On the house…

Tonight my boss told me that instead of the usual sushi, he was going to let me get some space from the office and grab dinner at one of the nearby restaurants… gave me $40 and told me to be back in an hour (he was leaving for about that same period to get a massage). So I went to a place called Blockheads - a mexican restaurant where I used to go with teacher friends all the time becuase they have cheap margaritas all day long.

Ate my fill of shredded beef enchiladas… guacamole… and, of course, for old time's sake, a couple margaritas (becuase they were so cheap!)… haha… all on the company dollar and on the clock… it was a good night. At least that part was… =).

Sustainability

My lovely roommates, Benji and Arielle, always tell me that I’m extreme. My moods can swing from extreme elation – to crazy sadness… I get on kicks where I exercise religiously, and then go through swells where I just eat (lol)… either I’m working like a dog (PS 53… or even this week when I worked 16.5 hours on Monday, 10 on Tuesday (only because I had a Japanese class in the evening), 12.5 hours on Wednesday, 14 hours today… and looking at another 10 tomorrow, and then my boss asked me to come in on Sunday…), or I’m unemployed… I skimp and save for months, and then buy a fancy guitar, or a plane ticket to Europe, or just go out and spend like there’s not tomorrow…

I almost think it goes along a little bit with what I was talking about in an earlier post: about counting down. I’m always counting down, because there’s always some kind of end to my current way of life… it’s somehow never sustainable. I can’t have work be my life and maintain a sense of personal value, nor can I do the things I love (in the lazy-capacity that I like to) and pay rent.

So yeah… I don’t know. It just hit me today. I was sitting in that office, gleefully watching the hours go by, thinking of the money in my pocket… and then realized that I was selling my life now for a potential life later. At a pitiful rate.

So next week I’m going to try to take on a slightly different schedule… maybe I could come in around noon, and stay till my normal 9-11ish… I’m pretty sure this would be okay with my boss. I’d still get some overtime (and free dinners), and at least I’d never have days where that was all I did. I’d still my mornings to do things… but in moderation.

But who knows – maybe tomorrow I’ll remember that I want to visit Kate in Florence… and then travel to Canada with Mom and Dad… and stay with Adrianne while she gears up for the new baby… and then maybe have time to just relax and spend time with Kate when she gets back to the US this summer, before starting whatever I’ll inevitable have to start come this fall. And maybe that’ll make me want to start saving up to enjoy those times without feeling like I have to hold back too much.

For now, at least, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for the strength to find a middle path: not a compromise, as I think this Buddhist ideal is often misconstrued as, but a middle way as in a place where the current is the strongest… free from the debris of riverbank extremes… a place where I can balance work and play so that I’m spending my time, not selling it.

Wish me luck! =)

Me, trying to be buddhist (!)

Sunday Blues

Had a pretty good day today - spent a lot of it relaxing… read a little (Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity), and had some time to mess around with some ideas for my friend's commercial (I think I wrote about this earlier - HS friend asked me to write some music for him). This evening I was even able to just lounge around with my guitar playing with no purpose at all. The best! It was nice to have time to do music today…

But tomorrow is Monday - and I go back to work… loooong sigh. G'night!

CRC ≠ PS 53

I’m going to try to keep this one pretty short. I really am. Just wanted to write a few thoughts on my current job at CRC…

It’s very different from my gig teaching at PS 53 in the South Bronx. That is for sure. And as far as this goes, there are things that I love about it… and things that frustrate me.

Some welcome changes: When I work overtime, I get paid for it. The work is easy. My meals are free. I sit down all day, and even after putting in a 14 hour I don’t feel exhausted. My job never comes home with me. Nobody pees in their pants.

But there are also some differences that make it difficult for me to see any longevity in this kind of field. Namely – I’ve been having trouble finding meaning in the job. I’ve been working with my boss on understanding the overarching goals for each of the projects I’m working on… and while I understand the importance of offering our clients good services, and helping to increase and facilitate intradepartmental communication… at the end of the day I often wonder what good has been done. Have I helped anyone reach some sort of personal goal? No. Have I spent any time engaging in my own passions? No. Have I spent my time in a way that I’ll be able to look back on and think, “I gained something from that”? No. So what have I done? Have I done my bit to oil the gears of a corporate machine? Yes. Ford can now have more vanity numbers and discover can have most solid platforms to run their faxing systems through. But so what?

I don’t know. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like I’ve been counting down the days until a better future, somewhere just over that horizon. It’s getting old… I’m not trying to complain, per se. This job isn’t bad. There are, as I’ve said, a ton of perks, and I like the people I work with a lot. But at the same time, I’m getting antsy to do something that I wake up looking forward to doing, not just something that pays the rent.

In any case, Adrianne sent this to me and I laughed harder than I have laughed for a while. Maybe you guys will find it amusing too:

Hamsters

I’ve been meaning to write about this because I think it’s kind of neat… one of the services that the company I work at offers is an e-fax system that can be done over email. So, for example, you could fax a 100 page word doc with the click of a "send" button! Maybe it’s just me because I’ve never had much of a penchant for faxes, but this technology has me quite tickled. I e-fax in time sheets for my work every week and squeel with glee (well - almost).

Other than that, not too much to talk about work wise. Still loving the free sushi dinners and sirloin sandwiches for lunch.

I’m also taking a Japanese class through the Japan Society. I've been to a couple classes now and it seems good enough. I was doing the homework for it last night and going over all kinds of words and kanji that I used to know how to write -- now I can barely remember meanings (and was often at a loss for pronunciation). Siiiiigh… oh, unspoken-foreign-languages… how far and how quickly you can run…

More excitingly, I should say that Clara, all the way from out in Portland, OR, is coming here to visit! Yayyyy! I'm soo excited to see her! She gets in tomorrow morning and is here until Sunday. It'll be her first time in "The City"… =). She says she doens't need to do any of the touristy things - just wants to walk around and look at tall buildings. Cool. We can do that (so long as we bundle up nice and warm because it's coooooold!). Maybe we can even throw some H&H Bagels in there.

And lastly - I'll leave you all with a blogged reproduction of a greeting card that I thought was awesome:

(Front):

If We Were Hamsters

If we were hamsters,
we'd snack,
we'd nap,

we'd think about working out,

we'd snack again,

nap some more…


(inside):

hey… wait a minute…

Assistant to the man…

So I’ve gotten a lot of emails inquiring about the nature of my new job: “What sort of employment was won with that tough face?”

And it’s hard to describe, really. It changes almost every day… but essentially, I’m a personal assistant to the President of a NY-based computer consulting company called, Charles River Consultants (http://www.crc.net/aboutus.htm).

As I mentioned, I had my vanity number project… one day I spent almost the whole day cleaning out the closet and organizing everything (I think that mom would have been very proud to have seen my handiwork)… and I’m going though a huuuge stack of folders and papers that I’ve been finding all over the office creating a filing system and then filling it with said folders/papers. It’s funny – there are all these hanging folders, and desks with drawers for hanging folders – but almost all the drawers around the office. Everything is just piled ON TOP of the desks =).

So temping has few benefits (other than an easy-out option), but I try to find my silver linings where I can - and with this job, the best perk to the job is that I get all of my meals paid for while I’m working. So for lunches I usually order sirloin sandwiches and for dinner, he likes to order sushi… so I usually get a spider roll, salmon avocado roll… and something else to keep things “exciting.”

We also don’t get lunch breaks, per se… which I see as a positive thing… because, while we kind of just eat on the run, or eat over office meetings… I like to find comfort in the idea that I’m being paid to eat. Which makes me really happy.

In other news, I just got a really exciting email from one of my old HS buddies who is trying to make it as a real estate agent out in Montana. He’s in the process of putting together a commercial to advertise his service, and asked me to write a song for it… I offered to just do it pro-bono, because I know what it’s like to be young and poor, but he still insisted on paying me, which I thought was nice. So he gave me a few songs he wants me to try to capture the mood of and re-create – I guess I’ll get to work here pretty soon.

But first… food… some friends from college are coming for a late brunch I think I’ll make some hashbrowns from real potatoes, cheese omelets, and friut… mmmmm… I’d better get to it!