Fucking Bluebirds

Do you remember yesterday when I had cartoon bluebirds chirping around my head and cartoon chipmunks dancing at my feet. Fuck 'em.

All it took was 8 hours in the Cube From Hell and I am back to "What the hell?" I know. I know. My husband just orchestrated the world's most perfect 40th birthday for me, and I have the world's coolest 8 year old for a son, but I am not a happy person for 5 out of 7 days of the week. I'm a weepy pissy grumpy unpleasant person a good majority of the time because of this damn job.

In times past, I would feel bad about feeling that way (I'm damn lucky to have a job, etc., etc.). Then I saw Ghost Town. It's a lovely movie with Ricky Gervais and Tea Leoni (and in my head I am cute like Tea Leoni without the sex addict husband). Anyway, you should watch this movie if only for the scene where Ricky Gervais goes in for a colonoscopy and gets frustrated about all the questions he has to answer to the charge nurse just so someone can stick something up his ass. But the main point I am trying to make here is that there is another scene where Ricky is telling Tea that he really has no grounds to be frustrated with his life, given how lucky he is compared to everyone else. Tea then explains to him that he has every right to be frustrated because you only have one life, and the world's other frustrations, while important, shouldn't change the fact that you deserve to be happy. She's cute and brilliant.

This past weekend, while staying at the hotel, I seriously wondered whether I would be happier being a hotel maid than sticking with my current job - and I don't even clean my own house! That's how bored I am at my job. And yes, I am asking around for work and even offering to fill in for the jobs that this company has posted as open.

My husband asked me this morning why they keep me around here. Valid. The best way I know how to explain it is by analogy. My cousin is an information technology guru and works for a company doing IT. Much like me, he is bored crazy because he has nothing to do. He has nothing to do because people have no idea whether an IT issue takes 15 minutes or 15 weeks to fix. Although he begs for other work, people need him to be available when there is an IT issue. He spends lots of time just sitting around being available for issues to pop up, and when they finally do, they usually end up being 15 minute issues. That's me, only replace IT with minor paralegal issues.

Because I am doing minor paralegal work, I am able to pad my resume during my unplanned legal hiatus with work that is tangentially related to the law. And they pay me. But every day I absolutely buckle and wretch at the idea of having to face a computer, located in cube with a lonely individual energy saving light bulb, doing absolutely nothing FOR EIGHT HOURS. Eight hours. Eight. Really. Long. Hours. In half minute increments.

At some point it's just not worth it to spend the days like this. I knew I needed to leave my ex-husband when I started to take my frustrations with him out on my son by being grumpy and easily agitated. Basically, the most important person in my life wasn't get the best of me. That's how its starting to feel with this job. I get home and I'm just beat and mental from sitting around doing nothing all day and for whatever reason I just can't switch over into sweet wife and good mom mode. It's at the point where my family just isn't getting the best of me, or really even me at all. And, yes, I am actively looking for another job.