Ah! The Clock is Always Slow; It is Later Than You Think.

It’s New Year’s Day! Happy New Year! For some reason small lad is swanning around rugged up like the middle of winter – this summer is not so much a summer as slightly warm with daylight saving. Disappointing.

Today I’m fighting the battle of the gorge after the champagne and amounts of nibble food partaken of last night (the heartburn today is teeeee-riffic!). One of my ears is a bit spinny as well, so I’d better not lean down too fast or I’ll topple over like a Terry Gilliam animation in Monty Python.

After my last entry I had some lovely silence in my head, where I wasn’t telling myself anything. Nothing. Zip. Tranquillity. It was a nice place to be in, but the world will rush in, as it does, so that lasted about a month. Then it was a case of telling myself far too much and beating myself up rather a lot. Sigh.

It would be nice to give my brain a holiday, especially the parts monitoring just how badly I’m screwing something up. It gets tiresome.

Since I’m now a recluse (I’m thinking of getting a membership badge) big groups of people freak me out a little. So Christmas shopping was approached with a contradictory mix of “eek!” and “grrarr!”, but it all worked out in the end. I must be doing something right, because I got asked in shops where “x” might be as if I was staff and everything.

There was a Christmas event I didn’t attend, which made some waves of an interesting stripe. One of the guests opined that I hadn’t shown up because of her. Since we're all friends there, way to put people on the spot. Way. Go you. (Actually she asked if, not opined that, but I wanted to use "opined" in a sentence. Opined. Dig it.)

Guesty then went on to say that nothing was her fault; it was the fault of someone else (I’m going to call that one Else).

Else, Guesty and I worked together in my old job. Else was having rather large issues at the time – bad divorce, almost no visitation, previous breakdown under her belt – and having trouble with the job. Since I’m big and mean and tough I report it. Cue about eight months later, I’m frustrated beyond belief and I blow up. Else tells me I should “take it up with management”*, to which I reply that I have…big mistake. For the next year after this I have Guesty and another, let me call her Quitty**, telling me how I don’t understand how bad it all is, I’m unhelpful, blah blah blah. And blah. It takes me a while to figure out just how much is being said behind my back, because prior to this Guesty and I, at least, seemed to have been pretty close friends***.

So Else is using me as a scapegoat. That was no surprise really; working with her was always a foray into being questioned over everything I did. Mostly I flicked it off (to which Else would be saying, “really?” “are you sure?” ad infinitum – so you either flick it off or become a mass of neuroses – and I have enough neuroses). Even at its worst though, I felt pretty sorry for Else – because she couldn’t seem to take any responsibility. In the finish, to make the long story short, she leaves for greener pastures. Guesty and I have a conversation about the things Guesty has said over the last twelve months or so – to which she replies “I never said that. If I’ve ever given you that impression, I am very sorry – you’ve always been…” blah blah, I can’t go on with it, I really might vomit. That was the last lie I was willing to listen to. (Yeah baby, there were more, yeah baby yeah). I haven’t been in touch since.

*If there’s one phrase used by the barely competent I can’t stand, it’s “take it up with management”. As if that’s got anything to do with the discussion: yes, congratulations, you’ve said the threatening thing so now I’ll back down, soooo not, you’ve just effed up good and proper and I have to fix your mess. Grrrraaarrr I want to smash.

**”Quitty” because during all of this she made a point of telling me I should quit my job because a) the system had screwed me (different pay grade by qualification – I was in the lower grade with the higher qualification) and b) I would never get anywhere here. On separate occasions. Strangely, because professionally I’d been part of something really big and good and quite successful and I’d gotten into the higher grade, just before this little shit nugget was dropped.

***I suspect that the pleasantries in the middle of the backstabbing had to do with husbandly and his amazing fix-it prowess, but maybe I’m far too cynical for my own good.

Anyway, sheesh, even having left stuff out it’s a bloody long spiel. I wasn’t perfect in here either; temper, temper, I’ve got a temper, but never mind all that. This distance on I still feel pretty sorry for Else: I don’t think she’s capable of better, which means she’ll constantly have enemies and nothing will ever be her fault. On the other hand, I have nothing but contempt for Guesty and Quitty – friends of Else or not, it was all pretty crap.

That contempt hit a new low after the event I didn’t attend. Guesty was trying to blame Else for showing up at my farewell*. Some friend; blame the incapable one for something you did. I know some of that is unfair – Guesty likes a bit of drama and didn’t (doesn’t?) always think of ramifications, but tough noogies, she made me miserable – Guesty. Not Else, credit where credit’s due.

*Else showed up. I knnoooooww!. For pure gall, I stand in admiration.

I’ve also had a few events to go to where other attendees looked rather unhappy I was there. In one case it was assumed (why?) I wasn’t showing up at all and the dirty look I got will keep me going for a few months. Snort. Maybe I should stick with the recluse thing...except I'd miss out on:

1.Driving behind a car with the number plate MUM-291. Is there a MUM-666 out there? Is her other name Rosemary? Or has the Devil gone for a daughter (who has since reproduced)?

2. Fruit pots, brought to me by Woollies, awesome last minute snack when I've been lazy in the food-to-take-to-work department.

3. A rather loud phone conversation where a lady (?) was telling her last date that she thought he (or she) hadn't been on many dates. She moved away before I could hear any more. She had nice legs, just to enter into the reportage.

4. The Harry Potter Exhibition. Awesome. I want the clothes.

5. They make CC's corn chips with guarana now. Why, oh why?

6. Sitting on a train going past people's backyards: one has a pool with no ladder, and two doors down is a pool ladder with no pool. A feud in progress or a coincidence?

7. Watching a Mum train her child (over a period of years) to wait for the toast instead of trying new foods. Just give the kid the damn toast. Or not. Don't hold off for hours and then give in; the kid will just keep doing the same thing, and while parent-etiquette prevents eye-rolls, said rolls are happening, believe me.

I finished reading Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy (just to keep some narrative in this overly-spaced-apart thing) and I love that book. Hilarious, well paced and full of little nuggets to give one to thought*.

"The ultimate consequence of denying reality is always failure. Scratch a worthless bum and you'll discover an irrational man." - Ayn Rand, the hologram. Very certain is our Ayn.

* As opposed to giving one to drink, to the earth, to be married or to the blood-brain border patrol**.

Is it bad to sidebar a sidebar?***

** Try saying that three times fast. While drunk.

*** Well it isn't a footnote. Much as I like them, i don't have the little horizontal line and smaller-print below said line.

I had my grammar corrected by Google. And Google was right (technically - I stand by my use of tense, since I was watching the movie at the time, it was in the present). How mortifying.

My shifts generally go quiet in the depths of the night (can you tell?), when little is stirring except rogue cockroaches scurrying past the tea room*. Sounds great, doesn't it? Work goes quiet, there's nothing to do, how too, too marvellous. What it really means is I'm struggling to stay awake. To the extent where I think: "Hmm, I feel a bit sleepy eyes, oh my head's going down (a submarine klaxon sounds) 'we're going down, Captain!' head going for bench, what bench, that bench, clunk." and out like a light. I surface when the chute system goes (I'm sitting right next to it) or if the phone rings. Bleary-eyed and probably puffy, I'll get up and work or speak on the phone. It must be hilarious to watch, from passed out to "HELLO, Blood Bank! Lateonenite** speaking!" I've probably alarmed a few people that way.

*I've only seen one in the whole year-and-a-bit I've been here, but allow me the poetic license, okay?

**of course I don't say Lateonenite, but perhaps I should. My name gets mangled into Stacey, Tracey, Therese, Vanessa, and on several memorable occasions, Elizabeth. Or I could give up and call myself Barry.

So this is Barry, signing off – I’ll try on the next entry to talk less about myself.

I Have Measured Out My Life in Coffee Spoons

Obviously the last entry left me tired and in need of recovery time. Or I had some really busy shifts (a self-venting spleen! not as convenient as it sounds!), lots of housework (it's a clean bathroom!) and champagne (bubbles!) played their parts in there somewhere.

I've had occasion this past couple of weeks to be told all about Listeria (a bacterium found in soft cheeses, etc., not a mouthwash*), the new redevelopment at Liverpool hospital and why I should lose weight, quit smoking and/or exercise more. Why do hospitals have such tiresome spiels? At another hospital I worked, the hold "message" was Spanish guitar music which, in and of itself, wasn't too bad. Until the fifteenth repetition on the one phone call. Perhaps I am a Philistine and have no appreciation of Spanish guitar music. The quivering first twang followed by a repetitive descending cadence; a couple of musical curlicues thrown in; it may have felt like the song that never ends (just tell me tell you about this meningitis-ridden patient so I can attend to my bleeding ears); in retrospect it seems fascinating. Much better than canned health messages from a man with a slightly nasal voice, a way-too-perky woman and elevator music in between them.

*There's a novelty. Bacterial mouthwash. Have some flora. Provided it's not Listeria monocytogenes.

I discovered small lad likes chicken giblets in rice. The outlaws/grandparents (whatever, I'm sure you can infer who I mean) came to visit last weekend. I was rude and ate only the rice because chicken giblets are not my thing. Chicken. Giblets. Erk. It's a texture thing, not a giblets thing. Mostly. The rice was rather nice though. Mother Outlaw does this marvellous chickeny-stock thing with it all.

The distance between entries has a lot more to do with my internal weather than how much I've had to do (or not - bubbles!). I keep a journal. Well of course I do, what aspirant writer doesn't? Every now and then I get a surprise at what comes out of the pen when my brain is otherwise occupied. That doesn't sound right, does it? In the zone I'm not thinking about what I'm writing (particularly not in a journal, where I'm not making a point, I'm just - SPLAT! - onto the page), it all just blurks out, to keep up with the auditory splashing metaphor. Because we all need reminders of how vomit sounds when it hits something, right?

It has been a bit odd adjusting to this new job with its long hours and minimal people time. I find I'm becoming a recluse and avoiding social situations. I left behind some pretty nasty effluvia in my old job (not entirely the reason for leaving, but certainly reason for not-staying) that has taken me a while to deal with. Simply put, a couple of people I thought were friends turned out really weren't; and the blood loss from the knives in my back didn't make staying worthwhile. (The positive "real" reasons for changing were the regularity of the roster, wanting to write a novel and my new job is about fifteen minutes from home as opposed to sixty).

Having left all of that behind (with limited success - there's nothing like hanging around with only yourself to help with obsession), I assumed the lows and not-very-high highs were just adjustment to the new! life, with the new! job and the new! time at home; I'd be back to myself in no time. Not so much. I've changed, but I have no real idea about the dimensions of this change.

It's surprising and dismaying that this betrayal* has had such repercussions. I'm not three; that grown-ups are nasty to each other is no surprise to me in prospect. But in fact it floored me. I'm thoughtless occasionally, I'm hideously forgetful, but I mean well; being deliberately nasty just isn't my style. There was a stage in all of this that I understood the idea of keeping your enemies closer, but the thought of being nice to someone who hated my guts and I loathed equally in return just isn't my cup of tea. If I don't like you I'll prefer civility. I'm not going out of my way to make your life hard.

*Betrayal seems too strong a word, but it will do in place of le mot juste. Plus it's accurate.

I always thought I would become more myself as I get older, or at least that's how it has worked before. It seems that the previous myself wasn't really working for me. So here is me, dingy and moulting to a new skin. When this particular epiphany happened (two weeks ago), the imagery seemed apt, but I was probably struggling to stay awake at the time, always a downer. If this were a self-help book the inside of the dingy would be all shiny and bright and full of new! possibilities for the new! me. I don't feel like having a new me, I want some of the old one. My sense of humour and optimism, for a start.

I suppose it feels very dull and dusty because I've limited (professional) possibilities, and the majority of my achievements to date have been professional ones. I could have taken a different kind of job which would have moved me into a management path, but the thought of it didn't thrill me. Then there's writing, very much on the back burner these days. I want to write a novel. I've wanted to write a novel for...ever. That's the next adventure, but I have this to work out first. I want my job to be something I want rather than something I show up at, but I'll settle for what I have. For now. Sound good?

The biggest blot on my horizon right this second is that it is bloody hot in this lab. I am temporarily without joggers and my current work shoes look really naff with shorts, so not only is it hot, I'm in long pants. Unless I'm in early menopause and it's hot flashes. Eek. At least I'm no longer dreaming of zombies during the day (or at night, when I sleep at night, that is).

The biggest question(s) I have at this time of the morning are a) why did four more questions pop into my head when I started this paragraph (including this one)? and b) why are the contaminated waste bags fitted into our big Sulo bins always too small? I'm not boring you to death with the other three questions. I'm sitting here typing this with the Dr Horrible soundtrack playing as specimens run in the background (run, specimens, run!). Soon I will get up and do the morning start up. Soon I will wonder if I should have that second cup of coffee (non, non, Nanette, ze diet is staying). Soon I will try not to look at the clock and count down to just how long I have to be here (the last few hours are always the hardest). Soon I will stop starting my sentences like this, tie off this blog entry and post it. Soon I'll read over it for the fifteenth time, discover the two errors I missed, edit it, re-post it, and sometime tomorrow or on the next entry I'll discover another two errors I missed and edit and re-post again. I am such a dedicated nit-picker that if I don't go and fix something broken it will bug me. For years, if that's what it takes.

Oh, I have to go and catch those running specimens. Then tidy up my coffee cup. Possibly brush my teeth. Ponder. Something. Check my stats again (I have stats these days! Thanks Robert Frost). I leave you with this thought, since I have gone from profound to profane (or at least light-hearted): "This sounds like a twelve-change-of-underwear trip." (The Cat, Terrorform, Red Dwarf.)

A Strong Drink and a Peer Group

Adventure! Thrills! Escapes!

Or rather, not really, but you try making fixing-the-screw-on-my-glasses-and-putting-the-lens-back-in sound interesting.

It has been a thoughtful week rather than an hilarious one. I still love my haircut, my wrist is giving me no end of gyp and small lad knows how to make microwave popcorn. None of those things led to any particular thoughts, but I have thought to mention them.

I got told by an orderly that he wasn't "...paid enough to be pleasant." Eheu. When he said it, it gave me some pause, but I could see his point. Orderlies aren't paid well. Certainly not considering they get vomited on, abused and, being the low men (and occasionally women) on the totem pole of hospital hierarchy, are ordered around, and often not nicely.

On top of this, several times this week* there has been this dialogue:

Me: Here we are again, how are you?
Other: Back to the shithole. It's not too bad ... yet.
Me: Well, you don't want to peak too soon.

And then I run away to my little lab. (*This "week" started for me last Friday, apologies for any temporal confusions.)

Granted, I've started liking my job again - I don't have to read the procedures manual every time I get something that isn't the routine get specimen/process it/put everything away, I've gotten more things right than wrong (I wasn't getting that much wrong, but I hate making mistakes) - and I have my time off, deliriously filled with things like housework, it's true, but compared to the life I was living eight months ago, it is marvellous.

That said, I would much rather be writing for a living (despite all of my current and ridiculously* crushing doubts about my ability to do that); still, the food is on the table, the roof is over our heads and we're all, pretty much, okay.

My advantage, I suppose, is that I work alone and therefore can ignore any and all politics, peccadilloes and people, if I so choose. So long as my work is done, nothing else really matters. (Others might argue with that, and they can if they like, I'll probably ignore it.)

It is a huge relief to not worry about what's been said today, asked what I'm doing (in tones of I must be doing it wrong) or having too much to do and no time to do it in. I (finally!) have my right head on about that. I have as much as I need and time left over for reading books, watching movies and possibly running away to Queensland for a couple of days in the school holidays with small lad (husbandly too if he can manage it). I believe people call it perspective. Mine's changed. Nice.

That was a fairly marvellous digression, and I'm still not even close to what I started out to say, but bear with me, will you? I might just get there and try for witty along the way.

*It's ridiculously crushing. Ridiculously. While I'm getting things into perspective, it occurred to me that I'm reading real writers' (!!!) work and immediately comparing it to what I'm managing (zilch, currently). Of course I'm nowhere near it. Der. Once again I'm trying to run before I can even turn over on to my belly. (Side note in the middle of all of these side notes - the family do last weekend involved lots of babies and smaller children than small lad; I was pleasantly reminded of all the fun things such as vomiting (baby vomit really isn't as bad as it sounds, but it is ubiquitous) and learning to crawl and walk and baby frustration (which resulted in small lad as a small baby looking at me as "Fix it, Mum! You fix everything else!") and turning over and then back again was a big achievement.)

Phew. Back to the point, which I'm sure by now we've all forgotten (but I haven't, I went back and re-read the first couple of paragraphs), the idea that you can be paid enough to be pleasant. It's a poser. In some respects. Bear with me again.

One of the things that used to drive me up the wall (and still would, if I had to put up with it) is the idea that when you're at work it should all handed to you on a plate, particularly when major changes (or even minor ones) are afoot. I can probably explain that best with the comment, "I'm not paid to think." Well you're not paid to breathe either, are you about to crash out all blue?

It's...interesting that people at work have this entitlement attitude - that you should be compensated for civility or effort. The effort part is a no-brainer - if you're paid to do "x" minimums then I suppose, she types doubtfully, the minimums are all you must do. Everything else is an extra, but why you should be ordered to apply yourself when something changes is a source of puzzlement to me. To keep doing your job you have to absorb the changes and adapt to them. As Sue Kaufman put it, "...Change is Growth and Growth is Life, which makes a pretty neat equation." In more ways than one. With this is mind, should you only develop outside of work? Should your personality only be formed away from the job? Only be affected by the people you meet?

I've certainly found the people I deal with professionally (i.e., outside of friends in the workplace) instructive in how to live in ways that friends are not. Which brings me back around to civility. One of the great liberators for me was the realisation that most people don't get out of bed in the morning to make anyone else's life difficult. Those who do usually have something else going on, and they're still in the minority. Hmm. So if I've got someone unpleasant on the phone or in person, they're either unpleasant themselves (more on that in a minute) or something has happened before the phone call, incident or conversation.

Unpleasant people, character disorders and total effing nutbags are usually more to be pitied than hated. Or perhaps empathised with. Can you imagine having to live you life constantly on guard? Constantly having to fight nearly everyone you meet because you think that's the way to live? To always be angry?

I've spent a lot of time angry, nearly all my life. Considering that start I got (in short, nasty - is it enough to say I was a foster kid? Well, I hope so, because I don't feel like getting into it), it isn't surprising about the anger. Having said that, my dearest wish is to be at peace. To not be angry; so I find myself, confronted with angry people, upset people, wanting to make them feel better, or at least less worse.

I'm certainly not paid for that - but I choose to live the way I want to rather than dictated to by a paycheck. And there's the logic fail in the attitude. If you're not paid to be anything other than the bare minimum in your duties, aren't you ceding your power (to choose, to live, to be) to your job?

As far as empathy and/or sympathy goes, it's somewhat off-putting that there are people who might read this and assume I'm fooling myself, since I fell down (In their opinion) so spectacularly when confronted with someone in genuine need. This blog probably isn't the place to start - or at least not in this entry. We can disagree on what the genuine need was, when balanced against the needs of the job and the ridiculous lying that was going on (nice and intriguing?). And for the moment I'm leaving it at that.

Some personality wobbles are fascinating, and not in the sense of looking at a new bug, although any reading this may think I'm having a shot, I'm really not. I have my moments of shit too. Anyway.

Most of the time I find people hugely entertaining; exuberantly laughing my way through my days is how I prefer it. Even crazy eyes (a subspecies of nutbag - always defensive, always have a scapegoat and often dud themselves) are wondrous in the way their minds work.

Ah-ha. Finally I come to the point. People are fabulous. Even the repugnant ones. Because after all they're just trying to get through too; first do no harm is my ethic. I could go on for pages about how fantastic, how awesome people are, just being themselves, but I'll bog down in sentiment (more than there is already?) and I'd like to pass and leave it at that.
    
"What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!"

That'll do for now. Peer group? What's that?

Untying the Choking Brain

Finally done it.

I've quit my old job, got a new job and start on October 21. Whooppee!

It's a bit disconcerting that the response from most of my friends has been "about time!". Better late than never, I say, and if I had left earlier, I wouldn't have had the awesome opportunities of the Cerner project. So, could be worse.

Something that cracks me up about this: the willful misunderstanding of why I want to leave all this (what, the curtains?); disregarding that I might have some plans aside from working myself into the ground and assuming this is a negative move. I'm only leaving because I'm not happy? Really? Couldn't be because this is an awesome opportunity and I'm not subject to anyone else's whims than my own and my family's. Bahahahahaha.

Ooh, cat screech just went off in my head. Never mind. When I'm gone...I never have to think about any of this again.

Now onward to another night job, with better conditions, spread of shifts (i.e. there is a spread of shifts, rather than this lurching around with the previous roster). It's a bummer in some respects - finally our roster is getting attended to and I'm about to leave. Sigh.



Never mind, everything is going to be alright.

The Ties That Bind, Then Choke Your Brain

It's been weeks and weeks.

I'm writing this with about five minutes to spare, no drafting and minimal thought.

It's been a fairly horrible couple of weeks, months, nearly a year. We are really short staffed at work, with people on holidays and people who have left and have not been replaced (in one case, we're getting to the six month anniversary and the fourth re-advertisement). On average, it's midnights, one off, one on, one off, several on. Throw in a midnight (leave work at eight in the morning) and an afternoon (come back at four or five of the same day), and no wonder I'm exhausted.

I had my third go at that one (two shifts on the one day) in a fortnight and feel like I've been abducted by aliens. I've lost a day. It's one day later than it should be. It has been for the last four days.

The creative writing workshop started two weeks ago, tomorrow is week three. Our teacher, Mark Tredinnick, is very good. I suspect though, that I'll be reading a lot of books in my future that I would not have considered (aside from, maybe I should read that) just from the short readings alone - and there's even more mentioned in the Little Red Writing Book (yeah, his).

I would like, very much, to quit my job and work on this. See if I can take it anywhere. See if it can take me anywhere.

See if I can have a normal life, where I'm not tired all of the time, disoriented and perfectly uncertain about the time of day.

But of course, we're already short, so...keep twirling until next time. Or be rebellious and inappropriate; that's my default when I'm this exhausted.

Nothing more. Too bored and furious (it's an interesting combination - I recommend it for enemies) to focus a lot of the time right now. I would like about four days of sleeping whenever I want to.

Since I have no end phrase (and I'm twenty minutes past my five minute deadline), bye.

It's 3am but I'm not lonely

Crashed and burned early yesterday evening, thanks to the help of some red wine.

I've had an overload of news in the last day or so and gone back to work on top of it.

One of my friends has given birth to her daughter, my sister's book arrived from North Carolina and another friend is taking a job overseas. Overload!

Congratulations to everyone.