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2000-01-19 I'm thinking about how this phase of the journal might differ from the first one. My life seems quite a bit more closed-in than it used to, largely because of my change in jobs. Before, I worked at a university, sharing an office with one other woman and one or two others in an adjacent office. We all got along, and with little actual work to occupy us, the days could be fairly social. Mid-morning excursions to the cafeteria or the student union for coffee. Lunchtime forays into town once or twice a week, and on nice days, strolls to Nearly New. Even the seven-minute walk from the parking lot to the building was an opportunity to see people, to experience the weather, to look into parked cars and imagine the lives of the people who drove them. Now I get into my car and drive to an office park in the middle of nowhere. I park about eight yards from the back entrance, pass my key fob in front of the sensor to unlock the door, and walk down the corridor to my windowless office, where I pretty much spend the day. I arrive around nine and leave around five, so I stay in at lunchtime, eating food I've brought from home. I run into people in the kitchen and the bathroom, and I have two standing meetings each week, but almost all other contact is through email. The people here are very focused; one-on-one they are all friendly enough, but something about the culture of the place is very solemn, almost funereal. God, I'm depressing myself, here. One advantage, though, is how it affects things between B and me. He's self-employed, works at home, with just the dogs to keep him company (I could really go for one of them curled under my desk during the day.) Before, when I spent the day in constant interaction with co-workers, I was acutely aware of never being alone. I was his sole human contact, and he'd await my return each evening with eagerness. I was happy to see him but sometimes wanted to be left alone. Now I come home to him and the dogs and am thrilled to see them all. I started this job a month before the wedding, got an advance on my vacation to take eight days off for the wedding and honeymoon (we rented a beach house for a week, took the dogs). That meant that Christmas and New Years were just two three-day weekends for me, after years of taking off at least ten days. The first weekend we made a marathon drive to New Jersey where B's parents live. The second weekend we stayed here. It was freakishly warm-in the high sixties-and we played tennis and rode bikes. We shopped and cooked and lolled around reading. I confirmed what I've known all along, that I'm perfectly capable of amusing myself without a job to take up a quarter of my waking hours. Last winter, when I was on the verge of quitting my job at the university, I decided instead to take a two-month unpaid leave for January and February. Every weekday morning I went to a cafe and put in two or three hours on the book, that's when I made some very serious headway. Then I'd come home and make lunch and at one o'clock B and I would watch this TV show we were obsessed with--I can't remember the name. They'd have a real-life couple who were "at a crossroads in their relationship," send each of them on a blind date with someone who was theoretically much better suited and then all four would come on and talk about the dates. Finally the original two would go off and make independent decisions about what they wanted to do. Then they'd return with cards in their laps and raise them to reveal whether they'd chosen to "Stay Together" or had a "Change of Heart." (Oh, that's what the show was called, Change of Heart.) Almost invariably, the most miserable couples would stay together. The really painful ones were when one would want to stay together and the other would have a change of heart. God, I'd forgotten all about that show until now. I wonder if it's still on.
So, anyway, the days are a little more predictable now. � � |