"one day...like any other / you do what you want...but you want something better..."
-APB, "One Day."

with a belly full of dinner and pale ale, i'm mentally preparing for another manic monday. the work week in general, really. i work through the weekdays to get to the weekend. it's truly amazing what so many of us are willing to put up or get ourselves into just to get a paycheck. we work at jobs we're not interested in, surrounded by people we don't like, working for bosses whose heads would look better on a stick...okay, so my current gig isn't that hellish, but it's customer service and that's far from heaven. i liken my time on the phones to a tour of duty for a soldier in Iraq: while it makes total sense for me to be riding around in an armored car, i'll be damned if i can find any scrap metal. basically, i need to learn how to put the shrapnel i'm hit with to good use. being on the front lines, you're gonna get shot at. the days range from bloody awful to ai'ight to surprisingly good, but that's life. the monitor at my desk now has mini-tower speakers for ears, providing the necessary soundtrack to get me through the day, or at least through the next phone call. radio broadcasts from WFMU, the Giant Step jukebox, and random dj sets from Percussion Lab make up a good bulk of the rotation.

the frustrations of the work day are frighteningly similar between my wife and i. she's in an insurance agency now, wearing several different hats at once and performing tasks she was never told she had to, i'm sure. we both do too much at once. she now totally understands my aversion to the phone when i get home. after answering one all day, the last thing you want to do is pick it up at home. that started happening to her last week - she would visibly shudder when the phone rang in our apartment. i can't begin to tell you how ecstatic i was about that. not about her frustration, but the fact that we know exactly what the other goes through during the daily grind. makes it that much nicer when we get home and see each other. "yeah, i know. my day sucked, too. you don't know how happy i am to see you." then we kiss, feed the cat, and prepare dinner.

i will admit, though...in their own special way, my co-workers remind me not to take my 9-to-5 plight so seriously. they don't even know they're doing it half the time. i mean, it's cool when questions need to be answered and they're able to help me out, but in a way, it's even better when they make me laugh during the day. they can be a silly bunch - outright stupid some days. i think it was last tuesday that we were getting socked with snow. perhaps the feeling of cabin fever made us all slap happy, but it was a mental ward on my side of the office that day. we ended up getting more snow than was expected and traveling during rush hour wasn't going to be fun for anybody. beth called me up because she was getting out early and wanted to know if we were as well. i said, "baby, around these parts 'getting out early' means leaving here ON TIME." we did finally receive a notice from management that they were closing up shop at 5 p.m. "so that everybody could get home while it was still light out." the notice arrived in our email at 5:02 p.m. the day was already silly enough, but that just took it to the next level. beyond that, the sky was overcast the entire day and got worse while it started to snow harder, so technically, it was never "light out" to begin with.

it has been my experience that jobs were never meant to be enjoyed; rather, they are to be endured. anybody that's blessed enough to have a job where they actually like what they do ought to thank GOD daily for their situation. not one f**king complaint out of any of you, seriously. and let's not get it twisted: if that's your situation, you're BLESSED - luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. so i work for the weekend. i work to get home and be with my wife. i work so that the bills can be paid, so that we can have a date night once a month, so that future plans can be laid and our future seed can have things a bit easier (while still teaching them the value of a dollar and not being afraid of hard labor). the routine is the routine and i do it so that the enjoyable areas of my life can still be enjoyed. so i work where i work, but it's not who i am. it has nothing to do with my purpose in life (whatever that is - God knows but He ain't talkin' yet). it's not a passion. it's not even an area of interest. it's just a means to an end. and it makes me no different from the millions of other wage slaves on the same ship, some of whom would much rather throw themselves overboard than spend one more day on the rough seas.