I only have the first shot.
May. 3rd, 2021 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonAt the end how much of it is about trying to control your memories? There's a lot of life that is just 'what happened to you'. Or even 'what was done to you'. You're stuck knowing the things you know, history & knowledge are irrevocable Once you've eaten the knowledge never again can you return. So you may be defensive, protective, careful about what you try to know. At the end it's about what you are forced to know.
You'd maybe like to have control over it. Today I'm trying hard to put this morning's events out of me - I don't want these memories. But we'll see, maybe I'll have bad dreams. Probably I will.
First things first - I hate cars. I don't think anyone should have one and if I had a genii style wish it'd be for all the cars to fly to the sun immediately. Well, maybe if I had 3 genii style wishes. But everything is somewhere else & you get there in a car. So work is in the dark country of Penn's woods & I have to drive to it from the holy land. This is a whole thin. it occurs to me that I've not spoken on this. So here's all of that.
At my old job after the election an old man lost his mind and shouted antisemetically at the intellectually sub-normal jewish lady. And I immediately looked for a new job. So then a recruiter hooked it up & I got a new job - only in PA & in two zoom interveiws they hired me. For a lot more money. To do less work. THat's just the way of things huh? Every time I get more money it's to do an easier job. Well I started out in January driving out here in a car I borrowed off my ma. Well, rented. My ma thinks she needs money, so I give her some. She had an extra car, whatever- I figured out what it is to rent a car and paid her that amount & drove here - to Canonsburg on mondays and home on wednesdays from January to March. They put me up in the hotel & had me figure out the job.
I figured it out pretty good. It's a big, cool factory where we make transformers - big ones for essential infrastructure. That's where I ended up huh? Manufacture of essential infrastructure. Presumably nonessential manufacturing all happens abroad nowadays. Anyhow - electricty is important & now I help it get transmitted. I turned out to be pretty good at this thing called ERP - enterprise resource planning - it's the computerized way of running your factory. Systems - I understand these. So I make the computer do. I'm pretty good at it.
The computer where I am is in bad shape. My predecessor (and a quick aside - this is the first time I've done this, but it's true - I replaced a boomer. Someone was doing this job & then I got it, when he left. This the first time. It's always been - here's a new position devised or similar. Never replaced an old in a good job.) Well he treated the thing like a mystery & kept too many secrets & gave away too many permissions. A lot of commmentary here but that's pretty much my entire job - recovering & discovering what this dude did. I'm pretty good at it. But being good at it is relative though - you can only be so good at making a broken thing work.
After 3 months I went to work at home. I'd thought that was my comittment. 3 months on premise, thereafter - home. Weird misaprehension on my part - because my contract was 6 months on site & I missed it somehow - confused, Excitement? I tell them the things I realized in 3 months: 1) I will not move to Pennsylvania. It's a lateral move at best - from my perspective which is entirely weather/beach proximity related. 2) I will not get a car. I hate them.
So they like me and decide to up my per-diem & give me a company car to drive & they ask me to spend 5 weeks on so I can fully document what they're doing - come and be here for 5 days a week for 5 weeks. I agree. Get Julie to drive me here, then I get the car & I work a lot. This is many, many meetings - long ones where I ask hard questions about 'how do you???' and hope these people can answer. I'm diagramming their processes & then, once the notes are all figured out - I'll write them up a completed document explaining all I've learned & what they'll need to do. It's going well. This is week 3.
Now - Being away from home this much is, well, whatever. My games have all switched to online. My friends are all more or less still self-isolating. Or live far away. Or... I've got friends and all, that's fine - but middle age is a solitary experience. Kind of. I have ideas for when the quarantines are all lifted-lifted. When the bars open again. Ideas... So It's cool! Being at the hotel all the time. I kind of like it - it's peaceful compared to my house - given the intolerable stamping of my upstairs neighbors. So this is fine. I've been trying to hang out with Agatha on the weekends. That's been hard. She's pretty hard to hang out with - for me at least. She's at work on friday nights till late (to me) and works on saturdays - and (worringly rarely) she hangs out with her friends (now only online but still). And she sleeps until well into the afternoon & doesn't want to do things generally. So I spend my weekends kind of waiting for her to show up, or wake up. It's pretty needlessly depressing honestly - but I'm trying to have a good relationship! She's 18 but childish still. Contacts me or her ma to ask permission to do things & so on. It's... kind of depressing. She's got another year of school so, sure, she's gonna be still childish - what with that sort of oranizational hierarchy bullshit. But a part of me always dreamed she'd hit 18 and go her own way. Do what she wanted and go & be. She's too timid. I wonder if it'll always be.
Saturday she woke up early enough that we could walk down & get breakfast. This is, depresisngly, all I really want to do. Go for walks in the spring, see the flowers & have meals together. And I feel lucky to get one every couple of weeks. I'm trying to be patient but it's frustrating, watching her curl up under inertia. I wish she'd try to pursue a dream.
This last weekend there were concerning problems in theantiquated SQL server & the finance department called me about them on friday, late. End of Month - I'm in Ohio, halfway between, I get the call & try and diagnose it over the phone. Fail & then spend the weekend trying to decipher the system I've been left with Eventually I have a smart idea & fix it - middle of sunday, after spending a lot of Friday & Saturday figuring it out. And Agatha has something disagreeable to eat at work & comes home late Saturday to throw up all night. Then sleep all day Sunday. So working seems fine - may as well do something right?
I figure it out & am glad. Then I drive in the company car to PA- early this morning. Not as early as usual - I worked all weekend right? I deserve a little slack. I'm on pace to make it in just in time for meetings to begin. Seems fine. Smart.
On the road I don't drive the way people think you aught I guess. I strictly observe the speed limit as an upper bound. Especailly in rain - like it's doing today. Especially in the twisty mountains - which is what PA is like. So I don't beat 55 if I can help it for most of PA. But PA people are psychos - for real. They pass at speed in the right lane, shift lanes eratically - they're all over the place- genuinely unpleasant. Anyhow a pair of cars today apparently got pretty mad about my way & tried hard - like, screaming & gesturing - this is clearly not an error - drive me off the road. I mean - I did go off the road. At speed - trying to avoid their ram-attempts. It seems crazy to say - but that did happen. It was straight up nuts. Boy I hated that. And all day I'm thinking about it. There's no recourse I can take. I was too starled to note identifying details. They raced off at incredible speed. It's nothing I can do anything about. Except you know, remember it. Unwillingly. Probably unbidden in vulnerable emotional times. You know - like when things suck real bad.
But a lot of this - you know it's trying to control the kinds of memory. On the balance I don't want to think about where I was working before. I don't want to think about the way my upstairs neighbors stamp around like farm animals. I don't want to know these things - I want to control my experiences. So you get a new job, hope it's better, look for a new way &... It's all still at the mercy of others. The bitterest pill? The hardest thing. Making peace with the hated other.
You'd maybe like to have control over it. Today I'm trying hard to put this morning's events out of me - I don't want these memories. But we'll see, maybe I'll have bad dreams. Probably I will.
First things first - I hate cars. I don't think anyone should have one and if I had a genii style wish it'd be for all the cars to fly to the sun immediately. Well, maybe if I had 3 genii style wishes. But everything is somewhere else & you get there in a car. So work is in the dark country of Penn's woods & I have to drive to it from the holy land. This is a whole thin. it occurs to me that I've not spoken on this. So here's all of that.
At my old job after the election an old man lost his mind and shouted antisemetically at the intellectually sub-normal jewish lady. And I immediately looked for a new job. So then a recruiter hooked it up & I got a new job - only in PA & in two zoom interveiws they hired me. For a lot more money. To do less work. THat's just the way of things huh? Every time I get more money it's to do an easier job. Well I started out in January driving out here in a car I borrowed off my ma. Well, rented. My ma thinks she needs money, so I give her some. She had an extra car, whatever- I figured out what it is to rent a car and paid her that amount & drove here - to Canonsburg on mondays and home on wednesdays from January to March. They put me up in the hotel & had me figure out the job.
I figured it out pretty good. It's a big, cool factory where we make transformers - big ones for essential infrastructure. That's where I ended up huh? Manufacture of essential infrastructure. Presumably nonessential manufacturing all happens abroad nowadays. Anyhow - electricty is important & now I help it get transmitted. I turned out to be pretty good at this thing called ERP - enterprise resource planning - it's the computerized way of running your factory. Systems - I understand these. So I make the computer do. I'm pretty good at it.
The computer where I am is in bad shape. My predecessor (and a quick aside - this is the first time I've done this, but it's true - I replaced a boomer. Someone was doing this job & then I got it, when he left. This the first time. It's always been - here's a new position devised or similar. Never replaced an old in a good job.) Well he treated the thing like a mystery & kept too many secrets & gave away too many permissions. A lot of commmentary here but that's pretty much my entire job - recovering & discovering what this dude did. I'm pretty good at it. But being good at it is relative though - you can only be so good at making a broken thing work.
After 3 months I went to work at home. I'd thought that was my comittment. 3 months on premise, thereafter - home. Weird misaprehension on my part - because my contract was 6 months on site & I missed it somehow - confused, Excitement? I tell them the things I realized in 3 months: 1) I will not move to Pennsylvania. It's a lateral move at best - from my perspective which is entirely weather/beach proximity related. 2) I will not get a car. I hate them.
So they like me and decide to up my per-diem & give me a company car to drive & they ask me to spend 5 weeks on so I can fully document what they're doing - come and be here for 5 days a week for 5 weeks. I agree. Get Julie to drive me here, then I get the car & I work a lot. This is many, many meetings - long ones where I ask hard questions about 'how do you???' and hope these people can answer. I'm diagramming their processes & then, once the notes are all figured out - I'll write them up a completed document explaining all I've learned & what they'll need to do. It's going well. This is week 3.
Now - Being away from home this much is, well, whatever. My games have all switched to online. My friends are all more or less still self-isolating. Or live far away. Or... I've got friends and all, that's fine - but middle age is a solitary experience. Kind of. I have ideas for when the quarantines are all lifted-lifted. When the bars open again. Ideas... So It's cool! Being at the hotel all the time. I kind of like it - it's peaceful compared to my house - given the intolerable stamping of my upstairs neighbors. So this is fine. I've been trying to hang out with Agatha on the weekends. That's been hard. She's pretty hard to hang out with - for me at least. She's at work on friday nights till late (to me) and works on saturdays - and (worringly rarely) she hangs out with her friends (now only online but still). And she sleeps until well into the afternoon & doesn't want to do things generally. So I spend my weekends kind of waiting for her to show up, or wake up. It's pretty needlessly depressing honestly - but I'm trying to have a good relationship! She's 18 but childish still. Contacts me or her ma to ask permission to do things & so on. It's... kind of depressing. She's got another year of school so, sure, she's gonna be still childish - what with that sort of oranizational hierarchy bullshit. But a part of me always dreamed she'd hit 18 and go her own way. Do what she wanted and go & be. She's too timid. I wonder if it'll always be.
Saturday she woke up early enough that we could walk down & get breakfast. This is, depresisngly, all I really want to do. Go for walks in the spring, see the flowers & have meals together. And I feel lucky to get one every couple of weeks. I'm trying to be patient but it's frustrating, watching her curl up under inertia. I wish she'd try to pursue a dream.
This last weekend there were concerning problems in theantiquated SQL server & the finance department called me about them on friday, late. End of Month - I'm in Ohio, halfway between, I get the call & try and diagnose it over the phone. Fail & then spend the weekend trying to decipher the system I've been left with Eventually I have a smart idea & fix it - middle of sunday, after spending a lot of Friday & Saturday figuring it out. And Agatha has something disagreeable to eat at work & comes home late Saturday to throw up all night. Then sleep all day Sunday. So working seems fine - may as well do something right?
I figure it out & am glad. Then I drive in the company car to PA- early this morning. Not as early as usual - I worked all weekend right? I deserve a little slack. I'm on pace to make it in just in time for meetings to begin. Seems fine. Smart.
On the road I don't drive the way people think you aught I guess. I strictly observe the speed limit as an upper bound. Especailly in rain - like it's doing today. Especially in the twisty mountains - which is what PA is like. So I don't beat 55 if I can help it for most of PA. But PA people are psychos - for real. They pass at speed in the right lane, shift lanes eratically - they're all over the place- genuinely unpleasant. Anyhow a pair of cars today apparently got pretty mad about my way & tried hard - like, screaming & gesturing - this is clearly not an error - drive me off the road. I mean - I did go off the road. At speed - trying to avoid their ram-attempts. It seems crazy to say - but that did happen. It was straight up nuts. Boy I hated that. And all day I'm thinking about it. There's no recourse I can take. I was too starled to note identifying details. They raced off at incredible speed. It's nothing I can do anything about. Except you know, remember it. Unwillingly. Probably unbidden in vulnerable emotional times. You know - like when things suck real bad.
But a lot of this - you know it's trying to control the kinds of memory. On the balance I don't want to think about where I was working before. I don't want to think about the way my upstairs neighbors stamp around like farm animals. I don't want to know these things - I want to control my experiences. So you get a new job, hope it's better, look for a new way &... It's all still at the mercy of others. The bitterest pill? The hardest thing. Making peace with the hated other.
