There's a scene in the second season of the TV show Dexter, wherein Dexter's detective sister sits anxiously and uncomfortably while Keith Carradine's superior officer character slowly pieces together his lunch from his brown bag. He sits there on the edge of the dock, feet dangling in the cool water while she grows more and more impatient to continue working. He tells her that work will always be there. It's time to eat.
Life can get to us - the demands others apply to us, the ones we put upon ourselves and on and on. With so few days off of late, I have grown to cherish more and more the time I spend alone before I open up the store. I plug in the iPod, steadily getting things set for the day by the dim overnight lights, watching the occasional anxious customer rattling the front door and suspiciously scan the store hours for discrepancy.
I ease into the day. It makes me feel a bit more in control of how it goes. We all need that power over our situation. When it occurs, I try to have my lunch half-hour - disappointingly rushed timeframe as it is - flow in similar fashion. I sit in the car, windows open under the shade of the trees, watching the traffic flow past north to south and south to north along Main Street, watching the brief montage of the world moving along. I enjoy the disconnection from all of the phone ringing, all of the voices, all of the conflicting TVs, radios, and the Sirius Radio sounds. The single drive to do little more than sit, ponder, and doze is crucial to my daily sanity.
What's part of yours?
close the door to my office, with a "lunch" sign on it so the Gorgons in my office dont mistake my closed locked door as a challenge to try to open it. I put on a TV show from HULU, maybe a Dateline or something with Gordon Ramsay. I eat in peace, usually, for that 1/2 hour and then wonder if I just kept my door closed and locked , how long would it take the apes to start pounding on it demanding more bananas.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm folding clothes at my job, all I hear it customer's voices and complaining. So when I get a break, me and my co-workers will leave the store and go into the store next door, just to have a change in scenery. It's a furniture store, and we will collapse onto the couches and just lay there for the half hour, just talking and doing nothing. Sometimes we will also go over to the corner store and get some popsicles. It's all so lame, but it's what keeps us from snapping at people.
ReplyDeleteHehehe. I drink. ;)
ReplyDelete