Sometimes you know it seems it would be easier to change the past

by anna at 07:04 PM on June 23, 2005

I so envy Leaffin, all carefree and bumming around Central America. She's putting off that awful weightiness and crushing tedium of real adult life here in the states. Bully for her. But alas, I am dealing with a host of issues. One is that I am up for a promotion at work. By which I mean there's an opening for a job that pays better than mine. And involves a lot more responsibility, a different skill set and dealing with management.

Though I am considered the leading candidate, I haven't even applied. In fact, I don't even know how to apply. I'm sure it entails clicking and clacking on something or other in "my HR." Thinking about dealing with the whole resume and interview process is stressing me out. It's doubly weird because the folks who'd interview me are people I've known for many years. I've been through it once before, applying for this same job only to receive a stinging rebuke when they hired some other guy from outside the company. Now he's gone.

I'm also stressing about what would happen if I landed the job. Supervisors are judged on the performance of others. I've done that too, in the late 80s when I was transitioning from crazed party animal to settled-down husband, father and homeowner. My unit was a chopping block of losers the company wanted to lose. Suffice it to say it did not go swimmingly. One guy I was supposed to fire called in with a stress claim the day the axe was to fall.

Stress claims! What a concept. Until recently in California, workers could go on disability just by saying their jobs stressed them out. Whose doesn't? Choice grapes went unpicked in vineyards. Sheets went unchanged on porn sets. Silicon chips and breast implants piled up on loading docks. Nobody cleaned San Fransisco's HIV-encrusted bathhouse benches. As Sir Mick Jagger once put it, "In the sweet old country where I come from nobody ever works and nothing ever gets done." But boy do they have a good time eating fish n chips and guzzling ales in pubs until they puke the fish n chips all over their busty birds.

Then there are the French. Say what you will about the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but they aren't stressing out. Despite their swilling of wine like Paris Hilton basks in the glow of flashbulbs, they enjoy long lives. They brought us the interchangeable terms savoire faire and elan. A zest for life they have and no way are they going to let stress, brooding or angst spoil that (though you wouldn't know it from the brooding, angst-soaked movies they make. If it's gotta be foreign flicks give me Bollywood any day.)

So it's off to the sunny outer banks to sit there with my toes in the sand, pondering my future. Maybe when I get back the job will be filled and I can stop stressing out about it. And I'll pour some wine into my jelly jar glass and drink it down with elan. Or savoire faire. Here's to you all!