"You’ve gotta face it, gotta go outside and do the day-walk, living with the lights off, ain't nobody home"
As we all know, me being alone in the flat alone for long periods of time simply isn't healthy. I need to have something to keep me occupied and gets me out of the flat; if I don't have a reason, I won't do anything except slouch around and eat cookies (the cookie eating is really nice, though).
So this past week has been frightening for me, and I say frightening because I've literally done fuck all. Nothing. I haven't left the flat. I haven't put on make-up, done my hair or cleaned anything. My routine is fairly simple with me having a shower sometime in the afternoon just so I don't feel grimy.
I do make cookies and watch all of my TV shows on dvd. I lounge around in my summer night dress and think a lot about what I should be doing. My list of Things That Need To Get Done, But Haven't Gotten Done Because I'm A Lazy Bum, is continuously growing and I simply don't see a point in doing anything when it doesn't need to be finished straight away. What's another day going to hurt? It's not like I'm going anywhere anytime soon or that I have a job to look forward to. There is no end to this monotony.
Until Nikki called me.
Nikki is Simon's little helper that calls up people and asks them if they're available to start on this day, at this time for this pay. She called me on Tuesday asking if I had any experience taking minutes for meetings, and I lied and said that I did have "intermediate" skills. But she wanted me to start at half one that afternoon, and she called me at 12:30. I had just woken up, so I told her it was unlikely that I'd make it on time.
I was a tiny bit down in the dumps wondering if they were ever going to find me a job, and I was starting to get nervous, because I haven't paid all of the rent back yet (I'm so close!) and I need money in order to, oh I don't know - live. I mean, there has to be plenty of admin jobs out there right?
Apparently not. However, Nikki did call me the next day saying that I must have left an impression, because my old job WANTED ME TO COME BACK. For four weeks. Starting bright and early on Monday morning.
"I can have you start earlier if you'd like," she said to me over the phone.
"Oh, um, no, that's okay. Monday should be good. This Monday?"
Jesus. My old job. My old mind-numbing job, where I just so happened to drop off a certain note on a certain person's desk, who hasn't called.
"Are you sure you can start? You sound a little hesitant," she asked.
Of course I'm hesitant, Nikki! Do you know what I did there on my "last day" of work? I left a note on a guy's desk who hasn't called me, and I thought that would be fine because I thought I'D NEVER SEE ANY OF THEM AGAIN.
"Oh, no. It's fine. Really. I'm just working out how I'm going to get to Hammersmith from Kingston. We're moving soon is all."
"Oh right. Okay. Well I'll send you an email with all of the details, and you can get back to your old job."
"Fantastic."
I could have died. I was on the phone and I already felt my face turning red. It's as if the whole world knew, and now this was a terrible, cruel joke that was being played on me. If I wasn't so desperate for money, I would have waited for another job to come up. But no. I'll be going to back to do a "similar" task with all of the old records I've already looked at. I can hardly wait.
Not long after Nikki called me, my phone started ringing again, and I saw that it was Helima, one of the ladies who used to suffer alongside me. She told me that her agency called her with the same offer, and so did Sandra and Anna. It looks like we'll all be back together for a reunion after not even being apart for a week. I felt slightly better knowing that my fellow comrades were going to be there with me and that I wasn't walking in alone with a giant red bulls-eye on me. There will be some friendly faces for me to look at when I'm not staring at the wall.
The universe certainly does have a sense of humor. Unfortunately for me, I'm not laughing. No. Instead I'm huddle in a corner and slowly dying of embarrassment.
I suppose the upside would be that since I know I'm going back to work on Monday, I have motivation to start working on things here at the flat. Not much motivation (I still have the weekend), but there is an end to this boring routine of mine.