A glorious, glorious day off
Sep. 22nd, 2006 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philenaI suppose I should fess up and admit that my internship, which I was so delighted about at first, and bragged about shamelessly at first, is not quite all I had been hoping for. Possibly this could be related to the work I have to do, which is important, and for which I get recognition, but which I just don't like very much. It's tedious, and although I'm not quite the kind of person to dread going there in the mornings and to look for excuses to stay home, I can see how I could get there. It's not that I hate it; it's just boring. And even the days when I do fun things (like writing industry briefs or translating delegate evaluations, which I started doing yesterday; half the fun was in decoding their handwriting! You should have seen what they did to мотивация!), I feel as if my cubicle, which is comfortable and has two humongous plants and half a window, is so tainted by the boredom of the normal tasks that I start yawning as soon as I get there. Probably in December, when I'll be able to stop working there, I might even be offered a job, but I just don't see myself taking it. I could get health insurance that way, but I could also get health insurance working full-time at the bakery, which I like much more, and which would at least ensure that I get two days off every week. (I could also get health insurance by marrying Daniel! But I feel I shouldn't let that be a deciding factor.)
I have, at any rate, been thoroughly enjoying my day off today. I slept until 10:17 (my body is so used to rising at 7:00 that I had to be firm with it to make it go back to sleep. Fortunately, mind triumphed over manner, and I was unconscious by the time the sun came up), did some necessary house cleaning, read the paper thoroughly* and then relaxed on the couch with a cup of chai and the last few stories of Italo Calvino's T zero. Something about those Italian authors, I guess! Although, actually, it reminds me a good deal of Borges, so perhaps I should say that it's something about those Romance authors! I started reading the predecessor to T zero, called Cosmicomics, last week or last weekend, and devoured it in a few short days. It was fabulous, a set of short stories narrated by Qfwfq, (which in my head I originally started pronouncing "quifflecue," but now pronounce "quifquif" (it's just a verbal representation of an orthographical representation of an identity so ancient that he's beyond representation anyway, so pronunciation is irrelevant)) about various stages in the evolution of the universe and the earth. He was around at the time of the Bang, and the time of the condensation of matter, at the moment when fish started walking on the land, when the dinosaurs died out, and so on. Other settings owe their inspiration to older theories about the universe--the appearance of color, for example, or the period when the moon was close enough to the earth to touch. At least, that's how Cosmicomics is structured, and each of the stories is a true story, with a plot, however odd or discursive, and characters, and sometimes very touching relationships. T zero moves far away from that sort of setting, and instead is almost a collection of essays, many of them set in modern times, or modern-seeming times, that ruminate on traffic jams or cellular division or lions. They are some of them excellent--in particular a story, or perhaps an essay, or maybe a meditation, about the Count of Monte Cristo--but they are not nearly as fresh and delighting as the stories in Cosmicomics were. And now that I am done, I'm looking for something else to read. I'm thinking a more standard novel, with plot and characters and exposition and denouement. Alternative fiction, while fun, is tiring.
*We shouldn't actually even have the paper; it's the dreadful San Francisco Chronicle, which is rife with bad writing, bad journalism, and ridiculous partisan opinion. Don't get me wrong--I'm probably about as staunch a liberal as many other people here, but some of the reporting doesn't even try to be objective! Daniel and I got a short-term subscription with a promotion, and when the promotion ended we tried to cancel--twice, in fact. Since it's still coming, despite our having called twice to tell them we don't want it and won't pay for it, I figure we might as well read it.
I have, at any rate, been thoroughly enjoying my day off today. I slept until 10:17 (my body is so used to rising at 7:00 that I had to be firm with it to make it go back to sleep. Fortunately, mind triumphed over manner, and I was unconscious by the time the sun came up), did some necessary house cleaning, read the paper thoroughly* and then relaxed on the couch with a cup of chai and the last few stories of Italo Calvino's T zero. Something about those Italian authors, I guess! Although, actually, it reminds me a good deal of Borges, so perhaps I should say that it's something about those Romance authors! I started reading the predecessor to T zero, called Cosmicomics, last week or last weekend, and devoured it in a few short days. It was fabulous, a set of short stories narrated by Qfwfq, (which in my head I originally started pronouncing "quifflecue," but now pronounce "quifquif" (it's just a verbal representation of an orthographical representation of an identity so ancient that he's beyond representation anyway, so pronunciation is irrelevant)) about various stages in the evolution of the universe and the earth. He was around at the time of the Bang, and the time of the condensation of matter, at the moment when fish started walking on the land, when the dinosaurs died out, and so on. Other settings owe their inspiration to older theories about the universe--the appearance of color, for example, or the period when the moon was close enough to the earth to touch. At least, that's how Cosmicomics is structured, and each of the stories is a true story, with a plot, however odd or discursive, and characters, and sometimes very touching relationships. T zero moves far away from that sort of setting, and instead is almost a collection of essays, many of them set in modern times, or modern-seeming times, that ruminate on traffic jams or cellular division or lions. They are some of them excellent--in particular a story, or perhaps an essay, or maybe a meditation, about the Count of Monte Cristo--but they are not nearly as fresh and delighting as the stories in Cosmicomics were. And now that I am done, I'm looking for something else to read. I'm thinking a more standard novel, with plot and characters and exposition and denouement. Alternative fiction, while fun, is tiring.
*We shouldn't actually even have the paper; it's the dreadful San Francisco Chronicle, which is rife with bad writing, bad journalism, and ridiculous partisan opinion. Don't get me wrong--I'm probably about as staunch a liberal as many other people here, but some of the reporting doesn't even try to be objective! Daniel and I got a short-term subscription with a promotion, and when the promotion ended we tried to cancel--twice, in fact. Since it's still coming, despite our having called twice to tell them we don't want it and won't pay for it, I figure we might as well read it.
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Date: 2006-09-25 01:27 am (UTC)if you really hate the job, then don't take it if they offer it to you. however, decent first jobs are hard to come by at all, and it's better to have a sucky job w/ benefits that looks good on your resume and could get connections than not being able to find a decent job at all and having to take a pointless crappy one or temp.