Acceptance

I’ve been feeling much better this week. There’s no obvious reason why – for all practical purposes I’m in exactly the same position as I was last week, only I’m a week older – but my newfound acceptance of my work situation seems to have helped. At work we’re all supposed to be full steam ahead on a lifelong career path, but since I want to jump off the conveyor belt at the first opportunity I’m constantly forced to act out a role. This perpetual play-acting is tiring and ridiculous but crucially it no longer gets me down.

Statistics New Zealand rang me up on Wednesday about that job. For a moment I got very excited about driving down to Wellington for a possible interview, but that was only because it would make a pretty cool road trip. When I realised I didn’t particularly want the job and wouldn’t survive their rigorous interview process anyway, common sense prevailed. Predictably our conversation focused mainly on the last 5½ years; at best I added some serious embellishment to my work history, at worst I outright lied and felt quite uncomfortable doing so.

On Thursday we had a fire drill; this was reminiscent of the scene from Office Space where Milton sets fire to the building. I’m getting more like Milton every day. The other highlight of Thursday was spending hours on the phone to the IT help desk trying to install a system whose name was pronounced identically to my own name but spelt differently, and without which I’d be completely screwed. Of course when I finally did get the program installed I was just as screwed as ever.

I’m sure all you avid Fixed and Floating readers will be thrilled to learn that the new tennis season is almost upon us. Thursday night’s practice match gave me a real boost: I cared about my performance, I could think about what I was doing, and I’d even go as far as to say I enjoyed it. We were the underdogs, so a 4-6 7-5 3-3 tie (from our point of view) was clearly a positive result for us. One of our opponents was Superman, who’s taken over from me as captain of the interclub team.

As I write this, Mum will be halfway through the first round of her 36-hole final of the club championships. Hopefully she’ll be burning up the course. Dad will be in the UK for another month; I don’t know if he’ll get to see my brother, who spends his weekends taking people up for tandem parachute jumps. Sometimes he’ll clear £400 in a weekend. I’ll be honest here and say I’m quite envious of my little brother. Making that kind of money doing something you love is a pipe dream to me.