I wonder what I wrote on Contains2 on October 3 2002

I Can Finally Not Enjoy Life Again!

“I’m sure I’ll be employed again by October…”
– Patrick D Ryall, September 2001

I just didn’t realize that I meant October 2002. But I just got a job. So now the scales have turned and over half of Contains2 is employed. We’re somewhat less cool.

I’m going to be a flyer inserter. I don’t know what that entails exactly, but I’m going in with the attitude that it will suck hardcore, that way if it does, I’m right and if it’s actually pretty mediocre, it’s better than I thought. I’ll be working Tuesday to Fridays, so I’ve got three off, that’s good. I start at eight in the morning and go until we finish that day’s work apparently. I make six bucks an hour, which is leaps above what I’m making without a job.

And I start tomorrow, so I have to try to sleep tonight. This is gonna be very hard, because I have to get up about two hours (or less) after the time I’ve been getting to sleep for the last few months. O, woe is me.

But I’ll have money!

Oh, that’s what I wrote. I guess I should check out October 4 2002 as well.

The Lowdown on my Jay-Oh-Bee

Well, it doesn’t suck hardcore. It’s just mediocre. Whew. I basically just show up in the morning (way too early by my standards) and then they tell me what job I’m to do. I can be doing any number of things that result in grocery store flyers being taken from their boxes to the sorting machines, or from the sorting machines to a different box. It’s very, very easy and of course very boring. But they give me money, so I guess it’ll do for now.

Most importantly, I was given free earplugs. Score!

I’m amazed that I only had three hours of sleep yesterday, and I wasn’t only not tired at work, but I’m still not. Go being awake!

And now I’m watching the TV shows I taped while trying to fall asleep then. Oh, Stephen Colbert, you crack me up.

Oh, I see now. Say, I wonder why I’m looking up stuff about the start of my current employment situation.

I feel that maybe it is worth noting that this last month or so I have actually been feeling like Patrick D Ryall, which is something that doesn’t happen often enough. That may sound strange, because whatever I, Patrick D Ryall, feel like should be what it feels like to be Patrick D Ryall, but it is not so. I’m feeling PDR in the adjective form.

I have a pretty clear idea of how the ideal PDR is supposed to go, and to be honest, it doesn’t go that way often enough. But that has been improving. Last month I saw a great number of people of whom I don’t see enough, so that was a plus. A combination of the winter being over and just taking circuitous routes has increased the amount of walking I’ve been doing, and walking is a definite must for PDR. During one of those walks I got the attention of the police, another classic PDR result. My monetary situation seems to have slightly improved, which is a definite plus because all that dwelling on money is very much not a PDR action (For that matter spending a decade in a job I can’t even pretend to care about just so I don’t be homeless is very not PDR, but I haven’t quite worked out what to do about that one, yet). Also, my creative output is up. Things like this make for a very PDR PDR.

I should point out that feeling like myself isn’t necessarily the same thing as feeling happy. In fact, the spectrum of PDRness runs the full gamut of highs and lows and these months has been no exception. There have been various minor things like the whole affair with my wallet and credit cards. (and also losing a book on a bus, which certainly seems like something a PDR would do), and some other things I don’t plan to dwell on here on the site (although, actually, I will add that losing my three day weekends is utter ballsack. And not in the good way), but at least for the moment the state of the Nation of PDR is such that at least the youth in the Nation of PDR aren’t rioting in the streets ashamed at our loss of national identity. Or something.

And finally, for those who saw the title of this post and were disappointed by what it turned out to be, I’ll try to see if I can’t make an a guide to groping PDR someday in the future to make up for it.

Has anyone else ever been unable to sleep, but you know you have to wake up in a couple hours, so your just laying there in bed trying to sleep and failing and you decide say to yourself “here’s what we’ll do,” and you just make rapid eye movements in the hope maybe you’ll trick your body into thinking it actually got a little REM sleep in there? Or am I the only person who has tried that? Probably I am the only one.

Anyway, I don’t think it works.

Haiku!

Potato is here.
Potato is always here.
Such is potato.

Just for posterity, I feel that I should mention that I’m now working five days a week instead of the four I’d been doing for the last… two years, I think. I’m not happy going back to five days a week, but I do need the money. And I am aware that five days is the “normal” work week and that I should “quit whining” or whatever, but I’d be perfectly happy having everyone else get an extra day off as well.

Anyway, I’m going to try to not let this extra day of life-wasting a week harm my output for this site, Let’s see how I do.

This last weekend I had to go into work for the first aid course they make me take every three years. Usually I’d take it with a bunch of other people, but though my good luck and other people’s illnesses, I was the only one in the course this time. It was much better that way. The instructor catering specifically to me instead of a group made it much easier to actually learn stuff. One specific thing I learned: I get annoyed by having to take breaks.

Back before my work ethic was doused by my distaste for my job I used to work right through all the breaks we would get in a day. The smokers always need to get out there and do their smoking, but PDR would rather keep on working so as to get it all done sooner. I remember back in high school when they took away our lunch breaks to keep us from fighting and we used to finish our school day at like two in the afternoon or something! That was a sweet deal! And this attitude has grown into my work life apparently. I figure that if I can get the work done quickly, I get a longer period of not-work, and that’s way better than a break during work. Granted, that really only works for jobs where you get to go home when the work is done and not jobs where you’re there for a set number of hours… I suppose that breaks improve those kind of jobs…

But anyway, why do we need so many breaks? I propose that all schools do like my school used to do. Get the kids out of there early so that they can have better afternoons. Heck, while we’re at it we could take away their Summer breaks and they’d be finished the whole schooling process years earlier! Surely when I explain it them the kids will be okay with that.

Okay, I am serious when I say I prefer not taking breaks during a workday, but if I could get Summer breaks again like in school? I would be a happy person.

Today I had a box of cereal and a carton of milk that both became empty at the same time! That almost never happens! Now I don’t have to go buy more milk or more cereal to use up the rest of whatever remains! Hooray!

Haiku!

Man lands on the sun.
He says “I guess they were wrong”
and gets shark attacked.

I’d be complaining about cleaning thousands of spam comments again this week, but I’m getting as sick of seeing myself write about that as I am about seeing me complain about work. So I won’t. And anyway, I have to go to work now. Which sucks.