Leggo my ego

Any time I need a reality check about my work and where I’m at with things here, I just look at the new temp. She’s in her fifties for sure and has a kind of reticent self-assurance that’s almost convincing at a distance. But since I’ve moved desks I can now see straight through that ruse.

I was typing away the other morning and looked down to find her shuffling through personal items in my stand-alone desk drawers. Assuming she’d made the mistake of thinking I’d moved but the drawers associated with my new desk hadn’t, I told her that perhaps she was looking in the wrong place. She said, “No, I have this list of stationary items I need to buy but I thought I’d just go through people’s drawers until I found them instead.”

Sounds reasonable, I guess. If you’ve got foetal alcohol syndrome or something I mean.

So after that weird moment, I’ve noticed more and more that she’s either completely incompetent at what she’s doing or simply too scared to ask the appropriate people whatever she needs to ask in order to get things done. As far as I can tell, she’s spent the entire morning stressing out about it and refusing to make phone calls.

I don’t know what her circumstances are but I’m very glad it’s not me.

I received an email from my darling Ariel and something in it finally loosened this niggling sliver of uncertainty I’ve been having about my circumstances. The whole not being able to own my experiences, the feeling that I’m not really ‘here’ or anywhere for that matter – it all stems from the same place. (Drum roll please.) I seem to have lost my ego. And I don’t mean that obscure place inside that tells me I’m the most important person on the face of the planet, either. I mean that in the direct Freudian sense, the requests volleyed in turn by my Id and Superego seem to cross in the air over my Ego’s head, whilst it sits cross-legged between them with its fingers in its ears going “hmm hmm hmm hmm little star, how I wonder hmm hmm hmmmm!”
It’s a bit bizarre, really.

There’s some unknown something I’m in the midst of working out to be sure, but maybe it won’t ever become apparent, what that thing is. Maybe one day I’ll just wake up and realise I haven’t felt anxious or angry or envious or any of those other things a person shouldn’t feel on a day-to-day basis for a very long time. That is my hope. Here’s to hoping.

Last night I had a very funny dream wherein I was invited to be a stand-up comedian in an outdoors club. I haven’t been the centre of attention in my dreams since probably university. It was a nice dream too because I started off being really funny and everyone loved me! But then I sort of forgot what I was doing and everyone lost interest and started talking amongst themselves while I read my notes and you’re not really paying attention anymore either because this is a boring dream description so never mind.

My mother was going to send me a £300 note in the mail, which is a bad idea on more than one level so I’ve told her to hold off for now. We’re going to have a discussion tonight; about life, teeth and unnecessary surgery.

Also, the BBC seems to have tapped into my subconscious or something. The morning of my dentist appointment, I woke to a broadcast about how it’s very difficult to find a dentist that offers NHS care and how people are resorting to pulling their own teeth out rather than spending the money on private care (and thanks Stuart, for the inspirational link). This morning there was a report on how adult health in Britain was suffering due to too much alcohol consumption, directly following my decision to cut out alcohol entirely.

Do I control the BBC or sumink? Maybe tomorrow they will report that people who eat ham and cheese every day should switch to something different so that they don’t get bored and consider eating that communal packet of biscuits at work. Yeah maybe.