11:47 p.m. - 2003-03-18
Somewhere, David Hasselhoff is Smiling through the Pain.
Buf.

Oeuf.

I was driving so hard towards helping our company get the Contract of Miracles that I am emotionally exhausted and let down by the fact that there has been no mention of restoring Spike's and my workdays to full capacity.

It's going on 3 1/2 months of 24-hour work-weeks.

I dreamt last night that I was trying to set the Guinness World Record for being buried up to the neck in cold, damp ground, and that three or four men (known upon waking, as "months") sat nonchalantly on the earth above me, as if to anchor me. I was periodically let up for bathroom breaks every hour, but as I was about to will myself back under the soil for another go, I simply could not compell myself to do so.

"Why am I doing this?"

At which point I woke up and mentally composed a business letter, since I was already in a foul mood.

The advantage of being awake is that I knew perfectly well why I'm up to my neck. I love the job. I love the possibilities. I love the potential. I love the comic.

...That's enough.

But I am rather fantastically disappointed. I had coaxed the contract into a mental vehicle of tremendous and immediate change; imminent certainty, sureness and plans, purpose.

I was unprepared for a directionless calm.

But I am trying to stay hopeful. I will not sit on my trembling hands.

...I scheduled an appointment with the bumbling little company who handles our company paychecks, and signed us up for a program that magically regards health insurance as non-taxable income, rather than requiring odd tax-time gymnastics.

Now I've 81 dollars more per month, and I am (officially) able to live gingerly on what I earn.

And I 've put my name down for...a...

...a lifeguard re-certification class.

140 dollars. 36 hours. Twelve 3-hour classes amongst teenagers.

Good God.

But the county's hourly wage is startling--higher than many temp office jobs. The hours are flexible, and it's the only fully disposable job that involves reason, responsibility, and standing about without trousers. Not to mention hollering at customers, rather than the other way around.

I can do it on a substitute basis entirely. If my current job snaps back to 40 hours a week in a month (or 6) and I have to quit the second job, it wont truly inconvenience any pool I work for. They expect high turnover. Teenagers, see.

Nevermind that at 28, I will be the oldest person in the class.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

I guess I've been spoiled by the excitement. By the potential. By art. By being treated by a human being at work, rather than a drone, plied by stock options and lies. By tiny forays into paid publication. I have become a hard-working dilettante, a slaving slacker with indignance grown too recklessly large for pantyhose. It's not as if I can get any poorer, or much closer to enjoying what I do.

...Nothing must interfere.

Not even my uneasiness over the Brick Test.

I will attend the Company Secret Sell-out Party this Friday with joy and fear--and joyous fear--in my heart, wondering if I am as daft as I think I am, wondering if there is any good champagne, imagining if chickening-out will seem more attractive as the first lifeguard training class approaches.

....Wondering if I have a swimsuit that doesn't look like it belongs on Charo.

I'm pretty clear on the lunatic issues and swimsuit problem, actually, but the rest will be a surprise.

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