New Stuff

So I think my goal is to make this blog once again a daily affair, or at least something a lot closer to that sense of familiarity. It's different now - you who read it are the same people who will end up being in it, in a lot more cases than it was before - but I feel like it's a good exercise for me to try to put my thoughts down on a regular basis whether or not it's as exotic as my travels to New York were. Once I get internet in my apartment, it'll be an easier business to write regularly. Before I go to bed, after I wake up, whenever I have a minute to steal away. But for now, I'm still settling back in and trying to decide what's necessary and what isn't. It'll take a little longer.

Coming back was strange, but I felt like I approached that jolt really well. I drove back down, which gave me 12 hours to readjust my entire mindset. I think I've said it before, but flying from NYC to SC really creates an odd effect - there's no readjustment time, no quarantine to speak of, so one minute you're in that breakneck speed and you're alone and you're surrounded by thousands of people, and the next you're in the arms of someone you love in the much slower SC pace surrounded by a city that has known you since your birth. There's a sense of shock there that's really hard to put my finger on. But those 12 hours in the car with Brian (I'm going to start using his name now, as part of my SC-blog changes) while I unwound and sweated like crazy (the AC was only on about 20% of the ride home) allowed me the opportunity to say goodbye to that world in a slightly less harsh manner.

I tried to go back and read the first blog post about a week ago. But I started it, and had an instantaneous rush of all those emotions from those first few weeks - despair, terror, and absolutely loneliness - and had to stop. I still have such a visceral reaction remembering what I didn't write while I read what I did write that I couldn't even finish that first post. I say with all seriousness that the only thing that got me through those first few nights was the encouragement that I received from Sarah and Brian. I still have one text saved from Sarah - I won't transcribe it here, but she told me that I was strong and brave and that I could make it through this. And Brian, stopping on his way to some other event, calling me and talking to me for an hour while I let my panic die down little by little. I'll adore you both forever for that.

I know it's ridiculous to say this after two and a half months of hating being in New York, but there is definitely a part of me that misses parts of it. I miss driving out to Coney Island on a rainy day - although those best times were always with Brian - and feeling that strange, old energy wrapped around me. I can definitively say that I miss the buzz the city has. I find myself thinking about when I can go back, even if only for a week, but do it on my own terms and decide whether the city holds quite the kind of sway that I was offered the last few weeks.

Settling back in, only to have school and a new apartment and a new set of obligations thrown at me, has been an interesting experience. One that I'll discuss in more detail later - my new job at the Film Archive has been a really great experience so far, even though it has meant dropping one of my shifts at Cool Beans. Starting back at Cool Beans has been a little funny too, after two months of working for the crazy one with all my strange New York co-workers. My life has completely flipped, for better or for worse, and I find myself fully back in this world with little or no overlap from the previous.

Hours

In some ways, this feels like as much of my last night as the real one will. This is the last time I'll sit in the apartment alone, with my iChat open and my Thievery Corporation up loud. The last night I'll fall asleep alone in that big bed. The next week will feel like more of a vacation than really a wrap-up - in some ways, I feel incredibly unprepared. I wasn't given time to say goodbye, exactly - I was working and waiting, and then suddenly tomorrow, I'll be blissfully unaware that there was ever a city at all. I'm happy about that, but this sudden end of my rhythm is startling.

I had an okay last day. I made good money and I enjoyed working with the people I worked with. It was less bittersweet than last days normally are, mainly because of the hell I put up with from Janice. I came home, did some laundry, cleaned the apartment a bit, and chatted with my landlord about some final terms and whatnot. It's been a good, productive day, one more involved in the preparation for tomorrow than really today. I had a brush with the clean freak in me, and managed to keep her under wraps for at least a little longer - I cleaned that bathroom with a fury that I knew I had, but that had lain dormant for a while in regards to cleaning.

The next week is going to be wonderful. I'll extend that week to include the two or three days right after I get home, when there'll be a flurry of settling and seeing and catching up. I'm incredibly excited about that, as I've mentioned. My emotions do swing wildly between being anxious about going back and being thrilled that I'll be returning to what was such lovely normalcy. Is it awful that I'm nervous about it? Is it more awful that I was offered to opportunity for a summer in New York and didn't fall head over heels for the city?

Yes, StumbleUpon, I like pictures of tiny adorable animals. BITE ME.

Near

Tomorrow's my last day at work - thank God. Today actually went really well, considering how worried I was about it. The Princess was surprisingly kind to me, I made good tips, and I managed a good swing shift on my second to last day. Tomorrow might be another story - I might just walk around yelling "last day, bitches!" People give good tips when you do that, right?

I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to not have my integrity called into question at every turn, I'm ready to not be treated like an imbecile. She told Aaron that she didn't trust me closing last night - she made the poor guy come back in to help me close. The implication here is that she thinks I'm going to steal from her. I did the swing today, so whatever I may not have done last night, I would have had to do this morning - the fact that she legitimately mistrusted me to that extent deeply offends me. I've done nothing but hard work for her, despite being treated the way I've been treated. That's got to count for something.

More than anything, I'm ready to see him again. I've used up most of that eloquence telling him this, but just getting a proper hug for the first time in a month and a half will be a joy. Seeing everyone will be wonderful - I'm looking forward to Karissa's honest hugs, to my Rihanna dance time with Sarah, to my pre-work naps with Chloe, to my coffee (and now drinking!) dates with Brittany, to sharing music and pastries with Rachel, to the days I take Immac lunch to my sister and play with the babies. But more than anything, I'm ready to fall asleep with his arm around me, to share my whispers with him.

There are days when I want to wrap myself up in a song. Like . . . lose myself in it. Shoot up that melody, put it directly into my bloodstream, let it flow into and out of me like some ethereal liquid, mysterious like all music is. Sometimes headphones and speakers just aren't quite good enough. Is there a way to drown in music? I'm sure I've said it before, and maybe I'll have to say it many more times, but I think I want to start playing music again. Have my keyboard and my violin at my new apartment, and try to get back into some sort of regimen. I want to remember the width between half and whole steps again. I want grace notes to come naturally to my fingers again. I want the high back that only playing music can really give you.

There's something especially harsh about forced normalcy. When your words say one thing, and the emotion behind it is pushing you to say something else. It's not always wrong, either - sometimes denying it is really all you can do.

Self-Important Ramblings

There are certain profiles within the working world - there are always two people at every workplace. There's the bitch, the one that everyone either loves or hates, depending on whether the bitch loves or hates them. There is âlwaysˆ this person, always the one who breeds workplace strife. Sometimes they mean to do it because they enjoy the drama, but sometimes they don't even know it - or at least, I like to think that a certain few of these people are just unaware of the havoc they wreak on the rest of us on a daily basis. Profile Number 1: The Bitch (can also be The Diva, but is not necessarily so). Profile Number 2: The Hated One. As I told Jesse once, if you don't know who the hated one is within a week of working somewhere, you should assume it's you and bust your butt until you get it squared away. As I've mentioned before, I have a good nose for workplace drama - more because I pay attention to human interaction than because I enjoy the dish.

So I had The Bitch pegged within the first day, basically. Jesse introduced her as "The Park Slope Princess," which was enough of an indication for me. Up until yesterday, I'd actually gotten along okay with her - I'm new, and I know how to keep my head down if nobody's deliberately targeting me. But yesterday, inexplicably, it was like she became aware of my presence and the fact that I had no ill will towards her, and decided to change all of that with three hours of inordinate bitchiness. I get - and deeply respect - the concepts of seniority and even the sense of superiority that it brings. But there's no need for the kind of condescending, demeaning attitude that this girl has, and it really pisses me off. I have two more shifts to get through with this girl, but God help me, because I'm dreading it awfully. I'm having to try harder to care about things with every passing shift, too.

I wish the real world were like University - I wish I could, at the end of the "semester," write up an evaluation of Janice, and express my disdain and disgust with both her managerial style and her way of dealing with people in general. As it is, I suppose I'll just have to express my frustration here - I don't want to slander the store as a whole on Yelp!, because I actually really respect the people who work for her, and want them to remain employed. The woman couldn't respectfully interact with one of her employees if her life depended on it - she's caustic, cruel, and about as passive-aggressive as they come. And that's even aside from the fact that she's awful about micromanaging, and doesn't know how to just let her managers do their job.

As long as the blog is still entitled as my Personal Theories, here are my thoughts on managing: a good manager should be a liaison between the owner and the employee. The owner is the idealist, while clearly the employee is the pragmatist. The owner thinks of ways to bring in or keep business, many of which sacrifice efficiency and speed; the employee thinks of ways to open and close and help the customers quicker, many of which sacrifice some of the integrity of the business. These are both valid points - the employee's tactics benefit the owner by clocking out early, but the owner's tactics benefit the employee by getting them more tips. But the manager's job is to negotiate that incredibly fine line - to find a middle ground between the two, and to mediate between these two somewhat-opposing parties. A good manager should be able to see both points of view, and work between them accordingly - this is why an owner working in close contact with the employees makes everything twice as complicated. Every time Janice walks in and starts mucking around, she's undermining Drew or Jesse's authority, and damaging the set of rules being crafted. It's just a shame.

I want to draw an odd - maybe even disrespectful - parallel; craft an analogy that might be weak, but one that expresses a growing apprehension. Is Stockholm Syndrome partially caused by the victim's new found fear of what was once considered normalcy? Maybe as the first part of my retrospective, I think I want to express the city as my captor. In a way, I was dragged here by my sense of obligation to myself - one of the driving forces in my life is my desire to live with an eye to not regretting things in the future. I forced myself into going, and then staying, and then surviving. This probably sounds incredibly melodramatic, but the sense of panic that I felt every single day for the first several weeks - and then less often, but still regularly in the months following - was incredibly real, and immediate. I could feasibly label myself my own captor, but it was the legacy and prestige of the words "New York" that made me stay. But just recently, as my frame of mind has started shifting into "last few days" mentality, I've started thinking I may not be ready to go back to what was once normal. Not because I don't still love Columbia, or my network of really incredible friends and family, or even how convenient my life was; honestly, it's just that transitioning back into what I once considered normal now seems strangely daunting.

Alright. Enough theories for the night.