NOW I'M MAD...
HOPPING MAD, actually...
unless I'm just STARK RAVING mad...
Today was not a good day. I got up bright and early to get to a temp agency for an interview they had requested based on receiving my resume. I remembered to go [first achievement of the day!], got there EARLY, found the office, went in cheerfully, and slowly lost the thread of things as they began to get weird. The head of the office had called ME to set up the interview, and had been very effusive on the phone.
When I got there, however, I never got past the "resource specialist" [read "receptionist"] who, after making a show of taking down information they had had for days and entering it into a computer, told me that in all honesty they had already had several applicants with MUCH more experience in graphics and editing than I could show, and she could not really recommend my going forward with an interview with what was a VERY LARGE firm. I would do better to take "direct" work on contract rather than going through them.
All of that was degrading enough, given that THEY had called ME in, but the fact that the woman I had talked to was there in the office and didn't have the grace to tell me herself really stuck in my craw. How hard could it be to walk out of your office--I could see into hers through a glass window, so I knew she was there--and say, "I'm sorry"? As it was, she had her one employee basically tell me to go away and NOT bother coming back. Well, I guess we all have our weaknesses we inflict on the rest of the world in one way or another... Then I got home to discover that the computer had somehow eaten the better part of a day's work on my last graphics project, and had to spend most of the rest of the day re-doing it, so it didn't go off to the printer until the end of the day... And it was grey and wet all day, which never helps...
On the other hand, I held my first little Writer's Workshop, and got good response to the Snow-singer story. And tomorrow I will go for a walk with one of the friends I am allowed to talk to about You Know What, but since I haven't said anything at all to him, at least not since blurting out something I'm not entirely sure he could take on board as I was sliding into my [first?] "nervous breakthrough" ten years ago, I'm not sure how to approach it. One does so want to avoid "queering" a relationship that has come to mean a lot...Wish me luck.
And if you do the prayer thing,
remember me.
I feel some of your pain here. YOur treatment there was appalling.
ReplyDeleteAh, WOE.
ReplyDeleteWhere would we be without you?
the
Troll of Less Tristesse
Temp agencies suck - I work for one (for now). I feel like a commodity; I guess that I am one. The one I work for has this slogan on their door "The most valuable people are the people that walk through our doors." Or something like that. Talk about double entendre. Yeah, I'm a commodity.
ReplyDeleteB
Yeah. Nothing like an unvarnished report of one's worth from a completely neutral bystander...
ReplyDeletethe
Not so Temporary after all
Troll
That's a bunch of BS...rude!
ReplyDeleteuh oh, the "you know what" talk... (how did that go?) I've heard of so many mixed reactions...fortunately the people I've ever told have all taken it well so far. The hardest part seems to me to just get the first sentence started...it sometimes feels like a confession of love where rejection can be so great and you're the one heartbroken. It's so scary.
Bad weather has caused the Great Walk to be postponed until Friday, by which point I may have chickened out entirely. It never ceases to amaze me how easily I shift my assumptions about 180 degrees from day to day...
ReplyDeleteyr
Amazing
Ever-vacillating
Troll
Oh...that's too bad. Here's a suggestion about the conversation:
ReplyDeleteAt some point when the conversation lulls from it's initial pleasantries, I start the sentence like this:
"I have something I want to tell you..."
It gets their attention and they'll get really quiet and wait for you now so you can get up the courage to spit out what you want to say next...my next sentence is usually something like:
"You're really important to me and a good friend and there's something I want you to know about me."
(then take deep breath) and I say it.
The conversation should get pretty lively then...hopefully for the best. Be brave, you can do it! Good luck!
Sorry for their rudeness. Now I understand your graphic ability and appreciate having received my HTML tips from the master.
ReplyDeleteI like Bear's model conversation; I see a few in my future to.
Hang in there Troll, we are doing the wishing, hoping, praying thing for you.
Have I said something stupid again? I am not about to declare my love for a married guy who has plenty of other things to worry about, right now, when I am practically a walking TIME BOMB emotionally. ["I am flame", remember?] Even if I were in love with this guy, which I'm not.
ReplyDeleteNo, my point was that I had to deal internally with the fact that he appealed to me; part of what made me comfortable as a friend was something that made me comfortable with him as a gay man. That would by definition put a certain load on whatever else I chose to tell him.
At least, unlike some of my close friends, he does not have the habit of showing up in leather motorcycle jeans and stroking my cheek...
So Friday should be a breeze, no matter what comes up, right??
Fat Chance
sez the
Fat Troll
oh HAHA...(pulling my foot out of my mouth) I thought you were going to tell him you were GAY. Not that you were in love...that's way trickier.
ReplyDeleteIt's still possible to use the model I guess :)
No, Bear, no foot.
ReplyDeleteOn rereading your post, I can see clearly that I had [once again?] misread what you wrote. This is beginning to sound like a refrain that comes around a LITTLE too often...
My hesitation about broaching "the subject" -- and you are right, it is that, among other things, my gaydar seems to work really well -- has less to do with not knowing how to say it [I don't] than with what's going on in his life, and whether or not he really needs to add what's going on in mine.
My opener is usually something on the order of: "I don't know how to say this." That tends to get some attention. Then, should it happen tomorrow, there's whether or not he remembers what I blurted out ten years ago... [He's close enough to my age that he may in fact not -- or he may remember that, and not what he had for breakfast. Who knows?] But "there's something I want you to know about me" seems to cover the waterfront.
The problem, in my experience, is that you can plan it all you want, but as with Piglet and his brave plans of coolly dealing with the Heffalump when it arrived, things tend in the heat of the moment to come out less like, "This is a trap for Heffalumps, and I'm waiting for one to come" and more like "This is a trap for ho-hos, and I'm waiting for the ho-hos to come-come".
The moment is everything.
Lunch with my rabbinical advisor [NOT on the approved list, but wound up to make sure I don't spend all day alone, I'm sure], then a walk in the woods with this unsuspecting friend.
Should be quite a day.
yr
Troll