Chapter 11: I already know the conversation

Suddenly, all that shit I meant to find time for prior to starting work... I wish I did.

"I'm Amazed" is a really cool song by the band My Morning Jacket. They performed it on SNL this past weekend and I found it startling to hear such a great classicist rock tune. I'd never heard of the band before, but they've definitely got my attention now. That said, the song's really great, anthemic and uplifting (and I'd love to see it in Guitar Hero IV) but I'm not in the mood for anthemic and uplifting.

Maybe I have every right to be bummed; maybe I shouldn't be at all. I've enjoyed a certain level of freedom in the past (re: joblessness) but with that freedom came an elevated sense of self-loathing. Like, I wasn't doing anything, wasn't worth anything, was wasting time. I regretted not getting a job last summer; I don't regret getting this job, but I still reserve the right to express misery. This is, after all, SWP, fuckers.

(I'm kidding when I call you fuckers. I mean it lovingly, I do.)

There's nothing like your first day on the job to make you feel like a n00b. With the exception of the famed kiosk job in October 2006, I've never had a first day I enjoyed and I don't think others would contradict this assessment. It sucks being new. You want to approach training with enthusiasm but for some reason, the whole day becomes about how badly you suck.

Classic Bowl was a less-than-pleasant first day. Nothing out of the ordinary for what that job ended up as, but the seeds of my discontent were sown then. At Tim Hortons, where I worked for two days, my first day was a miserable affair, existentially bad, and left me questioning my place in the universe. My first day at HMV, a job I loved, may actually have involved tears; at least, the question of whether I regularly freaked out over little things (I do not....... admit to it, anyway. and I managed to hide it okay for the rest of my time there.)

So by contrast, there was nothing so wrong with my first day as a Student Works painter, it was your typical daylong reminder that a: I have to acquire and develop certain skills, (mostly regarding painting) and b: I'm basically stuck in something. But that's okay. This can work, I tell myself. Anyway it's what I told myself this morning...

It was a short night of sleep. I had been up until 1 completing the safety test - I'll admit, I mainly skimmed the Shockwave Flash style manual and used common sense to answer the questions. I had made the characteristic yet fundamentally flawed decision to ingest a crapload of caffeine late last night. I never really felt the effects of caffeine at bedtime the way I did lsat night when I was awakened after maybe an hour of drifting toward sleep by the sound of my own heart beating rapidly. It was intense. Part of it was the caffeine, part was nerves. It felt like the night before the first day of school, which is always a hard one to sleep because your mind is just abuzz with all the possibilities and anxieties. So this was no different. Sure, if I'd been starting at 3 in the afternoon or even 10 in the morning things might be different, but this was bright and early. My alarm was set for 6:25. Why? I guess because deep down I hate myself and want to suffer.

It reminded me, actually, of a quote from the Jim Jarmusch film Coffee and Cigarettes, about Steven Wright saying he likes to drink a lot of coffee before bed so his dreams go faster, like the camera on a Nascar track, just whizzing by. My dream last night jetted through about three months of plot twists and characters in about four hours of sleep.

But I awoke still weirdly buzzed. I stretched, sat up, punched myself in the head, made a sandwich, and got on with the day.

I set out for the bus. The jobsite was not out of the realm of my travel, so I got there in good time... in theory. In theory, I remembered to bring the jobsite address. In practice, I got to the street and thought "Oh, shit, where am I supposed to go?" and kept walking in a daze until I ran into my employer, who very chipperly asked where exactly I was going. I had indeed walked way past the jobsite, at which she hadn't arrived yet (I was looking for a yardsign.) So eventually we got there and my nervousness started to fade... after I vomitted a little in my mouth.

We got there and I was introduced to Zack, my boss' boss, who was just going to be around today to give us the fundamentals on what we would be doing. He seemed to mean well, but was a bit brief. If I had to say something unflattering, it would be that for all his abilities as a painter he seemed to dislike having to instruct others, or that he would rather just work with people who already knew. Whoops.

And well, therein is where that "n00bish" feeling lay. I had every right to not know what I was doing, but I was very self-conscious about it. I had an easier time painting when Zack (or for that matter, Kerissa,) wasn't over my shoulder. Once I get scraping and caulking and priming and brushing and rolling into my head, I think it will be easier for me to deal. But it's my first day, right?

Between the four of us (me, Kerissa, Zack, and Catherine who was also training) we managed to get the job done way early. I don't anticipate that being the case all summer, although it's what I'm going to shoot for. I took off around 1 and caught the bus home at the Upper Oakville plaza (which by now is the Middle Oakville plaza), humming "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground to myself because, gosh darnit, you can't listen to your iPod all the damn time.

I got home and promptly... bathed. Not to sound, y'know, off or anything, but when I'm working, I like to indulge in a little soak for whatever muscles may have been tired at the end of the day. Afterward, I watched a little of Eric's favourite cinematic endeavours (a weird, cheezy retro softcore porn,) and then waited around a while to get to dinner.

We had dinner at dad's. It was a long time in the making (and he was late in getting here to begin with) so the whole thing was delayed, but we had some nice pleasant conversations. But as the evening wore on - and it did, and it was B's birthday and we did all that - I got uncomfortable with the ticking clock, because I'd had something I wanted to do, and had figured on doing it sooner.

And even though, when I got home, I gave it a go, I knew it wasn't happening. I have a sense about these things, and that sense had a negative outlook for the evening. I would've liked to get out, even though I was understandably wworn out from the day. So I chilled out for the evening. And it wasn't so bad. But it was not to my preference.

I'm all over the place. Gotta get a handle of myself. Gotta replace a fluorescent light. Gotta think about my computer and it's intermittent slowness... usually after long periods of inactivity (as in, screen savers, or startups.) It irritates me more and more.

Sigh... full day of work tomorrow. And every weekday, it seems.

Well, that's life. We all need to get shit together sometimes. I oughtn't bitch.

Sometimes it's confusing. Ordinary life can be pretty complex stuff, as Pekar said.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott