Buddy came in this morning to have breakfast with us as he usually does, and his right cheek was all swollen up from the dog bite. He sits between Sam and I as we sit at the coffee table and have breakfast in the dim morning light. He looked a bit like a stroke victim, this morning.
I guess he is lucky he is a bulldog. Just last week I was listening to Martin Clunes dog show, hearing about how bulldogs have loose floppy jowls to help prevent damage to them when they were used for bull bating. And when they are being attacked by big mean dogs too... apparently.
Oh, it was very stressful today. I had to get everything done in the usual 2 days that I am booked for, when they wanted me to make all of the new financial year adjustments. Derwood just kept piling things on and I felt like I was getting further and further behind. It felt a little like drowning, even if I knew I wasn’t actually going to die and that I would get through it.
Sam calls me a drama queen, after all. It makes me think, how much of any if the stress I have is because I am a drama queen? I never used to be, a drama queen, that is, actually, anxious. That has only just started this year, since I returned to work after taking the summer off. I used to be very laid back about stuff, now all I seem to do is worry? I wonder if there is something wrong with me. You know, like a tumour on my pituitary gland, or something. Maybe, I should go to see the doc and have some tests?
Derwood is really treating me like a permanent employee, which is really what this position requires. I am there just to finalise the month for him and yet he keeps trying to pile me up with work that a permanent employee would do.
I guess that is what he asked me to advise on, where their processes could be improved. I guess that is what I should do?
I think I should ask Jack to replace me. All I can really see happening with this job is me getting the blame for their lack of organisation.
They invited me out for drinks after work, but I declined. Oh no, I don’t want to get that involved with you lot. Please! I am not your colleague. I am only there to fulfil my contract, not to make friends.
You know, wanting to feel like I am good at something, I think I am expecting some great realisation, some great aligning of the planets and the time continuum after which I will feel I have mastered everything, that I will be powerful and on top of my game, that everything will come together in some great coalesced feeling of success. I’m guessing that is a delusion and that nobody ever feels that way. What I want to feel doesn’t actually exist. I am guessing that we all struggle for all of our lives with the feelings of struggling with our inadequacy.
I didn’t get everything finished until quite late. Derwood was getting antsy, I could feel it. Oh, don’t get uppity with me little man, I thought.
I always try to bluff my way through any problems I may have, I just try to get things done. It is a hangover from having a permanent job. When, with contracting, I should just tell them how it is, so that “the problem” isn’t on my shoulders alone and it becomes the client’s problem, as it should be. So, when the system started to error, instead of trying to come up with a work around, I simply told Derwood.
Easy.
Late in the afternoon, when Derwood was looking a little cats-bum I said to him,
“You know, I needed another half day with all the new financial year adjustments.”
That seemed to relax him just a little… again, I didn’t take it on just myself, I gave it back to the client and by his reaction, he seemed to see that maybe I was right and so therefore ultimately it was his mistake.
I got everything finished by just before 5pm. I never did get the answer about the error in the termination payment calculations, so I calculated the manual payments that would need to be done by Elaine on Monday. But, then there was a mistake that we had to correct before we could finalise it all. Oh, something about figures that had to go to the director, no big deal. Ha, ha. And the answer for the original error came in from (my company). So, I pulled all the work back down again, corrected the two errors, with the fix from (my company), and I reprocessed the figures right through. It kind of made me appear able and clever again, I think, in Derwood’s eyes anyway, getting it all reworked so quickly. Well, that is how it felt anyway.
I reworked all of the reports. I sent the reports to the salary packaging company and we were finished by 5.45.
Derwood signed my times to 5.30pm. “I guess I should sign you up to 5.30.” I was scheduled till 5pm, but it was 5.45, I didn’t say anything. And really, that was the moment I should have said something, hey.
I left work not long after.
I met Sam on the corner of Queen Street and La Trobe Street, outside the lovely old derelict Argus building, one of my favourite buildings in the CBD. We walked to Little La Trobe Street and ate pork buns, which were actually chicken – they didn’t have any pork buns left – and we drank warm organic soya milk, sitting on stools in the window of the pork bun shop watching the rain fall gently down. The lights glowed in shiny reflection on all of the wet surfaces.
We came home and ate Japanese Curry. We ate roasted (Korean) seaweed and pickled (Japanese) vegetables.
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