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July 19, 2004

a sample day in my life

brought to you by me.

The alarm goes off between 7am and 7:30am (the time the alarm is set to depends on the whim of C. Currently, C does not have a job and does not get up until well after I leave, and yet she still changes the alarm time randomly). I get up and hit snooze and lay back down on top of various pillows/C's limbs/cats that happen to have moved to my side of the bed in the 2 seconds it's taken me to hit snooze. Sometimes this last sentence is repeated once or twice (or, on particularly bad mornings where I'm either 1) angry about work, 2) depressed about work, or 3) hungover, even three or for more times!). Then I get up and put on my flipflops and hate myself for being alive. This feeling often continues well into the work day, but sometimes ends after I have coffee at work.

I then go into the bathroom. One or both cats will be in the bathroom, crying and rolling on the bathmat. The cats want food, but I am too tired to feed them so instead I limply throw a ball or coo at them (yes, coo). Then I get in the shower. I should, at this point, shave my legs, but since I'm usually too late/tired/angry to worry about that, I don't. This is why I am usually wearing jeans even though it's 90 degrees out. So now you know.

When I get out of the shower I go into the bedroom and turn on the light. C does not stir. I then look in the closet until I find something acceptable to wear. What I wear has almost nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the state of cleanliness and un-wrinklyness my clothes are in. 95 degrees and 100% humidity? Black wool sweater is the only thing clean? No problem. If I can't find anything to wear I wake up C. and complain. My lack of clothing options is not, of course, any of C.'s fault, but I'm crabby in the morning and I need someone to complain to, and there she is, deep in blissful "I don't have to work today because I don't have a job HAHAHAHAHA!!!! SUCKER!" sleep, and she fucking deserves it. Damn her.

After I dress I dry my hair. Depending on how tired/late/depressed I am, this either takes 7 minutes for a complete dry, or 2 minutes for hair that is unacceptably damp, but at least it's not dripping. I then fumble around for about 5 more minutes grabbing diet pepsi and granola bars and my keys and trying to find my Metrocard in different pants' pockets. During this C. mumbles things about "babies" and "super loge" incoherently. I kiss her goodbye and walk to the subway.

The walk to the subway is about 2 blocks. I pass by a school, where kids are just arriving for day camp. I hate them and their tanned skin and big smiles and all that giggling and happiness.

In the station I wait for the F train. Three G trains arrive. Then an F train that is too crowded for me to get on. And then another 4 G trains. (Note: I know! Yes, it's true that the G train never runs EXCEPT at 9:15 AM. I don't know where it goes from there. It just disappears.) Then a slightly less crowded F train pulls in and I shove myself in between the ubiquitious Carroll Gardens/Park Slope 23 year-old newly yuppifed with jobs at Morgan Stanley or Citigroup couple. They always give me dirty looks because: 1) I live in Cobble Hill, haha fuckers, and they're jealous; 2) I have shoved myself in between them so they can't give each other light neck kisses when no one is looking; and 3) I am dressed like 22 year old editorial "assistant" at some 3rd rate magazine, and am obviously a lower lifeform.

Tons of people get off at York to get to their mindless civil service jobs in downtown Brooklyn and I race a middle-aged bitchy looking woman to a seat between a really fat woman and a businessman with his legs spread too wide. And, yes, this IS a good thing.

I exit the train in midtown and run up the stairs to beat all the amazingly slow people who are reading the Post or "The Nanny Diaries" as they walk up the stairs. I could walk all the way underground from the subway to work, but that just doesn't feel right. So I walk with the people (mostly tourists) above ground and get to work in 3 minutes. I flash my ID card to the security guards who pay no attention. I could flash them my Blockbuster card, if I had one.

I get the elevator bank and pray that no one I am supposed to suck up to or otherwise acknowledge politely is there. I also pray that a gaggle of loud secretaries does not get on the same elevator with me, but I pray less hard for that. Usually I am rewarded with the latter.

I get to my floor, into my office, cringe as I look at the voicemail indicator on my phone--not lit, awesome. Turn on my computer and go get coffee and a cup of ice for my diet pepsi (yes, both at once). Put on my "work" shoes which are just as dirty as my "street" shoes but have two inch heels. Surf the web for an hour and a half and/or feverishly try to finsih something I was supposed to have done the night before but didn't.

Between 11 and 12 I usually find some motivation (god knows where) and draft up something I'm supposed to draft up (one "drafts" by finding a model on our online database and copying it). Then I go to lunch. Sometimes I should not go to lunch. I should sit in my office and do work and eat through lunch. But I go anyway because I didn't I might self-destruct.

After lunch I get on the internet and compare cellphones on cnet.com for about 45 minutes, and then I check my checking account balance and transfer money between my checking and my savings account. At some point C. calls to tell me about interviews she has scheduled or anything cute the cats have done.

At around 2:45 I pull some more motivation out of the toe nail on my little toe on my right foot (this is a freakishly small nail, btw) and "draft" some more. Sometimes I'll get really wild and crazy and return phonecalls I've been dreading. When I'm not feeling so wild I send vague e-mails (note: the e-mails must be vague because I never know what is going on, and no one will explain it). I then wait for angry e-mails in return.

At around 4:30 I start reading the archives on Salon.com.

At 5:15 I start feeling out when I'll be able to leave. Is the partner in the other room screaming on the phone at the client about comments to "drafts"? Is the senior associate sending me cryptic e-mails about "drafting" riders to loan agreements and including the words "let's see if we can get this done tonight!" where "let's" and "we" = me. Or am I being ignored? Hard to tell for sure until around 6:30.

If I'm being ignored, I leave at 6:35, so when I get a voicemail asking where I am at 6:36 I can safely say "hey, I was here until 6:30. I thought we were done when I didn't hear anything by then." If I'm hearing yelling on conference calls and getting e-mails about riders and "proofreading" (I "proofread" by selecting random pages from long documents and reading one paragraph of each page. I think this is efficient...) then I'll be here until 11:55 and I'll have trouble finding my car home because the dispatcher downstairs leaves at midnight. During the car ride home I'll either get a really freaky quiet driver who makes me uncomfortable or some guy who doesn't shutup and tells me my life must be awful if I have to work 14 hours a day--hey sweetheart, at least he owns his towncar (you know, the black one with so much chrome paint scraped off the bumpers that you can see the flesh toned molded plastic showing through underneath). He's his own boss!

Ugh.

When I get home C. is waiting up to tell me all the ways in the which the babies were cute that day. I try to pay attention (really, C., I do) but I'm already worried/angry/depressed about getting up in the morning and starting it all over again. At this point I either drink some of anything alcoholic in the refrigerator or smoke some weed (or both!).

Awful? Yes. Self-destructive? Yes. Soul crushing? You know it! Welcome to big firm life.

Posted by me at July 19, 2004 03:53 PM

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Posted by: tmr at July 22, 2004 11:56 PM

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