Well. Maybe a latte instead. I love you, Melbourne coffee.

Melbourne can’t work out if it’s beautiful or the dreariest, coldest fog bank this side of the Pacific. Both make my current job temping at a giant insurance agency somewhat unbearable, as it is either all sparkling sunlight from the roof of Southern Cross catching my attention and begging I go play, or the sort of chill that makes getting up at 6 in the morning intolerable. Despite my protests to myself that I’ve gotten up far earlier for work, it was in a job I enjoyed and valued. This job is sending rejection letters to people who just wanted some massages or glasses or anesthetic for their brain surgery and who, for a host of reasons from filling out the forms wrong to simply not being insured, I must cheerfully and politely deny. Previously, I thought my job in Staunton, working with mentally ill kids who needed hugs, not locked rooms, was the most evil job, but this might actually be worse because it’s dissociated from the pain I know I must be causing.

It turns out that what I thought would have been a good environment for me, a quiet office with cubicles, is utter torture. I have spent much time lamenting the noise levels of previous jobs, and how standing all day hurts my legs and feet, but sitting all day in one spot has me a fidgety, stimmy mess. It’s blissfully quiet, except for the other hundred people typing and sighing and making far more noise than seems reasonable. I could tune out others’ conversations in the bustle of work before, but now they are bright spots in otherwise uninterrupted tedium.

So I need a job on my feet, doing things with my hands, even the same boring thing over and over. Soon, please. It’s getting hard to pass off the stimmy stuff.