Hired...Dammit

Lies for the money...and it feels sooo bad

As I might have mentioned once...twice...maybe a dozen times, I've been applying for a new job of late. It's an awful, exhausting business, trying to fool strangers into believing that you're a whole and normal adult who's totally going to positively contribute to their business. Full of lies and smiles, I refrained from telling boss after prospective boss about all my failings.

The fact that I'm a real person is probably the biggest setback. I am odd, individualized, inconsistent in my day-to-day attitude, scatterbrained, and generally unfit to do anything more regulated than maybe - MAYBE - brush my teeth everyday. I mean, come on -- everyday? That's, like, so monotonous.

So, I got hired from one of the fatcat bosses I lied so boldly to. They think pretend Kana is just who they need. I'm terrified that real Kana is going to come as a bitter disappointment.

Not this kind of model
And yet, surprisingly
close to the mark in effect

This woman is terrifying to me. She's one of those expensively maintained models that runs on success and attention. (By "model" I mean to dehumanize her into a machine, not claim that she rocks the catwalk.) She's fifty, looks thirty, has a private plane she doesn't use, a lakeside cabin she has no time to visit, two grown daughters who live thousands of miles away, and a giant house up on Hillside (the good part of town). She also has a terrifying way of letting her smile sort of sour and fade while you think about your answer to her questions, threatening to take it away entirely if you don't give the "right" answer - read, "whatever she wants to hear." And it's not always clear what that is. AAAHHHHHHH!

I'm going to be working with a lot of these high-motivation career types - this is Oil & Gas, where the big money's made. So not just fatcats, but oily fatcats. I can't believe they wanted me. I can't believe I'm planning to work there. These are not my people. I am going to be forced to talk to these phoneys and submit myself to their judgement and their bullshit for hours everyday. I've been hired. Dammit.

Things! Things! I MUST HAVE THINGS!!!

I just want to state my agenda to the Universe (by means of this obscure blog) right now; I want enough money to be able to do things, not money in its own right. I am not a "career" person. I am a "job" person. I go, I earn the money, go home, and then my real life begins. I value happiness over things, and while some things make me happy, I'm not going to save up a cavern of gold like Scrooge McDuck just to be ready to purchase every good thing that comes along.

"...and please don't hurt me." Forgot that bit

And to this awful lady, who reminds me so much of my last boss at the Spa job: I do not admire you. I do not trust you. You are a phoney. Do not reward me with your expensive fake smile.Your empty nest and heavily be-ringed fingers do not appeal to me, nor your unused glamor-items standing in hangars or by lakesides unattended. You are not what I consider an example of success. Do not look down on me, and tell me how "on" I was today. I will serve the public trust, man my post in your records library so that public access and accountability may be maintained. I will not buy into your byzantine private-sector-meets-public-sector game of lies, profit and smarm. So there!

And if I can hold to this rant, keeping it in a small, locked-up portion of my brain that remains pure of the bullshit I'm about to undergo, maybe I'll make it through this new job.

You Probably Don't Remember Me, But...

...I'm still alive, I'm pretty sure!

Bunny is also an ant, lifting
things many times his own mass

So, long time no write, I know – a time of much jobsearching, interviews, unpacking, and D&D. Thankfully, Ike is way better at this 'moving' thing than I, so he's taking it on/putting it off on his own terms.

Whether it has been the soul-destroying enterprise of literally trying to sell myself to poser fatcats, or the stress of interviews, or maybe just a curse of unrest on my mattress, I have felt nothing but weary for weeks now. It’s taken its heaviest toll on my creativity; storywriting, blogging, drawing – usually an irrepressible font of ideas, both good and bad. Now I can barely doodle. I’m tired, guys; weirdly tired. It’s like I don’t have the energy to fountain ideas outwards – I’m only up to taking it in, hunkering at the bottom of a well of nightly escapism in paperbacks, telly and movies. I just can’t reciprocate. 

Grey spot on foot is where I was
stabbed by my own toes

In conjunction with this mental flat-lining and energy lull, I have also started to fall apart a little physically; a filling is missing on one of my teeth – when did THAT happen?? – and I accidentally kicked a Kirby vacuum, which has more in common with a Model T than a Dirt Devil. We think my toe is fractured, but can’t really get it professionally checked out. The dentistry is going to be expensive enough without insurance. Yaargh. Poor sucks. 'Nuff said.

So! Bitching and excuses aside, I am trying to shake off this feeling – we got a CO2 detector put in, and the toxic gasses I was half-sure were suffusing our new home and killing us slowly are simply not present, so this really is just me, and…well…I’m working on it!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5...6! 6 nerds! Ah! Ah! Ah!

On a positive note, I’ve DMed my first one-shot campaign, and am also now the proud momma of 4 little she-mice. We didn’t name them per se, but rather insult them on a case-to-case basis. The little brown one usually has shit-themed slurs, and the white one gets ice-queen allusions, but my Honeybunny called the dominant black one Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which has stuck for some unknowable reason. Lola the Fatass Kitty is more jealous than intrigued by them, although we have set up a chair for her to watch their terrarium, which we call Kitty Television. That scene of pure cute is helping me with my itis, fo' realies.

Aaawwwwwwwww