It is good that I love my job.

I had a hellish day yesterday. It seems that every time I think that things are evening out and looking up, everything crashes down again. I do not want to post all the details, but essentially I got pulled out by two professors during lunch and told that I am unteachable, have anger and confrontation issues, and that I will not make it in the professional world. Needless to say, it was a lovely conversation full of fluffy bunnies and rainbows and butterflies. And lots of tears and stuttering, too, but that is usually a given with me. So it destroyed pretty much my entire day.

And then I had to go to work at five thirty.

I was not looking forward to it. After my lunchtime discussion I nearly called in and told them I was sick. But I went.

And, wonder of wonders, it made me feel better. Because I love my job. I love the store itself, I love being surrounded by books, I love the music, I love my coworkers and managers, I love (most of) our customers, I love that I get fifty percent off items in the cafe (hot cocoa for a dollar and thirty cents? yes, please!), I even love straightening up at the end of the night.

I realized again last night how grateful I am not not be at Albertson's anymore. It would have destroyed me to have had to go work in the deli last night. I probably would not have made it through. But being at Barnes and Noble gave me energy and some happiness where I had none.

Praise God for small reliefs such as that.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

On My List of Things That frighten Me.

Yes, that is frighten with a little 'f.' The list is not of things that Frighten me, or of things which I Fear, in the style of A.A. Milne, where Important words are capitalized, especially Nouns. Perhaps the list is more Things that Make Me Nervous. Anyway. On this list is Chiropractors. I think I may have been raised to be Nervous about Chiropractors, or even to be frightened of them.

I like my job (this is not as horrid a non-sequitur as it may seem). It is not something that I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it is steady and active and my shifts go by quickly. And, of course, it gives me money. However, the past two weeks were hellish. I flew back from LA on Monday, June twenty-ninth, and worked the next nine days without a break. And really, my visit to California was not much of a break, because I was seeing people and down late and up early and quite busy overall. So, I worked over the holiday weekend, and most of my shifts were nine or ten hours. My longest, most horrid day/shift was Thursday, July second - that one was twelve hours long; I was called in two hours early for my scheduled eight (and one-half, if you include my lunch break) hour shift, and did not finish closing until an hour and a half after my shift was supposed to end: ten-thirty to ten-thirty. Horrible.

So, sometime in there I strained something in my back. And then not having a break aggravated it. And it was hurting quite badly by the end of my shift on Wednesday, and on Thursday I could barely move at all. I had planned to get a lot done on my day off - mostly cleaning my room and doing laundry - but I ended up spending most of the day curled up in an armchair. In a moment of temporary insanity, perhaps, I called my best friend and asked for the name and number of her chiropractor. I did not know if he was covered in my insurance, but the one thing in the situation that I wanted less than to go to a chiropractor was to go to a chiropractor chosen indiscriminately off of a list from my insurance company's website. (As it turns out, he is a provider for my insurance, so that is going to work out nicely.)

So on Friday I faced my Nerves, and went to see the Chiropractor. The doctor, while working on adjusting me, informed me that he had never seen anyone my size (height, weight) so tight and tense. I am unsure as to whether or not I should be proud of this accomplishment. He was especially impressed/horrified by the knot in my left shoulder which I have had since I can remember - probably at least since junior high. Afterward, I was able to move and straighten up some, so that was a significant improvement, though I was still in pain. I went in again this morning, very, very, very sore from yesterday, for another adjustment, and this evening I am feeling well. That is, I am feeling no worse than I generally would at the end of a work-day. But the doctor says that we are going to get me Well, or All Better, which is fairly Exciting, although the whole thing still makes me fairly Nervous.

I do like having movement, though. And the cracking is simultaneously absolutely terrifying and extremely satisfying.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Itsy-Bitsy Pieces of My Life

Esmeralda is shedding, which always frightens me a bit. I have a rough spot on my neck from scratching it while I had a cold last week, and wondered this morning if I were due to shed, as well. When I was at the optometrist's office today, there was a girl in the waiting room named Esmeralda, and it startled me when they called her. I jerked my head up, and ended up making very awkward eye-contact with her for a few seconds. This was the first time in my life, in all my many years of eye exams, that the assistant was able to perform the glaucoma test on the first try. I hate that test. The blue light coming toward my eye and pressing against it, even though the drops numb the nerve endings so I can not feel it, terrifies me. I was quite pleased with myself for making it through this time. Being there made me keep thinking about Blindness, which I finished reading last week. An excellent book, perhaps the best I have read in a long time. I was fascinated by the author's use of punctuation, which did as much for the pace of the book as the plot itself did. I miss reading a lot. I used to read several books per week, and now it takes me a week to read one. But I am trying to continue reading new books, rather than becoming one who only reads books she has read before. My other new book that I finished recently was If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which I liked decidedly less. But it seemed to me that part of the author's intent was that the reader should feel the unease I felt at it, so that was somewhat consoling. Next is The Master and Margarita, which my sister has wanted me to read for several years. I had no time or energy to do so during school, but I plan to pick it up starting tomorrow. The trouble I find with reading a lot is, of course, that which so many discover they have. That is, I do not lack time, but I do not feel like reading during that time which I have. I am working eight hours a day, and while I am not working I would like to be mindless. Television is more attractive for that reason, although I dislike television in general. I do not want to lose that mind which was cultivated so carefully over the past four years. My job is horrid at times. We are still in training, having just entered the second week. The hours are awful, and it is a noxious environment to be in. But I have hope that things will improve after training is through, when I am actually in a small, colorless box answering and selling phones. Hard to imagine that that would be a step up, is it not? My soul aches, here. I had thought that I was doing so well, finally getting used to being here again, but tonight after work, my soul started hurting for California again. For my friends, for the places and people I love so much. Oh, how I dislike change, when it is change away from what is good. But I can see ahead. This is not the end. This horrid position is a means to an end, and I will not be there forever. All my applications to graduate school are in, and now I have only to wait. Some say that is the hardest part, but I think it is much easier than agonizing over essays. It is out of my hands; there is a certain ease that comes from that, a sigh of relief. I hope to get into Fullerton. I hope to move back, to finally live with Adria, to study and relax with friends once more. I have few friends here. I hope when I return I will still have many friends there. I am so awful at staying in touch, I fear I may be losing people. My main problem is that I never know what to say. So I say nothing, and they do the same, and we fall away in our respective silences. The underlying issue here is that it is not the conversation that I miss, but the silent presence. I miss most those with whom I can sit quietly, or walk quietly. I miss those with whom there is that quiet understanding that silence is okay, and the silence of not being in contact is so very different than the silence of two people sitting and reading, knowing that the other is there if something does need to be said. I miss that so very much. That is all I can write for now, not because there are no other small pieces of my life I can think of about which to write, but rather because that last bit can not very well lead into any of them.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Post-Script Edit: In re-reading this, I realized the ambiguity of one of my sentences. In the sentence I miss reading a lot, a lot should not be taken as the amount that I miss, (eg, reading. I miss it a lot) but the amount of reading I miss (eg, reading lots of books. I miss that).