{"id":45189,"date":"2024-09-19T08:25:36","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T12:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2024\/09\/19\/back-at-work-2.html"},"modified":"2024-09-19T08:25:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T12:25:36","slug":"back-at-work-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2024\/09\/19\/back-at-work-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Back at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Back at the office after 4 days away. In the 2-3\/4 years I&#8217;ve been here I am yet to take what would formally qualify as a vacation. Most consecutive days I got away were 5, but mostly I get 3 or 4 days here and there. I used to take random days here and there for anxiety and panic swings but that&#8217;s not happening so much anymore. I have not improved my issues and weaknesses, but I&#8217;m toked up on reliable and working meds that keep everything at bay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was not like this for the first year or so working here, and it was really bad the first several months in particular. I mean, for starters, taking this job after 20 years of not having a &#8220;job&#8221; job was a big, honkin&#8217; huge deal for me. Maybe it should not have been such a colossal transition but it sure seemed like it as it happened. I blacked out long periods of time in the early months. But with the meds this just doesn&#8217;t happen anymore. I have never been a fan of pharmaceuticals or getting toked up on legal addicitives but if it&#8217;s making my life possible and more stable I&#8217;ll take what I have to take to stay sane, and employed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had lucid dreams a couple of days ago. Before me were crystal clear objects of mundane import. A pair of scissors. An unlabeled book. Some kind of food, I can&#8217;t remember what. I was controlling the scissors and opening the pages of the book but there appeared to be nothing on its pages. I&#8217;ve had lucid dreams before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve been battling a certain sadness the past week or so. Being alone again is a necessary condition given the circumstances previous, but the horizon of opportunity have for connecting with another like-minded woman seems vast to the point of impossible. On the apps I am basically invisible, competing against thousands of men virtually all of them more beautiful, wealthier, and more perfect that I could ever lie my way into making anyone believe. At work I resist and would likely outright refuse any connection with a co-worker. At first I was more open to those possibilities but not anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t go to bars anymore. I made one attempt a couple of weeks ago, finding a woman bartender so fucking rude and unpleasant I could barely believe I was even allowed to sit down. She took one look and deemed me a creep who would likely walk out on paying his tab. This was at a place I used to consider a semi-regular. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I don&#8217;t even care anymore. A bar I used to frequent and which could be said to have meant something to me in years past closed down altogether recently. I could barely raise my phone to get a photo of the place before it gets torn down or turned into something else. I did get the picture but all I could ask was why. Why do I care? This was a bar where cliques were strong and bartenders would write themselves $20 tips on your credit card payment thinking you would not notice. I noticed when it happened to me and the bartender who did it made amends, but I could only ask (hypothetically) how many people would not take note of an unintended $20 tip on their bartab unless they check their credit card statements vigilantly.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is boring, is it not? Morning text blast of no relevance or memorable heuristics. I found a couple of working payphones at the Brooklyn Museum. I knew those phones from the past but gave them up for dead a long time ago. It&#8217;s interesting because according to Melissa.com they are both T-Mobile Wireless now, not landline, with one phone showing an individual&#8217;s name as caller ID for some reason. I didn&#8217;t dig too deep but I found nothing obvious connecting that person&#8217;s name to PTS or to payphones. If PTS manages the phone&#8217;s caller ID, if it shows anything more than then number, it usually shows &#8220;PAY PHONE&#8221; or something similar. So I don&#8217;t know if this is really any kind of mystery or intrigue or just a characteristic of the phones&#8217; transfer to wireless, as PTS has indicated in the past they&#8217;ve been doing in other areas.&nbsp; I also need to return to that library to see if my instinct is correct that the phones hang up after 3 or 4 minutes, not the 15 minutes advertised on the phone itself. So much to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back at the office after 4 days away. In the 2-3\/4 years I&#8217;ve been here I am yet to take what would formally qualify as a vacation. Most consecutive days I got away were 5, but mostly I get 3 or 4 days here and there. I used to take random days here and there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-bKR","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}