Chapter 49: X-Static Process

I don't know what to say. I was just about halfway through a blog post about today, one of the worst days I have had in a very long time, but I just couldn't continue with it. I realized that it was far too overwrought and just a general downer about how terrible the world is and how I am just sitting on the sidelines watching it all pass me by. THAT IS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE. It is just SO easy to become frustrated with the world I am living in right now, especially after a day like I had today.

I woke up around 6:45am, and had a brilliant idea! I thought to myself, "Hey, we are gonna be completely dead at work today and have way too many people there for Christmas Eve, and I only have one issue this month, so I should just take issues and leave at 1pm when my Mom gets off!" This sounded like a great plan to me and as soon as I got to work I ran it by my supervisor/sister and, much to my surprise, she seemed to go along with it. In fact, she told me she was doing some last minute Christmas shopping when she left work at noon and I could come along and try to find a Christmas present for my Mom. As I've mentioned before, my brother, sister and I all agreed that we wouldn't buy gifts for each other, but that we would all buy for my Mom. Unfortunately, due to my lack of driving ability and nobody really being around lately, I hadn't actually been able to go shop for a gift for her yet. So, since my sister was going today, anyway, I could just tag along and that problem would be solved. Now, we had four people scheduled to work until 5pm, our holiday close time, one leaving at noon and one leaving at 3:30pm. Like I said, this was really much more than necessary. I spent the morning happily chatting with my co-workers, and anxiously awaiting noon when we had decided I could leave to go shop with my sister. Nobody really objected to this and it was a pretty solid plan. Then one of my co-workers scheduled until 5pm called in to say that he wouldn't just be coming in late, but he wouldn't be coming in at all. It wasn't a big deal, that just meant that if I left at noon there would be two people from 3:30pm to 5pm, instead of the three that weren't really necessary, anyway. Well, then one of the other departments got busy for about a minute, so one of the people who was scheduled until 5pm and was trained in both departments, had to switch over to a different one. That meant that if that department remained busy, she would have to stay in that department and there would only be one of our people working until 5pm. Fortunately, as I said, that department only stayed busy for a minute and she wound up switching back to ours. Crisis averted, or so I thought.

Noon came around and I packed up all my things to leave when my sister and her girlfriend didn't even bother to pull me aside, I had to pull them aside myself, to tell me that it really wouldn't look good if I were to leave early. It was bullshit and was infuriated. Initially I was like, "I don't care how it looks, I just want to go." Then they laid it on real thick about how I am applying for a promotion and it really wouldn't look good if I were to leave early today. They even went as far as to imply that my team would be pissed off at me and would rally against me, as they have so many others before. They basically just guilted me into staying, and I was fucking enraged by this. They told me that our program manager had the final say, and he would reconsider come 3:30pm. That was it. Well, actually, that wasn't it. It was a whole lot of making me feel bad about myself for wanting to leave, and fucking bullshit manipulations to convince me to stay there. I spent the next few hours there throwing a bigger fit than any child I have ever seen.

Then came a glimmer of hope. Our team lead was on the phone with the program manager. As soon as she got off the phone I went over to her and was like, "I still want to go home if said somebody could." She reminded me, even though I already knew, that one of my other co-workers wanted to go home, as well. That co-worker and I had both kind of written off her request previously, because I had already said I'd be willing to take the issues for it and she couldn't. Issues are kind of like our "allowances" at work. If we get 6 issues in one month, we are written up. The way the issues work is that if you miss less than 2 hours of your shift, like being late or leaving early, you get 1 issue. If you miss more than 2 hours of your shift, or the entire shift, you get 2 issues. I only have 1 issue this month, and my co-worker had 4. If I left at noon, I would have had 3 issues and not been in danger of a write up. If she left early, she would have had 6 issues and gotten written up. There is an exception to the issue rule, though, and that is if the program manager sends you home, due to low call volume, which is what was happening at this point. This co-worker had told me how she had to go do a few different last minute things for her kids for Christmas and would have to be rushing around after 5pm before places close. So, when the team lead reminded me that she wanted to leave, too, I didn't really say anything. Shortly after this, though, she went on break and apparently on her way to break told our team lead that she would stay and I could go. I still haven't decided if that was a genuine nice thing she did because she knew how upset I was, or if it was the most brilliant manipulative move ever! As soon as my team lead told me that she volunteered to stay, as much as I wanted to be like, "YES!!!" I knew what I had to do. As soon as she got back from break, I told her that it was very nice of her to offer, but that she really should go ahead and go. My plans for finding a gift for my Mom were already ruined, anyway. I actually tried calling and text messaging my sister multiple times throughout the rest of the day to see if they would take me to try to find something after work, and never got a response.

I realized during that time that staying at work wasn't what upset me at all, really. Sure, that was annoying but it wasn't the actual issue. The real issue was my sister and her girlfriend ganging up on me and basically giving me a verbal beatdown to get me to stay at work. As I mentioned in one of my recent blog posts, I have been feeling like my sister has been avoiding my requests to spend time with them or anything, and this was the final straw to make it perfectly clear that it is actually happening. I realize now that I don't need to make any effort to spend time with people that don't want to spend time with me. I don't need them on my side, and I don't need to concern myself with what they think of me because they have made it clear that they are not interested in getting past the ideas that they have gotten about me from somewhere else. I have changed a lot. I am not the person that I used to be, but they refuse to see that. So, fuck it. Fuck anybody who can't or won't see it. I don't need them to see it. I don't need anybody to see it. I CAN SEE IT. That is the only thing that matters at all. Nobody else's opinion of me makes a difference in my opinion of myself, so why should I even bother trying to make them see it.

This brought me to another realization. I have decided to withdraw my application for the promotion. There are two major reasons for this. First of all, the fact that they decided to use it against me today. I do not need anything in my life that can be wielded against me like a weapon. I do not need to be made any more vulnerable to people in the workplace. I don't think any raise or being able to list management on my resume once I move is worth having that kind of added stress in my life. I may never reach a management position in my lifetime and it honestly has never been a REAL goal of mine. It is not something I aspire to, in the long run, so why have I been chasing it at my past few jobs? It has been nothing but wasted time; completely pointless. No more of that. The other reason for this would be that I had a discussion with one of my co-workers about the other guy who applied for the position. It would really make a huge difference in his life and be a really good thing for him, both in and outside the workplace. Also, he wants it really bad; much more than I had thought previously. I, on the other hand, have said over and over again how it really wouldn't make a difference in my life whether I get it or not. It is not going to affect my life, in the long run, and I would only be doing it for a short while, anyway. Most importantly, I don't really care all that much. This particular position isn't even the one I really wanted, anyway. Thinking about it in those terms, it kind of makes it feel wrong of me to pursue it when there is somebody else who it would do a world of good for. Plus, if I withdraw my application, his is the only one left and he is perfectly capable of doing the job and would probably do it better than I would, anyway. So, why take away his opportunity to advance in a place where I no longer have an interest in advancing?

I text messaged my dear friend Nate, (the one with the YouTube Channel,) and said, "Do you ever feel like the world is spinning around in front of you, and you are just sitting and watching from the sidelines? I do." He responded with something interesting. He said, "Yeah but the good part is... even the fastest merry go round stops to let new people on." That is a really interesting, positive, not to mention adorable, way to look at it. As I told him, though, my merry go round is 6 months and 3,000 miles away. I am so ready for it, though. This evening, as I have been sitting here writing this blog, I had to stop a couple times to literally sob into my own hands because I was thinking about how much I really kind of hate my life here now. That isn't entirely true, I know, and is likely just the effects of this awful day wearing down on me. I just don't know how to handle the next 6 months. There are plenty of wonderful aspects of my life right now that I am going to miss terribly once I am gone. They are just really hard to see right now, because all I can see is California. It is all I can think about peacefully. It is the only thing that seems interesting or exciting or joyful in any way right now. That is not true, either. I am very happy for the people around me. I think the issue is that I am happy for what is happening to people around me, but right now absolutely nothing is happening to me directly. Like my text message said, I feel like the world is spinning in front of me. People are growing. People are changing. People are moving on with their lives... and I am just here watching. It's so stupid. I've got immense changes planned. I am making my future happen. I am making my dreams come true. I am doing what I have to do to get myself back to that place I was in, back in 2007, when I was genuinely happy with my life and I was living my "Nolita Fairytale," (the Vanessa Carlton song.) It is just extremely frustrating having to wait.

This is, I think, in some ways what Madonna was talking about in one of my favorite songs of her entire career, "X-Static Process." I kind of feel like I am in the midst of my own X-Static Process right now... and, like Madonna says in a different song, "Waiting is the hardest thing." It may not be exactly what the song is talking about but still, it is an X-Static Process.

"I'm not myself when you're around. I'm not myself standing in a crowd. I'm not myself and I don't know how. I'm not myself, myself right now. I'm not myself when you go quiet. I'm not myself alone at night. I'm not myself, don't know who to call. I'm not myself at all. Jesus Christ, will you look at me? Don't know who I'm supposed to be. Don't really know if I should give a damn. When you're around I don't know who I am. I always wished that I could find someone as beautiful as you, but in the process I forgot that I was special, too. I always wished that I could find someone as talented as you, but in the process I forgot that I was just as good as you."