waste

I just finished my final admissions essay for grad school. Well, I finished the last first draft. I will let them simmer for a week or so and then edit them.

I hate writing formal essays. They are incredibly annoying. I love writing informal essays. They are the easiest things to do ever.

I'm going to work on fiction in the meantime. It has been a while. I think I've only written one story this month. I have a couple of ideas for short pieces that I want to work on.

I really want a big project. I need a big project. But I'm on hiatus from a big project. I'm not sure if starting a new one is a good idea. I think that if I started a new one, and then switched back to the old one, it will be even harder to get the narrator's voice right.

Fuck it. Maybe I should do it. I'm feeling desperate and excessively lazy.

I think I want to write a novella about a shanty town, like the one in Desperate Living. I have no idea what the plot would be. I guess I will start brainstorming after I finish the two short pieces that I mentioned. Or during.

I have been sleeping too much lately on my nights off. I find this troubling. Maybe it is the change of temperature. Today, I set my alarm to wake me up. It was the first time in a while that I set my alarm to wake me up on my night off. I slept for about eight hours. I was still tired when I woke up. I stayed up for a little while, ate drank some tea with caffeine that doesn't do harsh things to my nervous system, and waited for the caffeine to kick in. It did not kick in. I went back to sleep. Napping is the new cup of coffee. At least for me. And it is not really that new since I haven't been able to drink coffee without painful consequences since last year.

I napped for three hours. I like sleeping, but napping for three hours is just a waste, especially after a decent night's sleep. I think I need to set my alarm before naps.

I also had a night off the night before last. I woke up with TMJ induced head pain, which was caused by stress. I napped for four hours. My one accomplishment that night was finding out that I liked the television show, Entourage.

The night after, I drove over what appeared to be an empty container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream on my way to work. Perhaps it would have appeared to be something else during the day.

When I got to work, TTB informed me that we were out of gas. I found this very funny. It has never happened before. TTB is probably to blame. I put up "Sorry, we are out of gas" signs on every pump because I did not want to bother to run outside every time a person tried to pump gas. Some people cannot read.

I think that I'm a slacker when it comes to jobs that make money and a workaholic when it comes to jobs that don't make money - like writing and editing.

I like working overnights at a gas station because of all the downtime. And because I get insomnia at night and sleep like a baby during the day. I wish I wasn't like that. I love the daylight. Plus trying to have a social life is annoying. Occasionally, I see my friends in the morning. I usually wake up right before work time. On my nights off, it takes me a few hours to get the urge to go out and do fun things. By that time, most fun things are near completion.

I have probably mentioned this before. I repeat myself a lot.

I miss college when I had a lot of nocturnal-ish friends. Nearly everybody I know is a nine to fiver. I feel isolated. Time is strange for me. The morning occurs on the same day as the previous evening for me. Sometimes I get mixed up when talking to people with normal schedules.

For a while, I was going to sleep soon after I got home from work. It was nice to be awake in the early evening, plus I needed to do it because that was usually the time when potential housemates were conducting interviews. Since moving, I reverted back to waking up right before work, which is also useful because I have been looking for a different job, although very passively, and job interviews usually occur in the morning.

I'm so lazy about finding a new job. I've only interviewed for one since I moved. I kept seeing signs on the road next to hotels. They were looking for someone to fill a third shift person. It turned out all the hotels were owned by the same company, so they were all advertising for the same position.

It doesn't look like I got the position because they never called me. I had two interviews. The first one was great. A conversation. No bullshit questions like "What is your greatest strength?", "What is your greatest weakness?", and "Tell me about your worst experience with a customer and what you did to solve the conflict."

The second interview was filled with bullshit questions. I did not expect them. I thought the job would be a sure thing. That no other person in my area with a college degree would have tons of experience staying up all night and actually want to do it.

The interview did not go badly, but it did not go well. Sometimes I have not gotten jobs when the interview went well. Sometimes I have gotten jobs when I thought the interview went badly. This did not happen.

It's always the same questions. I don't know why I never plan out my answers. I always tell myself that I should. I will from now on. Immediately following getting each interview appointment, I will plot out my responses corresponding to the specific job. It's not as if they need to be the truth. I'm just really bad at lying on the spot. I always tell the truth. If I had a lot of time to think about my answers to the questions, I probably wouldn't have to lie. I have probably experienced something in my "career" that would make a good response to each question. But I do not have the time to figure this out at the interview.

To the "What is your greatest weakness?" question.

I answered: "Most people probably say that they're a perfectionist. So I'm not going to."

The interview laughed.

There was a long pause while I thought of something to say.

I said, "I am incapable of working nine to five jobs because I am a night person and cannot drink caffeine because of medical reasons."