Caterwauling

‘Twas the last day of Mercury Retrograde (this cycle, anyway) and I’m not going to publish the post I wrote in a very heightened emotional state yesterday.

In any event, I had an epiphany on the drive in.

It occurred to me that, while I am very good at releasing rage and fear from my heart, sometimes all that gook gets clogged in my bloodstream. So, it never really leaves my body and travels back to my heart, where the cycle begins anew.

I had another epiphany as I continued to talk myself off the anxiety ledge.

I have no qualms or worries or fears about my massive workload. I know I’ll do it to the best of my ability. And I’ll do as much of it as I physically can before exhaustion or delirium sets in.

What I worry about is others.

I’m not going to qualify that. You can figure it out from my last 15 years’ worth of posts.

But honestly, without others disturbing me while I’m riding my melt … without others being honored or promoted or paid outside a level I may or may not personally believe they deserve … I’m not destroyed from the outside in.

The thing is, when I feel adequately loved, compensated and left alone to do my thing, that’s when I’m happy.

Trust me, I got this. Get out of the way and let the magic happen.

So, I’m going to focus on that. I will never have balance. But as long as I can have what’s rightfully mine, the body count can remain below 1.

Remember that job that put me on the street for no good reason?

They did it to a friend of mine today.

As I said, welcome to the club. Most of us who are hiring managers in the field think MORE highly of people who have been exiled from that dump. That generally means they have real talent.

I find the timing curious, as the new publisher is up here in conference-land with me this week … and not there to protest or question it.

I’m hoping this is their last hurrah. Because I respect the hell out of the new guy. And shit is gonna change.

In the meantime, I need help. But I have the position occupied by someone who tries hard but isn’t a perfect fit. But as I’ve seen throughout the years, many organizational leaders (and perhaps I can count the shrew who let my friend go today) have a soft spot for those who have no business being in the jobs they are in.

Then you get someone like me or any of my friends (and you know I don’t hang out with losers) and we’re the ones who get put on the street for not reading an Ayn Rand novel fast enough, or not finding time in a 70-hour workweek to do a performance review, or making a high-level decision that doesn’t pan out.

Basically, the more talented you are, the more anxiety you should have that your current rent payment may be your last.

I got the call right after I attended a really good workshop on social demographics and investing trends. Interestingly enough.

I love the speaker. I will follow him anywhere. I’m on his mailing list. I would love to hire him to be a columnist. You know. If I had salary money to spare.

In any event, the speaker was saying how Americans are working fewer hours per week. That pre-World War II, most men worked Saturdays. Now with two incomes in the house, “Fridays are the new Saturdays” and you can’t find someone to answer the phone after 2 p.m.

Who the fuck ARE these people who are averaging 22-hour workweeks?

Another attendee said really? Her kids are working 60-hour weeks on the low end A) because staffs are small and B) employers will run your ass out of town if they can get cheaper labor that will outwork you.

DING DING DING.

The good news, if there is any, is that robots will be doing our jobs eventually anyway. So there is hope that I can see a workweek below 70 hours in my lifetime!

I should probably start writing this sort of stuff as financial guidance rather than stream-of-consciousness bullshit. Because I’ve been analyzing the jobs data today and I seriously don’t know how anybody is bullish on the economy.

At least, when not one of us in my group of friends — again, the overachievers — can say with 100% certainty that performance and dedication are the top factors in continued employment.

I mean, is it possible my friend deserved to be canned? Sure. Why not. I’ll allow for it. I don’t believe it for one second. Not when I suffered the same fate and still to this day assume that the idiot minions have a better shot at being promoted and running the company than someone who actually deserves to.

I have so much boiling rage right now. This ripped open the wound I barely stitched together after it happened to me.

Granted, that company has about a 110% turnover rate, so my friend will find — like I did — that nobody gives an actual shit what the reason for the termination was when we all know BITCHES BE CRAY in that company.

But when you’re the only one putting food on the table, and your livelihood depends on people who be cray, it really sucks.

It reminds me of my experience, too, in that I worked hard. And long. And often. And to what end?

I wish my friend well. I wish I could help. And I wish I never ever find myself in that position again. Because even though you KNOW bitches be cray, that doesn’t stop you from wondering — even if just for a moment — whether those nutty fuckers might actually have been right to do what they did to you.

And then when you return to your senses, you wonder in what kind of a fair world those cray bitches don’t get burned at the stake so they can’t destroy another human being again.

I figured I’d try to salvage an edit the kid did on the big project that continues to haunt me.

Kid seems to think the sanctions imposed against a big, meanie of a country are meant to help its economy.

Kid also thinks people can have rising bottom trendlines. Which, in a porn I like to watch, I can see where that is conceivable.

But generally replacing “we” with the writer’s name when the writer was talking about an industry doesn’t make any sense.

I’m sure writing that (insert name) is “at an all-time high” is probably a fair statement. But the only worse thing than editing something so blatantly incorrectly is rewriting the whole article based on bad assumptions that Google could have easily busted in the first place. Or, not even Google. Reading the original text works too.

Redrum. REDRUM!!!!

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

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.

Deep into hour 13 of my captivity, my friend texted to say a dozen people were laid off at his job.

I got to thinking how I could use his writing and editing genius. And yet how I have to keep other people employed Just Because.

Because what, exactly? They can’t find their way out of the building?

Just think … I could instead take that salary, add a little to it and boom, get myself some help that I am not contractually obligated by the universe to put into air quotes.

Imagine.

My friend texted me today to tell me the stupidest person in his company got a promotion and a raise.

Six hours later, I sent the very same text back because it happened under my nose too.

My friend said he’s just going to act stupid too.

I think I’m going to follow suit.

It’s either that or we give up. Which is becoming an attractive option. Especially after one of my boys told me I “need a raise” (and I quote) because my workload (and how much of it I ACTUALLY ACHIEVE) blows his mind.

Being smart doesn’t pay. Working nights and weekends doesn’t pay. Not knowing how to find your way out of the birth canal without someone shoving an iPhone with Siri up your mother’s cooch? Gets you into your next tax bracket.

I will try very hard not to think about that as I work the weekend AND the so-called Monday holiday.

Attempting not to end every sentence with the equivalent of “WTF is WRONG with you?”

Here’s to hoping I don’t say it out loud.

Again.

“Nobody can be that dumb without a doctor’s note.”

I was just musing about the lost art of asking people how you can help them before you go home for the night. Instead of frolicking out. Frolicking, I tell you.

Even today I asked my boss if there was anything I wasn’t thinking of that I could do. Me. With plenty to do. Because I will do anything to learn something new or do something extraordinary. Even if it’s on my own time.

It’s a shame, really, that it’s been years since I’ve met another me.

When I stayed second-to-last and now last, I was learning so much. Even when I wasn’t doing the hands-on work, I remember sitting with my boss and just absorbing so much about the job, the field and even about life from him. We had some good talks.

I probably made him stay even-later than he needed to. But I hope he know he became such a part of me. I never wanted to disappoint him. I was always so thrilled when I did him proud.

It just kills me that not everybody is like that. Granted, I wouldn’t trust anybody with the big important stuff. But I might trust them a lot more with the slightly less important stuff so I could do the big stuff better.

I wonder if that’s how my boss was. Maybe I just wore him down till he trusted me.

But at age 30 I was a peon and by age 30.5 I was running my own franchise and at 31 I was overseeing my own department, website and staff.

So, that’s why I’m the Goddess. And no one else stands a chance of coming close.

Kids today, I tell ya.