11.21.07
Posted in May the Universe Respond, The Man Is Such a Drag at 7:34 am by jeci
A few years ago, I was a freelance technical writer. Which meant I was one of those mythical creatures who worked from home. Although technical writing is, quite simply, not for me, working from home was at once the best and worst thing to happen to me.
It was the worst thing to happen to me because I’d never worked from home before, so I didn’t yet know that unless I make a conscious effort to meet my daily physical and emotional needs, I’ll inevitably find myself slouched on the couch, dissatisfied and lonely, suffering from a case of self-inflicted immobility and watching with mild horror as cat hair sifts through the air to settle in layers on my wilting pajamas. I had no idea that inertia isn’t just something I learned about in Physics 10, but that it is, in fact, a cult in which my brain is a zealous and devout member. Since I began each day at rest, my brain went to fanatical lengths to convince me to stay at rest and would resist my (its?) attempts to change my velocity. Having never been in charge of my innate forces before, I’d always thought that my brain knew my needs best because that’s, you know, kind of its whole purpose. I had no idea my brain would argue with itself if it told me I was hungry and I would feel a resulting urge to move from the couch to the kitchen, only to have my brain turn around and deny that urge in a shrill, hysterical voice because that would involve STANDING and using my limbs to bear my own weight and then using my digits to chop things and press buttons and that’s TOO MUCH VELOCITY AND CHANGE and it’s really probably best to just wait this whole thing out until another being comes along and forces us/me into motion because you CAN’T ARGUE WITH INERTIA. It’s one of the LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.
So that part sucked. All the sitting and waiting for…something.
Because I am not, in fact, physically or mentally handicapped, I no longer wanted to live in a world where I considered it a triumph to brush my teeth. Because hey, brushing your teeth is something. And brushing my teeth meant I didn’t technically do nothing for yet another entire day*. I wanted to return to a world where I could focus on a bigger picture, where success was measured in terms of being able to achieve things beyond the range of activities I’d mastered as a toddler. So I found work in an office and promptly realized that working from home was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
It was the best thing to happen to me because…for a million reasons because. First and foremost, because I got enough sleep. Every. Day. I really can’t emphasize this enough. I have a tricky biorhythm that simply doesn’t conform to the 9–5 world and when I am forced to live in the 9–5 world, I am hopelessly and chronically fatigued, prone to migraines and illness, and generally miserable. I also got to be chronically fatigued and miserable in a toxic workplace. That was fun. When you work from home? You have complete control over with whom you come into contact, which can have a resounding positive effect on your mental health.
And, oh…I could go on and on. So I will just for a minute. When you work from home, you don’t have to invest any energy into maintaining the ridiculous facades we’re required to maintain in an office environment. If there’s no work to do, you can just leave; you don’t have to find inane busy-work projects to fill your time until you can be released according to the arbitrary schedule. If you work better listening to really loud music, you can do that. If you can perform perfectly well with the TV on, you can do that too. You can swear and snack and wear sweats instead of pantyhose and talk to your friends when you’re feeling uninspired or you can get up and leave for two hours if you’re too frustrated to continue. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just as long as you do it. In other words, you’re freed up to do whatever you need to do to improve your own well-being and productivity. (The Man has yet to figure that whole well-being to productivity ratio.)
And, fool that I was, I flushed the whole thing down the toilet.
When I was working from home, I allowed my life to suffer. I was in control of every aspect of my day and my happiness; I just didn’t realize it. When I worked in an office, my life suffered and there was little I could do to control it. I tried—hard—and it didn’t work. (Ergo, sabbatical.) I have since learned that my brain’s fervor for inertia is as dismissible as the rantings of any religious wing nut. I can do things, lots of things, amazing things, like bike across Canada, when I defy my brain. In fact, the best things happen when I defy my brain.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want a job working from home. I’m writing it down, putting it Out There, making it official. I heard that this works. (Besides, isn’t that what that book Oprah went nutty for says to do?) So, Universe? I want a job working from home. And this time I’m gonna rock it.
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* It should be noted that I never, ever, missed a deadline during this time. I did do work, and did it well, despite the fact that what I mostly remember from those days is all the sitting. The latent over-achiever in me never allowed my work to suffer, just my life. BECAUSE I AM A FOOL.
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11.16.07
Posted in Memes at 3:06 am by jeci
Listen, Kieran and I have had a craptastic couple of weeks. I haven’t been able to write about anything without my grumpiness seeping through. So, I needed to come up with something to distract myself because wallowing in grumpiness is not what anyone needs, especially me. In an act of mild desperation, I decided to tag myself with the rusty old “Six Weird Things About Me” meme. This turned out rather well, because it took me a while to come up with my six things and it took me a good couple of days of mulling it over to come up with my list. And…what do you know? I provided myself with sufficient distraction! Figuring out what makes you weird is a constructive form of therapy. Who knew?
1. I kinda maybe believe it’s possible that the moonwalk was faked. [cough] This could be because I’m sometimes gullible and naïve. But really? I think I just like a well-crafted conspiracy theory. And what gets me with this particular conspiracy theory is that there was the motive. The Commies were winning the space race and the Americans had to save face so, you know, maybe they got some dude to bounce around on a Hollywood sound stage and put up an American flag in a box full of sand and read from the Bible and make a suspiciously poignant and articulate speech and now the tapes of the whole thing are conveniently missing. I’m just saying it’s possible, is all. And, besides, it would be cool if it was true and one day the real life version of The Cancer Man revealed everything on his deathbed and it blew apart our collective understanding of North American society.
2. I hate listening to people eat. In the same way that fingernails on a chalkboard drive most people mad, the sound of chewing drives me mad. I’m actually pretty sensitive about this because I know people can’t avoid chewing food several times a day in order to survive and, therefore, it’s basically ridiculous to allow something so normal and recurring and unavoidable to bother me. But the thing is I’m not actually allowing this to bother me; I simply can’t help it. I have weird, hypersensitive hearing, okay? There is, in fact, a whole list of noises that are unbearable for me, including the sound of fabric ripping (this is the worst—I’ll actually clap my hands over my ears and start shrieking, in manner of Rain Man), the sound of cutlery scraping plates, the sound of anything chafing against foam. Fortunately, these things tend to be pretty random and don’t pose any problem to my daily functioning. As for the chewing thing, I think it’s just that no one actually likes the sound of chewing, but most people can’t actually hear those sounds, while I can hear it all. If I had to sit in a room full of people eating CornNuts, I’d freak out and could easily be coerced into revealing any number of secrets so long as it meant the infernal crunching would stop. (All that being said, please don’t feel weird eating in front of me.)
3. I can’t watch nature shows because they make me cry. A lot. Even when nothing sad happens. This all came to light after the March of the Penguins fiasco, wherein I practically had to be stabbed in the arm with a needle full of valium to ease my hysterics. The moment the first penguin waddled over the horizon, I lost it and started sobbing. Two hours later, I was curled in the fetal position and had used an entire box of tissue. The penguins! They were waddling so…earnestly! And they were so cute! And they were in the Artic! Aggghh—everything is vulnerable! And, OH GOD, life is as fragile as a penguin egg that accidentally rolls out from under its daddy’s belly flap and cracks in the cold.
4. I believe in ghosts. Actually, it’s my experience that everyone believes in ghosts to a certain degree at least. It’s just that, in the sober light of day, people forget that the night before when they were getting something out from the space under the stairs they felt a chill and things suddenly seemed eerily silent so they whirled around and even though there was nothing there, they decided to get back upstairs rather briskly anyway. I’ve just decided not to bother dismissing that kind of thing anymore. Plus, I’m a little bit addicted to being deliciously scared, so telling people I believe in ghosts prompts them to share with me their ghost stories and then the floor will creak and we’ll look at each other sharply and everything stops for a second while we test the air and I love/hate that. (No really, tell me your ghost stories! Leave a comment or e-mail me at blueyonbelly[at]gmail[dot]com.)
5. I have a freakishly accurate long-term memory and can remember events from my early childhood in great detail. However, ever since I got a concussion while skiing, my short-term memory is for crap. So, while I can vividly remember the details of the evening when, at the age of three, I realized my imaginary friends (Katie and Boom Boom—snort!) weren’t real and would not be making it to dinner, I have to ask my husband four times a day for our voicemail password. It’s likely for the best that most people can’t remember their imaginary friends phase because, I have to say, it’s a little weird to realize that you were once a BABY who did things that babies do.
6. I have a terrific sense of direction that doesn’t happen to fit into the normal “sense of direction” paradigms, thus leading certain people (my husband) to believe I’m lost when I’m not. For example, I can’t read maps at all. At all. Not even maps of my hometown, where I could find my way around blindfolded and drunk (there may be empirical evidence for this). The other problem is I can get confused between east/west, north/south and likewise right and left. Especially when we start getting into “my left or your left” territory. Confused as in there’s actually something wrong with me to the extent that, in university, my osteology TA used a black marker to write “L” and “R” on my hands before the lab final because I consistently and unnecessarily lost marks for reversing my lefts and rights (when identifying bones, you have to determine which side of the body it came from). (Perhaps the fact that I studied Forensic Anthropology and could tell you creepy things like how to determine a time of death or which bone in the human body has the most pleasing texture could be Weird Item 6.5) (The radius, if you must know. I like to press my index finger into the smooth recess of the radial head, okay?). All that being said, I rarely get lost. If I’ve been somewhere once, even decades before (see item 5), I will be able to find my way around with confidence. In the two-dimensional world of maps and the verbal world of lefts and rights, I’m lost. In the three dimensional world of trees and hills and buildings, I know exactly what’s going on. This may eventually lead to the demise of my marriage, as some of the most explosive fights Kieran and I have had have been over how we define whether we’re lost, leading to conversations such as the following:
Kieran: According to the map, I think we’re supposed to turn right here.
Me: But that means we’re going towards the mountains. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I think we should keep going straight.
Kieran: Straight? I don’t get it. Show me on the map.
Me: Um…well, um, I don’t know. Just trust me.
Kieran: What are you basing this on? Turn right. Turn right. Turn right. Turn right.
Me: FINE.
[Ten minutes later] Me: We’re going the wrong way. I’ve been here before one time when I got lost with my dad. See that green barn with the tree in front? I’ve seen that before. If we turn left at that barn and go down the gravel road, we’ll pass a stream and then we can turn left again at the big boot and we’ll be back on the highway.
Kieran: I’m not doing that. You’re insane. We’ll never get out of here if we turn down a gravel road THAT’S NOT EVEN ON THE MAP.
Me: Trust me. I’m turning.
Kieran: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. SHOW ME WHERE WE ARE ON THE MAP.
Me: I can’t. Trust me, I was here ten years ago with my dad.
Kieran: THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER.
[Ten minutes pass. Kieran is near catatonic with rage.]
Me: Look! The big boot is still there! See?
[Kieran glares, unimpressed.]
And now I tag blogging newbie Diamond Jackie. Mwah!
PS For fun, I’ve resurrected my Ugly Photo Meme post, which is the first meme I ever did. Also the most fun meme that’s gone around in a good long while.
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