dubious resurrection
Yeah, so, I'm back and stuff.
Thanks to Badger and Veeera of the Mountains for urging me to write more. We'll see how long this lasts -- if life gets a little too busy again, say I'm in another play for example, off the grid I'll go again, and for good reason. I'll write what I can (sometimes), and I promise I'll bring a camera when Mer and I go to Boston near the end of May.
But what I really want to do it bitch about the state of my life. It wouldn't be my blog without it, I guess.
Now, my feelings about being gainfully employed these days are well-known, and for a quick seminar about how I generally feel most days at work, check out minnie's blog. She's actually honest enough with herself to freak out sometimes at work, whereas I sublimate and sublimate and bury and sublimate some more and unload it all on my patient wife and a bottle or two of beer.
My DBA friend at work and I had this exchange when we were working our second Saturday in a row:
"Man, Brian, when I get out of here, I'm gonna -- "
"Drink?"
"Exactly. And what's more, I'm probably going to do it in bed."
"Hmmmm..."
"Yeah, drinking in bed. Just the sort of thing to let you know that life's just going great."
For those who've followed my work situation, the Fucker Boss is no more. We, as a group, decided we'd had enough. He dug his own grave with people watching, he moved to Seattle, and he's going to be out of the company, period, at the end of the month. As my DBA friend put it: "How badly do you have to fuck up for them to turn off your email?"
But then, the Fucker Boss had far-ranging effects on my life. The immediate ones were easy to spot: the nervous breakdowns, the paranoia, the seething hatred, the creeping alcoholism...
...but he also hired my present manager. I think he originally hired her because she'd be easy to control and bully. Now that he's gone, and the general consensus of our QA group is that our manager, while competent and decent in some ways (we are no longer yelled at, for example) doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground, and the new VP of Engineering hired to replace the Fucker Boss is a manipulative sneaky bastard, and now they have lunch meetings together and no doubt share private jokes about what lousy fuckup incompetents we are. The main complaints among us seem to be that she triples our work by requiring fully-documented test cases while critical work pressures are ongoing. Without any sort of automated system.
Another exchange with my DBA friend on the fateful Saturday:
"Hey, B****** -- sometimes I feel like we've cut the head off the Hydra."
"Yeah. Exactly. No more explanation necessary, Brian."
It's still like Stalin's Russia in there. We send net sends to each other all the time; subtle eye signals tell more than an email.
Of course, all of this has the secondary effect of much navel-gazing. Where did I go wrong? How did I end up here?
If I had only studied more in college instead of doing things like performing "Like a Virgin" on a kazoo, half-naked, in a driving Chicago blizzard.
If I had only applied myself more vigorously in law school instead of showing up to class in rollerblades or showing up to Torts dressed as Hamlet on Halloween.
If I had only applied to Julliard. CalArts. Journalism school along with my sister.
If I could only whine less in a semi-public internet forum.
Oh, it's OK. To regret is human, and I kinda like my pleasant memories of semi-coasting through college on some dubious smarts and wit. And this series of chaotic events is what eventually led me to the Divine Miss M. But I do have that aimless Renaissance curse (and I should really write less while I have a beer in me on an empty stomach). Here I am -- overeducated, whiny, aimless -- bitching about work and in a hell of a funk as to what the fuck I'm going to do with myself. How I'm going to provide my half of the bargain, especially when kid(s) enter the picture. And we're even thinking of buying a house!
So yes, I hate America. I said it. Or at least I hate what it is now.
Thinking about work, and life, and the pleasures of real estate in the Bay Area quite naturally gets me to thinking about this country's great need to chase after the Almighty Dollar. Or maybe it's less superficial than that. By way of example:
A couple months ago I went to an on-camera audition in the city for a videogame. I slunk away from work, walked the couple blocks to the casting office, and waited around the couple minutes or so until they opened.
As I waited, headshot and resume in hand, people started to collect in a line outside the office -- to be expected, usually, but I was pretty much the only thirtysomething male in line. Everybody else was a stage mom, talking to their unconcerned children about what and what not to do. The woman next to me, in her tracksuit that said "JUICY" across the ass, overly-made-up dyed-blonde look, zippered pullover showing off leathered fake cleavage, was talking to her pride and joy: her boy of about 8 or 9, dressed in black bomber jacket tailored to his size, spiked black hair, and earring.
I think one reason I didn't get this gig, beyond the obvious ones, is that I got too weirded out.
Stage mom after stage mom in the office gets insistent and huffy when the assistant tells her her child is too young by law to appear in the film, which turns out to be a Richard Gere vehicle filming in Marin, and this is the very last day of casting eligibility for minors, for whatever reason.
Nothing like acting to get you intimately acquainted with how people get almost feral with human need. The surface reason is money, and how willing people are to step all over each other to get it, but I think the more subtle reason is success.
Unfortunately, this is how I'm not much different from these people.
I'm guessing that I've been on 30 or so auditions now with the agency, and I haven't booked any work yet. This has caused an unending amount of neurotic behavior in our household, as M can attest to -- and it's a bit of slight pain to hear a radio commercial that you auditioned for just days before but didn't get -- and I suppose I'll get something eventually, but I want. And want. AND WANT, more than anything, to be able to support myself and us doing the very thing that I love most, the only thing I've discovered that I'm any good at professionally.
I suppose this needing is probably subconsciously coming off in other auditions as well.
I also suppose that I should probably think more realistically.
I suppose all of the foregoing is a very long-winded, circuitous way of saying that I got busted for surfing at work today.
Fuckers.