typical work day

12 pm - start of shift

No coffee today. I don't like to have it every day...it's not really a health thing, it's more like a tolerance thing. I make it a point to give myself some time off, so that it will keep giving me that boost (I always enjoy the feeling, but some days it's absolutely essential).

It's a tossup whether this is one of those days. Over an hour into the shift, I've been mostly just staring into space, listening to phones ringing. I'm supposed to wait six rings before I hang up and code it a 'no answer' call. I can't write and think and daydream and count all at the same time, so it could be six, seven, eight....

1:15 - first break. I get 5 minutes for every hour, but I can take them whenever...except during the first and last hours when it's discouraged (as they're more likely to be monitoring my calls). Sometimes I absolutely have to take that first break ASAP, but more often I play little games with the time...like how long can I wait? Unless the bladder is insistent, or the drink has gone dry, I can push it off indefinitely. It's not like there's a lot I can do in five minutes anyway.

1:18 - back to work. That's two minutes saved up for a rainy day.

The day feels wintry. Desolate and lonely but also somewhat blank- not despair, not even poignant enough for melancholy. I keep picturing myself, much younger, on the hill overlooking Lake Ontario. Anywhere from November to March...the dead months. Is the sky leaden grey or tired blue? Are the skeletal trees packed with snow or bare and stark? Are the streets full of furtive steaming cars and puffy-coated walkers, or is everything just empty and lonesome? I am staring out over the blueblack waters and idly wondering how far it is to unseen Canada. The warmth and company, the sounds and smells, are all inside the houses of strangers. I am watching a gull and wondering whether she feels the cold.

2:12 - second break. shift is only four hours today, so we're over halfway through.

2:21 - back to work. That adds up to 12 minutes out of my total allotted 20. I'll burn 8 more before my last hour, somehow...

Definitely picking up speed. That's always, or almost always, the way it happens: slow start, every five minutes seems like an hour, and then suddenly it's 45 minutes later than you thought it was.

I doubt that I'm really seeing a fair sample of people today.

3:08 - interview went long, so much for final break. No big deal, unless my bladder suddenly complains in the next hour. Even so, I can make it to the bathroom and back before anyone would miss me (less than a minute, I've timed it!).

do what you love...great advice, except that some of us don't even know what we love.

we do what we can, make compromises when we have to, and keep one eye open for opportunities. There's a lot I don't hate about my current job, but I know I could, maybe should be doing more...

I am a pussy. There, I said it. A woman on my last call told me she just found out she was diagnosed with cancer. I had to take a break after the call was over. She actually apologized for not being more polite!

I usually think of myself as cynical and self-centered, but it only takes a few (sometimes one) calls like that to bring me to the verge of tears. Peoples' lives are so full of suffering and loss. In over three decades, I have not grown sufficiently callous, and I doubt I ever will.

I have no hard data beyond my own subjective experience, but it seems to me that I'm more likely to be greeted with courtesy and willingness to talk by people who have suffered some serious personal crisis. Perhaps it brings perspective, I don't know...perhaps the assholes are suffering right along with the good people. Maybe that's why they're assholes.

That's the work day.