The 40-hr/week internship is going well. By well I mean it's an office job (yay to not smelling like coffee/baby shit/fruit juice!) and it is in my field. It is paid and I will soon have a laptop and digital camera provided to me. Hey, life is good. I have cubicle walls with pictures of Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the cast of The Office hanging on them. I have a single boss lady so I don't have to worry about three people telling me to do three different things NOW.
However, it is really, really boring. And everyone I work with is over 40. No joke. Everyone is OLD. It's not like they're a young and hip 40, 50 or 60. No, no, they are old, with grown kids and toy poodles and scrapbook supplies. I'm in charge of the newsletter, because I'm the only one who knows how to use Microsoft Publisher. Seriously, they're freakin' old. And because it's an office job, I have lots of time to kill (I get, like, three assignments a day that take all of an hour and a half to complete, so I end up with a good 6 hours of "free" time). Which is great in terms of me getting shit done (figuring out the student health insurance plan, putting together a slide show for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary) but after a while a person begins to crave a little companionship. And all I have is OLD. So I end up sending off e-mails to people I haven't talked to in ages, calling all my unemployed/self-employed/I'm-a-teacher-so-I-get-summers-off friends, and eventually singing to myself in a pitiful attempt at human connection. It's sad.
What's even sadder is my hardened work ethic, honed for years at shitty retail/service industry jobs that demand all of your attention at a time. I believe being at work is all about GO, GO, GO! at full speed. If you have time to read a ten-page student loan application you are NOT working. So I feel like I'm getting paid to not work, which is kind of true but kind of not. I do get all my work done, and I get it done well. I just know how to get it done efficiently without dawdling, so I end up with lots of free time.
Which leads me to my final conclusion: That I need to figure out a way to freelance so I can work hard for four hours a day, make the money, and then goof off for the other 20 hours a day.
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1 comment:
It is a weird feeling to not work while at work, but now that I've gotten used to it I like the extra hour or two to get stuff done. Six hours must be rough, though. That's what graveyards are like, only even more lonely because everyone is asleep.
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