2/20/2020
My diary day this time around actually starts at midnight, since I was still up. I’ve recently stopped taking a sleep medication that I’ve been on for about three years (which is about two years and eleven months longer than it’s supposed to be taken) so I’ve been experiencing some rebound insomnia. It’s not the best but I’ve always been a night owl anyway, and my schedule allows for a little bit of leeway in regard to when I roll into the office for work. I stay up late reading a play and a (very bad, Americanized, quasi Holmes-ian) detective story for a paper I’m writing about cultural consumption, in addition to Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream,” an old ‘favorite’ (read: ‘story that scarred me as a child and made me develop a brief but intense fear of supercomputers’).
I go to bed around 3 a.m. and have a series of odd dreams, the contents of which escape me the moment I wake up. And wake up I do, with my little gremlin of a cat (whom I love very much) scratching and meowing at the laundry room door loud enough to rouse me at 8:30, 8:45, 9:20, and 9:30. I finally give in and get up for the day on about five hours of sleep, feeling very close to my old high school self who experienced the same sleeping problems as I currently am. Once I’m up, I corral the other cat into my bedroom and shut the door so that I can let the laundry room gremlin out for the day. The two of them don’t get along since one is a crotchety old lady and the other is a very bitey 1 1/2 year old who wants to play play play. I realize, as I do every morning, that my home has essentially become a timeshare for cats.
I blast my music loudly as I get ready to go to campus for the day. The neighbor on my right moved out at the end of the last school semester and the neighbor on my left is usually off to work much earlier than I am, so I can be as loud as I want in the mornings. Recently, I’ve been playing the song “Pedestrian at Best” by Courtney Barnett on repeat so that I can holler along, distracting my sleep-deprived brain from its desire to stumble around and walk into walls. I shout “put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you!” as I pack my lunch and push the gremlin away with my feet as he bites at my ankles and calves, finally getting out the door and to the bus stop around 10:10.
I manage to get a seat as it pulls in and I sit near the back in an aisle seat. I’ll move if a crowd of undergraduates going from one stop to the next one over (why? Just walk!) piles on but since I get off on the second to last stop in the loop, and since I take the bus at weird times, it’s usually not a problem. I thank the bus driver when he drops me off at my building, and I finally unlock the office door at 10:25.
While I’m waiting for my friend A, I putter around the office, making a to-do list and cleaning up my desk. The piles of books and papers tend to grow substantially at this point in the semester so I make the executive decision to claim the desk next to mine as well in order to tidy my space up. A finally rolls in around 10:42 and we decide to go to The Cup in the village for coffee and bagels, walking there and getting back to the office at 11:03. By 11:30, I’ve finished my bagel and have mostly drunk my coffee. A spends that time telling me about the latest drama on the Bachelor, which she watches religiously; in turn, I talk about the new Animal Crossing game that’s coming out next month and convince her to watch the latest Nintendo Direct. As she watches, I can see her eyes light up with excitement. I decide to order a new pair of glasses online from one of the cheaper websites and manage to snag a pretty cute pair (with magnetic sunglasses attachment— score!) for around $40 with shipping. A starts her work and blasts music loud enough through her headphones that I can hear every lyric, so I put mine in as well, loading up a playlist I’ve made of every ‘oldies’ song that my parents have exclaimed “wait, how do you know this?!” whenever they come on the radio and I sing along. I quickly print and staple some research materials before returning to my desk to start work for the day.
At noon, I begin my transcription work, sacrificing my excellent tunes so that I can listen to the audio file and type along. It’s interesting work but I find myself getting impatient very easily with the interviewers— at times I think that they forget what their role in the project is supposed to be, and they interject and talk over the subject being interviewed almost constantly. That would irk me on its own, but I have to type up every “um” and “well, that’s—” to go along with it. On top of that, the constant typing causes my chronic tendonitis to flare up (which I got from playing the clarinet too hard in high school, like a total nerd). It’s a nice project to get lost in, though, despite my complaints. There’s not a lot of fuss about it so it’s easy to feel accomplished when I finish a file. If only my schoolwork was as simple!
A leaves for the day just as P comes into the office with a short greeting before sitting down to work, nose to the grindstone as always. Around 3, I warm up the lunch I packed from where it’s calling my name in the office mini-fridge. J comes into the office as I’m sitting back down and I groan internally. He’s nice but he would absolutely talk you to death without meaning to. My excessive Midwestern-ness, combined with years of working retail, makes it almost impossible for me to cut him off or ignore him to work. Somehow I manage to sneak my earbuds back in after I eat, abandoning P to J’s excessive conversation. Sorry, P!
Somehow I manage to finish my work around 4 despite J’s constant monologue, the end of my scheduled hours for the day. When I take my headphones out, J focuses on me with a laser-like intensity and P takes his chance to escape the office while he still can. Damn you, P!! Although I’m wilting on the inside, I half-heartedly make conversation in my customer service voice and what starts as a discussion of this week’s reading for class somehow devolves into politics. By 4:15, J has started talking about fake news and “who are you going to vote for?” and I check my phone in time to realize that the bus is coming. I grasp that excuse like it’s a lifeline when I’m drowning in the ocean and back slowly out of the office, J talking to me the entire way. I toss out an apology and a quick goodbye before almost sprinting out of the building.
The bus picks me up at around 4:20 and I stare out of the window while listening to music as it meanders its way through campus, feeling like I’m in an angsty teen movie. It deposits me at the closest bus stop to my apartment at 4:40, and as I walk up the gremlin appears in the window, standing on the window unit as he is wont to do. Somehow he always knows when it’s me walking up or parking in front. It’s endearing enough that I’m only 40% irritated when he immediately begins gnawing on my ankles when I step inside, although it quickly ticks up. I immediately want to stop being a grown-up so I kick off my heels, abandon my dress, and change into an old shirt and flannel pajama pants, throwing my hair up in a messy bun. Ah, the perks of living alone. I clean the gremlin’s litter box and park on the couch, telling myself for about three hours that any minute now I’m going to get up and do the dishes. What actually happens is that I ignore all of my responsibilities and lose myself in a YouTube spiral until midnight rolls around and my diary day is officially finished.