You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Coming back to work after a week off.
It’s stressful like a frying pan of nitro glycerin cooking on high.
Did I forget how to do my job? Where is my work again? Will my Key entry card work?
Coming back to work after an extended vacation is a balloon filled with angst. It’s like breaking out of jail and blood hounds hot on your trail, your pockets stuffed with lasagna and stolen jewels.
I’ve been relaxing. 7 days in a row. That’s like 3 weekends back to back to back without the stress of worrying about going to work on Sunday night.
Now I’m back at the job and I’m in a time warp.
I”m like the tin man after a rain storm.
I’m rusty.
“oil can.”
All around me flying monkeys are swirling, trying to knock me over.
I can’t move my joints. I am stiff, moving awkwardly.
If I could lay down in a field of poppies and go to sleep, I would.
“Poppies will put them to sleep,” the wicked witch says into her crystal ball.
I’ve been off for a week and I’m out of shape – work shape, that is.
Vacation is what it is.
It’s a time zone of easy where the air is warm and the couches comfy.
Vacations have all the stress of a wheel of fortune re-run.
But getting back into work shape? That’s something that takes time, endurance.
I’ve forgotten my pass codes and how to type and the new girl’s name at the front desk.
“Hey there….”
My words trail off.
Oh well, she doesn’t care if I know her name, right?
I’m out of work shape, that’s for sure.
Man has it been nice being off. The rat race has survived without me. Somewhere cockroaches ate bread crumbs and produced neon colored widgets and made the bottom line sparkle.
And it all happened while I was staring out my window day dreaming of a day without borders or time.
No boss shouting at me. No deadlines. No stupid emails.
Time became a function of so what. I am suddenly a Mexican national on siesta.
Vacation Deadlines don’t exist. And if they do, they are negotiable time segments that really don’t matter.
Eat when I’m hungry. Go to sleep when I want.
12:15 am.
So?
12:15 pm.
So?
But now I’m back at work. And the sledge-hammer is immediate.
Bang bang in the head.
I’m the faces of death monkey, stumbling around looking for a place to drop.
I’m a sorority girl, lost, stupid, banging innocently on the door of Mr. Jeffrey Dahmer.
“would you like to see my basement young lady?”
My key card works. An instant surprise.
I walk in. There are a few friendly smiles. “How was your vacation?”
But there is mostly antiseptic indifference.
I walk by a row of faces that don’t even look up.
Heads down, fingers rattling plastic, they are weaving a basket of corporate greed and my existence is inconsequential.
Is that what I look like when I’m tired and frazzled and whipped like a dog, I wonder.
That’s the look of indentured servitude and it is not pretty.
I’ve seen more hope in a FBI wanted poster.
These people look like pancake batter cooked on low heat.
They are pale, the color of uncooked batter with tiny bubbles that pop ever so often for no apparent reason.
That’s horrible. Bad jobs steal your soul. They can chip away at your sense of truth, who you are, even who you want to be.
This mental Polaroid is revealing. I don’t want to become these lifeless cogs on the zombie conveyor belt.
I was out a week. I suddenly think I could have been out a year. Maybe not off full-time, but from this place?
The thoughts are enlightening.
Vacation was a calm, relaxing, so what, who cares kind of week.
Now I’m back for less than an hour.
LESS THAN 1 HOUR!
The palm trees and trade wind insouciance is gone, replaced by a slap in the face.
Welcome to work comes with a brass knuckle tap to the jaw.
Suddenly everything is accelerated. It’s like I’m trying to cross a street and a bus splashes me with icy water.
My new dress is ruined.
One hour back!
That’s all it takes to put a pressure pistol to my temple and pull the trigger.
Blam. I’m a bloody crime scene, down for the count, outlined in chalk, surrounded by yellow tape.
I sit in my cubicle. It is a refrigerator box with 3 sides and no ceiling.
It’s forever drab, the color of darkening blah.
I am typing a story that screams irrelevance.
I look up trying to remove the instant kink in my neck.
There is a year calendar hanging above my monitor.
I stare at it.
In huge letters it reads January 2015.
I should feel optimism. The new year is upon me.
Instead the calendar at a glance feels empty, without end.
January 2015 is a series of 31 boxes with nothing written in them.
January 19th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
It’s a Monday. I work. It offers me no solace.
Wow.
5 weeks in this month.
5 weeks?
Hold on to your collective mind America, January is going to bust your ass right out of the gate.
Suddenly there is a chirping warble coming from some place.
WTF?
I realize the phone is ringing. One week off. How did I get so damned disoriented.
Then an email arrives in the in-box with a ding. It sounds like a sniper’s laser targeting my ears.
I hate that ding.
I begin to sweat like a Cambodian Cat on Cat Taco Wednesdays.
The stress is all around me, like 2 trains on the same track and nobody veering off.
Then I hear the voice of that girl who drives me nuts over the partition that shields me from the rest of the room.
Arrgghh!
Her voice is a pin. My brain a pin cushion.
The metal barb of her speech penetrates the soft tissue of my mind.
It is auditory water boarding without the water and all the discomfort.
Her speech is one part broken glass and one part southern syrup moron.
I inhale deeply. I hope a cleansing breath will cathartically remove the work place crud from my being.
I wait a moment. The pressure sandwich is still in tact.
Man, I needed the time off. I was starting to go one flew over the coo coo’s nest crazy.
I can feel that coo coo coming back fast.
I need a day where picking up dry cleaning is my big project.
The week between Christmas and New Years is a dead week.
Highways are empty. The malls are full. America is tuned out.
Nobody cares about anything.
It’s bowl games and eating out and returning Christmas gifts.
It’s easy to get out of sync, especially when it comes to work.
Unless you live in a refrigerator box and hold up a sign that says Homeless Veteran, you will need to re-engage.
We all need to work.
All I’m saying is prepare.
Don’t jump into the pool without testing the water with your big toe.
Visualize pain and pressure and mediocrity.
Work will be all of these things.
You stretch before you run, right?
Work is that run, that never ends, and you have just pulled your hamstring.
So long vacation. Hello Coo Coo.
Would someone answer that damn phone, please.
Life’s Crazy™