Twenty-Three: LOUD (all at once)

Have I ever told you 23 is my number? It's one of "the" numbers, of course, but before I knew that, I picked it as my signon at HMV, our of thin air (Cashier 23, password 456. Yeah.) I was almost 23 when I picked it. Then I moved into 23 Culham St. If you squint it kind of looks like a sideways version of my initials.

This is the second post of the day. I decided it all warranted a second post since the first post cleared out all of my wedding stuff and this is for other stuff. Which is a misleading designation because everything is related to the wedding these days. All this to say, scroll down to the next post before you read this one. Or don't, actually, because it's not like it was a big cliffhanger.

I won't be back at work until December 23 (hey...) This is the longest I will have been away from my desk ever. In fact, I have never taken a vacation of that length from any job, with my previous record being a full week I took off back when I was at HMV. Other than that it's mostly long weekends, because capitalism has me bad. I was very stressed setting things up, and worse because it was pointed out that I had done a few Patently Wrong Things at the last minute (oops... well, you never stop learning on this job.)

The team all took me out for coffee, and we talked wedding stuff and life and work. Honestly, I like just chitchatting with these people and would like more opportunities for these things. I also hurriedly bought a Secret Santa gift, which I felt compelled to participate in despite not being there for the actual exchange, because Becc, one of the new faces this past season, basically willed the whole thing into existence. She's nice, but she's a lot. At coffee, they presented me with a nice card signed by everybody (I've always wanted one of those! Actually, I got one last year as a thanks for always having candy at my desk.)

It was also the Christmas party. I had ditched on any number of potential holiday fun things this year because I have always been too busy and too stressed to do any of it, but I resolved to make the Christmas Party the One Thing I Did. I missed last year due to a clerical error, but decided not to rectify it because we had a very nice Pod Celebration with the Axe-Throwing and the Italian Restaurant. This one was flipped.

The event was at Ricardas, a nice restaurant, in the building's Atrium, a fine space for circulating. I took a moment to reflect how things had changed since I've been here, as the Inventory team has turned over almost completely. It has also not been lost on me how much less team spirit this has engendered - fewer meetings, less community. Is it a bad thing or a good thing? It's a thing.

I mingled as best I could and tried not to latch onto any particular person. It was my last chance to talk/be talked to about the wedding. I am going to miss the minor celebrity status that comes with getting married. People look at you and the one thing they know is "That guy's getting married." So they talk to you about that. And me, I do my best - not always successfully - to turn it back around and find out what's going on with them. I hate people to think I'm full of myself. But soon it will just be "That guy recently got married," and then "That guy...is there." Amy, who had recently returned from maternity leave and thus missed my entire arc, was particularly interested in hearing the whole thing.

Still, there were reminders throughout the night that my place is at the edge of glory, if anywhere at all. Without that conversational motivator, I was a dead fish conversationally, as there were too many people and too many competing elements, and I am just not interesting enough on that basis. I need one-on-one conversations but I can't get them there. I never have. I am still me. Still the same body you've always known. Well I guess I haven't grown.

Still though, I got to hang out with the Inventory Peeps and AJ and the Supply Chain kids. Then something weird and unexpected happened - I won plane tickets in the raffle, and became a minor celeb all over again. Earlier that night I had even said to Murray, "What would I need with plane tickets, I just paid for a honeymoon!" (I was really chuffed about it for my second honeymoon next year, until I got home and realized they were domestic. Oh well, I hear Banff is lovely.)

Edit, 4:30 PM: I've been thinking about this all day and realized I had left out what I thought was the central point of this, which also does not make me sound very good to admit. Let's face it, Indigo is staffed by any number of appealing, attractive-looking people, male and female (let's focus on the female) in both conventional and unconventional ways. And watching them all dressed up in their finery letting it all out - dancing, mingling, laughing and having fun - left me strangely melancholy, in a way I tend to be, at weddings that aren't my own or other rare formal events (well, big company Christmas parties, and that's it I suppose.) And this despite the fact that I have found love in my life and am less interested in sex (all things being equal) than at any point in my life, I guess because despite my commitment, I still have eyes and a heart and a soul - I can still see joyful, attractive people and feel a pang that I am not with them. Only now, I get to go home to somebody who loves me. That makes the pang less pangy. In fact it used to be crushing because it was the same way - attractive, charismatic people and me on the outside looking in. Now I know that I've found the person who loves me, more deeply and really than any of those superficially appealing people would, and it does my soul good. So in the end I don't sound so bad. Let's face it, just because I'm committed doesn't mean all my senses leave me. There's hot people out there. (OK that does sound bad, but let's engage with it instead of pretending it's not so.) I just happen to have found my person. Weird how I felt like I needed to get all this out, because I sound way less awful without it, but I think I wanted the record clear, even of self-censorship for my own good. Okay, back to the story as I wrote it this morning.

I drank my Rye and Ginger, and circulated, and felt as lonely as a cloud, pouting in the loudness, until the liquor hit enough that I could start dancing. It's "Moves Like Jagger" that does it, you know - I actually do have the moves like Jagger, the pointy finger, the Jimmy legs, the Rooster. I have cultivated them since my HMV days. I also have some moves like Michael, but not that many, and I'm rusty. Then, in a dance circle, I pulled out a one-man Kid n Play, followed by my specialty, the Windmill. Satisfied (and a little beat) from there I made a tasteful exit, grabbing a few souvenir selfies on my way out the door, home to get warm and cozy with my waiting fiancée, only a little later than I had hoped.

As I have mentioned below, I am sitting in the Starbucks in Indigo at Eaton Centre. I visited the books. I found an award winner to look at, and felt sad. Real writing, you know, doesn't happen on your lunch break or in the moments before sleep. I'm sorry to say, you can't just poop out a masterpiece between shifts. At least, I couldn't. it takes time and contemplation and mental real estate I don't have to spare at this time in my life. It makes me sad. Ameema, who is always fun to talk to at these things but we never seem to talk at work, conversed with me about my writing and ambitions and I swore in January I would get back to it. That's true, I mean it, because it's as necessary as air. But I won't be in the form of a laudable masterwork I dream I may have in me, but in the form of cheapo e-books that are their own thrill to get done (really!)

If you've got greatness in you, would you do us all a favour, and keep it to yourself? Harvey Danger.

If there isn't more to tell, there will always be more to ruminate on, but I actually have things to do today and I've been here for nearly 90 minutes.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto