"Operation: Better way of life" continues

Well, I've done a rough budget and it looks like I could work my last day at my current contract on May 9th (provided that there has been some honesty regarding the length of the contract, which isn't always the case) and live frugally for three weeks to a month before needing employment again. If I'm lucky and my British tax refund arrives in time, I could even nab myself a second month.

However, I had originally planned to use that to cover the main cost of flying to see my friend in Berlin this fall. It would also make for some useful padding in my financial cushion, something that would be wise to fatten if I'm going to be working as little as possible. But maybe I should consider that my time in London (and Athens) could be seen as enough Old Buildings etc and careful saving for the time being. There is something to be said for investing in your career and personal contentment isn't there? That's another trick, of course, to make the time off feel like an investment instead of a purchase - the method being obvious enough (actually getting serious script work done and hustling further work).

Looking forward to all this, it becomes increasingly easy to resent the hell out of the beige coated office where I'm grossly under utilizing myself - but it's the work I do here that will earn the money to facilitate what I hope to be the first in a series of leaps to being able to make a living doing what I love. So yes, maybe I look about and realize that from my seated position the only way I can tell what time of day or which season it is, is by checking my computer and am thus reminded of the practices of certain prisons to disorient their charges - but I don't rabbit on about it to my co-workers or pretend that I've found some profound metaphor to describe office life.

Not like an obese twat in a baseball cap that I remember from the group training session at a job I turned down during the days between finishing my degree and hoofing it to London. I'll never forget how, as the trainer left to allow us privacy to fill in some paperwork that involved confidentiality or the like, the twat lifted his flabby chin and - with a big grin - asked everyone in the room if they "felt like robots yet?". Two people gave him dirty looks, one person's features drooped and the rest ignored him completely. I only got as far as "Well then -" when the trainer came back, but what I was trying to say to him was "Well then, why don't you go do something else?".

Sitting in the office two weeks ago and feeling more than a bit pissed off at what I was doing, that's precisely what I ended up saying to myself.