Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Hey! Guess what!
I was offered a job. A job which I would actually like to do!
Oh how I wish I could leave it at that and walk off into the sunset content with my new job adventure.
This is me, Trillian. Remember me?
There’s a catch. There’s always a catch.
The job I would like to do, the one I was offered, pays $8,000 less per year than I’m currently earning. Oh. And. Would require me to sit in a very small cube.
But other than that it appears to be a perfect job for me.
So guess what I’m trying to do?
I’m trying to figure out a way to live on $8,000 less per year. Did you know $8,000/12 = 666.666666? Omen or opportunity? I’ll have to move, of course, but the good news there is that with the $666.666666/month pay cut there aren’t many apartments I’ll be able to afford, so making a choice in a new place won’t be difficult.
I’m also reading everything I can about interpersonal relationships in confined spaces. I’m focusing my research on POWs who were held hostage in small cells with other POWs. Apparently Hogan’s Heroes is not an accurate portrayal of POW conditions. I may have some issues working in a cube. I’m a private person. I don’t make a lot of personal calls at work, almost none, in fact, but other people, people who work in cubes, don’t have that same outlook. The people in the cubes in my office talk on their phones a lot. They talk about their plans for the weekend, their boyfriends, their mothers, what they’re going to have for lunch, what happened in the ladies room… And when they’re done talking on the phone they have conversations about their conversation over the cube walls. I know this because I generally keep my door open. And I can hear these conversations perfectly. I only close my door when these conversations go on for a prolonged period, are louder than normal or when I have to make a phone call (business or personal). Sometimes distractions are distracting. And a door is a good thing. There are no doors on cubes. Or windows. This could be a very difficult adjustment for me.
But then, living on $8,000 less/year is going to be a huge adjustment, too. So, you know, big life changes all at once. Out with old and in with the new. All that.
Still.
Is it worth it?
Forget the idealism of the plan: Doing something I like with people who seem better, or at least different, from the people I spend my days with now.
The reality is that I’d be taking a huge cut in salary, a salary which is already barely adequate to sustain life in the city. Would my new, even smaller, crappier apartment in a “bad” neighborhood fill me with resentment over the lower paying job? Idealism doesn’t keep you from being mugged, raped or shot. It doesn’t keep you warm at night and it certainly doesn’t feed the cat.
And what about the cube? It’s a cube in a cube farm of Dilbert proportions. Idealism doesn’t drown out the noise of a cube wall mate who talks to her friends and fights with her boyfriend on the phone all day. There are two layers of management in cubes above my position meaning I will need to advance through two promotion levels before I can have a door. Hey! That could be my motivation goal! Work hard, do a good job, spend long days and weekends in the office so I’ll be on the fast track for actual floor to ceiling walls and a door! A window?! Surely you jest. We’re talking interior office. A window is probably at least four or five promotion levels above my would-be job.
My would-be job in a cube with an $8,000 cut in salary.
But it’s an actual job offer. Someone wants to hire me. This might be the best I can hope to be offered. I’m kind of afraid to turn it down. Practicalities and sane logic be damned, I’ve been offered a job, another job, a job which is not my current suicide thought inducing job. It’s a ticket, albeit a cheap steerage class ticket, out of the current nightmare I call my job. This might be the next natural step in my downward spiral to living in progressively smaller apartments in progressively worse neighborhoods, then friend’s couches, then with any relative who will have me, then in a homeless shelter, then in a box. That’s how it works, right? Oh sure, most people go to college, get a job, embark on a career and have progressively better paying jobs and better apartments and then homes. Achievement. Work hard, be creative, be a good employee, show up at the office pot lucks with something other than two vending machine sized bags of Doritos and advance in salary and office size. But since I appear to be bucking every normal life trend, I might as well embrace the fact that I’m going backwards through life. Things are getting worse, not better.
I’ve been kind of fighting that concept, or at least trying to keep some small hope for a better job and more money. I’ve had difficulty accepting the fact that working hard, doing a good job, being a responsible person and employee aren’t going to pay off for me. Other people reap nice pay-offs and do a lot less than that. But I’m not them.
So, I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t scoff off this lower paying personal space encroaching job offer. Maybe I need to stop swimming against the tide of my life and just accept the fact that I’m going to get swept up by the current and drown anyway, might as well let the current take me, give up and end the frustration. Accept it and let it happen.
