Return to The Ivy

oh my god we have to get back on this blog train. this scantness (is that even a word? is it being used in the right context?) has gone on too long. it's not even just a matter of WE'RE NOT BEING WRITERS and/or OUR JOBS ARE INTERFERING WITH OUR REAL LIVES but we are just being non-blogging slackers, let's just admit it here and now. what is it with this once-a-week trade-off stuff?

 

:)

 

so i've been watching season one episodes of The OC, four every weekend to be exact, because i get the next DVD from Netflix, consume it rapidly, and then have to wait a few days for the next one. anyway, i was watching one where marissa hadn't yet figured oliver was crazy, and oliver was all like, let's go up to l.a.! we'll do The Ivy and The Getty! and i was all like, oh my gosh, yes! go! forget that he's crazy, marissa! because those are two things i did in california last year and it was way fun!

 

so basically i'm saying that for a moment i was trying to live vicariously through a fictional character from an outdated episode of a primetime soap opera.

 

actually, though, i love my life.

 

i have decided this week to seriously, rigorously practice Disassociation from All Stressful Things related to Customer Service. why? because i cannot continue to define myself and my life this way or else i am going to be sorely disappointed. severely depressed. and a bunch of other bad cliches.

 

it really is true though. here was my idea that hit me yesterday, and tell me what you think: could it be that i have chosen Customer Service as my post-graduate "trade" not because it's the only marketable skill i have and i "enjoy" it sometimes, but because i am really fulfilling some sort of childhood neuroses whereby what i really enjoy is not getting yelled at.

 

like, whenever i am interviewing for a Customer Service-type position, i always say, "I enjoy helping people." which i always thought was true. but maybe in addition to helping people, or maybe instead of helping people, i derive some sort of sad emotional reward from the customers who are not unhappy with me. because my main motivation for doing a good job in Customer Service, if you think about it, is not necessarily to make the client happy (which it is, sometimes) but more to avoid getting yelled at. and i am most depressed when they do yell. not just because they yelled, but because it leads to all these feelings of "i don't have worth, yadda yadda" because all i am doing is some menial job that a monkey could do and i can't even do that right.

 

when i was little, i was always sensitive to raised voices, even if they weren't yelling. and it would follow that i was equally sensitive to praising voices. maybe so much so that i based my self worth on them more so than the average little bird? ick, i just don't want to be doing the same now, too much. what if my psyche views my job as some twisted little game?

 

the horror, mendacious, the horror.