A year ago today, my youngest sister -- a girl I'd never met, yet was my sister anyhow -- was killed in a car accident. It is a day I haven't forgotten, obviously, and it cast an ominous pall over what would become a rather shitty October, in retrospect.
The full year since has given me many changes and many challenges. I have dealt with and done a remarkable amount of things in the past year, from moving to another state and getting married to starting a completely different career. There is very little of the me from a year ago that still remains now, in most aspects anyhow. Comparing the two years is akin to a snake shedding its skin. While some of you may find it morbid that I'm using the anniversary of my sister's death as a milestone, and it is, it was also a turning point of sorts in my life -- the turning point upon when everything started to slowly begin changing.
Make no mistake, if you read my posts from a year ago I did mourn my sister's death, but I did so in a rather detached way. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, really; I was hip-deep in the semester and I had never met or even spoken to the girl. That doesn't change the fact that she was flesh and blood, of course. I was shaken up indeed, though nothing about my life had changed. I tend to process death a lot differently than most people I know do. I'm the person who will cry at sad scenes in movies, and will cry when someone famous and/or I admired dies, but when someone normal dies, such as a friend or family member, I'm much of the attitude "yeah, well, that happens," and I go on with my life. I don't know why that is. I did not cry for my sister, but I did cry when George Carlin died. I came pretty close to crying when Robin Williams died. I don't know if this is a personality flaw or if I'm some sort of low-level functioning sociopath, or what.
Today starts my sixth week at work, and it feels like I've been there much, much longer than I have been. Again, my weekends go far too quickly and my weeks do not. In a few more weeks, I will be fully accustomed to the job and its duties right as I am thrust into the proverbial pit of hell over Halloween weekend when almost everyone will be out of the office -- meaning I'll have to do all of their work. That's part of why, as I mentioned in my last post here, I've been training on gatekeeping. I will not only have to be gatekeeper, but I will have to work as many issues as I can handle because nobody else will be there. Even a month out, the thought makes me shudder. The job is busy enough as it is when I'm doing my own work. I do not yet dread going to it, but I get the feeling that I will soon enough. The work is challenging and I learn something new every day, but you want to be bored shitless and stressed out of your skull at the same time, boy, this is the job for you. As I slap on my professional attitude every day I'm there, there's never been a day where I've not thought remember the paycheck, remember the paycheck at least five or six times. It is indeed a far cry from teaching college students three days a week. That was so much simpler, I had autonomy and I was actually in charge of something then. As I've probably mentioned before, I am now a corporate cog. I have job security, yes, but that's about it.
So, not all changes over the past year have been for the better...as you're probably gathering at this point.
Today it is storming. Well, at the moment, it's just raining hard. The rain started right as I was getting dressed and ready to go in to work, and I found about half an hour before I had to leave that Pete had yacked all over the couch in the living room...so that was fun to clean up. I used to love rain and storms -- for many, many years -- until I found that upon moving to Omaha, where I smoke on the porch outside, there's nothing to stop me from getting completely soaked. Therefore I dread rain and storms now when I'm at home.
Daisy, while I'm at work today, has a lot of stuff to take care of -- while cleaning last week, she found her passport, which will now allow her to change her name in the eyes of the federal government (read: the only place aside from work that she doesn't have my last name already). She also has to renew her car's registration, which expires today. It's 2:15 PM and she's still sleeping, so she'll have to wake up soon to do these things. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, I'll be in a cubicle until midnight because that's apparently my lot in life now if we want to be able to survive and pay the bills.
Do I sound bitter? That sounds bitter. I'm really not trying to be bitter about anything, but as most of you know, I tend to see the bad in everything much more than I see the good.
Anyway. This will continue later. I'm nowhere near done talking about life as of late, but I do have to go to work now.
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