You know me and my love of metaphors, well this one captures the essence of what's going on right now: dirty dishes in the sink.I hate leaving dishes in the sink, but on occasion, it's to be expected, especially if I'm rushed or it's just a small bowl and a spoon and it's deep enough in the sink so I don't have to see it every time I glance that way. (Outta sight, outta mind, kinda thing.)
But when I have more than a couple dishes poking out of the sink, begging for attention, sitting amidst a pool of long-cold soaking water with food debris hardening more and more with each passing hour, I know something is up.
Dirty dishes being ignored is like a problem being ignored, but the delay in resolving the issue just makes it worse. Plus, you can't truly ignore it, it's sitting right there staring you in the face all day long.
Other than the real ones in the sink, here are some of the other "dirty dishes" I'm dealing with right now:
I have to be honest, I don't really like the new job. There, I've admitted it. That's the first step to recovery, right? I don't know if it'll be that simple. I mean, what can I do? It took me almost five months of searching to find it, and that was while I was living under the luxurious umbrella of two months warning of an impending layoff date, then a six week severance payoff while also collecting unemployment benefits. If I chose to leave now, I'd be living off savings. And in this economy? So instead I endure and stick it out. I will have to rewire my thinking and do some serious cognitive restructuring to make this hated job work. I can't plummet back to the days of the worst of Koyaanisqatsi. I don't know if I could literally live through it.
Ole Mr. Gout has come a callin' once again. This time the flare up is about as bad as it was in March of 2006. Like then, I am forced to take sick days off from a new job and it's no doubt, as it did then, impacting the impression my supervisors have of me. It was hard for me to shake off the image of a slacker in '06 with Symantec, I'm unsure how I'm perceived here. Frankly, in light of my feeling expressed in the previous paragraph, I kinda don't care.
Of course, Mr. Gout doesn't come around unless I leave some kind of invitation for him in the form of potent potables. Like a big circular Catch 22, I've been drinking more because I hate my job but that invites hangovers and, in this case, gout to make me sick so I can't go in to work, which could make my job worse in that I would also have to prove to them that I'm not slacking off, but that becomes more difficult and makes me feel more stressed so I drink more and the cycle repeats itself again and again until I quit or I'm fired. I might opt for the later outcome. Maybe I could get back on Unemployment.
Like a drop or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid, there are a few things lately that are a refreshing swipe of the SOS pad:
As I've mentioned before, Nugget is doing fine and yes, she does indeed have a shiny new gas cap. Well, it's a dull gray plastic so it's not really shiny, but you know what I mean.
My friend and former roommate Wayne from RI found this blog through a Google search of my name and so we're keeping in touch by email. It's nice but a little weird...I mean what do you chat about? I don't really need to write about my life since it's so conveniently laid out here in the 325 posts of this blog.
Ric and I made semi-contact this past weekend...kinda. I was having a drink or twelve and decided to call him around 8:00 pm last Saturday but I hung up when it started to go to voicemail. He later saw I had called and called me back, but by then (1:00 am) I had already gone to sleep (ie: passed out). He left a message that was half asshole-ish and half conciliatory. It went something like: "Well the atheist calls the Christian...Hey, I saw you tried to call me earlier; if you want to talk it would be ok...". I haven't called him back.
I got out to IOA a couple weekends ago. It was a beautiful day and I actually had the energy and strength to make my way around the whole park. I didn't bring my camera since it was kinda an impromptu thing but I'm getting to think any photos or videos of the parks would be redundant anyway. There's just so much available on the web since they are such major tourist attractions. I saw the Sinbad show for like the billionth time. Yet again, new actors playing the roles. (They do have high turnover for that show...maybe because it's so physically demanding on the performers, I mean they are doing some amazing feats of acrobatics throughout the whole show several times a day, day in and day out.)
Well, I got to hobble with my lame foot over to the sink. Unlike the Sinbad show, there ain't no Enchanted Staff I can wave and make my dishes, and my troubles, just magically disappear.