I don’t care what anybody says, this up and down and up and down with the temps screws with my head. We go from sub zero temps(-30!) just a little over two weeks ago to 67 degrees yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll be back to a high of just 30 degrees. This is not normal, people.
The barometric pressure jumping up and down tends to make me feel sick. That compressed head feeling, like an invisible vice is slowly tightening on my noggin, giving me a “medicine head” quality as if I downed Nyquil when I haven’t. The whole up and down with the temperatures in rapid succession has been a source of agitation for me for a few years now. I’d think it was just that I was insane, or just something that was broken in me, yet the guy I’ve worked with for the last 23 years has the same reaction to this up and down thing. So I know it’s just not me.
Either that, or we’re feeling sympathy pains for one another.
Whatever it is, all I wanted to do yesterday was come home after work and take a nap. That could also be connected to the fact that yesterday was a complete nightmare at work. One of those days where you can’t get ahead for nothing, as you continue to be buried in work. Being off over the holidays for an extended amount of time, while always a joy, ends up backfiring when you work in receiving. The rest of the world doesn’t necessarily take a break, so we’ve got days worth of work coming in at the same time and it becomes, for lack of a better word, overwhelming.
With my job coming to a close in a year and a half it feels as if the great corporate machine is going to squeeze as much juice out of me as they can before they hand me my severance and send me on my way. I figured I could ride it out on the “What? Me worry?” Alfred E. Newman philosophy till the doors closed, but my corporate medical overlords are bound and determined to shake me and scar me till the very end. I mean, I’m good with working hard. But working stupid? Nah, no thanks. Right now, we’re working stupid.
I’m ready for a breather from it all. I want to sleep in and enjoy my coffee every morning on the couch with a dog sawing logs next to me. Write on the couch till 8 or 9, then spin some records while painting in the kitchen. Have a bagel, another cup of coffee, then head out for my morning walk. Come back, get cleaned up, then go from there. Instead, I’m still in this barometric cycle of insanity that’s either weather-related or work-related. Or both.
I think it’s probably both.
I definitely feel that compressed head feeling mostly at work. That sleepy, distant, drugged feeling hits me within minutes of arriving at work. We have pressure issues at work(figuratively and literally). There are days when the doors don’t want to close because of all the pressure pushing out of the building. I have to tell people to make sure the door closes behind them when they come in. We’ll have people randomly walking around the place with no tag or anything because when they walked up the door was wide open. But then, the very next day nothing. Doors close, no massive gusts hitting you in the face when entering the facility. It’s weird. And it can’t be good for one’s head. I mean, I can attest to that. Maybe we’re in a vortex or something.
There was an old man that worked here years ago. He was probably 75 or 76-years old when I started back in 1999. His name was Leonard. His job was basically sitting in the shipping/receiving office, drinking coffee, post-nasal drip plopping from his nostrils, and napping. Oh, and smoking. He’d occasionally come out of the office and tell me and the guy I work with “Boys, there’s a truck backing in.” He was helpful as well as being old.
We had a tornado hit in fall of 2001. It tore up quite a few neighboring businesses. One guy was on a forklift about four miles from our facility and was picked up and dropped. The guy survived with no injuries, but if you know anything about forklifts you know they’re heavy. Our place was miraculously untouched. We were on the back dock not knowing what was going on while the rest of the facility was being moved to various tornado safety stations. The dock doors started heaving in and out as if the place was literally breathing on its own. That was the precise point the tornado was floating directly over the building. When we saw that and massive amounts of water coming from under the dock doors we realized shit was going down.
After it was all said and done, and other than some flooding in the parking lot we had pretty much been spared Mother Nature’s wrath. Our guy Leonard told us after the fact that it was because the building was built in a bowl that we were spared. A bowl? Well the building is below the highway that runs by it. We’re in a dip, if you will. It looks like they dug a hole out of a cornfield then built a building in it. This is the “bowl” that Leonard referred to.
I mean, maybe he’s right.
But maybe while digging that hole out of this cornfield the excavators also opened a portal, or vortex, so now we’re forever dealing with pressure issues. The pressure is really the vortex trying to suck us into some other dimension. Maybe it’s a dimension where I’m not working here. A dimension where I never worked here. Maybe I stayed at my old job, or I’m independently wealthy and get to sleep in, drink coffee, and paint in the mornings next to a snoring dog. Or maybe this building is just shit. Either way, I’ll take a portal over pressure.
Sorry. Must be the barometric insanity talking.
Complex Distractions 