Monday, July 20 2009

Please do not leave advice.  Thank you.  Prayers welcome. 

Did first day of work today.  It was awesome that I came on time.  I was even ahead of Cam, even though he got in line ahead of me.   I don't know where he worked before besides that Laserfische in Long Beach.  Still not sure if I will even attend CSU for grad school, due to scheduling.    It's now close to end of first summer quarter yet not done with the incompletes, and have not touched it for a while now. If I want to have my grades changed I have to do something, but I think I'm going to fall asleep, and I keep on feeling emotional and weird after each inerchange with human beings.  I don't want this additional job to be my downfall.  I don't have the will to quit my job yet.  It's just temporary until I go to Canada, and while I need the money right now, it's not that much money.  What I earned in a weekend, I earn in two hours at my *other* job.

I feel weird about some of the interaction that happened at work.  I accidentally said "Jewish," when a co-worker asked me to guess the heritage of his name.  What I had meant was "Hebrew" or even "Jewish German."  Now I feel horrible for having said "Jewish," b/c I didn't want to amke him feel that I were reducing him to his religion.  I had meant "Jewish" as a race, obviously, but in truth I meant "aramaic".  And we all know how I feel about race, and how I feel about people asking me about my race or making statements about my supposed religion as if it stood for my religion, my culture and my biological heritage.  Which is why I feel even worse about it.  But he did *ask* me to guess the heritage of his name, which is a very difficult position to be in.  I could have just said, "I don't think I'll guess.  I don't think I could guess."  Or maybe I'll just say, "No," next time.  I was in such a mood to prove myself right, even though I was totally tired.  It was my first day on the job.  Anyways, after I had said, "Jewish," and he glared at me; I said, "Maybe Finnish?"  Then he started to enumerate his entire racial heritage: Norwegian, Black Foot Native American (apparently the heritage of the name I'd asked about--and believe me I was only curious to know where the name was from), Irish, Germa(I think but don't remember).  Anyways, the point is I didn't ask for his heritage, and he made me guess and then he enumerated his biology in terms of fourths and eights in detail.  And I still felt BAD, simply because upon his stating he was Native American, I immediately said, "Oh, What tribe?", because it had piqued my interest.  Part of me felt like one of those classifiers or that's howhe made me feel when he started listing out his heritage explicitly and saying, "There.  There.... I'm a Viking Native American, who is also an Irish person of German Descent, because my last name is MickAureee."  And I just sort of sat there totally bewildered.  I so much had wanted to just get along, but whatever.  I guess i'm seeing that this is less and less my fault since he was providing a lot of info that i hadn't asked for. 

Also, he may not have taken it the way that I take it.  Maybe he's really proud of his heritage and likes to show off.  Maybe he enjoyed the opportunity to tell people about himself, especially some new co-workers.  It was weird...though.

I felt triggered by the "hott" manager who is really the Director of Engineering, I now learned, not just the project manager of R&D.   Especially since he said something like, "That's a really nice picture," in reference to the name badge that I was wearing.  That 's the thing about delusions, we believe them a little bit, because they have to be just a little bit true or else they wouldn't be delusions.  But I overheard someone has a girlfriend, and I'm not sure who it is.  In any case, reflection on Mark's behavior would tell me that he could easily be "just being friendly."  And BTW: his name is not really Mark, but I thought it'd be fashionable for reasons of anonymity.  Same with Cam, who is not really Cam.    

I worry that I may have offended Mark: I had read some of the documents that he sent to me, and as I began editting them for myself I made a copy of the read-only doc he had shared with me.  I editted it so that I could understand the English and read it.  I had been listening my coworker saying all day how he felt annoyed by the English grammar errors all day, and how he wanted to correct the training manuals.  So at once, I said aloud to Mark and the Account Manager, "Hey, would you like it if I sent you an updated copy with the English corrected?"  He said:

"I'll make you a collaborater.  That way you can change the English translation to be anyway you want it."  I felt worried that maybe I'd offended him, even though he didn't say anything.  I know we can only believe what people say, but I want to be as reined in as possible and not just be free-weilding with the stuff, cuz that does not look good to managers.  I didn't want to show that I was just gonna do whatever I wanted, and I didn't want to come across as saying that his English grammar was not good enough or that his spelling were not--

But-- it wasn't.  I mean, it was sometimes illegible and distracting for me that he had certain words misspelled.  My intention was to do him a favor and to perfect the training document in order to make it readable in English for us English speakers here in the American location.    I just wanted the document to be better and to be meaningful for me, but I am worried I may have come across as offensive.  I myself could not contend with him in his native language, so I think it's a fair trade-off, but we were not writing in his language.  I was worried I had come off as too pushy, because i get confused sometimes.  I sometimes get a little carried away with being orderly or taking charge of things, and I don't want to go overboard with things.  

I also would like to say that I feel horrible that I accidentally overshot the location of one of the coworkers alma mater's.  He said that he initially came from Montana and then lived in Seattle for a little bit, so I just *assumed* that he had gone to school in Seattle, instead of asking.  I also assumed that he was incredibly brilliant.  And instead it came out as something like, "So did you go to the U of Washington or----?"  And I was about to come up with another college name, when suddenly he broke in with his alma mater and I felt totally awkward, when I had just been trying to make conversation to begin with.  Anyways it was horribly awkward like that, but eh....  At least I showed up and was on time and did what I was supposed to do, even if I did it slower than most.  (Reading!)

Now I'm going to bed soon, I got to get sleep to catch up and wake up by at least 8:05 am, make breakfast, until 9:05am, brush teeth and use listerine then leave no later than 9:20am.  Bring my reading disability CD.  I feel like I'm going to die.  This schedule at the theater on weekends is not giving me the rest I need.

Please do not leave advice.  Thank you.  Prayers welcome. 

It's late and I got to sleep, but I want to write a commitment here, before any of my old behavior continues.  I let myself off the hook and decided to watch some Youtube this weekend, after accomplishing 30 days of avoidance from the sites previously mentioned.  I earned it.  I committed to 30 days, no longer, and that's fine, but clearly I can find *other* ways to procrastinate other than these sites.  Evenso, I'm starting a new job this week and I want to be mentally present for it.  So I am making a commitment to avoid the following sites for another week-- that is seven days.  From there, I want to make it to 14 days, and at that point I will make a decision about what I'm going to do next that best suits my interest.

I am avoiding the following:

• social networking sites, including facebook, twitter, youtube
• dating sites
• chatting sites: woome, chat with a stranger, etc.  I cannot be on a
  chatting site.  MMORPGs count as "chat sites".  IRC.  The only
  exception is 12 step-related chat.
• chat programs
• MMORPGs
• YouTube, Google videos, Crackle
• SayNow.com, and calling anyone's associated fan line

First I have to make it to ONE day again though.