Finding Focus, Day 5: Phobia's Cinco de Mayo
Yesterday was a crap day at work. We had a ton of orders all dropping at once and we were shorthanded because Er, a key player on the make line, didn't come in. I ended up catching the ovens, which I normally like doing since it keeps me off the phones. It royally sucked this time though because it's challenging enough catching two ovens at once when other people are doing their jobs right. In this case everything was all screwed up because the store retard was putting up boxes wrong and the make line was tossing pizzas in the oven completely haphazardly rather than in order. I burned the back of my hand bumping a pizza back on the conveyor before it could take a dive. Fortunately I managed to catch everything with only a couple close calls.
Before heading out to Phobia last night, Brenda and I got into a big fight because she didn't want to drive. She didn't come out and say it. Rather she complained a lot about it expecting me to volunteer to drive so she didn't have to and would be able to drink. The thing is that I never drive and I certainly wasn't going to start by driving through downtown on a Friday night. I've only recently gotten a permit to drive and I haven't been able to get much practice. Driving is a stressful, terrifying thing to me in the best of circumstances. If she'd simply asked nicely I'd have considered it and maybe tried to work through my fear in an effort to make her happy, but instead she came out of nowhere with complaining about how unfair it was that she always has to drive so she never gets to drink (which she's not of legal age to do yet anyway) and basically called me a selfish asshole for not volunteering to do something she hadn't asked me to do.
We have these kinds of fights occasionally. Our first serious fight was when she was still living in Florida and was planning to move here to Atlanta and I suggested that it might be a good idea for her to get on birth control if we're going to be living together and she agreed with my reasoning. That's not what the fight was about. What we fought about was because a while later she got pissed off and gave me the riot act because I hadn't researched places for her to get birth control in Atlanta. She made me feel like the king of shit because I hadn't done this thing I had no idea I was supposed to do. She just assumed that I would because she thought I should and built an expectation upon that. Most of our fights are about expectations she builds up that she rarely tells me about until she's pissed that I'm not living up to them.
Anyway, that pretty much took me out of the mood to go to Phobia. Brenda still really wanted to go, though, but didn't want to go without me. So we took a little time to cool off then headed on out. I think next time Brenda and I go out we may have to recruit someone to come with and drive because neither of us can drive for shit in Friday night traffic and it was a miracle we made it to Spring4th without an accident.
In keeping with how my day was going, the door girl at Phobia pissed me off. She tried to charge us full price for entry. I was going to let it slide because I was just in black jeans and a black shirt, which usually got me through but I was willing to accept that I wasn't really fetishy and hadn't really even tried to be. When she tried to charge Brenda full price even though she was dressed up complete with her slave collar that pissed me off enough that I refused to pay full price for either of us. I found out upon entry that the girl had given a lot of people the same headache.
The rest of Phobia, fortunately, went much better. I drank until I could stop stressing about the crappiness of the day up until that point. I was unusually gregarious and mingled a lot more widely than I usually do. The only problem is that the more people I talk to in any given evening the less likely I am to remember them the next time I see them. There were people there that I'd met briefly at the Masquerade on Thursday or at Frolicon that clearly recognized me but I had no idea who they were. I tend to consider myself pretty forgettable so it always throws me off when people know me and I can't remember for the life of me if I've ever even met them before.
So in trying to draw some sort of wisdom from the evening to keep in theme with my search for focus, I have to ask myself what last night showed me about myself and where I want to go. After all, I didn't get anything productive done yesterday so I have to make up for it will introspective philosophizing or some shit like that. Well, one thing the night reminded me about is that I need to get more driving practice so that I can get my full license and stop being so reliant on Debra and Brenda for my mobility. I also realized that I really love people in general, even the really screwed up ones. I believe in the basic potential for good in everyone, though I'm not naive or trusting. I can see a snake for a snake and a bastard for a bastard. But I see the good in snakes and I see the good in bastards, though I've taken the shovel to both from time to time...but only when it's necessary.
Yesterday was a crap day at work. We had a ton of orders all dropping at once and we were shorthanded because Er, a key player on the make line, didn't come in. I ended up catching the ovens, which I normally like doing since it keeps me off the phones. It royally sucked this time though because it's challenging enough catching two ovens at once when other people are doing their jobs right. In this case everything was all screwed up because the store retard was putting up boxes wrong and the make line was tossing pizzas in the oven completely haphazardly rather than in order. I burned the back of my hand bumping a pizza back on the conveyor before it could take a dive. Fortunately I managed to catch everything with only a couple close calls.
Before heading out to Phobia last night, Brenda and I got into a big fight because she didn't want to drive. She didn't come out and say it. Rather she complained a lot about it expecting me to volunteer to drive so she didn't have to and would be able to drink. The thing is that I never drive and I certainly wasn't going to start by driving through downtown on a Friday night. I've only recently gotten a permit to drive and I haven't been able to get much practice. Driving is a stressful, terrifying thing to me in the best of circumstances. If she'd simply asked nicely I'd have considered it and maybe tried to work through my fear in an effort to make her happy, but instead she came out of nowhere with complaining about how unfair it was that she always has to drive so she never gets to drink (which she's not of legal age to do yet anyway) and basically called me a selfish asshole for not volunteering to do something she hadn't asked me to do.
We have these kinds of fights occasionally. Our first serious fight was when she was still living in Florida and was planning to move here to Atlanta and I suggested that it might be a good idea for her to get on birth control if we're going to be living together and she agreed with my reasoning. That's not what the fight was about. What we fought about was because a while later she got pissed off and gave me the riot act because I hadn't researched places for her to get birth control in Atlanta. She made me feel like the king of shit because I hadn't done this thing I had no idea I was supposed to do. She just assumed that I would because she thought I should and built an expectation upon that. Most of our fights are about expectations she builds up that she rarely tells me about until she's pissed that I'm not living up to them.
Anyway, that pretty much took me out of the mood to go to Phobia. Brenda still really wanted to go, though, but didn't want to go without me. So we took a little time to cool off then headed on out. I think next time Brenda and I go out we may have to recruit someone to come with and drive because neither of us can drive for shit in Friday night traffic and it was a miracle we made it to Spring4th without an accident.
In keeping with how my day was going, the door girl at Phobia pissed me off. She tried to charge us full price for entry. I was going to let it slide because I was just in black jeans and a black shirt, which usually got me through but I was willing to accept that I wasn't really fetishy and hadn't really even tried to be. When she tried to charge Brenda full price even though she was dressed up complete with her slave collar that pissed me off enough that I refused to pay full price for either of us. I found out upon entry that the girl had given a lot of people the same headache.
The rest of Phobia, fortunately, went much better. I drank until I could stop stressing about the crappiness of the day up until that point. I was unusually gregarious and mingled a lot more widely than I usually do. The only problem is that the more people I talk to in any given evening the less likely I am to remember them the next time I see them. There were people there that I'd met briefly at the Masquerade on Thursday or at Frolicon that clearly recognized me but I had no idea who they were. I tend to consider myself pretty forgettable so it always throws me off when people know me and I can't remember for the life of me if I've ever even met them before.
So in trying to draw some sort of wisdom from the evening to keep in theme with my search for focus, I have to ask myself what last night showed me about myself and where I want to go. After all, I didn't get anything productive done yesterday so I have to make up for it will introspective philosophizing or some shit like that. Well, one thing the night reminded me about is that I need to get more driving practice so that I can get my full license and stop being so reliant on Debra and Brenda for my mobility. I also realized that I really love people in general, even the really screwed up ones. I believe in the basic potential for good in everyone, though I'm not naive or trusting. I can see a snake for a snake and a bastard for a bastard. But I see the good in snakes and I see the good in bastards, though I've taken the shovel to both from time to time...but only when it's necessary.