Sunday, November 23, 2008
i-pod
As the daylight hours compress upon themselves and the weather gets steadily chillier, I find myself wondering why I can't just hibernate, or become a spore, dormant until the spring time.
This option of dormancy comes at a time when I'm riding a particularly high wave of ironically low gloom about work. I think in fact there may be some kind of connection between the lack of light, my increasing desire to hole up in my apartment and cease to function for a few months, and my complete apathy about work.
To wit, I watched Mike Judge's Office Space last night, a movie which I had successfully resisted the impulse to view for years. I couldn't help but cheering on the main character, whose main desire was not to go back to work, and simply do nothing.
It's not that I want to do nothing, exactly, it's just that I resent being forced to do something when I feel this way. I remember feeling this annoyed and burned out with my job last year at precisely the same time, and it precipitated yet another lateral move--this time to ICU--in an increasingly pathetic attempt to pretend I'm supposed to be furthering my career in bedside nursing.
My fantasy is to quit my job and work in a knitting store. Things I dig about the scenario? Well, for starters, in a yarn store, as a opposed to an ICU, no one is shitting, puking, bleeding out, or dying. Family members aren't snottily insisting you suctioning trached and PEGed Timmy Patient q2min when if they'd been to school and earned a degree and license and all to practice nursing, they'd realize wasn't necessary to do that fucking frequently because a) the patient's coughing and oxygen saturation of 100% means they are protecting their airway and oxygenating properly and b) the fact that you're not Yankuer-At-The-Ready Suction Girl today and are running around with a harassed expression on your face might just mean that you're actually kind of busy trying to save the life of someone who can't and isn't maintaining their ABCs (airway, breathing and circulation).
To continue with Why I'd Rather Work At A Knitting Store Than in An ICU: your job as a clerk in a knitting store, as opposed to a nurse in an ICU, consists of schmoozing about yarn and patterns, enthusing about your hobby, and knitting on your latest project. Occasionally, knitting clerks have to ring up a sale, show you some yarn or patterns or needles. At most, the biggest crisis you'll have to deal with is you don't have an exact match of dye lot in someone's chosen yarn, or maybe undo a couple of mis-knit rows on a distraught newbie's First Scarf project.
There's no, "Uh oh. We gave that person waaaaay too much yarn; now they'll never be able to knit all that yarn and die of yarn-sepsis!" or "Oh shit! We just gave that customer five skeins of the wrong dye lot; call the yarn bank STAT and find out what we need to do to reverse the damage!"
In conclusion, I need a different job.
Wait, no scratch that. I need a different profession.
This option of dormancy comes at a time when I'm riding a particularly high wave of ironically low gloom about work. I think in fact there may be some kind of connection between the lack of light, my increasing desire to hole up in my apartment and cease to function for a few months, and my complete apathy about work.
To wit, I watched Mike Judge's Office Space last night, a movie which I had successfully resisted the impulse to view for years. I couldn't help but cheering on the main character, whose main desire was not to go back to work, and simply do nothing.
It's not that I want to do nothing, exactly, it's just that I resent being forced to do something when I feel this way. I remember feeling this annoyed and burned out with my job last year at precisely the same time, and it precipitated yet another lateral move--this time to ICU--in an increasingly pathetic attempt to pretend I'm supposed to be furthering my career in bedside nursing.
My fantasy is to quit my job and work in a knitting store. Things I dig about the scenario? Well, for starters, in a yarn store, as a opposed to an ICU, no one is shitting, puking, bleeding out, or dying. Family members aren't snottily insisting you suctioning trached and PEGed Timmy Patient q2min when if they'd been to school and earned a degree and license and all to practice nursing, they'd realize wasn't necessary to do that fucking frequently because a) the patient's coughing and oxygen saturation of 100% means they are protecting their airway and oxygenating properly and b) the fact that you're not Yankuer-At-The-Ready Suction Girl today and are running around with a harassed expression on your face might just mean that you're actually kind of busy trying to save the life of someone who can't and isn't maintaining their ABCs (airway, breathing and circulation).
To continue with Why I'd Rather Work At A Knitting Store Than in An ICU: your job as a clerk in a knitting store, as opposed to a nurse in an ICU, consists of schmoozing about yarn and patterns, enthusing about your hobby, and knitting on your latest project. Occasionally, knitting clerks have to ring up a sale, show you some yarn or patterns or needles. At most, the biggest crisis you'll have to deal with is you don't have an exact match of dye lot in someone's chosen yarn, or maybe undo a couple of mis-knit rows on a distraught newbie's First Scarf project.
There's no, "Uh oh. We gave that person waaaaay too much yarn; now they'll never be able to knit all that yarn and die of yarn-sepsis!" or "Oh shit! We just gave that customer five skeins of the wrong dye lot; call the yarn bank STAT and find out what we need to do to reverse the damage!"
In conclusion, I need a different job.
Wait, no scratch that. I need a different profession.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
hiatus: a brief retrospective.
So, let's start with the obvious: I haven't posted to The Scutmonkey for awhile.
Long story short: I've been busy. Making plans, revising plans, executing plans, repeat ad infinitum.
But, never fear--I'm still rattling around, like so much change in a Belltown panhandler's insistently ubiquitous cup.
I'm in a rather odd mood right now--must be the infusion of caffeinated beverage and the fact that the sun is descending earlier and earlier these chilly early winter nights.
Off-kilter would be a good way to describe it. Just ever-so-slightly out of focus. Or, off balance maybe. Yes, that's it. Off-balance. Which I guess is the same thing as being off-kilter, isn't it?
Long story short: I've been busy. Making plans, revising plans, executing plans, repeat ad infinitum.
But, never fear--I'm still rattling around, like so much change in a Belltown panhandler's insistently ubiquitous cup.
I'm in a rather odd mood right now--must be the infusion of caffeinated beverage and the fact that the sun is descending earlier and earlier these chilly early winter nights.
Off-kilter would be a good way to describe it. Just ever-so-slightly out of focus. Or, off balance maybe. Yes, that's it. Off-balance. Which I guess is the same thing as being off-kilter, isn't it?
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