And while my friends go to work and change lives, or continue in their educations to better themselves… here I sit. Managing my day, not by tasks I must complete, but by the meals and snacks I have allotted myself at each 2 hour interval.

Things really brighten up on nice days, because that means at lunch I can go for a walk outside. That eats up some time before I come back in to our asbestos filled building where I eat my lunch at my desk, so when the executives walk by, it looks as if I’m so busy that I have to work through lunch, updating spreadsheets between bites of over processed lunchmeat. I could eat with “the others” and forgo the lunch time walk, but that would mean I’d be seen associating with these people, and that could be detrimental to my career with the agency… and we all know I’m going places here.

On good days, our bathroom is stocked with both toilet paper and accessible paper towel. I say accessible because on occasion, the paper towel is visible, but so high up on the spool, you have to reach in with your fingers, cutting them up and risking the contamination of whatever disease has plagued half these misfits. I understand why these people have gone off the deep end, because even when there is toilet paper, it’s so thin that with each pull, only a 3X3 inch square comes off. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes and a majority of your sanity just to go to the bathroom, good thing we all belong to the coffee club and only use the bathroom every hour.

I would volunteer for more projects here at the office, but the last time I was asked if I had time to replace a former employee on a committee, I was stuck cleaning out the break room refrigerator every Friday at 4. That was the last time I agreed to be any committee’s member.

It’s not so bad though, I have managed to strategically place my kindle in a way that my computer screen and coffee thermos block it from being seen by passers-by. The neck ache is a small price to pay to catch up on my reading, and since I’m reading during the day, it allows for more time to drink while at home at night. Productivity is truly the goal. And after a bottle of wine, and a much needed sleeping pill, I tuck myself into bed and dream about what I could accomplish at work the next day…