Caterwauling

“For what we do and what we lose, we are not adequately compensated.” — Victor Gantry, “State of Affairs” season 1 episode 10

While I was missing out on having a life, a person I once hired to be my protege actually surpassed the master. And will earn twice my salary this year. And do all the things I set out to do so long ago.

I can be happy for them but I cannot contain the blame I have for everyone and everything (including myself) that I continue to sacrifice my heart and soul and creativity to babysit, support others’ dreams, take external partners’ crap and die so much on the inside that the years are shortening in which the outside will eventually catch up. And everything I once had to offer will be dust right along with the rest of me.

Burst straight into tears at my regular Starbucks. Damn it. They are the only ones who know how to make a Flat White properly. Now I’ll never get one.

I’m unraveling, guys.

Stress. Pressure. Fear. Doom.

That sort of thing.

I don’t need help. I need things to STOP COMING AT ME for 10 goddamned minutes.

You know …

If I sit here till nine the fuck o’clock editing two documents for you …

And spend half the day trying to tell my boss that I didn’t say the shit you said I said …

Or at least I didn’t mean it the way you translated it …

And I’m on the phone with every department on your behalf because they will only speak to me about your issues …

AND I come in early because you require me to …

Try not to leave me a love note in my inbox telling me what a stupid laughable moron you think I am.

Love,

Someone With a Newfound Rage Problem

This. Not just for the message itself, but because I’ve been waiting my whole life to arrive home at 6 p.m. and not, say, 10 like tonight.

That’s the first goal. Then we can work on the “someone fabulous to come home to” part. Assuming I ever get out early enough to meet that person.

Does EVERY night have to be a late one?

I have been shoving duties off my plate left and right. Problem is, they boomerang right on back, in one way or another.

Meanwhile I keep remembering OTHER things I have to do.

And now a three-hour meeting at the worst possible time when I was hoping to knock out some of those bonus urgent projects.

You know, in addition to the mornings and nights when I’m sitting around by myself.

Feels like I just can’t ever catch up.

More than a decade ago, I started a job after being not-employed for many months. I was far from being back on my feet financially. That would take hears.

However, in those early days, there was a group lunch for somebody’s baby shower or who knows whatever it was.

I was broke and barely able to afford the cheapest thing on the menu. I drank water and didn’t eat the appetizers or grab a wine glass, just so I wouldn’t have to share in the cost.

At the end of the meal, the head boss decided to split the bill evenly among all 20 people. My $10 meal became $30.

I didn’t have dinner that night. or the next.

My boss at the time looked at me and said, “You should have eaten the appetizers.”

I think of that story often when I get invited places. Now in the age of debit and credit cards, most servers know to give people separate bills.

I thought of that as I said no to an invitation recently. Where I knew I didn’t even have to pay. I just had no appetite for pretending I was in a good mood and that everything was OK.

The thing is, even when someone else is paying, I still eat cheap. I shoot poison arrows at someone like the kid who will order not only the most expensive thing on the menu, but two of them.

I think he follows the idea to just eat the damn appetizers already. You pay for it one way or another.

So I really am just depriving myself, I guess, when I say no to the appetizers … or to a meal I want instead of just a cheap one … or to the meal itself.

I don’t know. I like to think I’m doing the right thing all the time. By by whom am I doing right? Because if it isn’t me, then who?

… Was the one I walked out on after one year.

There, I said it.

I loved being in charge of product development.

I loved being in marketing.

I wasn’t such a fan of handling the e-zine because nobody could hit a deadline and I worked on those at midnight.

But …

If I were just treated with a modicum of respect there, I would have stayed at that job as long as the company was alive. And then I would have been moved over to the company that took it over.

I might not have been happy now had I stayed. But in case anybody cares what I thrived at, that’s what it was.

Funny what you give up just to get a little goddamn peace.

For lack of being able to say what spun me into a dimension of doom I haven’t experienced since the month before I left D.C., I will say that going 12 rounds with the kid did me in the afternoon when I told him I had a “hard out” to go apartment-hunting really pissed me off.

Seriously, between people throwing me under a bus and retracting it privately, being accused of near treason because of it, and someone who doesn’t follow the instructions after being given them seven times in a row … Not to mention hating the apartment and coming home and almost falling at mine because the exterior lights are off for the third night in a row and everything is draped in black plastic so I can’t see … I’m really going to try hard to want to get out of bed tomorrow.

But no promises.

I have a funny feeling that completing my newest, biggest task to date is either going to land me in the unemployment line or the loony bin.

I stand a better chance of controlling a zombie attack than seeing this through to a successful completion.

In any event, I don’t know that loyalty and hard work and sacrificing your time/soul is what gets you ahead. However, it sure does elevate your blood pressure.

My goal in life (at least during 12-ish hours each day) is to produce actionable content. Sometimes the only action it inspires is to make me want to throw myself off a bridge.

I could use some help around here …

Yesterday I envisioned myself as Oprah. But I wasn’t giving out cars.

Nay, on my TV show I was instead yelling and pointing to everyone, “And you eat a bag of dicks! And YOU eat a bag of dicks! Everyone eats a bag of dicks!”

If today weren’t Saturday, I don’t think I’d be at home right now. I’d be in a maximum-security asylum. Or prison.