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Posts Tagged ‘day job’

One Year, Eight Months To Go

Posted in Everyday, tagged on March 17, 2014| 10 Comments »

March 17 is coming to a close.  Most people associate this date with St. Patrick’s Day.  For those of you who do, I hope it was a good one.  I, personally, don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, nor do I pretend to be Irish to make an excuse to get wasted celebrate on this date.  For me, March 17 is the anniversary of my first big girl job…the day job.  I’ve held it for thirty-four years, and while that’s an accomplishment by some standards, for me it’s grown tiresome and depressing.

For the past couple of years I’ve been seeing the light at the end of the tunnel grow bigger and brighter, but my movement toward it is like running through a river of molasses in January.  People say the last five years fly by.  They haven’t been flying for me.

On the other hand, when I think about not having a day job I get a little freaked out.  I’ve been getting up too early in the morning for too many years.  What will happen if left to my own sleeping patterns?  And my driving, will it suffer?  I’m so used to driving in mental traffic it’s second nature to me.  If I don’t drive through morning and afternoon rush hour will I turn into one of those people, scared to drive faster than forty miles per hour?

I don’t suppose I have to be concerned about those and other things just yet as I still have nearly two years before they’ll let me go with all of my benefits.  Until that day I’ll continue to complain about not sleeping enough and get frustrated with people who don’t know the difference between merge and yield.

The weirdest thing about it?  Today marked the beginning of my thirty-fifth year at the day job and I don’t even feel like I’m thirty-five years old much less have worked at one job that long.

I guess I’ll just keep plugging along and hope with all my heart they don’t decide to fire me ten minutes before I’m eligible to retire.

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A Brief Escape

Posted in Everyday, tagged , , on February 13, 2014| 8 Comments »

You know how much I complain about the day job? How it takes up too much of my time and how much I wish my retirement would occur next week rather than twenty-one months from now?  How the clientele gives me a bad feeling about our society in general and how the pissiness of the people I work with just drags me down?

You might feel the same way about your day job too.  Sometimes it’s just a necessary evil we have to endure to be responsible adults.  We have to pay bills, after all.

For those of us who are working strictly for a paycheck there has to be some kind of respite.  Something to take us away from what pushes us into a circle of hell that affects the way we think and relate to our skewed vision of the world.

OK, I’m being a little dramatic.  My point is, if we’re not completely happy, or at least content in our jobs, we have to find a way to escape, physically and mentally.  That’s when I put on my walking shoes and hit the skyways of St. Paul.

Today you get to see a little of what I see when I go off in search of endorphins in the middle of my day.

Fun artwork in the First National Bank Building.

The defunct but still lit up Galtier Theater entrance.

A view from the skyway to another skyway.

I love this space. So clean, fresh, and unusually peaceful for being downtown.

See that building in the shadows? I want to buy it and make it into a single family dwelling…for myself.

That shiny blue monstrosity is where I spend my hours working the day job. It used to be a beautiful department store. Mom and Dad took us to that department store to see Santa when we were kids. Once in a while I’ll see a glimpse of an original element of the building and have flashbacks.

A place for corporate drones to have happy hour after working for the man. I’ve never seen it open for business during business hours. I have no idea what the name of this place is or what it’s like when it’s open.

One of my favorite buildings in downtown St. Paul. The Pioneer Building. It’s been turned into apartments and I would totally live there.

That gorgeous arched window of the Pioneer Building as seen from the inside.

My favorite doorway. It belongs to that building I want to buy and make into my own urban mansion.

It’s all about finding beauty and serenity wherever you can. It’s all about finding an inner life and living it for a few minutes here and there throughout the mundane work day.  It’s all about making the best of a bad situation until you can go home and live a life you want to live twenty-four hours a day instead of six.

Do you love your job?  If not, do you escape somehow throughout the day?

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Such Is The Life Of Me

Posted in Everyday, tagged , , , , on June 25, 2013| 11 Comments »

It was an awful day. The kind of day Mondays are made of. The weather was hot and humid, which did a number on my hair. No amount of conditioner and “curl enhancing lotion” would keep it down. Oh, it was curly instead of frizzy but before long the curls started standing up, making me look like the Screaming Banshee.

Then our card keys ceased to perform their duties. I had to pee something fierce, but didn’t want to be locked out of the office. Of course security is so tight around here the idea of propping the door open until the problem was fixed was preposterous.

The card key situation was fixed relatively quickly, but then I found out the air conditioning wasn’t working on our floor of the building. What are the chances of it working on all other floors but mine? Hot outside, hot inside. And I had a long-sleeved top on because when the air conditioning is on it’s usually a frigid 60 degrees or so.

The hellfire that was my office.

And because there was no air conditioning, there was no air, period.  And the humidity began to creep in, making my hair stand up even more.  The wet air also caused all business papers to curl beyond recognition.

As I sat sweating in my chair trying to look business-like my left eye developed what appeared to be TV snow. I was pretty sure I was having a stroke, but it turned out to be merely a migraine. Hot, big hair, and now a splitting headache. Such a lovely day at the office.

Not Wigbert. I don’t post pictures of pets I know to protect them from petophiles.

The day ended okay though.  When I got home I took some pain meds for my headache and got right to work doing some laundry and ironing.  I know!  Ironing?!  Who does that anymore?  Then our nephew Fojo came over to pick up his beloved hamster Wigbert, for whom we had been pet-sitting for the past five days.  Fojo told us all sorts of stories about the fabulous fishing trip he had taken while we got to know Wigbert for a week.

All’s well that ends well.  Today things are back to normal.  My hair is curly, but not on end and my head hasn’t throbbed once.  The papers are less curly and easier to handle I can use my card key at will..  The icy drafts of resumed air conditioning are causing my fingers to stiffen once again.

Not me, but she has the right idea.

What will the rest of the week bring?

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The Carpet Layers

Posted in Everyday, tagged , , , on February 26, 2013| 6 Comments »

For the last week at the day job there has been some redecorating going on.  With redecorating comes workmen, and not the kind of workmen you’d prefer to see for eight to nine hours a day.

None of the guys look like this.

The bothersome thing was they seemed oblivious to the fact that they were working in occupied space.  They had no qualms about shouting to each other from across the suite.  They took heavy piles of carpet tiles and dropped them to the floor instead of placing them.  They huddled around the glue-drying fan and had conversations at a level that had to exceed the already loud noise of the fan, with no regard to the fact that people like me had to concentrate on our jobs too.  Then there came that point where I just had to leave, as in leave the building ~ I got a straight-on view of a giant plumber’s butt.  All of the noise and chaos distracted me so much I could barely do my job, but I had to draw the line when there was a bad moon on the rise at 1:00 in the afternoon.

So appropriate is a phrase from the early ’80s…gag me with a spoon! 

I really hope today is less cheeky, in all senses of the word.

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Monday

Posted in Everyday, tagged , , , , on February 12, 2013| 4 Comments »

You know how Mondays can be.  I had a hard time leaving the weekend for another five-day work week.  It was a weekend filled with satisfying housekeeping, festive party-going, and relaxing leisure.  How can one be expected to return to the dull beige of government employment after the color and festivity of a Mardi Gras/birthday party?

The day was cold and damp, the streets and sidewalks were covered with slush and ice.  A coworker spent a lot of time venting to me about the stupidity of a new program we’re using, instead of telling someone who could do something about it.  Not only that, after the day job I spent an hour in a cold car dealership waiting for routine maintenance to be done on the Space Pod.  All in all it was a very dreary day.

When I got home Husby had a cozy fire burning in the fireplace and supper ready for us.  The crackle and glow of the fire and the delicious meal made me forget all about the discomforts of the day, and after the fire died down I went to bed early to embark on a new book. 

It turned out to be a pretty good Monday after all.

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