7/21

So, I watched the pilot episode of The Office last night. And, to my great surprise, I really disliked it. I thought Steve Carrell’s portrayal of the boss so thoroughly toed the line between a straight performance of an absurd character and an absurd performance of an absurd character that I could not find it in me to find him more funny than I found him obnoxious. (Brilliant work, though.) The other thing is, I’ve worked in this office: the majority of people are so ordinary as to blend in with the file cabinets, a few people are awesome, and a few people are awful. I do not need to see the shenanigans of everyday life in this office. I’ve lived it. And the final thing is, I have a sort of Pavlov reaction to the reality TV model of showing action in handheld and then showing short clips of people talking to the camera about the experience afterward. I hate it, so much that it’s difficult to watch even decent or fictional programming that uses this model.

BF advised me to watch a couple more episodes beyond the pilot. I will. The pilot usually does not do the series justice. (Good God, look at ST: TNG.) But I’m really very surprised that I liked it so little. I love Office Space so much that I was sure I’d like this. In a way, it’s almost a relief: one less TV show of which I have to watch all the archives before I die. Buffy will be enough work for me, thanks.

Maybe it was naive, but part of me expected that I would see that locked-out girl again this past Sunday morning so she could pay me back. That’s what I would do, come up with that $100 as soon as I could and bring it back to where I knew my benefactor would be. I didn’t see her, though, so I guess she figured it was a gift. It sort of was; I wouldn’t mind seeing that money again, but Boomer told me once that I should never lend money unless I am prepared never to see it again. I think this is wise advice.

By Sunday afternoon, I had taught an active class on Thursday night (when what I really wanted was a slow class), a slow class on Friday night (seven students!, but what I really wanted was an active class), an active class on Saturday morning to 33 students (free, sadly), an active class on Sunday morning (really fucking tired by then, had a difficult class as well), and a slow class on Sunday afternoon (to one student). I was worn out.

Teaching on Thursdays is really not working out for me. New folks drop in sometimes, but usually it’s just the one student who requested this class, and the new people have not made repeat appearances yet. Plus, it’s so late. I don’t get home until after 9, and my bedtime is 10:00. It also makes me sort of weary for the next day of work to teach an active class so late in the evening. Saturday morning’s class was at Lululemon, and I had some great students, but I worked hard, and I don’t know if it was because of that or because of the hard floor, but I was pretty sore by the evening.

The next morning, already tired, I taught another active class. A teacher that I know, who is older and teaches very mild classes, attended. She sat out about half the class, and her apparent disapproval of what I did was, while not unexpected, so discouraging that it was a challenge to finish the class in good spirits. I had another student in, an older woman who has come to a number of my classes in the last couple of months, who often complains about what I’m teaching in a sort of snarky, good-humored way. (It seems very negative to me, but I figure that if she really disliked my classes, she probably wouldn’t come.) In a previous class she had mentioned that when younger, she could do full dropbacks – dropping back into wheel pose from standing by reaching her arms back. This is a goal of mine, and the way that I’ve worked towards it is by curling back and walking my hands down the wall and then up again to build my strength and surety. I had written a class that integrated this exercise, and when we got to it I mentioned to this student that I had put it in just for her. I instructed the students on what to do, and she said oh no she couldn’t, her head was stuffy today and she couldn’t try it, and oh she had to go to the bathroom, and she excused herself.

A stuffy head is a pretty dumb excuse for this particular exercise. An aching back would have been more realistic. If she had said she wasn’t comfortable with it, fine, I don’t care, I’m here to offer the path, not lead you down it. But to brag about being able to do it in the past and then wimp out of trying it with an excuse that seemed fake to me…yeah. I was not so much a fan of this student at this point. I sympathize with why she might have been hesitant – didn’t want to feel how her older body was less able to do this thing that she used to be able to do, didn’t want to freeze up in front of everyone, etc. But my suspicion, from watching her yoga in the several classes she’s taken with me, is that she was fibbing and never really could do this, and what I did was basically calling her bluff.

In the afternoon, I went to teach yin. For the last two weeks, no one has shown up. Today, the one person who showed up was the incredibly stiff guy who has caused me such despair and bogglement and fury in the past, and I was so extremely unhappy to see him. He keeps coming to my classes, which I guess means that I’m doing something good for him, but I feel at this point as if the universe is shoving a grapefruit in my face by continuing to have him show up. He could definitely benefit from yin, but to have him as the only student meant that he took my standard monologues as if I was talking directly to him, and he was responding to me, talking back. (While still not following my directions in the poses.) He was supposed to be going within, letting my words roll off him, that’s the whole reason why I think up such vague things to say, so you can ignore them if you want to. Instead he was behaving as if we were chums, not in a class setting, and I was just chatting with him. Aaaarrrrrgghh.

So teaching this past week and weekend was pretty goddamned frustrating. It really wore me out. And it starts all over again tomorrow night.

And Finally, my job is not going very well in the last couple of weeks. Something that my male boss said (I have one male and two female bosses) has made me afraid and anxious, right back where I was when I started this job, about billing enough hours. And in the last few days, I have not been able to avoid making one mistake after another: giving what was construed as legal advice, and having the client conveniently forget that I told her not to rely on what I said; telling a potential client gently that she has to communicate with us in order for the relationship to work, and having her take that so personally that she complained about us to another client; having the antics of a client who has, thank GOD, fired us, make me and our office look like we’re incompetent; and all manner of other things like that. I feel like I’m in Guitar Hero and the needle is edging towards the red, the red meaning fired.

Oh, and I’m also planning a wedding, did you guys know? It’s not going badly, as far as I can tell, but the florist is supposed to send me some information and prices today. I care about flowers probably the least of all the things to do with this whole shebang, so if the prices are too high, I will be unhappy.

Life ain’t much fun right now. I’m so glad I have BF.