Mistakes and McRibs

mis·take (m-stk)n.

1. An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness.

Now that I have been at my new job for more than 4 months, I feel confident in calling the move an unmitigated mistake. An error. An eff up. I try not to blame myself too much for it because, of the possible definitions of the word mistake, deficient knowledge is assuredly the culprit and you can do little about that. I tried to perform due diligence and shadow, ask questions, and o/w do everything I could to try to understand what the job was, but it was too much to believe that I truly knew what it was I was getting into. I couldn't.

The only thing I can compare it to is test driving a car. You can get a feel for the car's performance and a general idea about its accessories..........but until you own it you can't know that the cupholders are not in the ideal spots or the seat is too hard on long trips or that certain things rattle and on and on. Only in this case, using the car analogy, I think I bought a lemon altogether. The cupholders may be annoying, but it is nothing compared to your engine perpetually catching fire.

I think the major issue is really that the actual job is so very different from what it was purported to be. I knew I would be sedentary and that it would be M-F and that I would largely spend my day staring at pixels on a screen with a headset strapped on. But what I didn't know (couldn't know) was that, while I do primarily triage, I also do a whole lot of customer service, serve as a mouthpiece for both good and ill news for the doctors (generally the latter), and deal with a lot of people who are pissed off about something or another related to their health care that I am obligated to placate when I really want to just tell them to go eff themselves. Oh yes, and filling out copious paperwork and typing extensive notes about all of it. It is exhausting mentally and emotionally. I feel worn and frail. I vacillate between anger and a kind of deep overwhelming sadness because, well, what the hell can I do about it anyway? I have quite literally painted myself into a corner and there is nowhere to go without making a mess of everything. Honestly though, I more and more question whether that would really be all that bad.

In the interim, I am putting out multiple applications a week and ever broadening my search parameters because, well, the more trapped I feel the more open I am to any means of escape. Like the movie 127 hours, the protagonist didn't start by deciding to sheer his own arm off, but he did it eventually because he had little other choice. I am definitely encroaching upon that proverbial point because I am finding the cost of my displeasure to be too high. I hate the way I feel in my hours away, that I am already dreading tomorrow, and that Tia has to deal with all of it. Physically I am chronically headache ridden, my stomach is an acidic mess, and I find myself leaning further and further towards accepting pharmacological solutions as a means to subsist. Updates to come as they warrant of course.

In other mistakes, after being bombarded by ads and recommendations from people I work with, I tried a McRib. I think I may have had one before, but it has been a decade or so. I have to say, it may take another 10 years for me to forget this experience as well. The texture was off putting and the taste was somehow worse. Just altogether unpleasant. I just don't understand the clamor.

We also got to try a Portland institution this week, Stanich's. It was actually quite good and pretty darned inexpensive. For 4 adults, we ate well with a beer and 2 sodas and the tab was a mere $30. Not a one of us left less than stuffed. The burgers themselves are fairly pedestrian, but the cheese and sauteed onions were sublime. The fries were winners too, and appeared to be freshly cut with skin on (always a bonus to me). Not the best burger I have had in Portland, but dollar for dollar, among them to be sure.

I think it is time for a Sunday nap. A rare but necessary guilt free pleasure.