It’s Monday morning (well I know it’s not really Monday morning but I’d like you to suspend disbelief for me if you can. With not having a normal, steady 9-5 job to wake up to, self-motivation is essential. I therefore start my Mondays by attempting to rouse my spirits for the week ahead. This usually involves lots of stretching exercises, running, jumping and muttering to myself about how I’ve got to be organised, creative, strong-willed, email loads of people, call them, find work! Find work! Find work! Once I’ve finished this rather vigorous spirit rousing exercise, I usually then feel totally exhausted (what with the running and jumping) and so go back to bed for an hour, defeating the whole point of the routine. An hour later I wake feeling totally unmotivated about the day ahead. “Time for the spirit rousing exercises again” I think.
I love working. I don’t however enjoy looking for work – applying for jobs, sending off my CV etc. I find it easy to write a radio commercial for a company but impossible to sell myself. It gets a bit tedious and mundane. I therefore try to make the general mundaneity of such days into an imaginary dangerous and exciting adventure. Rather than simply turning on my computer to check emails, send emails, and make phone calls, I pretend I am on a vital mission.
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find yourself more work. If you fail in your mission then the entire universe will be destroyed!”
“Accept it?! Accept it?! Of course I accept it!
I am David Eagle!!!” I defiantly declare before exiting the phone box – er, bathroom.
I rush up the stairs, invigorated by my essential worth and the importance of my role to society. ON the way, I get my foot caught in a belt that has been discarded on the stairs. In my head I pretend it’s a dangerous trap which has been set by the wanton universe destroyers in order to thwart my efforts. I struggle free from the complex nexus of wires and metal bars and cast it aside. I then rush into my room (sorry, the Eagle-Mobile) to type my important and immensely complicated technical data into the super computer. Damn! There seems to be a problem with the computer.
“Some files and programs on your computer failed to initiate properly. This is probably due to a virus or a form of malwear on your hard drive. We recommend that you update your virus software and scan for errors.”
“Damn! I’ve got a virus!” I try pressing keys on the computer and nothing happens. Well, I really do have a problem now. Then I remember my imaginary mission and for a fleeting moment, a small part of my mind tries to compose a pretend scenario.
“OK, so the evil universe destroyers are trying to corrupt my super computer …”. Then a loud beep from the computer brings me back to reality with a jolt.
“No!” I shout at myself “you’re deluding yourself. It’s not a super computer; it’s a cheap, old, rusty laptop. You’re not on a mission to save the universe; you’re trying to get work. You’re not a great, noble, important adventurer, you’re an idiot! An idiot!! Do you hear me?”
“Of course I hear you! You’re me speaking to myself from my mind, how can I not hear you. Do you have to shout so loud? I’m trying to fix the computer”.
After a few hours I’ve managed to fix the computer. By this point I’ve lost all my adrenalin from the spirit rousing routine of the morning and my pretend mission. All my energy has been sapped. I apologise to myself for shouting at me and go to bed.
Everything seems to go so slow. I spend a whole day making calls, sending emails, and starting/finishing projects. I then retire for the evening thinking that everything is going to be great. I’ve set the ground work, people apparently like what I’m doing, people sound positive, progress is being made. I wake up the next morning, excited about all the responses I’m going to have in my inbox, all the phone calls I’ll be receiving all through the day. I check my emails and there’s nothing. I wait for the phone to ring but it doesn’t. I check to make sure the phone is connected properly. It is. “Maybe there’s a problem with the phone, the ringer might be broke”. So I ring the landline with the mobile and it rings. I put the phone down and think, “Damn! I’ve probably just missed a call from someone really important now by doing that”.
I refresh my inbox. Still nothing. Maybe they’ve ended up going to my spam folder. I scroll relentlessly down my spam folder, a truly demoralising experience as it becomes apparent that the emails haven’t gone to my spam folder and as I read down a list of emails telling me that my penis is too small to satisfy my woman. Now I’m even more deflated. Not only have I got a small penis (apparently) but I’m also reminded that I haven’t got a woman to satisfy regardless of penis size. What’s the average size of a human penis? My mind starts to drift. “Maybe I should google it.” I’m brought back to reality with a jolt by a ringing phone. I jump to my feet, clear my throat and answer the phone by saying “hello”, trying to make my voice sound really important and cool as if I’m the kind of highflying success who gets phone calls all the while. “Hello” I say with one hand on the phone and the other hand typing random letters into the computer at great speed to give the impression that I’m important and working in a busy office environment, or even better, that the sound of the typing is from my personal secretary. “Hello” I say again as my first hello failed to elicit a response.
“Hello” comes the voice at the other end of the line “this is a free call from debt direct. This call will cost you nothing. Are you in debt?” comes the recorded message. I slam the phone down in frustration. I’m feeling even worse now. Not only did that phone call get my hopes up only to see them crashing back down to reality again but it also reminded me that I still haven’t paid off my student loan which is increasing due to interest.
Plus, I’m also annoyed because the recorded message was obviously recorded by a Voice Over artist. “Damn! Why does he get to do that job? Why can’t it be me? I could quite happily sell my voice to a company that’s going to use it to ring people up and annoy them! I’ve got no morals, I could do that”.
And what do they mean by “this is a free phone call. this call will cost you nothing”? They rang me! How many times do you pay for a call that someone makes to you? “Damn! I’ve probably missed an important call now thanks to that stuck up Voice Over reminding me about my lack of work and my financial debt to the government!” I turn back to my emails in frustration. Maybe during that phone call an email has come in from an employer. I then realise in horror that due to my pretend, important typing frenzy when taking the phone call, I’ve managed to accidentally send my load of gibberish typing as a reply to the penis people. They’ll probably think I’m interested and send me even more emails now. IN fact my email provider will probably assume that because I’ve replied, in future I want any penis related emails to go straight to my inbox. What a cock I am! All be it a very small one. Needless to say the day passes without a single call or email from these important people.
Then there is the dilemma of when to take my attempts to the next level. How long should I leave it before emailing or calling again? The reason I’m writing this blog post is because I’m getting to the end of my tether with this situation. I was asked to do some production work for a production company. I did the work and sent it off. Surprisingly, I got an email back the next day which simply said, “Hi Dave, what’s your phone number?” I duly responded with my contact information. This email was sent last Friday, 24th April. It’s now the 30th of April and I hadn’t received any contact from the company, as far as I was aware and so I decided that I would give them a call. I convinced myself that they had probably called and for some reason couldn’t get through. (After all, I’m a really busy person aren’t I?) I assumed by their instant response to my email with the production work attached that they were asking for my phone number to offer more work and arrange certain details with me. As the week went on I became more and more negative about the whole thing. Couldn’t they have at least given me some indication of whether the work I sent was what they wanted? Was it good? Did they like it? Then I began to think that maybe they had asked for my phone number merely to get me off their back and it was the classic case of “don’t call us, we’ll call you”. So I called them today. The conversation went thus:
Them: “Hello.”
Me: “Hello.”
(I didn’t really have to include that bit but I thought it would build the dramatic tension a bit.)
Me: “It’s David Eagle, hi. I don’t know whether you’ve been trying to get in touch with me or not over the last few days but apologies if you have, things have been a bit busy here.”
(There I am doing that pathetic “busy person” act again.)
Them: “yes we tried to call you but we must have missed you.”
Me: aaah! Right OK,” trying to hide the huge relief from my voice, “well …”.
Them: “Listen, we’re in the middle of a meeting right now, we’ll give you a call when we’ve finished right?”
Me: “Yes OK.”
Them: “Right, great, bye.”
Me: “Bye” (although they had all ready hung up before my “bye” could have got through – a shame really because it was a rather good “bye” as far as byes go.
That call was made at 1:30, it’s now 4:00. Are these people deliberately playing with my mind?
Byeeee!
P.S. No reply from Johnson Komo, my spam friend I wrote about in
my last blog post.Even he doesn’t reply to my emails and I’m offering him money!
