O is for Ostrich

A fellow blogger started off her post today with a tribute to the letter A. In it she had all nice things to say, inspiring things about the Autumn Equinox, her awesome daughter and a bunch of other images that I wish would melt like butter over my brain. Happiness through envelopment, osmosis.

My letter for this rainy Tuesday afternoon, chained to my desk at a job I wish I could leave, is O for Ostrich. O is for ostrich, and on this muggy, wild, weathery day, it’s what I want to be – stuck with my head in the sand because doing anything else would be too scary, too much, too out there. Too unknown. And I feel like I’m five, walking to my first day of kindergarten for the very first time. Alone. On the verge of something great. But what if…

It’s no secret how I feel about my job. First off, it’s just a job – it’s not my career choice to push papers around a desk and order crap that no one would ever need. It’s all the plastic crap that will end up in landfills everywhere, and if anyone at work reads this I’m sure to be kicked out of the building. Maybe that’s the incentive that I need.

I need to leave. I need to leave so bad it hurts me to get up every morning and trek the whole 12 minutes into the office to sit in front of a computer and churn out purchase order after purchase order, order confirmation after order confirmation. Did you order the courier? Yes sir. It wasn’t fast enough. It cost too much money; couldn’t you get the price down? A shipment is late. Scribe, go and find out where it is. Now. Pronto. Get on that. You’re the worst employee ever. How would you like it if you didn’t get a pay cheque for the week? Really? You really didn’t just say that to me? Oh, you did. Man, if I didn’t need this pay cheque…

That is a typical exchange over less than a week in my office, a small business run by a couple. A couple of what, you ask? I’m really not sure. A couple capable of Jekyll-and-Hyde-like characteristics? Yes. Sometimes they’re nice. Sometimes they aren’t. It depends on the mood or the situation at any given time, or even the moon. I’ve seen it. They howl and grow claws.

Yet I’m still here. What’s holding me here? Loyalty. No, not really. The ostrich? Now you’re cookin’ with steam. I used to prescribe to the notion that if nothing is done, that whatever it is that is wrong will go away if you pretend it’s not there. Not true. It gets bigger and the bigger it gets, the more stress comes. In droves. It manifests itself in inopportune places – knotted shoulders, a quick word, a snappy answer, acne and the shakes. Whatever it takes to get the head out of the sand and the body and mind in action.

I wish my blog started with A: awesome, awe-inspiring, altruistic and amorous. It’s all good. And O can be good too, if only I would send the ostrich out into the fields in search. Of myself? Sure. An extra pair of eyes never hurt.

I do not know yet what I want or what truly makes me happy in a job. I just know what I don’t want. I want a pay cheque. I don’t want my self-esteem to be the price.

O is for optimism.