2002-07-19 - 1:54 p.m.
Tedium on a Friday

Today is Friday, July 19th.

200 days of this year have passed; 165 remain. Monday will mark my 6-month anniversary at my current job, and I live in dread of what my supervisor will say at the review.

Why? I fear not living up to expectation, and I fear facing a list of my mistakes, most of which were unintentional, but which add up to a lot of disappointment. I fear not getting the promised raise from $10.44 to $11.02 an hour. I fear getting yet another lecture on always asking her before doing anything, and being admin help, not a tech worker.

I fear a lot of things. I also fear phone calls -- it takes a lot of effort for me to call people, especially people I don't know. Work calls, I manage. Pizza calls at home, I pass to my brother (and he endlessly grouses). Phone calls to a new doctor to set up an appointment ... I'm still sitting here, all sweaty-palmed over that one and unable to call, even though I managed to ask for the number weeks and weeks ago.

I know it's irrational and that the phone won't bite. It's just, something about not being able to see a person's face and body language when I'm talking to them really throws me off. I want to *know* whether they're upset with me or if they think I'm stupid or what have you, and I can't pick that out just from a voice.

Call it a residue of my emotional camoflauge. I can't mirror expectations if I can't tell what their expectations are, and body language says a hell of a lot that people don't express out loud.

My chair creaks. There's a spider crawling down the wall. My back aches. The squirrel outside my window hasn't visited today. I'm not going to have a window at the new office, and it gives me flashes of hyperventilating, it reminds me so much of my summer internship a few years back.

My subconscious says: ((trap)) ((trap)) ((trap))

The rest of me says: You're such an idiot. You need this job. You need this money. You want a good recommendation. You can't give your mother yet another excuse to compare your potential with your failures. You stuck out that internship, remember, over three whole summers!

To which that panicky instinct replies: Yeah, and remember your state of mind and quality of work at the end of that time? Heh. You don't list *that* job on your resume.

I have a meeting in an hour and forty-five minutes. I have miscellaneous paperwork to do and phone calls that I'm waiting for associated with the move. Sometime after 4:00pm I have to go tape down a whole bunch of stickers so they don't peel up when computers are transferred. Which leaves me with a whole lot of mindless deadspace, i.e. time in which to do pesky tedious work that wears on my nerves as badly as rush hour traffic in Portland.

Outside, I am the picture of calm. Inside, I am the Tazmanian Devil, making incoherent noises and thrashing around impatiently like a tornado.

Square peg. Round hole. Something's got to give.