Day Three- Co-Workers vs. Co-Dependents

"There are few whom I love, and fewer still of whom I think well." Jane Austen has always been an author dear to my heart, but with this Pride and Prejudice excerpt, I think she hit the nail on the head.

I can count on one hand, the people whom I would take a bullet for out of love. But when I was in highschool, I was an "I-love-you" whore. I used the words consistantly. I used it with friends, aquaintences, teachers even. Now, after some experience and reflection, I know that love is something sacred. And if I were to go around telling everyone that I loved them when I didn't, not only was I a hypocrite but I would have made no progress since high school. And that thought is nothing short of terrifying.

When I first started at my current job, I took advantage of the fact that no one knew me. For instance, I wear a gaudy $1.49 ring from Forever 21 to ward off the average creep. When I sat down to my first day of training, my boss assumed I was engaged. I didn't tell her otherwise. In a few days, every reservation agent and supervisor was congratulating me on my upcomming wedding. My boss, let's call her J., peppered me with questions: what were my colors? Who were my bridesmaids going to be? Where was it going to take place? Small? Big? As a newlywed, J. was excited at anything pertaining to that fleeting and yet binding sacralige we call marriage. I haven't told her the truth. And I don't think I will.

Co-workers vs. co-dependents. Which would I rather abuse? I now supposedly have a soon-to-be co-dependent, but I'm lying about it. So I am abusing the facade the Holy Church calls marriage. At the same time, I am lying to my co-workers about something, to be quite honest, I wish was a reality. That gaudy piece of glass I wear on my left hand has grown on me and I find part of myself wishing I was genuinely engaged. Usually, I wouldn't care either way who I was abusing, as horrible as that sounds. But the conscience instilled in me by loving yet overbearing, republican Christian parents, won't let me enjoy this little game I created for myself. You could say it's grown over time.

To add to all of this, I do have a special someone. One of those people I'd take a bullet for.

The way I see it is that I have to live with the daily reminder that I am not what I say I am. That is my consequence. I just can't bring myself to expose a game that, while wrong, is still fun.

Day Two- My Box

Pushing a pencil is never the life someone sets out acquire voluntarily. As kids we want to be firefighters and ballerinas and princesses. When we reach our early teens we want to be rock stars, to be rich and famous. Then when the junior year of high school rolls around, no one has a clue. Drift forward five years or so and you will see these same individuals working the typical cubicle. But you see, it's OK. At least for me. Because I won't get stuck here.

I guarantee you that the most potential America can tap into is A) it's children and B) the office drones... the pencil pushers. If half of these people put forth the ideas they dreamt up in their office home that consequently smells like coffee and cooperate ambition, the world would be an entirely different place. And I firmly believe this.

My office is clean. Organized. Everything has its place. But unlike my office, my dreams of "the outside" as I like to call it, are messy, unpredictable and a constant source of pleasure. The best way to describe this, I suppose, is a memory box: filled with tokens and mementos of places you've been, people you've loved and dreams you used to cling onto. But instead, this box is filled with tokens and mementos of places you will go, people you will eventually love and dreams you have yet to conjure up.

My box contains a book or two I have written by dim computer light, Broadway tickets to Wicked, tasteful black and white wedding pictures, plane tickets to Fiji, Ireland and the Netherlands. Possibly a baby photo or two. Whenever the office life gets dull, as it will, I pull out my box and think of what I want to add to it. The list continues to grow.

So today, this Engladian has decided to add yet another thing to her box: a label off of a German beer bottle, which I ordered in German at a German pub. What to add next?