Yesterday I felt like everything was simultaneously going wrong and right at the same time.
Then I went to work.
I guess I should start from the beginning. I hate when things are different. I love schedules. I love doing the same thing over and over again.
I’m not saying I dislike going on vacation or anything like that, I mean, who could possibly hate going away somewhere and having other people take care of you? An alien maybe. I mean, not having to worry about cleaning up the kitchen or replacing the sheets on the bed? Not having to go to work? Amazing. I could do that forever.
In the real world though, the day to day, I really can’t deal with things changing. Particularly big things. Things that my brain considers to be kind of a big deal.
And Yesterday?
I had to work at night.
This posed two problems.
- I work in the morning, so I had to deal with being awake all day and going into work tired. I had to deal with different people at my job than who I’m used to. I had to deal with watching the sun slowly go down while I was still trapped inside.
- My husband wasn’t home.
The second part might seem a little stupid, but was more of a big deal for me. He works in the mornings, and I work in the mornings, so normally everything works out. I come home and he comes home and we have a set routine and schedule. And yes, we have lives and do things outside of just go home and go to work. Sometimes I have off when he doesn’t and vice versa. We have appointments and things outside of the norm that we do.
It never changes the weird sense of otherness that I feel when he isn’t there and I am.
Yesterday, I woke up and he was at work, and I had to sit at home, twiddling my thumbs. My schedule was off now, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with myself. So I tried to pretend things were the same as usual. I tried cleaning. I tried to read, and watch tv. I tried playing games.
Every time I finished doing something I kept finding myself looking at the clock and realizing that only a sliver of time had gone by before I had to go to work. Which lead into me assuming my phone was broken, which meant that I checked the time on my phone more often than is healthy or normal.
By the time I actually went to work my phone was dead.
Work was work. I can’t say it’s bad, or good really.
When I first started I went into it assuming that my life was going to change for the better. That I was going to help people. That I had finally found my niche. That I could throw aside all my dreams and aspirations for the so called ‘real job’. That even though I felt lost and like I didn’t fit in if I tried hard enough everything would work out and I would be happy and content.
A year later? I worry about everything, but one of the things I worry the most about is my job. Probably because, no matter how well I do, or how much I care or try the reality of it is the only thing that matters are a piece of paper with the words ‘Metrics’ emblazoned on it. I am not considered a person where I work.
It just so happens that after events beyond my control, my brain also made the executive decision that I’m not a person sometimes, and I’m writing about how I feel like the world is going to rip itself apart if I think too hard about things like work, or people, or pretty much anything.
You be the judge.
In any case, by the time I got home and my husband told me the company that did lab work for me a couple of months ago was sending me a bill for almost $700, I felt like a Sim. Getting ready to start screaming in simlish and cowering in the corner, potentially pee on the carpet and start crying.
Instead I let myself do the complete opposite. I just disconnected. Full stop.
I feel like I unplugged myself from myself. Matrix style.
I was there, but the fleshy meat bits of me were there, doing the motions, and I was the hand of god poking Sim me and laughing. The part of me that wasn’t me was angry and sending an email, and I was just watching it thinking ‘whoa there me, slow down, nothing really matters because you aren’t really the part of me that thinks or feels or any of that nonsense’.
I spent a considerable amount of time contemplating how much of ourselves is really on an autopilot. How much of our being is really ourselves and not just the meat puppet doing what it’s been programmed to do?
I mean, how many times have you driven somewhere and not remembered the actual act of driving? Gone through an entire day of work and not realized you had until you’d gotten home? Spoken to someone and not remembered the conversation?
Whoa man, that’s like, totally deep.
Anyway, within a few hours everything went back to normal, I was me inside me, instead of outside and behind. I went to sleep and life returned to its status quo.
Everything is perfect and wonderful and in it’s proper place.
Except, I work tomorrow night too.
Minutiae of the Moment 