I've been telling myself not to write anymore daylogs. I
like daylogs. I read them every day and ching them fairly often. But let's face it, we read daylogs, we pass on, we nearly never go back and re-read them. And in recent months, I've spent too much time writing stuff that no one will ever re-read, which meant, I decided, no more daylogs. But I need to
vent, so I must daylog. Feel free to pass me by.
First, I
despise my job. It used to rock. I liked the people I worked with and the work duties weren't
obnoxious. We had a boss who'd buy
pizza for the office and who would often let us go home an hour or more early on Fridays. For some damn reason, the higher-ups decided they wanted her gone and ran her off. At the time, the rest of us said it was a good thing.
Damn, were we
stupid.
The new bosses never did anything for the employees, never let us go home early. They thought yelling and making
veiled threats to fire people was a good
management tool, and in the process, they ran off employees who'd worked in the office for over five years. Now faced with too few
employees to do the job, they sweetened up their attitudes, but you can still see
deceit and
contempt behind their eyes.
And I don't like my new
co-workers either. They range from
clingy weirdos with a tendency to sit and
stare at me for several minutes before they'll tell me what the hell they're doing in my office to
sunny and thoroughly
unrealistic optimists who like handing out the bullshit about
letting a smile be your umbrella.
So I'm overworked, with major projects due at the end of the month and additional projects being piled on every morning. There's no way I'll finish on time. The bosses refuse to do any work more
strenuous than attending meetings and schmoozing with the higher-ups.
I feel so tired when I come home that I can't work up the energy to do any writing. There's just sitting in front of the TV or playing computer games. Not writing stuff for E2 or other fun writing projects makes ol' Jet-Poop feel like a goddamn shit, like a
loser who shouldn't bother getting out of bed in the morning, like a used-up piece of crap that don't have anything to look forward to in the long run but a cheap
hole in the ground.
I despise my job, and I'd love to dump it by the wayside and move onto a better position.
I have an
interview for a job this Friday. It's with a
computer gaming company. Some of my job duties would involve writing
fiction. And not the usual "Oh, here's why Professor So-and-So's project is important for the whole world and not just his resume" crap. Writing short fiction for a
computer game's website. The pay would be an improvement, and the job would be in
Austin, which everyone tells me is a wonderful place to live.
Frankly, I do not consider this interview to be a good thing.
First, the interview will take me away from working on my other work projects for two days, which is just one of the things that is making it so difficult for me to finish.
Second, I haven't lived in Austin since I was a little kid, and the directions I've been given for getting from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the company's office make no damn sense. I've tried studying maps, and I just can't figure out where some of these roads are actually located. And I'll arrive in town after dark on Thursday -- how the hell am I supposed to find the hotel in the dark when I can't even figure out which turns I'm supposed to take?
Third, I hate
airports. I love to fly -- the feeling of exhilaration from going airborne just thrills me to the core. But good god, do I ever hate airports. Just worrying about getting through
security, finding the right gate, picking up a rental car, all in a fairly small time frame -- that's another huge chunk of worrying to worry about.
Fourth, I'm not actually that fond of Austin.
Live Music Capital of Texas? Who cares? I don't go to bars anymore. Good dining? Who cares? I'm too
cheap to eat at a lot of restaurants. On top of that, it's insanely
hot and
humid.
Allergy season lasts 'til the first freeze in December. The
cockroaches are the size of spaniels, are able to fly, and are attracted to light. Just on the basis of the bugs, a sane society would tear Austin down and sow the ground with
salt.
Fifth, I like living in
Lubbock. Yes, it's extremely
conservative and so out-of-the-way that I couldn't get my friends to visit me unless I died AND the funeral home was serving those
high-dollar Vienna sausages. But my 93-year-old
grandmother lives here and relies on me a lot for stuff she needs. My
brother lives here, too, and we go running around town several times a week. My
niece lives here, too -- she's my brother's
rat terrier, but I love her so much that I get
weepy just thinking of the possibility of moving away from her.
And sixth, I'm far from being
guaranteed this job anyway. There's at least one other person in the running, possibly two, and we can't all get the job. Two of us won't get job offers, and who the hell says that I'm more likely to get the job than the others? Hell, the fact that the job itself sounds
interesting puts me on the low end of the scale anyway -- I think the
universe doesn't really want me working a job that I'd enjoy. So I've got a pretty damn good chance of looking back on this trip in a few weeks and saying, "Well, that was a
colossal waste of my time."
And even if I get offered the job, I'll have to start worrying about getting a new
apartment to live in, cleaning up my current place, packing up my tons of stuff, hiring movers, getting everything moved, getting
cable turned on, my
phones, my 'net connection, finding a bank... More
stress, more
worry, more
expense...
But on the other paw... God, I hate my job, and I want out of it so damn bad. The idea of coming into the office every day, with no end in sight, is like getting slowly crushed by stone plates. A little more flattened, every damn day...
Just venting, pass me by.