Low Men and Technical Girls

The view from inside my cubicle. See how dead the lights make me look?

About two weeks ago, my cat decided to make sweet, sweet face love to my tablet while I was out and about, resulting in an unfortunate crash landing that the tablet didn’t take well. It became quickly evident that the tablet had resented its latest interactions with cat and gravity and was rapidly shuffling off this mortal coil for good, which left me in the awkward position of having to do my job without any podcasts or audio books.

Now, for people who aren’t shackled inside of a gray cubicle with six foot high walls proofreading ad copy, the lack of podcasts might seem like no real problem, but I assure you that proofreading is what business majors do to English Majors by way of revenge for us not writing their term papers for them. In short, proofreading ad copy is something best endured with as large a buffer as you can manage, for the sake of your sanity if nothing else.

You don’t actually realize how deeply dependent you’ve become on a thing until it’s gone, and I was just about to crawl my skin. What can I say? I'm a technical girl. And that was before I learned that my three month wait for the audio book version of Steven King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger had finally come through in Overdrive. Finally, a chance to wipe away the horrible memory of that horrible movie (sorry Idris. I still love you, but the script was shit), and I was stuck with a glorified brick. I was practically getting tremors I was jonesing so bad.

I broke down and used my credit card rewards to get a new cheapie tablet. So much for mental fortitude and personal discipline. I need my books, or some poor sales rep is going to bleed, bitches.

Last night, my therapist invited me to start sitting with my discomfort instead of trying to busy it away or drown it with infotainment or delicious booze, as is my wont. I won’t lie. I’d rather scour my face off with brillo most days than feel my actual damn feels, which are stupid and very uncomfortable, but it’s something I’m willing to practice. I assume it’s going to help in the long run.

Nevertheless, eight solid hours a day, five days a week with only music and the constant whine of my own crazy-ass brain for company is a little much. I think at least having the occasional foray into escapism has to be healthy, too. 

So as soon as the new tablet is done copying over all my apps, I’m going to download me some Dark Tower. See if those low men can’t help shift the burden of my mental illness at least a little.