Toasty

I don't want to be here today.

I have developed a way of sucessfully enticing myself into work: eating jam on toast. I have brought in a toaster (I am not sure if I broke the other work one but it broke in my presence, or at least didn't start working again in my presence) which smells unsettlingly electrical, like something wrong is being fried deep down in the belly of its inner heating equipment, but it toasts nonetheless, and reasonably evenly at that.

It has, until recently, worked. I was a breakfast-before-work gal until I discovered that eating breakfast in work actually made me look forward to coming in. But I'm becoming increasingly aware that my self deception is beginning to wear off. Even the 'treat' of making a cup of tea is failing. I've started to eat my toast too fast, I'm not savouring it any more. I need the food. There's no treat involved anymore. I'm like Pavlov's dogs (well one of them anyway). Its what I've come to expect.

I've upped the jam content on my toast to see if that would help. It did for a while, but yet again its no longer a treat, the jam is thicker than the toast and that's damn well how its going to stay.

My other treats on my desk to entice me through the next hour are usually a large tub of raisins and some satsumas. But I forgot the satsumas yesterday morning and I'm damned if Tesco deserves another trip from me this week to go and pick them up. When I got to my desk yesterday morning I actually swore out loud. While I'd like to think little things can make my day (my toast, still sparking a little wave of joy for those few minutes it takes to eat; sitting next to someone who doesn't smell, isn't breathing loudly and isn't invading my personal space on the tube; my lunch; my dinner (a general food need drives my day)) its also the little things that can break my day too. Hence satsuma lackage = foul mood.

So until now all I could see, all that was driving me, was my toast. Past that was irrelevant when I was on my journey in to the office. But now the toast's hump of happiness has now decreased into a desolate plain, a wasteland, my toast is merely a shopping trolley in a supermarket carpark. I can see through the gaps, I can see over it, I can see under it. I'm tall enough that it doesn't even really make a dent in my vision. In fact I could probably even skip the toast now. (but, of course, I wouldn't. That's just bloody rediculous).

Yesterday I spent my day slicing, erasing and cloning various parts of children. While that gives me a little chuckle, I am also comforted by the knowledge that my reader will know I'm a web designer and it comes with the territory. But even this, while sounding vaguely fun and entertaining, is tedious. And what's worse its tedious AND stressful. Now that really does suck. Although I do, when I get really pissed off, get to literally wipe the smug look off some small pretentious mini person's face (and then quickly put it back and get on with my work, praise be for the history function).

Now I'd like to point out here there are times when I enjoy what I do. But through several knockings of my already half-cut confidence I don't have much courage in my design convictions and therefore my design time, usually a time when I can shut out the admin and the phonecalls and the banner ad amendments, is fraught with on-the-fly editing which is never conducive to creativity. I have read over and over that to produce good work you have to plough through the shit first. But volume of turnover / hours of work = enough time to take a piss between designs and that's about it. Try a new idea? Mess about with a new creative? Play around with some suggestions? Hahaha.

Oh well, maybe its for the best. At least I've got an excuse this way. I can just convince myself that I'm a genius really but I just don't have the time to explore my creative potential. That's why, as a left hander, its good playing the guitar right handed. I have a disclaimer. There's always the secret understanding, the knowing, that if I'd have learnt left handed I'd be a rock goddess by now.