I got a new job and even before I started I was pretty ambivalent about it. Now I’m downright hating life. I took it because we’re buying a house that costs a lot of money, we have zero furniture and I am way too OCD to live in an empty house for a few years. I want to have this house decorated by Thanksgiving. And the longer I work, the closer I get to the sectional I want.
On the other hand, I really loved my life. I loved making a home and creating stuff every day. I loved not having to wake up at 7am every day and being too exhausted to cook or clean when I came home. I loved being out in the sunshine sewing on my porch while the kitties kept looking for ways they could climb the nearby trees. And I loved playing the dutiful wife and doing laundry while planning the weeks menus.
On the other other hand, I really liked being a fancy businesswoman. I liked wearing suits and attending lunch meetings and throwing around fancy words about market research and strategy. If I was single, I would absolutely be a professional of one stripe or another. And I like having money, who doesn’t. I like feeling like there is a set purpose to my day, that I have a specific agenda and my having a productive and virtuous day relies solely on whether or not I accomplished a bunch of predetermined tasks. I like not feeling guilty for sleeping in and going out to lunch while Bear works.
I’ve committed to working here for at the very very least, two weeks. At the least, two months. If I can gut it out until October, I will have all the furniture I could want. But right now, it’s hard to imagine that. I work as a temp for a biotech firm, and I’m in that horrible brand new phase, so new I have neither a phone or a computer and since everyone is on vacation, it looks like it’s going to be quite some time without either. I don’t know anyone or anything and yet I have to try to look busy before they decide they don’t need a temp after all and I’m out on my ear. I don’t have my own desk, so I’m sitting at someone else’s and I have to be careful not to change anything. No internet favorites, no saving things on the desktop, nothing that would make this place not hers.
I totally forgot how exhausting it is to try to find work all day. By the time I get home I just want sleep. Without anything to keep me busy I’m just bored and yawning and the effort it takes to avoid falling asleep in my chair just seems like more energy than I have. At the end of the day I’m sapped and grumpy and have no momentum to accomplish anything. It’s seriously cutting in to my creative time. After typing and clicking for eight hours, my wrists and hands don’t really ache to work the knitting needles. I find myself just sitting there, watching T.V., without doing anything else at the same time. That’s just not me.
On the bright side, the girl I work with is super sweet and that’s always a plus. Also, I’m not in danger of being fired if I surf the internet as long as I’m not neglecting any duties. And I can listen to my iPod at my desk and wear jeans and flip flops as long as they’re cute.
By the end of two weeks, if there’s still nothing to do than I’m jumping ship, but everyone swears to me that this is just an abnormally slow time and things will pick up. Every day I’m hoping that the next one will be when it does, and re-evaluating just exactly how much I want that set of art deco nesting tables.