DANGER DANGER

MAN. OKAY. I don’t know where to start in explaining the past few weeks so I’ll just try … the beginning! The story goes like this: Through the magic of the Internet and Tumblr, I know Max, one of the creators of the game Cards Against Humanity. Two weeks ago, Max e-mailed me out of the blue and said, “we are thinking of hiring a community manager. Do you want to quit your job and work for us?”

I was sitting in the office when I got that e-mail on my phone and my hands started SHAKING. I could barely type my reply, which was, “Holy shit. Yes. Yes. Yes. Also, what’s a community manager?”

It’s still crazy to me how quickly things happened and got set into motion. Max said I should come tour the office right then, but  I was imprisoned until 5 pm of course. I went to see their (my! mine too now!) office immediately after and fell in love; it’s a gorgeous building. Here, have a picture:

I put in my two weeks notice. In the presence of my current employer, I politely pretended like it was a tough decision. It was not. I always hedge when it comes to major life decisions, but this? This? No hedging. Not at all.

So one day you’re working in an office so dry and barren that doesn’t even allow HEADPHONES … the next you are ordering beer for the office events and helping indie game publishers  come up with poop jokes. It’s overwhelming, to say the least. When people ask me about my new position don’t even know what to say. It feels nothing like a real job.

Life is crazy.

This weekend was great, and not only because I got to officially leave my shitty job on Friday. (Speaking of which, I sent a gracious email to both of my supervisors last week thanking them — I even spell checked it!! — and neither of them replied. They didn’t say goodbye in person either. Thanks guys!)

Anyway, this weekend:

- Good friend times. I got to see Adrianne for the first time in, uh, YEARS? I love that someone I met via the Interweb a thousand years ago is somehow even cooler in person. Turns out the Internet is useful for something other than looking at pictures of cats. Anyhow, she came over and we ate pizza! And she brought the dog a toy! And then she (the dog, not Aid) destroyed it in seconds. 

- We looked at apartments. Jon would say this went “fine” and I would say this was a “fiasco.” My favorite part was when the “agent” showing us apartments tried to convince me that moving CLOSER to Wrigley Field was a good idea, and then attempted to convince Jon that the traffic wouldn’t be that bad on game days because it was at LEAST two streets away from the stadium. Dude, no. We’re not moving into a frat house. In the end it turned out all right because we discovered our current place is kind of a steal, which I didn’t really realize. We are staying here and I’m actually really relieved. 

- I played a lot of Bioshock! I love that Jon understood that I did not want to go outside in the cold watch a Sports Event. Instead, he bought me a bottle of celebratory champagne and said “you should just drink all of this and play Bioshock all night.” And I did. I really, really did.

Ch ch CHANGES. Jon is searching for a new job right now. As soon as he sent out his first application - I immediately became ridiculously proud of him. I’m so easily impressed! But really, I’m so hopeful. I I pretty much hit the lottery on the new job front recently (more on that later) so let’s hope it’s contagious around here. I really miss the version of Jon who isn’t crabby from Monday-Saturday and would like the happier version back. Not asking much here.

What else? WHAT ELSE. We have an appointment to look at potential new living spaces on Saturday. We are not totally decided if we want to move, but I figured we should look because our rent is being raised here. Considering they’re not giving us more space to live, I find this pretty rude. I seriously, seriously do not want to pack and move and be stressed (I’ve moved every year since freshman year of college), but I’m excited to look at new places.

What else? Oh YEAH. Rejoice, rejoice, because today is my last official day working an 8-5 crappy dead-end office job. I think I have an exit interview to do tomorrow or Monday, but that’s it. This is it. There will be champagne.

We took the mutt to the dog beach this morning to let her run around and be a maniac. Surprisingly, it went really well. When she chased after ducks and swam far out into the water after them, Jon sighed,  ”well, it was nice having a dog while it lasted.” But she swam back to us! Hooray!

The real highlight, though, is when we came home and on a whim I looked up Yelp reviews on the Chicago dog beaches, because there are people in the world who write Yelp reviews on dog beaches. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I’ve been entertained out of my mind for the last half hour. Highlights include:

- extremely long-winded reviews from the perspectives of dogs

- people complaining on behalf of their dog, because “s/he didn’t have a good time” (???)

- giving one-star reviews if another dog was too mean to theirs

- people being mad at dogs for peeing in the water

- reviews that are generally just combative for no reason, like “if you don’t take your dog to this beach, shame on you for neglecting your pet.”

PEOPLE ARE CRAZY. If having a dog has taught me one thing, it’s that I never, ever want to have kids. Just kidding. Maybe.

SPRING FEVER! I’m on a cleaning and organizing rampage and I can’t be stopped. I’m pretty sure I got this from my mom, who phones the fire department if there is an unwashed dish within a twenty mile radius of her kitchen.

It’s a useful obsession when it strikes, except it kinda turns me into a tunnel-visioned maniac. Just now I was loading plates into the dish washer and thought, “Man, if only I could do my laundry as easily as this!”

Congratulations, self. You just invented a WASHING MACHINE.

Oh, and I updated the layout of this stupid blog a little bit. It’s pretty now. Or at least it’s somewhat less likely to burn your eyes.

One thing I won’t miss about this job is the banal requisite office small-talk. Mostly it’s polite, sometimes it’s terse. Always, always it is mechanical and dry, because we are mere dead-eyed robots. Without fail, if you ask any co-worker that you don’t know very well, “how are you?” the response will be dictated by what day of the week it is. I’m serious. I tested this out over a few days and all my conversations looked like this:

“Hi! How are you?”

“Ugh. It’s Monday.”

— OR —

“Hi! How are you?”

“Argh, Wednesday. Hanging in there.”

— OR —

“Hi! How are you?”

“So glad it’s Friday!!!”

Just once I wanted someone to answer without reminding me what day it was! Is that so much to ask!

I’m watching Firefly right now, drinking my favorite crappy wine. There is a a sleeping puppy and sleeping Jon laying right next to me. 

Also: I put in my official two week’s notice. I’m leaving my crappy office job. I have a new job that I can’t. wait. to. talk. about.

Life can be really crazy good.

Cool stuff: a half-day at work!

Not cool stuff: a half-day at work because you have a doctor’s appointment!

Cool stuff: The doctor’s appointment not taking nearly as long as expected! And everything going okay! 

Less than cool stuff: Mildly panicking because the dog ate grapes! Which are poisonous! She didn’t have many, especially for how much she weighs, but you can always count on me to worry. And you can always count on the Internet to assure me that A SINGLE! GRAPE! IS! LETHAL! FOR ANY DOG OF ANY SIZE!!!! I flew into action mode and called emergency vets, most of whom were not around? Interesting. I did get ahold of one who said ”watch to see if she gets lethargic.” That was a few hours ago and currently she is dashing around the living room and bringing me all her toys and dropping them in my lap. So - yeah. The dog is fine! And I’m fine too!

This is my tired brain, moments before it liquifies.

I know I’ve said this before, but I really mean it this time: I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday. I’m in the office this week, training for a new position. After working from home and now going back, I’ve never been more convinced that humans were simply not designed to work in offices. Or at least, I wasn’t. Spending 9 hours in near silence under artificial lights with no windows with no fresh air … it’s been soul sucking. And I do really like my co-workers and my immediate supervisor, so I can’t imagine how much worse a workplace could even be.

So yeah. I’m pretty drained right now. And yet, after that long day of sitting, I’m too jumpy and restless to focus to clean my apartment or write or get anything creative done. Seriously, I just had to re-type that sentence four times.

I guess part of the reason I’m so complain-y right now is I hate it when my day job steals me away from the stuff I love to do. That’s not allowed, okay?! The past few weeks, I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with a photographer. I had to write him because his work is absolutely amazing and the kind of photographer I want to be someday. We got to talking, and he wants to give me an internship that can turn into a paid position. The problem? The only time I’d be able to help him out clashes with my work week. I hate that. I hate that I can’t take this position in a creative field. I mean, in a perfect world, photographers would never have to work for free. Or, I would simply drop everything and take this position anyway. But you know what? Health insurance. Rent. Student loans. Also, I need to eat, and so does my dog.

Okay, I think I just needed to get that off my chest. And now … now I’m going to have a beer.

The nice thing about not blogging every single day anymore is when I have a crappy day, I don’t have to talk about it on here. For example, I didn’t have to write during the stretch from Thursday to Saturday where I did not sleep. And tried to rage-quit every responsibility in my life. And daydreamed about moving to Barcelona so I have reason to miss family holiday gatherings. I don’t have to remember those things or write about them and SHIT, I just kind of did, didn’t I.

I ended up having a nice Easter anyhow.

Starting tomorrow, I have to go into the office for the week as I’m being trained for a new position. I’m already exhausted just thinking about how “on” I’m going to have to be for the next five days. Under all those artificial lights …

But I’m optimistic. Because the changes that are happening are good changes. So I SUPPOSE I can handle putting on adult clothes and an adult attitude for a few days.