Don't let my lack of enthusiasm fool you

For those of you who haven’t been reading this blog since the beginning and haven’t gone back through the entire archives to catch up (note to the readers who have gone back through the archives: please feel free to find a life as soon as possible), I spent two years recently as an employee at a job that I despised.

Not a job that I disliked. Not a job that annoyed me. And not a job that kinda ticked me off.

This was a job that seriously left the following thoughts/ideas in my head:

1. If I get hit by a bus crossing the street to my job, can I make it look like an accident while having it mangle only my legs and not crush any major organs. After all, I just want to get out of this job for like, EVER but I’m not suicidal.
2. Where does one get an assault rifle?
3. Can I spend eight hours riding the elevators and hiding in the bathroom?
4. If I run over fellow employees, just how much damage will that do to my car?

Let’s put it this way. I came to a new job and lost all my health benefits for my entire family. AND I’M STILL GLAD I LEFT.

I find myself ruminating on this because there seems to have been something akin to personal growth in those two years. Either that or I have gone into some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder fugue state that I still haven’t been able to shake.

I spent those two years in a perpetual lie. I was surrounded by ass kissing corporate suits that disallowed certain things like personal opinion and constructive criticism. I stepped off the bus and pulled the blinds down on my mind and kept my tongue firmly between my teeth. Oh, the suits would never have admitted that they were this way, of course, but a visible shadow would cross the face of the sun if the WRONG THING WAS SAID.

So, I don’t think I developed a thick skin so much as I just didn’t care. Not that I didn’t do my job, I actually did it very well and got quite a few raises and never had a negative thing on a review. In other words, I fit in perfectly with the other drones.

I also spent two years with a stomach ache, a head ache, and several other stress related ailments.

I knew it was time to get another job when I read about a killing spree in a workplace somewhere and a little voice niggled at the back of my skull and said “you never know, that guy could have been working with a bunch of bastards…”

So, now I’m someplace different and I kind of took stock last night of all of my co-workers that have interesting personality quirks. It was well over 75% of the staff…

What I find most amazing is that it doesn’t even phase me.
I feel like I walk through my day with this invisible psychological armor on. All of the wackiness just bounces off me and I find myself observing it like Jane Goodall. I can almost hear myself narrating the interactions between various inhabitants of camp crazy.

My opinions at work are usually quite mild. When asked about my opinion on one project, I didn’t stand up and fight for my original design. I just let it go. A co-worker asked me “How could you not fight for that?” I looked her in the eye and said “Because I don’t care.” I then felt that, just perhaps, I had said too much. Or perhaps, been too honest. “It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I like to pick and choose my battles. Sort of like living with a toddler,” I explained. “And this just isn’t worth my energy.”

She looked at me like I had sprouted a second head but her forte is being disagreeable and she does it very well.

I think I have arrived in the zone. The zone where you stand on the beach and watch the tidal wave come in but all it does is wash over you and it leaves you clean and unblemished.

Of course, everything around you is torn to hell but you observe it with a curious detachment.

My god. I believe I have attained perpetual natural stoner-hood.

I don’t know if this is some sort of defense mechanism or what but I guess I’ll roll with it.

Man! Do I ever have the munchies…