on freedom

My prison sentence at Borders is OVER!


Sometimes I feel ungrateful in that excitement, because I was really lucky to have a job when many people don't.  However, working a liquidation sale is like being Prometheus, chained up and having your liver eaten out every day.  You would assume that customers at a bookstore would be cultured, intelligent, civilized people, and you would be wrong.  In fact, from the way they blatantly ignored all posted signage, I'm not quite sure if many of them could even read.

After two 60-hour work weeks (between the publishing company and Borders), I was woefully behind on my schoolwork and struggling in my sleep-lacking grumpiness to not hate every driver on the road that wasn't me (with no success).  Wednesday, after dealing with one too many customers who didn't know how to calculate 40% of $10.00, I finally snapped.  I left a note for my boss, gone for the night, that I would no longer be available to work after this week.  She called me yesterday to let me know she had found people to work my shifts tonight and Saturday so that I wouldn't have to come in at all. Ever.  I think this was a ploy to make me feel guilty, but I surely do not.  I did stop by tonight to pick up my pay stub and a few books, but I'm not planning on dropping in again anytime soon--the welcome from my coworkers was a bit frosty.  Go figure.  (For those of you who are firm on the "two-weeks notice" curtesy, I did inform my boss weeks ago that I had another job and that I would continue to work at Borders unless it affected my schoolwork.  In that case, I would be gone with very little notice.)

Would you like to know how I spent my day, free from my cage behind the retail register?

I woke up, and--free from the "you have to look presentable for customers" retail dress code--threw on an old tee, workout pants, and flip-flops, and drove to my publishing house in 10 minutes.  When I arrived, I toasted a bagel, chatted with my coworker about how cranberries are harvested, popped in my earbuds and loaded my favorite Pandora station before tweaking some graphics in a client's newsletter.  After I proofread a newsletter for another client, I invoiced a few orders, boxed up a few more for shipment, grabbed some salad and read a chapter of my latest children's book selection.  Lather, rinse, and repeat all through the afternoon, and finish with a lively office discussion about "Hoarders" and how gross it would be to find a dead cat buried under all your garbage.  When I got home, Ricky and I drove to Borders, bought a bag full of books, and I spent the evening looking at guitars on craigslist and doing the housework I haven't had time to do since before spring break.

My new job is very independent.  After rules and regiments at VMI, and micro-management through the corporate chain of Borders, being able to answer my own questions and design my own layouts and prioritize my own to-do list is still a novel idea for me.  I don't even have to answer the phone!  (I have never had a job where I was not the first in line to answer the phone when it rang.  Sad--and annoying--but true.) 

In other news, my Facebook sacrifice for Lent is peachy.  I got a free copy of "Finding Neverland," one of my favorite movies, through redeeming my Disney Movie Rewards points.  I re-discovered my love of folk music and Simon & Garfunkel.  I now own the graphic novel of Sense and Sensibility.  I watched the BYU/Florida game and felt like BYU deserved to lose because they refused to use the brains in their heads.  (Poor freshman missing that penalty shot, though!  He's never going to forgive himself for that one.)  My professor talked about a great Mormon friend she had in graduate school and how she couldn't stand the "small, mean, prejudiced people" that belittled her friend for practicing a faith they didn't understand...and for being a liberal, feminist, rational, religious woman.  My professor doesn't know I'm Mormon, but at the end of the semester I'll have to remember to thank her for teaching tolerance to a class full of professor-hopefuls.

on handwriting!

I should probably make a note that my gratitude log will now be kept daily in a notebook.  Blogging is too impersonal for this kind of thing.  Plus, it's hard trying to remember everything at the end of the day--it's like I spend all day being a pessimist and then I have all these good moments at the end.  Hopefully carrying a pocket-sized notebook with me will help me see the good things as they happen!  I'll probably still post a few on the blog every week.  It's a learning process.

on day six

1. OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE.  Ricky and I went there for an impromptu date night.  That pretty much covers all three, but you know.
2. Ricky did the laundry so I wouldn't need to when I got home from work.
3. I bought a copy of Jeff Shaara's The Last Full Measure for a few bucks today--I won't get around to reading it for a while, but I'm excited!  For those of you who haven't read Michael or Jeff Shaara's historical fiction, you're missing out.  It's excellent.

on day five

I almost went to bed without posting!  I'm not even a week in and I'm already being a slacker.

1. I am currently watching "The Wild Thornberrys" on Netflix.  This is one of the Nickelodeon greats from my childhood!  Really, this show is so good.  Nothing says happiness quite like nostalgia. 

2. Zelda the cat isn't much of a snuggler--in fact, she almost never jumps on a lap--but for a few minutes today she curled up against my leg and it was adorable.  Cats are so worth it.

3. Between shelving books and working the printing press, my fingernails have been looking mighty gross lately.  I took some time today to paint them bright pink.  Bright pink wards off grumpiness.  Fact.

on day four

Today's bounty of blessings:

1. My dear friend Meg posted a link to eShakti on her blog, and it made me so excited when I found it.  You can pick out a cute dress and submit exact measurements, sleeve and skirt lengths, etc.  You get free customization on your first order, too.  New modest dress for me?  I think yes.

I'm struggling to find awesome things from today.  Isn't it funny how you can immediately remember all the totally crappy parts of your day, but the not-so-crappy parts take some thinking to unearth?

Oh, I remembered a good one:

2. Two of my co-workers have pre-teen daughters, and both girls made me colorful, decorated "Katie" signs for my desk!  I mean, I just met them, and they're already so sweet to me.  I'm going to see if I can make them some cute accessories.

3. I made a Goodwill stop and bought like-new copies of Wicked, Cold Mountain, and The Brothers Karamazov for $.99 each.  Even though I have a "to read" list so long that there's a good possibility I won't get to these books for at least a year, this absolutely does not diminish my satisfaction at their acquisition. 

I'm actually really surprised that, after fishing for three things that I didn't think were "good" enough to count, I feel like my day has been more productive and satisfying than I thought it was before I started. 

on day three

Today's thoughts of thankfulness:

1. I swore I wasn't going to spend any more money on books for a while, but how could I resist a Latin children's book for under two dollars at Borders?  Unexpectedly finding this little gem of a dead language made my day. 
2. I made it through my entire "to be printed/shipped" list at work! 
3. I've been getting burned out with going straight from the office to the bookstore with only 20 minutes to eat dinner, but today I went to Moe's for food.  Moe's!  Who on this planet could ever be unhappy with eating Moe's for dinner?  Aliens, that's who.  Burrito-hating aliens.

on day two

Today's spoils of gratitude:

1. I had to drop by Walmart on my way home from class, and I got a parking spot right outside the door.
2. I cashed my first full-time job paycheck!
3. I've been on an anime kick lately (Miyazaki, anyone?) and one of the girls in my graduate cohort brought one of her movies to class for me to borrow--she just handed it to me and said, "I thought you might like this!" 

on the fact that I am a whiner

One of the goals on my 99 in 999 list is to make a list of three great things that happen every day for six months.  This is because I am Whiny McWhinerson.  So, starting today, I will be posting daily, and you better not complain about it, because this is a complaint-free zone for the next six months.

To quote myself: "If you ever have a day when you're feeling upset, inferior, frustrated, or annoyed with everything going on in your life, come post a comment on my entry for that day.  Find at least three wonderful things that happened that day and brag about them.  I've found that the more you talk about them, the more you notice them, which is why I'm excited to start 'gratitude hunting.'"

You heard me, anonymous blog stalkers.  This is a participatory project! 

And so we began. 

From today:

1.  My HEL (read: History of the English Language) professor handed back our midterms today, and I got an A!  He even wrote "excellent job" at the top of my essay, which pretty much made me feel like a rock star.
2.  I was seriously stressing out because I've been working 60 hours a week (until my Borders store officially closes, I have two jobs) and legitimately haven't had any time between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. to write my term paper.  Our first draft is due tomorrow, and I've barely broken the surface of graduate-level research.  I found out tonight that the draft only has to be six pages instead of the fifteen I was planning.  Six pages is a piece of cake!
3.  I was craving green olives (I know the word "craving" is always associate with "pregnant," so to preemptively answer your question: no) and Ricky immediately drove to the grocery store to get some for me.
4.  (I'll add an extra since it's the first day.)  I got to name the new computer at work.  The first name that popped into my head was "Beatrice," of Dante's Divine Comedy fame, and now every time I log onto the server I'll get to see a great literature reference.

:)