Mark

What a different week from last week and the last what seem eight trillion or so. Started a new job and it’s been good so far. I’ve been there all week, and it’s been interesting, hard, easy, strange, and everything else in between. It’s a small place and it’s basically physical labor. The last two days I spent on my feet the whole time. It’s been an odd adjustment going from sitting around doing nothing to doing actual work, but I enjoy the challenge. Even though I got laid off a while back and then spend most days just sitting at a computer at home, or out and about with the laptop, the last few years of my job were spent pretty much doing nothing as well. In fact, I am starting a new blog kind of about this very thing. My time doing nothing at my last job, getting laid off and then the long ass time between then and now and some of the stuff that happened in between. I hope to make that one humorous for the most part since this place has gotten kind of out of hand.

A few thoughts since I started. I post too much shit on Facebook all the time, which I don’t really care or think about that much. I sometimes put some “personal” normal stuff up there when I am not joking around. I try not to complain or put anything passive aggressive up, but maybe every 29th post may be something like that, whatever. Other times, I’ll put something personal like I quit smoking for however many days. I put something up when I started work this week and then a couple of subsequent posts referring to work and a few people asked where I was working. I think I decided since this job is mainly to earn money I don’t really need to tell people about it, it’s nothing exciting, it’s warehouse work and it is supposed to turn into a more important warehouse position, but I certainly don’t want to be defined by the job. I always am bored to death when people want to talk about work. In Los Angeles, every person you meet asks you what you do for a living, which basically means they want to see how you might be able to help them out, or what they can sell you. Anyway, I’d rather talk about other shit “I’m up to” unless of course I start making lots of money doing interesting things.

The people I work with all seem pretty okay, it’s a warehouse environment, and there are only about five or six people in there at a time so it’s pretty quiet aside from the music which may or may not become a problem at some point. The first day was mostly your basic rock and roll station on FM for most of the day and eventually that got turned into modern hip hop complete with vocoder songs, etc. I honestly can’t stand this shit at all. I’m pretty open minded about most music, but I can’t really handle that stuff at all. There is quite a bit of ball busting going on in there, the crew is three young men in their early 20’s I guess who are typical teenagers (I guess), talking about Call of Duty (I shouldn’t have mentioned I play) and smoking Newports on break, and liking that horrible music, a seemingly bitter guy in his late 30’s who is helping out there until they move him into another position, the boss who is cool, and then a guy in his 30’s (I think) who is also really cool, likes good music and seems to get annoyed to all hell with the younger guys and their antics. I’ve tried to keep to myself for the most part until I figure out what my role is there. I haven’t really gotten that friendly with anyone aside from small talk. Oh yeah, and a young man working part time that started the day after I did, after some talking he goes to the Jesus college I talk about on here sometimes and his girlfriend works at the coffee shop I go in daily. Small world. He’s a nice guy and I can’t imagine what is going through his head listening to some of the conversations going on in there.

As shitty as I’ve felt the last few months, I don’t feel that much different really. I guess my mind is elsewhere all day, but on the other hand, interacting with people all day is making me almost not want to do anything at the end of the day. I may just be feeling tired right now though. I feel generally better off though. I enjoy the physical labor more than sitting there at a desk, and as soon as I get a little money together I am going to join a gym and start working out again since I am so disgustingly out of shape now. I am clean of everything at this point, but look and feel horrible and fifty-eight years old. I almost don’t even want to go out right now because of it. I feel a little disconnected from everyone and everything as well. For a while I thought I wanted to do music again for an outlet but now I don’t even think I want to. I guess the way I know this is, when the band played their last show last August I never took the guitar out of the case after that show. Playing that show in October with that other band I used to be in was fun, but I haven’t even thought of picking it up again. Usually if I even think about playing the guitar it’s because I hear a song and think “ooh, I’d like to learn that” and then realize I could just listen to the song and have a better time. I think I’ve managed to tell twenty six different people I want to start a band with them yet have no desire to really. Perhaps in thirty minutes I’ll feel different about this.

Looks like shit is still the same I guess.