Fine, Thanks.

I hate Mondays.  And Tuesdays.  And Wednesdays.  And Thursdays.  And most of Fridays.  I hate everyone.  Of course, I don’t actually hate everyone.  But also, I do.  

Every weekday morning I wake up, feel around in the dark for my phone, check the time and see 5:30a.m. glaring back at me.  I roll over and go back to sleep.  At about 6a.m. I will wake up and check my phone again.  And then again.  And then again. Until it is 10 to 8—just about the time that I should be waking up and slumping into the shower.  Instead, I reset my alarm from 7:55 to 8:20.  I am convinced that 25 minutes of sleep will change everything.  That extra 25 minutes of sleep will make me feel excited about my job, it will inspire me to eat a salad for lunch, it will give me the energy to do some writing when I get home, maybe I’ll even eat a salad for dinner instead of French fries and a bottle of wine.  In the dark, moderate comfort of my bed I tell myself that I don’t need to shower or put on fresh make-up or find an outfit that I haven’t already worn to work at least once a week for the past month.  In reality, that extra 25 minutes of sleep changes nothing but the amount of minutes I will be late to work and just how gross and depressed I will feel all day. 

If I do shower, I will first pour myself a glass of orange juice, which I will bring into the shower with me and drink while the fluctuating hot and cold water beats against my back.  Then I will reach out of the shower, grab my toothbrush from the sink and brush my teeth while I stand, half awake.  And I will never blow dry my hair.  I will pull it, still dripping wet, into a tight bun and I will glance at myself in the mirror just long enough to notice the faint wrinkles forming around my eyes.  Thoughts of age and the mathematics of years start to float to my mind’s surface, but I push them back down—I don’t have time for getting old.

As I stand impatiently in the subway station I will notice women wearing eye liner, with freshly blow-dryed hair and pretty painted faces.  And when the train finally arrives I will squeeze my body against theirs and many—too many—other bodies and I will stand, scowling behind my oversized sunglasses as the train creeps from 96^th Street to 59^th.  I hate everyone.  And I hate days when it’s too gray or rainy to justify wearing sunglasses because then I have to be really careful not to role my eyes as I repeatedly glance around the train car.  When the train stops at 59^th I will silently curse at every single person who walks in front of me because they are all too slow and seem not to know that I woke up 25 minutes late and –in fact—have only been awake for 40 whole minutes and I have neither the time nor the patience they seem to have as they climb the steps out of the station. 

Once outside, I race the traffic lights one avenue and two blocks to my office, flash my ID and settle myself down in my cubicle, where I will remain for the next eight to nine hours.  I am least ten minutes late, sometimes 15 minutes, but I will never be anything less—anything close to on time because every morning as I run down the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding being hit by an early bird taxi looking for a pedestrian worm, I am struck by the ridiculousness of running to sit.  Rushing to wait for the day to be over.  Hurrying up only to count down the hours. 

In my cubicle, I drink bad coffee and eat yogurt and I answer the phone and I thank you for calling and I’m doing very well, thanks and one moment please and have a nice day and I pride myself every time I sound genuinely happy because after years of practice, I have learned that if I smile when I talk, then I sound like I mean it. 

Throughout the day I hate everyone.  I hate the noises that the people who sit in the cubicles near mine make.  I hate their prissy laughs and their prep school preening voices.  I sneeze several times a day because the woman who used to sit at my desk had so many cats that she tracked their hair anywhere she went.  No matter how much I scrub, cat hair clings to the cubicle walls, the keyboard, the files…  And so I blow my nose into a paper towel and I do office things with fancy titles like Presentations and Proposals and I sit and I wait and I count down and  I’m doing very well, thanks.  

I think that in order to be satisfied with one’s job, a person must either be making a lot of money or doing something that they are extremely passionate about.  Anything in between is hell.  Because it is empty.  Money buys things that look an awful lot like happiness and passion invigorates the soul.   Both are things to believe in, as any good American citizen knows.  Everything else is a lie.  I try to lie to myself, to convince myself that what I am doing matters, because it does matter that I keep my job and earn a paycheck and survive.   I try to reason with myself that I need to care about something.  Maybe all those people I hate—people who look pretty and well groomed and more calm than I ever am—for some reason care about what they do, they certainly look like they do.  I look like I’d like to go back to bed.  And I would. 

But I do still care about things in the same abstract, liberal arts way that I always have.  I read the news every day and I care about what is going on in the world.  On weekends I get drunk and rant about feminism because I care about gender equality.  And I say, “I love you” and I sure do care about that.  And I call my brother every now and then because I care about how his life is going and I really do hope he has a nice day.  And sometimes I do take the time to sit in front of my computer and write because I even if I don’t care for my life, I still care about a good story.