You're Doing It Wrong

Twenty years ago this weekend I moved to the Pacific NW.

In didn’t happen in an orderly way and I didn’t know I was moving when I first got here.

What happened was I wanted to leave Los Angeles and I had a plan although it wasn’t a well formed plan, or even poorly formed plan. It was more like an idea that depended on a lot of luck that did not materialize.

I was in that horrible place where I had no idea what I was doing with my life and also miserably broke with a fair amount of debt to deal with.

I moved to Sacramento where nothing went right for me (details omitted, no need to rehash that horrible time) and so I spent the summer hanging out in Orleans doing odd jobs to earn enough money to make my car payments when my Aunt Aileen invited me to visit her in Portland and look around and see what I thought.

There are more details here if you feel like you’re missing out.

Right away I got some office-type jobs. I had two cousins who had just finished college living in the area so I had friendly faces to hang out with.

I started working for my Uncle the next February (career milestone in 2012!) and moved into this apartment a couple months later.

I married a local and I seem to be settled. I like this place (not the apartment, the PACNW, I only lived in the apartment for a couple years) and I like how everything turned out, but to be honest, I’m still a California girl in my heart.

This apartment is the only time I’ve ever lived by myself. I didn’t have a great TV so I read a lot of books that year.

I found these photos when I was at my folks last month. I have zero recollection of them being taken or of ever seeing them before. My Aunt must have taken them and sent them to my folks to show them how I was doing.

Obviously, I was still moving in.

It kind of blows my mind how much of that stuff I still have.

In this one I’ll point your attention to my first computer, a Mac Plus with my trusty Imagewriter. And me. I’m pretty sure I still have those sweatpants.

Sign to Red Cap Lake, Marble Mountain Wilderness, CA

I cannot figure out my office building. It’s not the fanciest office building but it’s a nice building. The people in there are attorneys or software something or non-profits. Not slouchy jobs.

I’m on the 10th floor and there is maybe a handful of people that I see regularly. That includes two men who I never see without a phone in their hands. Talking on the way to the restroom. Talking on the way out of the restroom. Co-worker reports they talk on the phone while doing their business in there.

There are a number of people who do their cellphone talking in the common areas and it’s always a bit awkward to walk by and pretend like you aren’t trying to figure out what they’re talking about. Because they wouldn’t be talking in the hallway if they didn’t want everyone to know what they’re talking about.

My point is, I don’t see a lot of people on my floor. There are only three businesses other than ours, all larger. An insurance defense office, a non-profit and some sort of technological sales something. But I don’t see oodles of people around.

However, I go in the women’s restroom maybe 2-4 times a day and there is *always* someone in there. Always. Sometimes two people.

And it always smells like a truck stop after a chili cook-off.

What the hell? I don’t understand how this is even possible. How can so seemingly few people keep that room so constantly maximally busy?

You might guess that all the other floors have tagged the tenth floor women’s restroom as mostly abandoned so have spread the word: do your stink jobs on that floor. Except the stairways are locked for “safety” and our office is adjacent to the elevators so I think I’d notice excessive traffic.

They recently installed this thing called a doorpod and for the first week when you walked into the bathroom it smelled like a simmering a pot of Pez. (Improvement?) But whatever magical smell absorbing technology it uses, it was maxed out right away and no one has come back to replace it.

The whole thing is a mystery.

Some jobs I’ve had:

Jack-in-the-Box – drive through cashier; grill
Chinese restaurant – server
UC Santa Barbara – government publications library assistant
Santa Barbara Zoo- Chipwich cart
contractors license school – fraud-ish test prep assistant
Panavision Hollywood – marketing assistant
Bureau of Indian Affairs – copy clerk