work – Stefanie Moore

Passable at faking

Recently, when I’ve written the date, I’ve been putting the year as 2016. Am I losing my mind? Am I a time traveller? Or am I just always somewhere else? I worry about an early slow descent into dementia (who doesn’t at 3 am in the morning? ) but I think the reality is that I never fully concentrate on what I am doing and then I wonder where the hell the day has gone.

People have me pegged as a ‘good listener’, but most of the time, I’m not actually listening, I’m waiting for them to leave the room so I can get on with shit. There’s a massive difference between genuinely giving someone your attention and just being so trapped by social morés that you sit and plaster on an ‘Í’m here for you’ face while secretly sweating with the urge to tell them to do one. I have conveniently blended these two skills and convinced myself and others that I am, for want of a better phrase ‘good at listening’. But they don’t come from the same point. The more admirable route would be for me to tell the speaker that I’m busy and to come back another time and/or never, depending on the nature of their grievance. but that would involve a measure of self empowerment and willingness to preserve oneself and one’s sanity. The road more often travelled by me, to sit and ‘listen’ involves a form of self-preservation, but more from a fear of others than from genuinely looking out for the big id. That internal monologue that cringes in your ear ‘ Oh God, I’ll look so rude if I tell them to go away now, they’ll pull that affronted face and then they’ll say something about me to someone else and about how rude I am and how I’m not a good listener after all, ah God oh God. I’ll just quickly send this email while nodding at whatever they’re saying and then I’ll apologise for sending this email and really pretend to give them my attention’. Lest you think me a horrific she-devil, can I just stress that I’m talking about listening not when people have a real genuine problem that they want to talk through, but when people just want a good long moan about the injustices of the break duty rota or how someone didn’t say hello to them that morning.

This is not Syrian crisis that I’m pretending to listen to.

And of course, everyone needs to vent, I understand this and I hold nothing against the plaintiffs in these cases. They’re lovely people. It’s me, I’m the problem. Almost how certain folk were set up as the town scribes when no-one knew how to write, I have become the team’s rant-guardian. This is my fault, I’ve let it happen. Sure, I give all the physical signs to show that I want the person to leave; foot wedged in door, body turning away, making eye contact with others, the triple impact conclusive comment, shurg and eye roll. But still it come, a ticker tape of slights, perceived or real. And I’ve taken it. I’ve not just lay down on the floor, I’ve written welcome on my face and permitted people to traipse their shit in and park their arses for the long haul.

So how to extricate myself? Maybe erect a sign? ‘ You’re too wrapped up in your own problems and I’m passable at faking’? Even this feels too passive. I’m going to have to flat out tell people – the ‘hurt face’ has held sway over me for too long!

And now, having written this, I realise thatI have been moaning. I sincerely hope that you pretend read it and got on with something more useful instead.

Magic Eye Me

Please forgive me; I offer this post not because I think I am inherently more interesting than anyone else. In fact, once I tell you how i discovered these things about myself, you will probably agree that I am inherently less interesting than you.

That’s okay.

I don’t wish to come across as someone who believes that they should be the focus of a column in a Celebrity magazine, called something like “20 questions!” “Get the lowdown!” “The skinny on …” Good lord no. I barely rate a mention in my workplace newsletter or all staff email list.

That too, is okay. My brain contains dark workings, too febrile for the general public ……

Not really, it’s just that I’ve had a week off and I haven’t done much with it, which has been truly liberating. I think back to the article in the Onion, headlined, “Area Man disappointed to find that he has failed to sort his life out in week off.” Or something like that, the point is that I work in a job that regularly grants me a week off (no I’m not a spy), so I’m all too aware of the “I will turn my life around” phenomenon that hits and I’m cautious of its effects. Monday: get a new job. Tuesday: sort out will and revolutionise wardrobe and living space. Wednesday: Get fit. Thursday: See all absent friends and family. Friday: Meditate the shit out of it. Saturday: Sort out finances. Sunday: Repeat Wednesday and Friday. This is made more challenging if you have any add ons, like seeking a life partner, or the desire to learn to cook or horse ride, or master an instrument for example.

Allow me to take on the guise of a salty seadog, propped up at the end of a beer sodden bar, holding a few novices in the palm of my hand and pausing to suck on a cheroot before delivering my credo. Beware the week off: it fulfills nothing but your well of disappointment and shame! You will never sort your life out in a week off. A more believable timetable runs like this: Monday: sleep in. Feel bad about sleeping in. Tuesday: Get up with good intentions. Wander into town at midday and feel bereft. Wednesday: Try to do the things that you set out to do on Monday and Tuesday and realise that it will never happen. Thursday: Netflix. Friday: Drown out impending doom feeling about work through any available vice. Saturday: Look at what other people have done on their week off. Sunday: do laundry, cry, drink.

Sorry – that’s just how it is. If you are a novice! A better option is just to accept that not everything will be achieved and that this isn’t your one-shot at success, anyway. This week, I’ve been to the gym, watched an entire series of House of Cards, done some writing, done some walking, failed to get Prince tickets. That’s a good haul, all told. Well done me. Through hours of not doing very much I’ve also found out some previously incommunicable things about myself.

I am a Magic Eye. The longer I stare, the weirder the fruit. For example, through long bouts of not doing much, I now know that:

The default taste in my mouth is parmesan.

I can gauge how stressed I am by how many hair bands I can avail myself of. The fewer I have, the more stressed I am,

Facially I do have a better side, but I can never remember which it is.

As child, I remember being so bored that I danced full out to the theme tune from Sons and Daughters. In a room on my own. Full out.

Don’t worry, I’m back at work next week

Of broad oaks and little leaves

I know I’m not alone.

Last night, at approximately 6.37, it kicked in: the gut wrenching pangs of realising that the sweet taste of freedom has almost completely slid down the gullet towards the sour stomach pit of realisation.

I had work tomorrow. I had to get up. I had to interact with adults and children on a neverending pedastal of stress, each step made up of deadlines and demands. And emails, emails, emails. Like I said, I know I’m not alone in this feeling! But in the spirit of things, I decided to replace my otherwise Beckettian monologue of repeating ‘Do I have to go in tomorrow?’, and do some research on the dreaded sunday feeling, and how to resolve it.

Not for me the first few sites that I tuned into, who seemed to accept that work was something to be managed like a taciturn orca. I didn’t want to read about ‘Time management’ and Éffective strategies’. I wanted to be inspired. And somewhere, lodged on page three of my google endeavours, I came across some quotations from a man called Khalil Gibran, who wrote a book called The Prophet.

Granted, I haven’t read the book and I will misquote him, but the gist of his writing shed a new light on the Sunday feeling. He believes that work is essential and a joyful act at that. This is what he writes (with my commentary in italics):

Älways you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune (true that!). But I say to you that when you work you fulfil earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born (huh?). And in keeping yourself with labour, you are in truth loving life. And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret (hmmm….okay…..).”

Granted, I don’t know what life’s inmost secret is – hands up if you do, because I want a detailed powerpoint presentation on what that is. And I’m also not sure on how to achieve this state of bliss while trying to drill the three sentence types into my year 9’s heads on a wet and dreary afternoon, but it was a helpful perspective today. Instead of finding ways of managing work, to strap it down and hold it in place and hate the whole darn thing, to actually take a moment to appreciate the act of work, of all the myriad decisions that we make while working, of the processes that we adapt to and in so doing show an understanding of life. It made a difference today: I actually enjoyed a discussion with students about two poems that we were studying, rather than marshalling them towards the right answer. Instead of despising my commute, I enjoyed the chance to be still and see a new world emerging from the darkness. I felt prepared and ready.

The other point that he made resonated, and that was regarding work envy. At school, I didn’t really care what I wanted to be, I just wanted to be renowned for it. Since leaving school I’ve tried my hand at a variety of jobs, but they’ve always had the potential for fame nd glamour: I was an actor and then I worked in television and all the time I was focussed on how to become known in these circles. Looking back, I realise that my focus was wrong and maybe I should have enjoyed the work more rather than looking to be the next thing. (Or maybe stopped and realised how little I was enjoying my work and rung a few changes…). And now I’m a teacher and I sometimes think of the phrase ‘Those who can, do, those who can’t teach’. For a long time it has seemed like a failing in me, that I’ve ended up as a teacher, unlikely most days to even get a thank you from my students. This feels particularly galling when I turn on my television set and see any of my peers acting their little socks off in a primetime dramas, maybe even making a move on Hollywood, the big time. Would you like some salt with your wound, Madame?

What Khalil Gibran advises us to stay away from thinking about is of the status of particular jobs in relation to each other, but not to denounce them. When I see a compadre doing well in their chosen field, I should stop musing bitterly on their shelf life and how it will all end badly for them as a way of gaining temporary and illusory satisfaction, I should think on the joy inherent in my own work. The quote that I have been musing on today was something like this:

“Both the broad oak and the blade of grass feel the same sunshine’. This is not to suggest that my job as a teacher is any less signficant than being an actor (some would argue the opposite in fact), but that relative values don’t matter. If you are gaining joy and satisfaction from your job, it is the same feeling regardless of external recognition.

Unless your occupation is a serial killer. Or you are Rupert Murdoch.

I’m not normally one for spirtuality, but this struck me as sound advice, certainly more practical than other guides with their talk of ‘maximising business opportunities’ and ‘learning to succeed’. It’s certainly something that I will hold in my head until I finally learn to feel 100% grateful for what I have.