Waiting for God(ot)dess

All I wanted on my first day back to work yesterday was to leave at 6 p.m.

Since I started at 6 a.m., I figured this wasn’t too lofty a goal.

So at 8 p.m. when I arrived home to find Mom was waiting to have dinner with me because she thought I’d be home at 6, I sort of short-circuited.

And by “sort of short-circuited,” I mean “searching the want ads.”

I love my field. I love what I do. I love most of the people. But damn it all to hell, I am not certain that compensates for everything else anymore.

I smiled all year as people ignored me and I learned their jobs. I “licked dick” begging people for things I desperately needed and never got. I danced circles around people outside of my editorial/marketing expertise and fixed HTML and FTP and other issues hours before they even read my SOS e-mails.

Last night, great example. We needed to change 2013 in an HTML template to 2014. After I broke the UTF-8 encoding on one of the templates, I called everyone for help. 3 out of the 4 experts have less expertise than me. The fourth and ultimate expert is on vacation, so I tried another department.

So I make the other guy stay late and he helps me make the fix, but then the fix broke the usability function for the non-adept in HTML layout. And as I didn’t want to do the layout myself (because, it was past 6 and that would take me till 8), we reverted back to the wrong date so I could leave at 7.

This after I fixed an FTP issue that occurred at 4:31 p.m. because, really. The building alights at 4:29 p.m., as (my imaginary) folklore has it.

Now, you say, Goddess, you could have stayed the extra hour. And yes, I could have and normally would have. But to what end, really? Yes I want the date right but no, frankly I’m tired.

My smile has been stretched to the absolute limit. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.

That’s why I’ve created my 6 p.m. rule. I have to feel like I have some control, some freedom, some respect for myself.

I read somewhere that kids’ job is to play. They don’t need to “relax” like the rest of us do. When they have “free” time they play some more … they play till they go to bed … they play till they’re dead.

When’s the last time any of us played?

Let me rephrase, when’s the last time any of us played whilst frolicking through NYC, NJ and PA and didn’t come back home and get slammed with a crapalanche and immediately regret having a taste of playtime that they’ll never see again at this rate?

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