Hypomania and its downside

Due to overwhelming grassroots support I have decided to answer the call of the public and post something on my “fuggin” blog.

Ah, yes, the last posts caught me in the midst of a new-job-induced hypomanic condition. This mild mania phenomenon has followed me throughout my working life. Even my first week of bussing tables found me thinking of how good the money was and how great it was to drink unlimited cokes and stare at hot waitresses and patrons. At that time, I truly minimized the demoralizing aspects of the job, such as picking up people’s snot-filled napkins, half-chewed foodbits and god-knows what else. It didn’t bother me so much that I reached into a liquid and food-filled busspan to retrieve sharp objects like knives and forks that had been used by people that may or may not have had communicable diseases. I was making good money(probably $12/hr on average) for that time and didn’t have to do any thinking. Back in the day, it was important for me avoid thinking at all costs. I focused my thinking energy on drugs, religious studies and theories of personality. In other words, total mental masturbation.

Ah, the college days.

But, like most mental states, the new-job induced hypomania is finite. It gives way to a more sober view. For instance, it is no longer so great that I have to drive 25 miles to work out in the hill country. Yes, the scenery is nice, but it is hard to look at when you have to dodge deer crossing the road. Also, the serenity of the 2-lane farmroad through the hills is hampered by always getting behind some giant pickup truck driven by some slowpoke with nowhere in particular to be.

The dirt/rock road to my actual office is pretty tough on the tires, so I’ve been walking. This hasn’t been so great during the colder days. In fact there was a good freeze a few weeks back that left me without water in my office toilet. After my last flush, I peed outside in the woods.

Yes, I pissed outside at work.

The terrain has not been forgiving after rain, either. For the past few weeks, the entire ranch has been one big mud-pit. So even though it’s been slightly entertaining wearing water-proof boots and camouflage rain gear to work in, it’s just not my scene.(Although who would have thought I’d actually use that camo stuff my mom got me years ago?)

The Shack(my office)

The cat that came with the shack in the back tracks in muddy paw prints and insists on jumping on my desk. My desk calendar has little chunks of mud from Smokey cleaning her paws on it. I like cats. And, sure, it was neat having an indoor/outdoor cat that came along with the job, but on low mental energy days I get tired of shooing away a muddy cat. Plus she meows at me and insists that I leave the faucet running for her to drink out of. I nipped that in the bud though. The cat can drink from a bowl just like any other animal. What, is she going to die unless there is moving water to drink out of? Bullshit.

Maybe I’m just being grumpy, but the little ‘charms’ that the job offered are instead just annoying me. Perhaps it’s because I glossed over the fact that the bulk of the actual job entails me doing the things I despised most about my last job. Throw in the fact that I am the one who is supposed to be organized when everyone else here is completely unorganized only adds to the frustration. As many know, I am not the type to rally others to order.

If I could just prolong that hypomania, if I could really be the guy I am during job interviews. I have had so many interviews the last few years, I have gotten quite good at talking the talk. Like a politician, I have gotten pretty adept at showcasing and highlighting some selling points, while not mentioning other things(like the fact that I have to build in goof-off time into a work day for sanity’s sake). In fact, after a panel-style interview last month, I felt like I had just hosted some town-hall meeting en-route to my presidential nomination. I was ‘ON’ for that and would compare it to being in the “Zone” that sports players get into when they are playing at optimal level. Those Theta brain waves were crashing around in my brain and I was making shit up at an alarming rate. And it was good shit, too. Totally off the top of my head.

I wonder if that’s how I got this job. My brain was ‘ON’ and chose not to directly deal with the real facts of the job, other than it was going to pay my bills sufficiently. Who knows.

I guess if I was always hypomanic, I would never change anything in my life. Hell, I might still be in Pine Bluff.

And that's a scary thought.

In Retrospect....

Now that I am in Austin and getting settled, I can begin to look back on that weird transition time in Baton Rouge. There remains too little temporal distance to really reflect on what was going for those months while I lived with my in-laws. But at least now I can allow myself to post some of the pictures from that month-long period when I was a laborer on a construction site.

For the first week, we had to get there at 6am. With the 45 minute commute factored in, I had to get up at 4:30 am to get there on time. I would drive in darkness across the Mississippi River into Port Allen and then proceed along the highway-lined river south to Plaquemine. On the way, I would pass casino truck stops and these chemical plants that looked like little cities:
One of those plants is Dow Chemical. According to the billboards, Dow is doing wonderful things for Louisiana. I suppose that the Nicaraguans were not so lucky.

Anyway, I'd get to the work site and the superintendent(boss) would begin promptly at 6am. One day after we had begun the set-up, the asshole left to go run some errands or something. As you can imagine, that meant we didn't do dick. It was at times that these that I was instructed by J(remember J from an earlier post) to do nothing because that was the only rest you was gonna get.

Here are 'work' pictures that I snapped:




It was obvious that I was extremely well respected at the site:

Strangely enough, my body did adjust to the physical strain and I'm sure that it helped build up enough muscles to where the furniture moving last weekend really didn't kick my ass too bad. However, my mind never really adjusted to the labor. I hated every minute of the work and dreaded it most of the time that I wasn't there. Holy fuck do I have a new-found respect for people who do that for a living. It takes some grit that apparently I do not have, or more likely, grit that I do not have to have. If that makes sense.


Or, fuck, maybe I just can't use a hammer worth a shit.



Nevertheless, I did get a chance to wear work boots and almost hoot from a construction site at women.
The end.

New Apartment

No more fucking hotel room. Although, I will miss the ice machine.



Today is day 2 of the new apartment. The cable guy came by. Hello high-speed cable internet. Yes.


Updates to follow.

Live Blogging from Bed, II

The last post was more of a warm-up for this one. In fact, some may wonder why I am in bed to begin with and why I am in a semi-crappy hotel with a name like America's Best Value Inn? Shouldn't I be working or something, or looking for a job or something?

Well, a strange thing happened. Last week was temp hunting week. I expected to stroll into a temporary staffing service, whip out out my Masters Degree, flop it on the placement manager's desk and immediately receive a job at a decent post with a respectable hourly rate. Much to my surprise, that did not happen and I was forced to slum around Austin, jumping from wi-fi hotspot to hotspot. Most bars and coffee shops offer free service, some even offer a free secure server to log into. Pretty nice of them.

I sent out a shitload of applications and resumes last Thursday, even applying to stuff on Craigslist. I had begun to use an Austin address and felt that perhaps it was the missing component to my job searching. I was wringing hope out of whatever I could find, basically. Drinking with friends later that night, I was informed that I had an inside connection to get hired at Starbucks.

Yes, things were looking pretty grim overall. My hope, however, enabled me to concentrate on other more important things like a 3-d Imax movie on Friday and LSU football(link not SFW) on Saturday. It was an un-fucking-believable football game. We had found a bar in Austin that has a special LSU room in the back that hosts LSU football every Saturday. Pretty neat. It was quite a raucous event. Lots of hooting and hollering and drinking. I drank a shitload of beer. It was enough booze and excitement to distract me from what was becoming an uncomfortable overall situation.

It's not that we were on the verge of starvation, but goddamn, I'm in a fucking hotel room and I've been looking for a job in my field since JULY. Fucking JULY! So, for 4 fucking months, nothing. Only one crummy interview to show for the whole thing. Mentally, I was beginning to re-experience the job hunting days when all I had was my bachelor's degree and restaurant experience. Sure with a degree, I could have gotten on some manger-track at any number of retail and food outlets like Fred's, Dollar General, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Blockbuster, etc. And not to knock anyone who chooses one of those paths. Livable wages, benefits, free movie rentals or coffee, retirement packages etc. It ain't the end of the world. I'm just saying that I'd probably jump off a tall building if that was my fate.

These ideas were circling in my head on Sunday. Plus, I was feeling the aftereffects of all the beer. After casually checking my email I noticed that one of my craigslist postings had written back. So I called the lady and she told me to come out to Driftwood, TX for an interview.

This was pretty good news, but I was not going to let myself get too excited over just my second interview. Still, I was optimistic. It was way the fuck in Driftwood, which is about 20 miles southwest of Austin. The commute, though, was an estimated 30 minutes. With the way traffic is around Austin, if I had gotten a job 5 miles north of our apartment, it would have taken 30 minute to get to it. So, the distance wasn't going to be a deal breaker.

I drove out for the Monday morning interview. The major highway slimmed down to a 2-lane road with traffic lights here and there and began to notice some spectacular views off to the sides as I drove into the official Hill Country of Texas. I started to think that this wouldn't be so bad a place to work. I meandered around a little po dunk highway and turned off and found the interview site which was a converted ranch. I drove up and parked. I was early so I sat and soaked in sights of the surrounding beautiful land.

I'll spare you the details and the negotiations and what not, and just say that they offered me the job on the spot. I talked it over with the wife and called them back and accepted it. The money is right and the job itself, while slightly removed from what I was doing in Baltimore, is in my field and will teach me about counseling a population I am unfamiliar with. So CHEERS, YIPPIE YAY, YES YES YES, and HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH!!!!!!!THANK THE LARD, the job hunt is finally OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AND THE JOB ISN'T SHITTY!!!!(except for the manure)!!!!!!

To get to my office, I have to drive on a dirt road past horses and a pasture. My window is facing a field with trees in the distance and 90% of the time I will have the office all to myself. Before I accepted the offer I was thinking that it was just too fucking cool, that there has to be a catch, that maybe I was just a little manic now thinking that things might work out. But even after accepting, I'm still thinking that working out in the Texas Hill Country is going to be really fucking cool.


I'm so happy that I've dedicated today Total Laziness in Bed Day, hence the"Live Blogging from Bed." I'll go in tomorrow for a meeting, but won't start until Monday. We start moving into the apartment on Thursday. So, today is the last real fuck-off day for me until I don't know when. So I am doing nothing to the extent of my do-nothing powers. My ass has left this hotel room twice today: to get ice and to get a Texas-shaped belgian waffle.

Fuck Yeah!

Live Blogging from Bed

This is my eagerly anticipated first dispatch from Austin. I am writing to you now from the comforts of the America's Best Value Inn, a dingy place that has wi-fi and excellent ice. They also have belgian waffles in the shape of Texas. You can't beat that.

This whole TEXAS thing is still going to take some getting used to. The country music redneck on the tv commerical said that Texans are tough just like Ford trucks. Also, we have this lovely fast-food place, the Dairy Queen, that serves chicken fried steak fingers because Texans deserves the best. And on and on.

Last week when we arrived, my goal was to find some kind of temporary office job. I looked up a few staffing places and had some interviews. The tempjob interviews are where I think I perform my best. No stress/pressure and nothing really to loose. At one place I had this smoking hot, "placement manager' chick interviewing me. She was maybe 25, dark hair, maybe some native american mixed in there, petite with a little cleavage poking up out of the business suit. It was utterly distracting. She had an expensive haircut. But one strand kept falling out of place onto her face. She kept fixing her hair the whole time, like after every sentence or two. So then I started fidgeting with my hair just out of reflex. I kept her talking by way of nodding and smiling at appropriate places, and looking intense and inquisitive at others. At no other time can I remember having been so consumed with lust while carrying on an interview. She gave me her card and told me to call in to check for an opening or to call the receptionist(who was hot, too). I couldn't turn away from the flash of sexual imagery involving those two, so I blushed a little and said thank you to them and went on my way.

They obviously picked up on something. Maybe it was the tent I was pitching in my pants or the eye-contact that ventured into creepy land. Who knows, but I have yet to hear from them. It's apparently a woman-owned company, so maybe they screen out buffoons like me and assist others who don't ogle their staff so. A female friend of mine says they send her email about jobs all of the time.

Well, shit on them I say. I don't need your stinking temp job anyway.




Stay tuned for more ABVI dispatches!

Make Good Money, $5 a Day

I know that my loyal readers are in withdrawal and I do apologize for the lack of posting. It's just that I haven't found my most recent position of construction laborer too inspiring. I have had the pleasure of being the low man on the totem pole at the Iberville Parish Veterans Memorial work site.[check out page 3 of the pdf link for some pictures] This has meant an incredible amount of back-breaking, knuckle-bruising work for your ole blogging buddy.

We've been forming up concrete walls. I helped to build the forms and pour the concrete. Also, there was shit work like re-arranging a pile of 2x4's, 2x6's and 2x8's. I got to hammer some nails and use a maul(i.e., sledgehammer) to drive in stakes. I got to shovel dirt, tie rebar and dig a hole to find a sewer pipe. I worked for a real cock-biter of a superintendent who some referred to as a wind-up asshole. Like some machine, he never seemed to really stop working and he expected that out of everyone else including me. It didn't matter that what I was doing was of no immediate consequence. I still had to do it efficiently.

I shadowed a guy who I'll refer to as "J." He struck me as a cliche of a 48-year-old southern black man: " Yes suh. Shoo, I jus gon keep right on sittin' here 'til he(the boss) come back, cause you ain' gon git no break with him around. Naw suh, don't let him see you not workin'." He took me under his wing and we did all kinds of fun, backbreaking shit with him instructing me on how to look busy.

The first thing he told me about was 'The Show Stopper.' Apparently, there was an extremely attractive woman who worked nearby and basically shut down the entire work-site every time she walked by. He told me to keep an eye out for her. I did not catch a good look at her until the next-to-last day. I was signaled and got an eye full. There was a discreet form of communication between workers when women walked by. It consisting of making some sort of animal calling noise. This was to avoid calling out someone's name and thus alerting the bossman. The Show Stopper was indeed incredibly voluptuous. Round in all the right spots. I resisted the urge to hoot at her. But it was tough.

The work was hard. We were to report at 6am and leave at 2:30p. Break was from 9 to 9:10. You weren't told about break by the boss, you just had to keep an eye on the time or the other workers. Lunch was from 12 to 12:30. You weren't told about that time-frame either. You were informed, however, if you returned from break 20 seconds after the others. The wind-up asshole wasn't too fond of me. Then again he wasn't fond of anyone. I spent hours daydreaming of cussing him out, complete with tensions escalating to physical confrontation. I kicked his ass every time.

I worked there off and on for 3 weeks, but it felt like forever. In Baltimore, I would pass the construction workers going to work and idealize them being outside and doing 'honest' physical work. Well, that idea has been revealed as just that, an idea. The experience of outdoor labor everyday for not much money sucks. And I lucked up with excellent October weather. I couldn't even imagine how shitty it would have been to be there in 90-degree temp with Louisiana humidity.

So, hopefully that will be the last of my labor crap for a while. Now begins the next phase of my professional life: office temp. On Monday and Tuesday, I will interview for some temp agencies for placement in Austin. So, who fucking knows what is next.

Yippie yay!

Slacking, sorry

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I've been occupied by work stuff.

Despite my failure to get work at the day labor place, I kept hope alive. I went back on Monday the 7th and was selected to work with a few others to help set up a booth at the Baton Rouge River Center, which is basically their convention center. The booth was being set up for Hollidays, some holiday -themed shopathon for women hoping to buy nic nacks and doo dads for christmas and beyond. The booth we set up was stocked with lotions, creams and beauty products for anything from dry hands to varicose veins.

The women we were helping were from Pensacola, FL and had a trailer full of shit to unload and set-up. I was skeptical that there was enough for 3 of us laborers to do. The other two was a redneck couple, guy and girl, in their early 20's I guess. They probably picked us because we were white. Wouldn't want any of the 'darker complection' scaring the white vendors and middle-aged women meticulously decorating Christmas trees. Our particular booth was on a red-themed corridor. I heard the women saying they wanted more red on the trees, they looked so good last year.

The work proved to be ample as we schlepped a goddamned shit-ton of lotions and giant shelves and tables. The boss assured us that our booth was among the best decorated. The woman in charge of the operation was a 40's-ish blond who was very particular about how we unloaded and set up. The other two laborers took this as condescension and set to taking sarcastic tones with her and muttering hostile whispers under their breaths.

The day went slowly as we conducted the rest of the tedious setup. Besides the mind-numbing nature of what we were doing, it was the pay that kept pecking away at my temper. Minimum fucking wage, $6.00 per hour. Not that what I was doing was sophisticated or actually deserved much more than that. But still, at the end of the 7.25 hr day, I had made $40. I have walked by a bar and spent that much before.

We were pretty tired, and they were exasperated, so we ended up leaving early. I figured the lost $4 was worth my piece of mind. I was elected spokesman to break the news to the Type A boss lady that we were done. She raised her eyebrows when I made the case that we were fine with leaving early. However, she recovered and said that was fine. We left and I picked up my check at the Labor Finder office.

During the work day I had gotten a call from the father of a friend of mine. The dad works at a construction company and he had called to say that he had some work for me. I called him when I got home and he told me of a construction labor job he had for me that would pay at least $10/hour. I thanked him and said I would see him tomorrow to sign the papers and take the drug test.

To be continued...