jetsam/open letter

Quote for the day: We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. -Herman Melville

Yesterday was a Saturday in disguise at work. I mean there was NOTHING going on. In the afternoon I managed to write another half-chapter of the novel and no one noticed. I felt a bit guilty, but the phone wasn’t ringing, no one was asking me to do anything, and the only shit work I have to do is the kind that no one will notice if I put it off until the cases settle.

Although just before I left yesterday, I dealt with a series of phone calls that inspired me to write this open letter:

Dear Not-Quite-Client,

I am sorry you have not received the certified mail packages I sent you in January. I have tracked these packages twice and was told that they have been awaiting your pick-up at the post office since January 20. I have previously spoken with your daughter about this issue, and I find it unfortunate that she was no friendlier than you. I cannot explain why the post office did not send you a notice; I do not work there. I truly am sorry for the mix-up, but I fail to see how it’s my fault that you were unable to pick up the packages in the three weeks between your daughter’s call and your own, nor do I understand why, if you worked for the post office for 25 years (as you have so helpfully informed me five or six times), you have never thought to ask me for the tracking numbers yourself to solve this mystery.

I’m glad the post office was able to be more helpful once I had called them (twice), and also glad that you were able to confirm that your packages were indeed at the post office. The fact that you didn’t call me back to let me know I was correct about this is encouraging, because it likely means I will not hear from you again.  Please go your way and let me go mine. Forever.

VTY,
Crisitunity

I didn’t get the state job I interviewed for. They sent me a nice letter saying they’d found someone else. I think I’m learning to cope with disappointment better than I used to, because I just shrugged about this and moved on. Maybe I just didn’t really want the job.

Yoga class yesterday was fine. There’s little changing in my practice right now, so I haven’t found much to say about it. Civil Procedure last night was the same – he lectured about stuff I use every day in my job, I wrote Chapter VI on my laptop. More guilt.

I had the most awful dream last night. I dreamed that I was an observer on a battleship during a war. On the deck of the ship were these enormous square wells with water way down in the bottom, and since the battle had been going on for a while and there were casualties, all the dead were wrapped up in mummy-bandages and thrown down there to keep until the ship made for land. During the battle I was observing, a bunch of the soldiers needed to hide, so they were thrown down in the wells with the mummy-bodies. They bobbed there, next to the corpses, shouting to please come and let us out. It was horrible.

So, now that I’ve brightened your day, I’m off. I’m sorry if I haven’t been my usual self-analyzing Crisitunity in the past couple of days. The book I’m writing is absorbing me and I’m walking around in sort of a trance thinking about it all the time, so it’s hard to find much to say.