Ten days.
Ten straight days.
Ten straight days of working
Ten straight days of working fourteen hour shifts.
Am I insane? Prior to this week, you couldn’t get me into work on a day off if you told me that people would wither and die if I didn’t. But for some reason, I feel like I’m totally attentive to my work. I’ve been so gung ho and working on stuff, typing furiously and racking machines left and right until my fingernails have all pretty much been ripped up to shit. For clarification, I let my nails grow out and I’ve stopped biting them entirely. So, now, after three months of not biting them, they’ve kind of grown out and I don’t ever want to cut them. I’m so proud! Anyway, while racking, because of the way my nails have grown, they got in the way and some of them tore… so I had to rip the nail sticking up. Now they all look like shit.
I’d have to say that the only thing making working this hard bearable is the people I work with. I’m not talking about my immediate group, although there are two people on my team I love working with, I’m talking about the people in the other departments that I have to interact with. This weekend, my vice president rented walkie-talkies for the departments to use while we got all the desktop/workstations setup. It’s SO much easier to talk on a radio channel than having to remember desk phone extensions. Speedy. Only problem is that everyone else is listening to your conversation, but really, that’s okay. Especially when you just need a location or a small piece of information. But even so, these guys and gals all turn into children sometimes. They were broadcasting the strangest things. I heard Abba singing Dancing Queen, a toilet flushing, three of them singing in the elevator (“I’m coming up…”). I heard 187’s being declared on everything from hard drives to people… I mean, it’s been quite an interesting week of work, to say the very damn least. To say the most, it’s been hilarious to work with these freaks for so far seven days straight. Not to mention, since I work nights, I hadn’t even met most of these guys until this weekend. I’ve worked at PayPal some eight months, now, too. I guess that’s one of the major upsides to working days, though… actual human interaction. We have some pretty talented women and men working for us, and they all have cool personalities. I’ve seen them at their best and their worst… I’m still consider myself to be in good company.
Moving onto a topic of a different nature, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the past. Okay, okay, so I’ve been doing that a lot. Sue me. I think about the past a great deal. There’s a quotation I seem to keep repeating this weekend, because it happens to have wisdom in it and no one seems to pay attention. Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. If I don’t think about the past, then I’m doomed to a cyclic future, and life’s too damn short for me to be repeating myself, don’t you think? Anyway, I was sitting in my car this afternoon, picking up Arby’s for dinner and I saw this Hawai’i sticker on the back bumper of this Acura in front of me. My thoughts leapt to that week I spent in Hawai’i with Stephanie and her family. I remember being a total asshole on that trip. I had to close my eyes and shake my head as all that embarrassment came back up. I refused to participate, I went off on long walks by myself, I listened to my Diamond RIO and I stayed out of conversation. What a fucking moron I was back then. I look back and just scream at myself for being so dense. Of course… that was part of the bigger problem of my marriage. I was just too young for the responsibility of it all. I mean, I understood the concept, but I wasn’t quite mature enough to undertake it and see it through. And she just wasn’t about to stick around long enough to wait for me to grow up, and to be honest, I don’t blame her one damn bit. The most I can do is apologize for being such a prick and hope that gives her closure on it. At least, it would give me some closure. I still feel as though that door is left open and I’m trying to make it work. I could deny it, I could misremember or gloss it over and say it was all her fault. It would solve my problem, sure, but then the next relationship I have would be just as fucked up. What would I have learned? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. I want to learn from the mistakes I made with my marriage and overcome them. I want to grow up and be mature, and treat the other one with as much consideration and love as she gave me. I wish so much that I could go back in time and slap my past self around with a two-by-four and tell him to grow the fuck up and realize what he’s got. The fear that comes with all of this surrounds the possibility that Stephanie was my only shot at that kind of happiness. But, I can’t believe that. I just can’t, for fear of losing hold of the only part of personality I like the most: my optimism. Better days are coming, of course they are. I’m just feeling the embarrassment of times gone by and all the emotions that are interconnected to that…
Before I switch my mood from hopeful to depressed, I am keeping the stiff upper lip. I am over Stephanie. I know that much. I’ve lived apart from her for a year and a half, now. I’ve gotten used to being single again, and I’ve definitely begun to reacquaint myself with the freedom that comes with that. However, I still love her, and I probably always will. I mean, not in the sense that I’m going to be in love with her, just that I gave my heart away and once that’s accomplished, well… you can’t really turn that off like a light switch or anything close to it. It takes a lot of time to climb out of the hole when you fall in love, but loving someone is forever. I’ll probably die still loving her. Right now, it’s faded for sure. Like an ember that has a little life left to it. It will remain in that state, but I wouldn’t take her back if she begged me. Getting over her was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. I don’t care to put myself back in that spot again. Time for the future, and all the promise it holds for me.
Night and Day
Written by Cole Porter
Sung by Ol’ Blue Eyes
Night and day, you are the one
Only you ‘neath the moon or under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It’s no matter, darling, where you are
I think of you day and night
Night and day, why is it so
That this longin’ for you follows wherever I go ?
In the roarin’ traffic’s boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you day and night
Night and day, under the hide of me
There’s an oh, such a hungry yearnin’ burnin’ inside of me
And its torment won’t be through
Till you let me spend my life makin’ love to you
Day and night, night and day
4 comments
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They always say Hindsight is 20-20. Well, where that one may be true, the guy who said ‘Time heals all wounds’ is full of shit. I know exactly how you feel.
I’ve come to learn that despite that you may love some one for the rest of your life, the human heart is capable and has the capacity of loving many people at various levels. So is it bad you may go to the grave loving her? I dont think so. We never love any one person quite the same way, but the devotion, seriousness, and loyalty can be just as strong and intense.
Lissa
Yes, but I wish foresight were as capable as hindsight. That’s what reflecting on the past is for, I guess. To tune the lens by which your foresight sees…
— ZC
You got it. To quote you, “Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Lissa
Oh fuck. Hoist by my own pitard.
— ZC