The department-wide message announcing my fifteen-year anniversary with my company went out on the first workday of 2024.
My head ached vaguely from having had two varieties of libation the night before. I was on about three hours of sleep. And, as I have done for nearly four years, I had de-activated an 8:15 alarm in order to lie in bed until 8:25 for a work start time of 8:30. As ridiculous as this may sound, it’s my routine.
I should mention that, recently, while in the act of delaying bedtime by exploring social media, I got an ad describing that very phenomenon in which I was engaged: Revenge Bedtime Procrastination.
The psychology behind RBP is that the sooner one goes to sleep, the sooner it is time to go to work. Practitioners know it is illogical but still feel as if staying up somehow delays their loss of freedom.
I have known for awhile that RBP is my pet vice, but never before had the internet decided to tell me about it WHILE I WAS DOING IT.
Anyhow, on the morning of my workiversary announcement, following a typical night of RBP, I was slowly waking up by answering a few post-holiday emails. It was then that my local public radio station played a song that froze me in my tracks (or, rather, in my alternatively-purposed gaming chair).
It was a country song, and I am not the biggest country fan. I am, however, a lyrics hound, and I can be won over by songs that are “against type” if the sentiments tickle my brain.
The song was Brent Cobb’s “Living the Dream”:
Here come another morning sun
Ain't got a whole lot but I'm gettin' it done
I step out, this cold world shouts
But don't nobody know what they're talking about
This ol' scene's on a slow lean
Am I the only one who knows I'm livin the dream
It ain't as hard as it seems
There's no phone line so I
Make conversation with the warm sunshine
I'm dim lit, nit pickin' on a brand new tune with the same ol' lick
And it's blues, pinks, a half full drink, the house and the kitchen sink
I'm livin' the dream
It ain't as hard as it seems
Kinda feels like this whole thing's a smoke screen
But it don't owe me a doggone thing
(“Livin’ the dream” – that phrase that folks in my company and those in countless other large corporations whip out on the phone as a casual, socially appropriate acknowledgement that we’d deeply prefer to be elsewhere – yet here we are, collecting our paychecks.)
The anniversary announcement painted me as a wayward poet whom a staffing agency had plopped in an unlikely position of fiduciary responsibility. It talked about, not my industry expertise, but my charitable nature. It spoke of me more as a musician and patron of the arts than as an underwriter. Of course I had supplied some of this information, but there were a couple surprises my boss had inserted.
It was painfully accurate in its characterization. As previously written in this blog, when it comes to my job with a huge insurer, I check a sufficient number of proverbial boxes and, yes, go above and beyond when customer service fiascoes are foisted upon me. Nevertheless, where my true loyalties lie is an open secret.
Since I’m a permanent work-from-home employee now, in lieu of an office “cookie party”, I was invited to order a special gift item from an online catalogue.
The only thing offered that wasn’t junk food was a bucket of succulents. Being that my partner and I enjoy the company of succulents and have been relatively successful at keeping them alive, this was the consolation prize I sent to my cart.
The display photo suggested that the bucket was more like a small planter, and that the whole arrangement was the size of a hearty bouquet, so I thought we might have a bit of a challenge on our hands. But I felt game.
When it arrived a few days later, it turned out the bucket was more the size of a mug. The plants were slighter even than the succulents we already own, seemed fragile and had moss messily strewn around their roots for shipping.
It wasn’t long before I realized the larger pieces nestled in the soil were rotting. I fished out two large “thumbs” that were totally black; after a couple more days I realized there was a third in there and dug it out as well. The rot caught up with a couple of the taller plants after after a few days more and caused them to collapse like cartoon skeletons.
Fortunately, after removing the afflicted bits I was able to aerate the soil and what remains is looking all right now. Rest assured there is absolutely nothing metaphorical about this story.
*
As luck would have it, not long after this milestone, another opportunity to get out of the contact center arose unexpectedly. Despite the fact that it involved a department that has declined to welcome me aboard three (four?) times now, of course I gave it a try, championed as usual by my management and hopeful that the gatekeeping for a temporary work assignment might be slightly less rigid than it is for a permanent position.
The result was the same.
More notable than my insistence on enacting the colloquial definition of insanity was my watching the Oscars 1963 episode of Ryan Murphy’s Feud (Bette v. Joan) on the night following my interview.
Susan Sarandon’s Bette Davis, though her fearsome ego matched that of her rival, came off as the less self-deluded diva… a straight-shooter with little pretense about what she wants and why. Seeing her lose the Academy Award for Baby Jane after those around her had assumed she was a shoo-in (I hadn’t been familiar with the real-life results of this contest, nor had I Googled them in advance) was a sock in the gut. Especially after the way her voice had cracked as she’d confessed to her bestie Olivia de Havilland: “I need this”.
In my case, failing to pull off a career pivot has become so old hat that I barely flinch; nevertheless I sympathized with Bette’s “I need this” because sometimes a person simply wants to line up the next phase of their life to insure against stagnation. Unfortunately your ability to do this can hinge on whether certain figures of authority are able to recognize your value.
I’ll also say this: while in the past I have written about the challenge of convincing a hiring panel that you grasp, and, indeed, are the best individual to solve, their business problems… this time I’ll make a different observation. Allow me to suggest that job interviewing shouldn’t feel like game playing. If it does, you probably don’t want that job.
*
Speaking of Feud – it’s overall a more substantial series than I expected, full of musings on gender, aging, trauma, performance, control, manipulation… in short I am its exact target audience. In fact, though watching series is not typical of me, over the past few weeks I have wanted to do little in the evenings outside of watching Feud. This hiatus, for better or for worse, has extended to my music.
That said, I feel myself on the cusp of starting up again, and given that Feud is all about projecting (perhaps correctly, and piercingly so) on historical figures, it should be one of my main sources of fuel when I do so. (I’m still working on the second half of my Ambrosia project, which sees me stepping into other people’s shoes.)
*
Here’s a happy development: the stars have aligned in such a way that it seems Sold Kingdom’s first live gig could very plausibly happen in thistheyear2024! When I first got this news, I snapped into preparatory mode, and though I’m keeping my little red Casio for ultra-casual, minimalist situations, I’m now also in possession of a rare, discontinued 64-weighted-key stage piano that is the perfect marriage of portability and heft, and an amp that allows me to plug in the piano AND a mic AND an Apple product of choice for backing tracks (don’t laugh, I didn’t even know these were a thing cos I’m stuck in a time warp!). I’m pleased to say that for the smaller venues I’m interested in, I’m finally ready to go as a self-sufficient entity who doesn’t even require a PA.
*
I’ll leave you with another song my local public radio station played on the morning of my workiversary announcement.
The Sold Kingdom 
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