Ex-Vox: Dyejob on Progress

Malaria and dengue.

We're rounding out week two of my stay at the Starbucks Coffee Company. What a rapid and sweat-filled two weeks they have been! I'm glad to finally feel like I'm working for my money and being appropriately rewarded. Base pay, tips, and in three months, benefits and other tenure-type rewards -- ah, for the promise of twenty hours a week.

There's something about this job that I don't think I can screw it up. I don't have an apathy towards it that I have had toward the office job(s) -- yes, there was even a measure of apathy with Mr. Lam. Though I know the funny thing to do is accuse the company's undoubtedly potent brainwashing techniques of my lack of apathy, but I gotta be honest, what it really boils down to is pure necessity.

I've finally begun to truly feel the weight of necessity.

But outside of the whole Hooray, I Have A Job thing, I've noticed slowly that I haven't really changed in the past year. Sure, I've sported some rarely-sported shoes, I've picked up a few inexpensive tissue-thin tops from Target and worn them to death, and I've made a triumphant return to patterned socks. But I haven't cut my hair in nearly a year. I haven't broken free of the old bad habits. I think what I need to start feeling better is a little retail therapy, actually.

I've got debts still to pay before I proceed with the fiscal diarrhea and the prettification process; until I'm ready to shop again, however, I will be salivating at every store and every site. Prepare yourself. There will be an influx of shopping lists here, happy consumerist things that detail outfits I want to build, pipe dreams caused by lunchtime visits to IKEA, you know. But I have to remind myself that I'm saving up for growing up, for grown-up things. Nothing silly. If I am actually struck by an absurd sale item at IKEA for my future apartment, heck, we've got a shed! Best I start collecting furniture while I still can, who knows what we'll need!

This entry is really scatterbrained. I just wanted to blog about how excited I am to have money and how badly I need to spend immediately before being good on savings. Make sense?

Gravensteins.

All right, it took all of two months (max?) to get fired from the office digs. So I'm on the brink of getting hired at Starbucks -- interview Wednesday, manager commented that my application was "brilliant." Let's just hope I don't fuck this up. I could, after all, get bennies from dem fools if I can manage not to get myself fired.

Life's been giving me that well-needed proverbial Kick In The Pants for years now, but that whole time my problem's been my exceedingly numb butt. I had a feeling my life and I were not prepared for something so professional as an office job. For others my age, even younger, sure, but my brain's got a fuse in backwards or something. I still have an era of pseudo-McJobs to handle, especially with a company that allows nearly unparalleled schedule flexibility to suit my fits.

And then after that, we can talk turkey after I get a degree in something.

I feel it creeping closer, definitely pressured by the shift in Cameron's attitude towards his own home life and need for independence. I feel it in myself, partly a resentment of the stunted growth of certain friends and their stalwart refusal to seize life. It might just be Last Summer, Part Two, but on the chance that it is legitimate, I've got to ride this out:

I'm going to grow up.