A Day Of The Life
18 April 2008 at 4:34 pm

I lie in bed for a few minutes before officially deciding I will not go back to sleep again, since I am already a half-hour late for work anyway, and croak to no one in particular, "I'm dying." It takes another ten minutes before I summon the energy to move my legs.

Three missed calls and another coming in. It's S (I use full names when it's relevant) to tell me about her narrowly avoided DUI. She'd been drinking Delirium by the pint glass and I never would have let her leave the bar if I'd known she was the one behind the wheel. I chastised her appropriately and went to put on the kettle (tea is all I drink anymore since the coffee maker is such a pain to clean) and jump in the shower. My new roommates' stuff is everywhere, including their two-day old dishes, but I can't bring myself to care quite yet. This place has not been my home since Aaron left; it's just a place to sleep, when I can.

I throw some granola, yogurt, and ground flax seed in a bowl and sip black tea with a shot of nonfat unsweetened soy milk while going through the real mail, my emails, and my RSS reader. V emailed the flier for the coming month's worth of shows; my boss sent me pictures from the whale watching booze cruise the day before to post on my bar's myspace; my virtual personal shopper sent me another catalog of things I will narrowly avoid purchasing. I grab some deli turkey and my rhinestone-enhanced to-go mug of ginger tea and head to work, an hour and a half late--not too bad for a Friday.

My boss has already done his work for the day and is off to pick up his daughter and go flying (literally, piloting an airplane; these are the hobbies people have in Santa Barbara). I get started on the shipments, answering phone calls, packing the retail orders, reading my daily bits of web site goodness in between accomplishing tasks. My coworkers come in; I tell one to call our web site host to fix a glitch that's affecting the retail order amounts; the other is sent downstairs to package fins.

All the deadline-oriented stuff done, I work on personal stuff, packing clothes to return, responding to band inquiries for the bar, eating a bit of turkey, balancing my checkbook. I can't leave until my coworker is done, so I start planning my evening. I have to swing by the post office, maybe, if it's not too busy. Then I'll head home and water my slow-death garden and maybe read outside, but more likely will hide in my room watching episodes of 30 Rock while doing my makeup and working on my playlist for my shift tonight. I might head in early to catch the last bit of one of the regular's jazz bands and to talk to the boss about band issues. I'll finish the miserable bottle of wine I opened last night to ensure I'm appropriately extroverted for the first few hours of the night. I'll remind myself to smile throughout the night, to be congenial and flirty when necessary. When 2am rolls around, I'll pour myself a Guinness and put on something I can sing along to, The Libertines or Sharon Jones, and begin the slow process of closing on a Friday. I'll dance around the bar, checking things off the to-do list, wiping everything down, bringing cushions in, washing ashtrays, changing kegs, balancing the register, until it is 4am, when I will probably be done, and I will drive home. I might stop by the beach to share a Wittekerke with the moon, and then I'll go home, take off my makeup, strip down to my underwear and my basketball camp t-shirt that came down to my knees when I got it when I was 9 and now barely covers my bum, pop an Arrested Development DVD in, and pass out for as long as possible.

I don't write any of this because it's interesting, because it's not. I want to look back on this typical day when I am older and stressed out and worried about this and that and remember that I made a cataclysmic life decision several months ago and now I have plenty of money, plenty of friends, and can sleep in as late as I might without fear of retribution. In short, I have everything I ever wanted.

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About me
Hi. Morgan, 27, of Santa Barbara, CA. I am a hypocritical admirer of rhetoric (when it is my own) and an observer of literary trends. A secret: I don't take anything very seriously, and that includes myself.