A day in the life…

I know I’ve been absolutely shit at keeping up with this, so I thought I’d give a little insight to what my life is like right now by showing what my average day is like. Here we go:

5.45 AM: Housemate’s alarm goes off, hear it through the wall, curse him silently and will myself to go back to sleep. Think of you, wonder what you are doing.

6 AM: Build myself into a silent rage hearing housemate open and closing doors. Tell myself it’s ok, I still have an hour and 20 minutes before my alarm goes off.

6:15 AM: Check Instagram, tell myself looking at photos of puppies will make it easier to go back asleep. Make mental notes of all the puppies I would send to you if we still had that sort of relationship.

6:30 AM:Housemate leaves. Silence. Wide awake now, start counting to 100 and push thoughts of everything I have to do at work away.

7 AM: Now in a full blown panic about everything I need to accomplish at work, get out of bed in a frenzy. Get dressed, make lunch, makeup on.

7:20: Realize it’s too early to go to work, sit on the end of my bed for 10 minutes. Think about you.

7:30 Walk to bus stop, get on bus, inevitably sit next to someone smelly. The sense of doom that began earlier is now rolling like thunder through my stomach and I can feel my heart beating faster the closer I get to work.

8 AM: Convince myself to walk into the building. Elevators broken, stop on floors 5 and 9 even though nobody pushed those buttons. Make it to my own floor, and elevator doors don’t open, back down to 1, back up to my floor, doors open. Day begins and I’m thinking about you.

8 AM-10AM: Answer emails, write a 15 page support letter. This is the quiet period before the storm. It’s normally only me and 1 other coworker in the office until around 9:30 when other people start trickling in. Convince myself I have a handle on my to-do list. Get a lot done. Tell myself not to text you.

10 AM: Hear the elevator door ding open and feel my stomach drop to my feet. She’s here. My stomach rolls like a boiled kettle. Boss comes in without taking off her coat or putting down her breakfast. Insults my intelligence, tells me my work is easy, asks if I understand, tell me to work faster and that I should be stressed.

11 AM: HOW IS IT ONLY 11 AM?! Time has slowed to a crawl. Edit the letter I wrote. Clean up small tasks for up to 4 other cases. Wonder if you are having lunch. Think about when you used to come home for lunch at your last job. You’d ring me and, if I wasn’t at college, I’d come have lunch with you and watch Scrubs or Jeremey Kyle. Think about how long it took you to make a sandwich.

12 PM: First crisis, often involving a case I was told was not a priority, or a client emails and all of a sudden shit hits the fan. Try to put out the fire, maybe have paper thrown at me, maybe do everything wrong. The kettle is still at full boil.

1 PM: Tell myself to take lunch.

1:30 PM: Actually take lunch. Check and see if you’ve texted me. Convince myself not to text you.

2:00 PM: Back to work. Put together 2 cases for filing. This often takes all afternoon and involves last minute phone calls to client’s, editing documents, printing up to 9 copies of documents, and arranging those documents. Then copying the massive packets that are created. Copier jams, add 20 minutes to copying times. While unjamming the copier, think of how I used to ask you to print things for me at work all the time.

4:00 PM: Realize I won’t get everything done. Start to panic again. Finish putting together packets. Start a new letter. Email client’s so they know I’m still working on their cases, try to put the ball back in their court. Boss comes in and reminds me again to panic. Gives back a letter she finally checked from yesterday, tells me it can go out today after I edit it. Frantically edit the changes, which includes taking out words she doesn’t “like” like “aforementioned”. Tells me it’s like English is my second language.

5:30 PM: Realize I’ve worked an hour and a half of overtime and am starting to feel like blood is coming out my eyeballs. Keep working.

5:45 PM: Notice that I am one of the last 3 people in the office. Even my boss has left. Tell myself it’s ok to go home. Have another moment of panic when I realize how much I have to do for tomorrow. Walk to the bus stop. Bus home, crammed in with a hundred old Asian people none of whom stand taller than my shoulder. Think about how nice that random man’s jacket would look on you. Want to text you and ask if I should mug him for it because I think you’d laugh. Feel my stomach boil turn into a simmer. Slowly shed my work thoughts and start thinking about applying for jobs.

6:05 PM: Come home to my housemates playing Call of Duty. Immediately open my laptop to start applying for jobs. Brain starts to melt. Open up jobs I think my suit me. Realize I have no energy to write a cover letter. Decide to make dinner and tell myself it will be easier after I eat.

6:30 PM: Dinner done. Look at jobs again. Close most of the tabs because re-reading descriptions make me realize I’m not qualified or not interested. Tell myself to write the cover letter. Watch a new episode of Orange is the New Black instead. Ok, ok, watch 3 episodes of Orange is the New Black. Send you a picture of a puppy. Just one!

9:30 PM: Shower. Try not to start thinking about work or about you.

10:00 PM: TV with my housemates or reading.

11:00 PM: Bed. Think of you incessantly. Think of work second most. Know I have to wake up soon, but can’t clear my head of you or work enough to sleep right away. Most of all try not to think of scary things that will give me nightmares. Otherwise I will wake up in the night wanting to text you.

12:00 AM: Put on an episode of the Office to fall asleep to. Go to sleep thinking about us watching the Office together. Have sad dreams about being happy.

Then I wake up and do it all again. Great times. Thrilling life! I know everyone is so jealous. What a wild adventure! Hopefully things will settle down soon at work and I will be back with my regularly scheduled morbid/melancholy posts. Until then…just refresh this post every day for an accurate account of how things are going with me. Even on Saturday, because I get to work weekends now, hurray!

 

Let’s try this again…

So WordPress hasn’t been publishing my posts when I push post and then it also doesn’t save a draft. That combined with work has not really motivated me to blog much, not to mention that I forgot my password and spent like 20 minutes trying to guess it right now. 

Work has been insane lately. I had a small reprieve this week, because my boss was gone, but she still managed to frustrate me from 3,000 miles away. I was also working overtime all week. I never thought that extra money would not be a good motivator to get me to do something, but thinking about staying even one extra minute per day in that hell hole is terrible. This week didn’t even feel like a short week. Luckily, I also had two interviews this week. One went really well, and I am supposed to hear when my onsite will be soon. The other didn’t go that well, because the job was nothing like what they posted and the girl who was interviewing me was also not a good interviewer. I have gone on enough interviews by now to know who is good and who isn’t, and she really didn’t even listen to my responses. It was especially frustrating because I used a good excuse to get out of work to do a Google Hangout, rather than a normal phone call, with her because it was their preferred method. So frustrating! 

I’ve never heard of anyone being in a job situation as bad as mine. It’s giving me really bad anxiety. Last weekend I went to my aunts house to go out on her boat, and instead I ended up having a panic attack and just staying at home by myself. My heart starts randomly beating out of my chest and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s exhausting. I know I can’t stay in this job because of the physical and mental toll it is already taking on me. Twice now in the office people have mentioned to me how I don’t show signs of outward stress, and how good that is to have in this line of work. Well, that probably just means that internally I am destroying myself. Ha. Either way I need out, NOW.

So that’s pretty much all that my life has been focused on lately, just getting through work, getting to the end of the day. There is something else that I am tempted to write about, but I don’t think its a good time yet to do it. In the meantime, I’m very happy it’s the weekend and that I have almost nothing planned. I know my posts have not very very exciting or introspective lately, but maybe that’s a good thing because it doesn’t allow me to dwell. Outside of work, I am pretty happy. I’m doing a lot more socially than I did when I was living with my parents and I’ve met a lot of new people. Well, it’s time for me to walk to the shop now, no more procrastinating. Then I am going to bake a cake for my housemates. Yaaay! Now if this doesn’t post I will throw my laptop out the window!

Work.

Work, work, work. This is the only thing on my mind and it doesn’t make for an interesting blog post, but here I go anyway. There is so much I can say about my job, but the idea of sitting here thinking about it all over again is more than I can handle. I hate my job. I love the actual work, I find it very interesting and rewarding, but I hate my office culture and my manager in particular. I know that people have been fired for saying things about their work on their blog, so I’m just going to say my manager is literally Voldemort and that is it. I have only been at this job for two months, but I know I can’t last much longer there. I know what a bad position this puts me in. If I leave after two months it will look bad, if I leave this position off my resume while I look for other jobs, the gap looks bad. I just am hoping and praying every day that someone won’t care and will just hire me to do anything else.

I am so burned out. I can’t even bring myself to type more, because I know it’s just delaying me from applying for more jobs. So this is the official worst blog post of all time.

Engagements, Church Friends, and Being 20-Something

I had quite an interesting conversation with a co-worker today. She’s actually the only co-worker I regularly chat with, but that’s a story for whenever I have the energy to rehash what a horrible situation my job is. So we were sat at lunch, each eating our home-made salads, and talking about her friend getting engaged. This is one of her church friends. Whenever she talks about her friends, she makes a point to say “I was with my church friends, my church friend and I went to the lake, my friend from church and I ate burritos.” Now, she doesn’t say this with a tone of denoting that she has church friends and non-church friends. I have been around enough church people to know that she is trying to imply, “Ask me more about my church friends and my church and I can help you find Jesus.” Because I am not interested in hearing about church or having my soul saved, I generally just gloss over these parts of the conversation. I don’t push any part of the issue. If she tells me she and her church friend went to get a burrito, I’d rather hear about the burrito, thank you very much.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a bit off track. So we were sat at lunch talking about her church friend getting engaged. She asked me if I thought I was going to get married soon. I said, “Oh God, no.” This is an understatement. Interestingly, in all the topics we have covered in our lunch-time chats, we’ve never talked about relationships. I don’t know if she has a boyfriend, and I’m guessing since she has church friends she wouldn’t have a girlfriend either. I asked her back if she wanted to get married soon and she said she definitely would. I just said ok, and kept eating my Trader Joe’s Honey Wheat Pretzel Sticks. She decided to go on a rant about the subject, including how 26 is not young anymore, how she wants a family, and how after 30 your fertility is zero. I didn’t even bother addressing most of what she was saying, just passively agreed, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s not to challenge people on these types of conversations. I just found the whole thing so interesting though. If fertility is really the thing you’re concerned about, the great news is that you don’t need to be married to have a kid. Ask any teen mom! But think of what your church friends would say. I still think 26 is very young to get married. I want a partner but I know I don’t feel the mad pressure to get married the way a lot of my friends do. 

I recently had a conversation with another of my friends where I said I would rather take a $50k trip around the world with my boyfriend/husband than spend that much on a wedding. Her reaction was that I was insane and that a wedding is too important. But to me, it seems like I’d really rather have tons of amazing memories with the person I’m spending my life with than one night of a really expensive party. Maybe I will change my mind later when I am with someone, if that day ever comes again. That being said, I absolutely do have a secret Pinterest board where I pin all of my ideas for this wedding that will never happen. In the mean time, I will just enjoy my lunch-time chats with my co-worker, hearing about her church friends engagements, and being satisfied that it’s not me yet.

First Day of Failing (and Sharing it)

I’m adding to the white noise of 20 somethings blogging about being 20 something on the internet…

Here’s how I measure up in terms of 20 something success compared to my peers so far:

Age: 26

Employment: Freshly employed at my first job in San Francisco. My boss is a bit terrifying, and yelled at me for using the wrong type of paper clip in my first week. 

Salary: Piddly…won’t get too specific but it’s less than $55K

Student Loans: Immense

Relationship: Well here’s where it gets really good. I dated my last boyfriend, who I thought was the love of my life, for 3 years. We then broke up, but continued to sleep together every night/go on dates/go to concerts/go on holidays/go to family functions together for another 1.5 years. Then we both left the country we’d been living in….yet still can’t stop talking to each other. Every little girl’s dream!

Friends: I have so many good friends I consider myself immensely lucky in this aspect. However, I’m just starting out in a new city where I have friends, but they are all scattered from each other so I have no cohesive group. No go-to people I can hang out with on a weekend. Still my friends are an incredibly bright spot in my life. 

So essentially, that’s me. Of course, more details will be forthcoming as the posts continue. So if you’re a 20-something who isn’t engaged and making millions working for a tech company, you’ve come to the right spot. Grab a beer and get comfortable.