Received a spam just now entitled Hey!! I saw you at work today!
If only.
One of my favorite songs begins:
It’s the tenth of January / and I still ain’t had no sleep
In the shower this morning I was reflecting that the temp agencies haven’t called me in ages, and wondering what I ought to do. And I thought, if they’d just tell me “Go away already, you’re a fuckup and we’re never going to use you,” at least I could forget about them. And then I thought, the same goes for life in general. If an angel were to appear and say, “You already know you’re never going to get laid again, right? Well, you’re also never going to hold a job for more than a day,” that would simplify things enormously. For me anyhow.
Buddhists say that happiness comes through detachment from desire.
Don’t believe it.
“disappointment was my closest friend”
That old familiar mood disorder got a lot of teeth into me over the last few days; but even if I thought you cared to read about that in more detail, I’m far from sure that I’d want my moaning on record.
Last week I moaned about unemployment. So now I’m all-but-offered a job: doing work even more mechanical than before, at 3/5 the wage. Naturally the client won’t want to invest three weeks of training (on a proprietary system; the last thing my résumé needs) unless I’m ready to make an “indefinite” commitment to a “friendly” environment where one is expected to “take ownership” of one’s work.
Dilbertland here I come.
Three months out of work. Occasional nibbles from agencies but no follow-up. (And all because for the last dozen years I used WordPerfect rather than bloody Redmondware. To think that, last time around, the temp agencies were fighting over me because they knew I can tackle an app I’ve never seen before and, by the end of the day, know it better than most users ever will.)
Invisible walls closing in. Sleep erratic. Familiar symptoms of serotonin deficiency hard to distinguish from familiar symptoms of objective disappointment. Thoughts dwell on friends who died of it: Dan Alderson (1941-89), who allowed diabetes to do him in slowly; and Sasha Chislenko (1959-2000), who took a speedier way. Remind self that at least two people would miss me.
Will try not to bore you further. About that, at least.