I’m loath to admit this, but I don’t totally, completely hate the jobs I’ve had in the past, which by and large have been customer service based. I actually, *cough* don’t mind serving other people, and I get a little bit happy when I’ve done a decent job. As much as I complain and complain and complain, and constantly utter the phrase “my god, I hate people”, if I’m completely honest, other people make me soft hearted- I want to please. I’m a poor excuse for a misanthropist. It’s sickening.
Until tonight, I was seriously contemplating maintaining three menial jobs this year (all geared towards paying for a very extended stay in NY at the end of the year)- my current waitressing gig at The Restaurant, so named to protect the innocent, a moula making call centre job, and another one I stumbled across that sounds really interesting, but is only two days a week and not enough money to entice me give up one of the other gigs. Then, tonight after dealing with a self satisfied prick who made me want to stab his likely non-existent genitals repeatedly, I realised there is only so much sunniness one person can maintain- a third job is guaranteed to make me homicidal. Which is sad, because it’s really the only job that sounds at all interesting to me and currently fits my situation. But money it seems, the bastard, likes to rule supreme.
Otherwise, my life is currently dandy- ish. Part of the reason I haven’t blogged for a while, is because anytime I’d manage to wrangle internet time, and I even got close to checking out mine or other’s people’s blogs, I had to restrain myself from waxing on and on about my gorgeous, beautiful, smart, wonderful nieces. I am so in love with them all, I fear there is no space in my heart for anyone else. Anyhow, this summer, despite my life’s usual shitty complications, has made me go through one of those times when I wish I was filmmaker, so I could reproduce the more golden moments in my life for other people to share as I saw them.
I’ve had a bunch of them lately- all of them mundane and uneventful: driving home from the park with my sisters and my two oldest nieces- all of us singing ‘the wheels on the bus’, and getting to the line “the babies on the bus go wah wah wah wah’ to have my nieces fake cry in time with the song SO loudly, with the afternoon sun streaming into the car. Playing uno and monopoly with my brother one night when we were really bored, ending with me bad naturedly chucking my monopoly money down and refusing to play any longer. Walking and chatting with my brother-in-law along the beach and realising that we’ve now known each other for ten years, and that he’s seen me grow up. Chasing my nieces on the beach, listening to them screaming and giggling, physically feeling my heart expand. Having housemate Em come out of her room at 1:30 in the morning and say, “we’re going grocery shopping”. Having Bel call me and tell me, “I’m taking you grocery shopping”. Having my sister call and tell me, “you have to take me shopping for groceries”.
Having a moment out of time at the Broken Social Scene gig the other night, yellow light pointed in our direction giving everything a golden haze, listening to the amazing noise just before they launched into ’stars and suns’ and thinking, I’m so glad I’m here. Sharing a group hug at the the end of the gig with Bel and Andy, and feeling immensely happy. Having Bel sit on my lap in Andy’s car, and being grateful that the policeman in front us was on a motorcycle and could probably not see us.
Anyhow, all of this, plus a recent conversation with housemate Em over breakfast, made me realise what kind of person causes my heart to skip: people whose cynicism and anger at the world is very real, but really only a result of the fact that at heart they are idealists, romantics- disappointed in the world, but also totally abandoned, beholden to the beautiful, golden moments, able to see beauty more clearly than anyone else.
