On Employment and the Eeriness of Winter

As usual, I'm up very early on a Saturday morning. My Monday-Friday job requires me to get up at 4am, and on the weekends, despite my best efforts, I still get up at 4am. This of course truncates my access to daylight considerably—I go out for coffee with my dad every Saturday at 10h30, but by early afternoon I'm exhausted again. I cannot leave this job with this current schedule because it is one of the few jobs I can work with my issues. I am no longer required to interact with the public on a regular basis, and the social requirements are few and far between. To be sure, most jobs in my life that I've had that required me to interact with customers have been successful in one sense: I am good at hiding my feelings and am often seen as friendly and easygoing. However, interactions with anyone in management often end disastrously. I often don't understand invisible societal rules, and am rigid in my understanding of social situations. I got in trouble once as a secretary for keeping my door shut to keep people out of my office. It didn't matter that my job was completely feasible from behind closed doors, it wasn't what I was supposed to do. But that made no sense to me. Few rules like this ever do. I was let go from this job and told to return to university, saying I'd be much better in an academic setting. They were right, of course—I excelled academically and became the president of the social work society at my college. But as soon as I graduated, like clockwork, I was back to failing miserably in jobs.

I don't mean to seem like I am whining; I realize that there are things about being an adult you just have to tolerate to make a living—but it has been my experience that there are few jobs I am good at doing. My heart is in the right place: I got a degree in social work precisely because at the time I wanted to work helping people. But wanting something and being good at it are two different things. My range of talents—speaking foreign languages, writing, and memorizing esoteric topics—are always hampered by my inability to do them in any setting where I am required to interact with a hierarchical structure. I used to work as a receptionist and part-time French-speaking contact for a certain company. Once I needed to speak to someone above me about a certain issue. So I did. I later got in trouble for not going through the right channels. But the person with whom I needed to speak was the right channel in my mind. And so it was. It didn't matter how many times I was told that I was not allowed to speak to this person, whose office door I could see from my desk—I never understood the rule. Any organization who has useless rules and unspoken expectations like this will be a very hard place for me to work. And I've come to believe after four decades of existence that I'm not the problem at all—situations like this are completely unnecessary because they make no sense. But now I'm rambling.

I stated before that my early morning schedule often affects my energy levels later on in the day. I have been getting up at around 2am to write, still managing to make it to my job by 6am. This perhaps isn't ideal when the weekend comes, but it works for me during the week, and I am grateful that I have had a job that allows me the clarity of mind to write. Writing is one of the few things I've ever found that brings me true joy. ✦✦✦✦ My husband and I have started a tradition where we go to Bath, North Carolina every December when we are off from work before the new year. I am very much looking forward to this in a few months. I am hoping that the quiet of the little town I love so well will be a place of respite and inspiration for me. I am planning on continuing my series Sad Premonition featuring several stories of missing persons that have touched a nerve with me. One of these stories I've heard over the years—a story which may or may not be included in my series—features one of the oldest missing persons cases in North Carolina. Leila Bryan and her daughter Mary went missing from Carolina Beach in May of 1941. Her husband told authorities that they had left go to a local store. An article on CUE states:

At Carolina Beach at the time, according to town records, there was a small grocery store catering to fishermen and vacationers, a store similar to a general store, and a combination grocery/department store. All three of the stores were in the same general area, near the modern intersection of U.S. 421 and Channel Drive. Where Leila went shopping that evening, if she did, has never been discovered.

In the stillness of winter in Bath, I often think of cases like these. There has always been a certain eeriness about rural and small town communities for me. When I was a child living in New Salem, North Dakota, I was often haunted by local ghost stories, like that of the Simon brothers (see newspaper clipping at the right). There was something otherworldly about the stark winters, the abandoned farms, and the miles and miles of fields. With Bath, it is the vastness of the ocean and the tininess of the community that calls me to a very eerie place.

I am thinking of all of these things as I sit here with my coffee writing by lamplight. I could try and go back to sleep, but I know it won't be of much use. The city this morning has filled my head with all sorts of tales, tales I love writing down, if only for myself. Writing makes me feel alive and important—someday when I am gone whoever goes through my things will find hundreds of poems and short stories I have written over the years, yellowing and long-buried among my books. This morning I feel as though I am looking over the horizon at a new dawn. And there are so many stories I want to tell.