palmerpink

Here's where I'm at these days. This poor woman. She's a colleague of my mother's and probably hating her right now for referring me to her.  More general news after the email chunk. So, today i'm trying to make contact with the campus. After much ru nning about (I've discovered that UMD's website is not really a singular monolith but rather a congealed mass of smaller, distinct websites for the various colleges and their departments. very confusing.) I've managed to gather several bits of data. For one, I can now log in to things.  Apparently at this point the "block" on being able to register is for academic advising with the English department (as a transfer, I've already matriculated). What I'd like to know is whether the orientation is mandatory to proceed with the semester (apparently they're not rescheduling today's....or listing any further ones for the spring 2014 term....) or whether I can try meeting with an ad...

A good several weeks ago I plagiarized/stole/otherwise made off with a rather brilliant idea from a friend of mine : He had inherited a couple of bow ties along with a bunch of neck ties when he came to DC to work as a senate aide, so since he didn't have enough to wear one every  day he declared Bow Tie Tuesdays. So now, every Tuesday I work at Macy's, I wear bow ties. Sometimes suspenders, too. It's kinda pretty much awesome. I have about 4 bow ties now (purple+polkadot, black, orangeblacksilver plaid, and black&white plaid) and they rock. It's funny, people see you/me with a bow tie and assume that a) it's a thing or b) you're awesome. I'm okay with either of those conclusions because both are obviously true. So: Everyone: wear a bow tie today if you can. Preferably one you tie yourself (don't be a poser), and preferably a cool one (redundant!). Let's make Bow Tie Tuesday a thing!

This work crap has gotten a bit better but it still dogs me badly. At this point, I'm less absorbed by the agonizing worry & overthinking than I am simply painfully aware not meeting my own exaggerated demands. Slight improvement, yeah? This is literally what I look like at work. That is something, though. I've realized that much of this boils down to a few bad habits of thinking and a lot of anger. It's just got my head all wrong really; these bad habits of thinking prey upon something basic in how I operate. The result is the sorta-nervous-wreckness I've been experiencing the last half a week or so. Although my managers may want me to get dozens of people to sign up for credit cards each week, I only really need  about 5 a week. Anything more is awesome (more Macy's Money and stuff!) but as long as I can get 5+ cards, I = success. It's easy though to get caught up in my managers' expectations, to make their demands my own, to measure myself by...

I'll be brief, perhaps...for once...I'm weary. You may be in luck. For reasons beyond my caring, my store--my department, especially--has upped its game credit wise. That is, in getting people signed up for our store credit card. All well and good--in fact when I actually talk to people about credit I can be pretty convincing and find it fairly easy (the talking about it part, at least). But now we've added a new dimension. I don't know if it's just our new way of doing things or simply because it's slow, but we've taken to the aisles to solicit  people to apply for our card. Nobody else seems to have had any trouble with this. I, on the other hand, have been near my breaking point for two days in a row. It's not that I can't talk about our credit card or lack confidence--I could list a dozen ways to save and how they're relevant to you and your interests--it's just the talking  part. To random people. About something they might (might!...

So I had an interesting Valentines afterall. There was even a date in there, of sorts. Such a romantic. Erm, literally? Work was kinda ridiculous. Remember, I sell fragrance. Perfume. Evidently that's what people love getting eachother on Valentines because it was nutty Monday and insane yesterday. But I was dressed sharp and on the ball all day. It was, I'll point out, a Tuesday. I recently stole my friend's idea  decided to make Tuesdays "Bow Tie Tuesdays". Having recently taught myself to tie said ties, I was down for it. Of course, being a holiday, I had to dress up more than usual (which is kind of saying something), so out came the three piece suit and pocket watch and shoe polish. It was, as was to be expected, busy. I made bank, dawg. I was everywhere and ringing everything--and, even with almost all my coworkers there at once, I still pulled in a sweet 4 grand or so, which means about $130 of comission. In one day. That's a lot of bow tie...

It feels like just last Thursday I was gearing up to bail on retail. I was so many kinds of over it. The surly customers, the daily goals, the shitty & unsteady hours, the barely above minimum wage pay. And now...now I've committed to a dimension of retail I could not have foreseen and would not have guessed. Certainly not last year when I came into this mad, fun, frenetic world of customers and sales, nor last month when I was so eager to wash my hands of it. But I am getting ahead of myself--and dangerously florid. So this whole turn of events began back in mid-October when I inherited a part time position in visuals at Macy's from Parker. It was a pretty sweet gig, though short term. The excellent pay, stable hours, and manageable workload spoiled me some and, as it came to an end, that's what pushed me to such a breaking point with retail as a whole. Simply put, I wanted to keep getting that kinda money with a nice steady schedule and, having realized such thi...

Since I thought of a title for this post, I've kept thinking of that Radiohead song--"The Tourist"--and its refrain . Hey man, slow down. Lord knows I need to. For one, this last week has been crazy as hell. Like, "whoa, that's fucking crazy". Most of the week I worked mad hours into the night helping to get the store ready for Black Friday. One night, I started at 6pm and got out at 8am; I got to bed at 9:30 that morning and rolled outta bed around noon so I could be back at the store by 3pm; I got out that night at 3am. I think (?) I had a day off--oh, right, Thanksgiving! sigh.--before Black Friday. I got to the mall at 10pm Thursday night and didn't leave until 10pm Friday. Yup. 24 hours. So, what with the wack hours and sleeplessness, most of last week seemed to rush past me. I hardly spent any time with my grandmother and thanksgiving was simply a large meal between naps before work. I don't feel like that was particularly fair to anyon...

So I have 3 jobs now. It's gonna get intense--especially this week with Black Friday looming monolithically. I'm still not entirely sure why I'm doing this to myself, but I'm sure I've got a plan. So as many of you have inferred, I've been working at American Eagle Outfitters for over a year. Though it's been tough at times, it's still fun, and I've learned a lot. Then I picked up visual merchandising gig at Macy's, it was short term, but it was fun and different. It led to job #2: I've been picked up to do recovery & replenishment at Macy's. It's something I had to get good as well as fast at doing at AE, so frankly the actual tasking isn't so hard as the figuring out what to fix up and keeping up my stamina/focus. Then job 3 came along, half outta nowhere. Parker works over at PacSun as a keyholder/assistant manager (whoo! :D), and now our friend Jeremiah manages the store. People from my AE have flocked to our mall...

Yeah it's been a long bit since I posted, hasn't it? I've been working 20hrs a week at Macy's doing visual merchandising (it's still pretty sweet even if im exhausted from bad sleep habits), going to continue at AE at least for the short/medium term, but still polishing up my resume. I'll prolly be at AE through the holidays but I'd still rather it not be my only job/source of (fucking meager) income. I've been having some really awesome sexual revelations recently. You can bet your sweet little ass I am gonna prolly dedicate a proper post to that soon ish. I've continued feeling a bit agitated, however I feel like I have more options (?). I wont say "control" because that's part of the problem, I think. I think either my inner demands to have everything a certain way or my recurring frustration when some things never seem to change or my feelings of powerlessness about some things I just don't have any power over....something i...

Interesting day; mundane post. Apologies up front. Today: I worked, I met up with Parker & Kial for lunch and had a lovely time, I worked out, I napped, I led a meeting, I came home, and I blogged. Er, am blogging. Whatever. Epiphanies were also had, and choices may be in motion. Read on:

So I've been working this parttime gig at Macy's. Visual merchandising--from 8 to 1, which means I have to get up pretty goddamn early. I did pretty well today; I'm just about used to this sleep schedule. I was outta bed around 6:30, maaan....nuts. The rest of the week was a bit mixed: some days I ran late (only hadda get a ride from mom once) other days roughly on time. Today I was running early and so that was heartening. I really like working here so far--and not entirely because I'm getting paid more and have a moderately substantial number of hours. the work is good, even paced, and I feel appreciated. I do really well with that. I like getting some positive feedback overall; it doesn't need to be fawning or worshipful. Like my manager has tested me sayingthey things like "thank you for the hard work" or "you did well on the garlands, im grateful for your help". But we can discuss why I like that so much later. Right now I'm almost...