motivation

8/25/99

The feeling I get when I first get to work in the morning is the same horrid feeling I got when I was 12 and away at summer camp for the first time. Trapped and homesick. I don't know what makes this job worse than the grocery store. Mornings in retail I felt ironic hatred. I don't hate this job, I just hate being here. I want to go home. In retail, all I wanted was the freedom to leave, and to be treated like a human being. Here I have both. I'm so confused.

The day is so long and I have little control over my activities, just like camp, and the hours count by slowly before I can get in my bed (house) and not force cheerfulness anymore.

8:20 am.

God, I just feel terrible. Becky called last night just after John left and invited me over for dinner. We played Nintendo with Rob and watched Buffy. They didn't have to work in the morning, so they were planning to stay up late and watch movies, but I bowed out and came home to go to bed. Didn't practice.

The only way I'm going to feel any better about work is if I practice at night. It's incredibly hard. I get home at 6 and just want to eat dinner and veg out. At 9 it's time to write and e-mail, and I try to get in bed before10:30. There's just no question: I have to make myself practice.

So I'll eat something, maybe even on the way home, and I'll practice from 6 until 8. Then I'll cook dinner and lie around for an hour.

It's not even the situation where I'm guilting myself into practicing. Or that I'm getting ready for an audition (which I am) and I need to practice (which I do.) I am freaking miserable. I feel like this job is sapping me of my talent. My skill will diminish and fall apart if I don't do this.

When I have hours and hours of job-free time on my hands, I never feel this need to practice. It's only when I'm busy doing something else that I feel this pressure.

Work is tolerable once thefirst two hours are over. The hours are scheduled with lots of little breaks, and my tasks are busy and time-consuming. I have this compulsive streak, ever since I was a little kid. I used to love to sort out my mother's button collection, first by color, then by size, etc. My job is all about sorting and filing: by number, by letter, by name; mail this here, fax that there, file that over there. This stuff occupies my mind the same way practicing scales and technical exercises does. I just employ the sliver of my mind that I need to keep going, and the rest of my mind goes where it pleases. Here's how I meditate at work.

5:00 pm

Sure enough, 9 rolled around and I was cheerful. All day I was pumped to come home and tick to my schedule, totally motivated to pick up my horn and get to work.

A new development: after the 3:00 break, I returned to my desk tired and depressed. I lagged between phone calls. My neck began to hurt. The ratio of doodles to notes on my notepad soared. I thought about John. I thought about Michigan. I checked my voicemail.

Man. these last hours drag. I'm not getting shit done, and I'm in a worse mood every time I look up at the minute hand. This is the time of day when I call John and vent. This is the part that's sending me home in a crummy mood.

So from now on I'll bring my vitamins and take them at 3. They should peak right about when it's time to practice. For today I'm going to sit here and chip off my green nail polish, and listen to the personal phone conversations in the other cubicles.

9:15 pm

I suck.

That long drive home got me in a crappy mood. Knowing that I was coming home to an empty house, and knowing how hard it would be to pick up my horn and play, I totally psyched myself out. I ate cookies for dinner and didn't practice.

Until about 7:30, when I thought about how much I would hate myself for not practicing. How crappy I'd feel at 7:15 tomorrow morning. How I'd resolve again, but fuck up again, because the first day is always the hardest. How I'd hate myself tonight when I was trying to fall asleep. So I did it. I practiced. Goddamn it.

There was one kind of fun thing that happened at work today. We all loosened up a bit and people started asking me, "Do you have *this* in Michigan? Do you have *this*?" *This* was all of these things: grits, pigs' feet, hogjaws, biscuits, Mcdonald's, Waffle House, snow, chitlins, and humidity. It was get-to-know-Michigan day. It started when they made me eat something called a "scuppanum." I don't know how to spell that, and I'm not even sure how to pronounce it, but it's sort of a cross between a grape and a cherry. As far as I can tell.

And I went out to lunch with the woman who was on vacation last week, who wanted to get to know me. She's now the one in the office who brings up the tuba every time she can. (Tuba is what she thinks I play. It's the only way I can explain the euphonium.)

There's this guy on the radio who's a total asshole. I don't know who he is because it's a country station, but everybody listens to him down here. His wife just left him and he has this pity party on the air every day. It was decided (not by me) that I will bring in my "tuba" and play the saddest song in the world over the phone to this guy. It was decided silently by me that I will not take my euphonium into the office for any reason.