be fed and watered in the manner to which I am accustomed. As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. 

Anyway, I'm off to the airport in a couple of hours. I have been given a giant box full of sweets and a envelope full of cash (for 'expenses') - these people are far too trusting - and this evening I will be attending the opening festivities. I quote from my orientation sheet;

Dust off your leiderhosen! Oktoberfest has arrived early! Quench your thirst with some German beer and enjoy sampling the flavours of Germany on the buffet.

I can hardly wait.

I suddenly feel better about my life choices

Oonagh Moodling, a writer and speaker on the desensitisation of the workplace, tells me: "The most seemingly innocuous words can cause subconscious limitation or damage. The term "human resources" is a limiting term because it commodifies people as things to be used instead of genuine assets to be nurtured. Language has such a deep influence on people because it patterns and dictates how we think. This is why I suggest Human Resource departments are renamed Human Potential. All you need to feel is your own emotional response to those two phrases to notice the difference."

I may be floundering in the very shallows of the world of grown up employment, but at least I'm not spouting nonsensical crap like this. 

Amen.

...and you're next!

New goal: stop whining

Don't worry, the maladjusted cynic you know and tolerate isn't going anywhere. But I am sick of hearing myself whine about how much I haaaaaate my job. So today I will be telling you about some other things.

First of all, these fun things from our trip to Canberra a few weekends ago;

You might have to zoom in a bit for this one

Also cheering me up this week; bits of conversations I have overheard on the street, which I can only hope made more sense in context;

• OH MY GOD! If there was a fire, I would, like, totally die.
• Man, that's so much better than ten burritos.
• It was so sad, we had to wrap each other in toilet paper 

All in all, it hasn't been a bad week. I'm starting to hate my job less. I am no longer terrified of the entertainingly unpredictable mood swings of my boss, and I have a work buddy to have my lunch with. I have been to some proper business meetings, like a real live grownup (one of them was with someone at the Art Gallery of NSW, and I have to admit I got a huge kick out of that). I have learned that, while on paper I work five days a week, Fridays are unofficially a write off. Everyone turns up late, we all have lunch in the pub, then we spend the afternoon doing as much work as we are capable after a lunchtime wine, then at four in the afternoon the drinks trolley comes round and we watch TV/play on the arcade games/trawl the internet etc, with impunity. I have learned that the currency of my office is Cheezles, and that if you get in the way of someone trying to get to the Cheezle bowl on a Friday afternoon, you will get your ass knocked down. And I have learned that I can get a later bus to work but still get to the office on time, meaning that I can sleep in for half an hour longer in the mornings.

If it wasn't for the actual work, I would be loving my job.

more gloom

Why does one have to work? WHY? To quote The Clash, as one should always do in moments of extreme emotional stress;

It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages
You're frettin', you're sweatin'
But did you notice you ain't gettin'?

Word.

Seven working days in and I am over this shit. The work is not hard, but it is, how can I put this...soul crushing. Marketing is really not for me. I am far too emotionally fragile not to take rejection of my carefully thought-out schemes personally. I spend all morning thinking about how I can help various people have businesses that suck slightly less, and then when I tell them how they can be more awesome they shoot me down. It's just like high school all over again, except that my hair is way better these days.*

Even my diary seemed to be conspiring against me today. It's the Permaculture Diary, bought  because it was marked down to $4 in the ABC shop, and because I felt that professional people should really own diaries. Because it is designed for rudderless hippies (which is why it was on sale - hippies don't need day planners) it has little inspirational quotes scattered throughout the pages, and today's was from Kahlil Gibran; "work is love made visible". 

To which I say: Suck it, Kahlil.

I got my first job as soon as I was old enough to work, and up until I ran away to Spain last year I had basically never had time off. Having had five months of holidays, I am ruined for life. I mean, getting up every day at the same time? I can't cope.

The one thing that made this day not completely awful happened on the bus on the way home from work. I was slumped up in my seat by the window, not really looking at anything, when I noticed that in the lane next to the bus was a car with a kid in the passenger seat who was leaning out the window and waving wildly at the bus. I gave him a little smile and a wave back, and he looked as if it had made his day. Did you ever play that game 'sweet and sour' on car trips? It's a great game for when you've become too bored even to play counting games, and when you've lost the energy even to squabble. Basically, you wave at people, and judge them 'sweet' or 'sour' based on whether they wave back. We used to love it, but I never thought at the time that, just maybe, I'd made someone's day a little bit less miserable by doing it.

So thank you small child in the ridiculous Lexus 4WD, you will never know how much that helped me today.

*My 'best friend' in high school used to tell me on a regular basis that my haircut made me look like Fabio, and that I had hairy toes. If I knew how to get in touch with her, I would send her the bill for my anxiety meds. 

One week down, only fifteen to go...

Yay, I got through my first week of having a grown up job without crying in front of anyone! The funnest part of my week was realising that when the office manager gave me the tour on my first day, she  had been referring to herself in the third person the entire time, and because I hadn't caught her name when she introduced herself I thought she was talking about someone else. It took me until Friday to figure this out, but in my defence, it was an odd thing for her to do.

Let's call her...Jilly. As she was showing me around the office she kept pointing things out and saying stuff like 'here's the kitchen, Jilly empties the dishwasher', and 'here's the storeroom, if you can't find anything just ask Jilly, it's her job to keep it stocked'. But she said these things in a really bitter tone of voice that suggested a significant degree of loathing, which led me to assume that this Jilly person was a useless pain in the arse who couldn't be trusted to do her job. All week I waited for her to show up, and eventually figured she was on holiday or something. I finally figued it out when I asked Jilly where Jilly was, if you follow me, which ended awkwardly. Still, I have been much less socially ept in my time, and that was by far the worst that I did this week so I'm counting it as a generally positive week, socially speaking*.

When I wasn't making a fool of myself, this is what I mostly did this week;

• Hid in the toilets
• Made many, many cups of tea
• Washed and dried my tea cup, veerrryy slowly
• Refreshed my emails in the vain hope that someone, anyone, has sent me something useful. I have even subscribed to dozens of vaguely work-related newsletters so that I get at least a few emails every day to peruse
• Went to get coffee at the cafe down the road, veerryy slowly
• Tidied my desk. This is hard as the only things I have on it are pens and my diary, but you'd be surprised at how many different configurations you can come up with, especially when you add in a water bottle and a coffee cup. 

It got so bad that I was utterly thrilled when my wisdom teeth flared up agonisingly on Wednesday morning because it meant I had to go to the chemist, where I managed to have a lovely long conversation with the girl behind the desk about gum disease, thus managing to be away from my desk for a good twenty minutes. 

I have also perfected the art of staring at the computer screen with a slightly thoughtful look on my face, as if I'm trying to decide what my next marketing strategy will be. 

I fully expect to have been given the sack by the end of next week. 

On the positive side, because my job involves getting out to shops and things and talking to people about selling the magazine, I get to see all sorts of things that I wouldn't otherwise have seen. Like the woman in full blackface makeup I saw leaving a pub on George St. at four in the afternoon on Friday. I really hope there was a good reason for her to be doing that. I thought that as a society we had decided that we weren't going to do that anymore, but maybe she just didn't get the newsletter and couldn't figure out why everyone was staring at her in horror. 

And I saw this;

Even as a joke, this is the worst name.

And I love the area I'm working in. I went for a little explore down my street yesterday;

And finally, I have had a bit of a revelation this week about the nature of classical music. It's all a big in-joke, isn't it? I mean, really, it's all a long running meta joke perpetrated by people with filthy minds and  a penchant for the absurd. How else can you explain the things I read about this week? Did you know that  Mahler's wife was called Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel? Say it out loud. It'll cure what ails you. 

Other completely implausible classical music-related things from this week;

• I read an article that discussed the composers Titz and Scheidt
• I read an article about an instrument called the flageolet, which is a member of the fipple flute family, and they were reportedly designed to teach birds to sing. Yeah, like I believe any of that for a second.
• I read dozens of articles about performances of Bach's organ pieces that brazenly and unashamedly used language that should really only be available to mature audiences.

On balance, this was an OK week. My plan for next week is not to get fired. Aim low, that's my motto.

*Actually, this isn't completely true. I did manage to imply to the woman who sits opposite me that I thought her kids were a significantly different age to the age they actually are, but I wildly underestimated, luckily, thus implying that I thought she was much younger that she actually is, so for once it worked out in my favour.

blurgh

What kind of day did you have? Was it like mine? Was it a day when you ended up having to go and have a tiny cry in the toilet because you don't understand your job and everyone is horrible to you? To be fair, just when I was at my snivellingest point one of my FOUR bosses actually gave me some useful information, and then the lady who sits opposite me actually spoke to me for the first time, so it did get better.

But I still ran away a bit early so that I could get home early enough that I don't have to immediately go to bed, and so that I had time to trawl the internet for pictures of baby aardvarks, possibly the only creature on the face of the earth more fragile and pitiable than me right now.

Ohhhh, that's what I'm supposed to be doing

As with most things in life, I can relate something that happened to me to a joke from The Simpsons;

(Sorry that it seems to be in Czechoslovakian (maybe), it was the only version that I could find, but I quite liked it because it seemed oddly apposite in that it is basically total gibberish to me)

I'm still a bit hazy on the whole marketing deal. Apparently marketing for an arts magazine involves spending a lot of time scouring the inner city for possible contacts, then painstakingly writing emails to people begging them to buy the stupid thing. So far there have been no glamorous parties or freebies, and after two days of bewilderment I really feel that I should have experienced at least one of these. I do feel somewhat entitled to them.

So after gallivanting about Sydney all day lugging a bag full of magazines,  I'm a bit footsore and a bit sunburned, and the only freebie I've had all day was a cup of tea, and I'm  feeling somewhat disillusioned with the whole 'having a grown up's job' lark. 

On the positive side, I did see this stuff today;

OMG LEOPARD PRINT

Ah, Spanish graffiti. That takes me back. Not really sure what it says, Google translate has it as 'I have wounded at this difficult stage of life that is the withdrawal'. Really makes you think. 

Fruit bats in the botanic garden

This abomination

Now I am going to have a large drink and go to bed. There's more marketing afoot tomorrow, and I needs my sleep.

No longer a burden on the state!

Huzzah, I have finally managed to bamboozle some poor trusting fool into hiring me! Using the time honored combination of writing begging letters and exploiting the contacts of everyone I know, I have landed a temporary gig marketing a magazine. Awesome! No, wait. I mean extremely scary. Because I have no experience whatsoever in marketing, and after I accepted the job I had to call a friend who works in marketing to ask him what it is, exactly, that he does all day. And because I've only had one job in the last decade, and I'm terrified of starting something new. In my previous job I was the unquestioned lord and master (at least in my head) and I ruled my tiny empire with an iron fist. And the lure of biscuits and the promise of additional biscuits if my minions pleased me kept unruly behaviour in check.  Now I have to go somewhere where I don't know anyone, and I will have to submit to other people's snacking whims. 

So here's my plan. Bring biscuits. Be awesome. Or at least not totally useless.  And work to win the hearts and minds of the people, thus forming a new petty empire to rule over.

I totally look like I know what I'm doing