so i wore shorts since its damn near ninety degrees here in hollywood.
when i got to my cubicle my commander had left a post-it note that he wanted to meet with me.
when the meeting was over i returned to my desk and i was thinking, what more could this fucking place do to me? which is a very victim-y way to think about anything, but its all i could come up with.
turned out one of my favorite people, the fella who sits next to me, had filled out a formal complaint about the fact that i had the nerve to play music at my desk.
a while back we made a deal that i would not play music until after noon, the halfway point of most of our days. i was pretty good about holding up my end of the bargain. but now even that amount of music was too much and i was being asked not to play music unless he was in the bathroom or away from his desk.
i dont know why some things bother me and some dont. call me a freak. the low pay, the extremely low pay, doesnt bother me.
the lack of opportunity: no biggie.
the lack of praise or respect for the fucked up work that im forced to deal with on the daily: whatev. ive grown to realize that there are very few perks to working at the xbi and kudos is low on their list.
people ask what the busblog is. what this is all about. and what the xbi is. and this morning taking the long walk from my commanders office to my little desk on the other side of the complex, i was realizing that the busblog is the written expression of endurance. of putting up with so much nonsense and not cracking. of turning shit into shinola.
its no accident that this blog didnt exist before i started at the xbi. and theres a little part of me that deals with all this whatever this is because the end result is writing that i dont mind putting my name on, because it isnt a daily barrage of venting, it isnt whines from the wilderness, it isnt bitchings from the balcony.
and the biggest struggle in this standoff regarding music is that i like the guy, and i know he has no love for music, and he knows how important music is in my life.
in the past i would be playing something and someone would ask me about it and i would talk about the songwriter, the guitarist, the producer, the label, the politics around it, the lyric that refers to a completely different song from a completely different person. i might even talk about one of the times that i saw the band. music to me isnt just the fa-la-la that it might be to someone else.
similarilly the groans from the guitars of lee rinaldi and thurston moore that i hear arent the shrieks that others hear. the tinklings of tones from thelonious monk that i enjoy isnt the background sounds that others here. and the walk of bass notes from john paul jones is more than just a fond recollection of past days that others might hear.
and being asked not to do something that i find nearly a neccessity to get through the day is horrible to me.
so im torn. and im tired. and ive hit the end of the road. i want to quit now. i want to stop this insanity. i dont want to have to fight for every little shred of happiness that im forced to wrestle over in my walk to earn my daily bread.
and im not getting laid.
damn good thing nothing in here is true.