Office Monkey See, Office Sea Monkeys Do (exist!)

Don't try making sense of this post's title. That's like trying to justify the existence of Sea Monkeys, which (as we all know is the case with mystical beings like Fairies and Mermaids and Elvis) you must believe in, in order to see them, unless you're instructed by a coworker to to sprinkle nanoteaspoons of yellow sea monkey food into a "seamokarium" every other day so that they won't starve to death, or, better yet the fear that their possible existence partnered with your forgetfulness might result in dead mystical creatures floating around in a misty yellow monkey broth on aforementioned coworker's desk upon her return. Yup. That'll do the trick too.

I fed them yesterday. I'm covered till tomorrow.

Our "Process"

My boss created this work of art in order to describe for us the inner workings of our department. After a 35 minute lecture, I still have no idea what's is going on.

Note the impregnable "Walls of Separation" both major and minor. Those are my favorite. What they are separating exactly is still very much in question.

I HIGHLY recommend clicking on this picture to enlarge it and "appreciate" its bepuzzling intricacies.

I REALLY need to decorate . . .

That's all there is to say.

First week

Normaly, this is the anomoly week. Work is light, your disoriented, and you don't get paid. I don't think this is the anomoly week this time around.

Light work load: NO. I hit the ground running. Lot's of proofing and 6 campaigns that involved 3 aspects and they needed copy in wireframe format for all of them = 18 little projects in 1.5 days. Yowsers. I finished it but was concerned initially.

Disoriented: Not really. I'm used to confusing buildings (um Dwinelle anyone?, Lauel will know), but I have an almost freakishly normal schedule. I get in around 9 I eat lunch with my book in the courtyard from 12:45 to 1:45 I get a free cookie in the break room at 2:30. I leave around 5. I feel pretty comfortable.

Don't get paid: NOPE I do!!!!! They were able to get me into the system just under the wire. Like I've said, I'm lucky.

So now that the mystery is gone and most of the stress has abated. You can say goodbye to those morose pensive things I've been writing and look forward to some peppier prose. :-)

Me: To be continued

Next time I write here, I will be somewhere else. I might even be someone else. A new home, and a new job, and lots of things I don't even know I will have and be. Behavioral psychologists claim that your outside actions influence the inner self? Say you want to quit smoking and you always smoke after work in one particular coffee shop, behaviorists will tell to you stop going to the coffee shop altogether so that you disassociate with the behaviors you had there. To take yourself away from yourself.

Change happens from outside and travels inward. Pretty simple idea. So my environment here is part of my identity. When I leave, I will eventually center myself around different things and different places. Things and places that will become the everyday fabric of my life. Patterns and people will work their way into me and slowly I will be a corner at 7:45 am with a sharp turn, and a long walk from a parking lot across campus, a local park, a late night haunt with live music and a little perch on which to sit and watch, to absorb the life into me.

I will still be me. Obviously. I will still be the same. But changing and different. I will be just like the word "still," which in one place can mean "to remain the same" and somewhere else can mean "to continue on." Still and still moving. Still and still changing. Still and still becoming. Still myself.

Last Words

Tomorrow is my final day here. I've packed up all my trinkets and taken all the personal and blackmail-worthy matieral off my office PC. I've started to do all the required motions but I just can't seem to write my office Farewell letter. They really just make me sick. So many people have left this place that I've become well-versed in the farewell epistle, that which chronicles the "valuable and unforgettable" experience each person has found here and how much "we will be truly missed" and yadayadahyadah. These "sincere" employment eulogies make my literary sensibilities wretch from sugared emotion overload and are the single last thing I want to leave here with my name attached to. I want to be truthful and direct and appreciative of all the time I've spent here expending this company's internet resources and free soft drinks.

I could be cheeky:

All good things must come to an end. And this my friends is the end.

I could be boring:

This is my last day. I wish you all the best.

I could be silly:

Sarah has left the building. I repeat. Sarah has just left the building.

Or I could be a bitch:

I'm getting out before the boat sinks. You best do the same.

All of which I will not (try to) be of course because I do want to leave a good impression here, and I have valued this experience, and I really and truly goddammit will miss working here. I just hate having to say it because it always sounds so lame and artificial since what I'm doing I'm announcing to every one of my coworkers that I am officially blowing this popsicle stand for supposedly bigger and better things and underneath whatever gobbeldey-gook I end with, what they hear is, I'm off to something better than what you have . . .

You know what, I really hope they're right.

I got it. I just don't want to think about it.

I really was job. A week later they offered it to me and I took it, and since then I have successfully signed a new employment contract, rented a new place, and started to move. I have also become one giant ball of nervous energy. I'm stressed and spastic and irritable. Why is it that I can be such and unstressy person about so many seemingly stressful things and then get all stressied up about about this junk, specifically all my junk, not in my "trunk" but scattered across my bedroom floor, that junk.

So I hired movers. Movers to move my junk. Does that help with stress, yes, but it's not enough. My solution - diversionary alternative stress therapy (should I copyright that phrase and send it to Websters?). What is DAST - In short, doing as much shit as I can to snap myself out of my stressfilled universe by throwing myself into another one of equal but opposite stresses. I started cycling with the LA Triclub (nerve-wracking cuz I suck as cycling) and swimming in the ocean (nerve-wracking cuz I suck at swimming). I was so nervous before getting into the open water that my hands were turning blue, but you know what - I sure as shit wasn't thinking about moving! And when I was floating in the water and diving under the waves I was feeling good, feeling like I was getting something done by putting myself out there and trying something new. Giving myself something to be proud of myself for, since the satisfaction of moving can oftentimes take months to finally settle in and satisfy. I'm sure it's the same reason we start alphabetizing our bookshelves and doing the dishes when we should really be writing a final paper, or doing our taxes -some little distraction that makes us feel "good" and productive while we are being "bad" and procrastinative (new word too?).

So there's my life for ya, one diversion after the next until I finally decide to look my move in the face and say, "You don't scare me anymore."

Next diversion: Cinco De Mayo in Sacramento with lots of drinks and wakeboarding. But I might need to throw something more stress-inducing into the mix to really get the job done. Blindfolds?