The Important Things

This guy I work with says, “I’ve really mellowed out the past month or so.”

We’re preparing for a massive move over the weekend, almost everyone on my floor is shifting places, and he’s calming himself down as he tells me and a co-worker about the storage facility where we can send the overflow of boxes of media kits, etc.

“I lost my mother last month.”

I hate moments like that, especially with people I barely know. I never know what to say and, not being particularly religious or anything, even the simplest platitudes like “God bless.” are awkward. Worse, though, is that I recently found out this guy was involved in a crazy case where his wife, who’d been artificially inseminated, had given birth to twins, one white, one black. Turned out the black kid “belonged” to another couple and somehow the sperm, or was it the egg?, had gotten mixed up. Crazy shit, and I’ve never been able to look at him the same way since.

Anyway, the office move. It’s mainly being done to defrag the floor, since the upheaval of the past year or so that combined different groups has left us all spread out in different areas. I found out yesterday that I’m moving to a No Man’s Land on the other side of a wall separating me from the primary marketing area. I’ll be there with two other marketing people, one who hasn’t been hired yet, and some higher-up circ person who reportedly talks too loud on the phone. Added to my month-and-a-half late annual review (that will finally be taking place a little less than an hour from now) which looks like it will result in a promotion and a bullshit “maximum” raise of 7%, I’m feeling kind of edgy.

The Important Things? We’re trying to buy a house before the end of the summer, and my staying here is necessary to make that happen. Thanks to our move to VA and the fiasco known as American Express Financial Advisors, when I took this job, I knew I’d have to tough it out for at least two years for credit report purposes. Less than that, they want to look further into your work history, which wouldn’t be a good thing in my case. So I grin, grit my teeth, picture the kids playing in the backyard while two churrascos cook on the barbeque, and my comic books are neatly stored in the extra room…and I bear it.

It’s definitely worth it; it just takes extreme patience and willpower not to get up and walk the fuck out some days. I have a feeling I’ll need to take a nice long walk outside around 2:30pm, though. Hopefully it won’t have started raining by then…

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.

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