The Great Mandala...

Take your place on The Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time
Win or lose now
You must choose now
And if you lose you've only wasted your life...
The Great Mandala by Peter Yarrow

How can it possibly be Sunday night again? I feel as if my life is hurtling by at breakneck speed...and I wonder what I’m doing. Friday I telecommuted because in the afternoon I needed to take my car in to have keyless entry and floor mats installed. I’ve never had keyless entry, and I admit, I think it’s really cool, and I’m glad I got it. I got the dealership to do it for free quite by accident...the salesman wanted to sell me the car on the spot, and I said I wanted to think about it. We were close on price, just wheeling and dealing details...he asked what it would take to seal the deal then and there, and I suggested he throw in keyless entry, a $600 option. To my amazment, he did. Who knew? But Friday morning was endlessly frustrating, because I could not get my laptop to connect to the VPN at work. It’s always connected in the past with no problem, but in the past few months we’ve received endless security patches at work, and a colleague said that she’s had trouble connecting remotely since IT has been installing all these patches. I called IT, and we did all the usual...meaning, shut down both my laptop and PC as well as router and modem...disconnect everything...wait a few minutes...reconnect...reboot...my PC was fine, but nada with the laptop. Finally, the IT guy told me I needed to call my internet service provider. I refused, because I could imagine that conversation with Time-Warner: “What’s the problem, ma’am?”
“Well, I can’t connect my laptop to the VPN at work”.
“Can you connect your PC to the internet?”
“Yes, no problems there”.
“Is your cable working?”
“Yes, just fine.”
“And we can help you how, exactly?”....

Lucky for me, I’d logged over 40 hours when I left work on Thursday, so I’m not turning in PTO for Friday, but I will be calling the service desk first thing tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, on the homefront, I did laundry, including ironing (yeah, I still iron...I wear a lot of linen in the summertime)...ran errands, picked up a prescription...and reminded myself I need to transfer all my prescriptions to mail order...I loathe going to the pharmacy...picked up a new soak hose for the east side of the house...stopped by Crate & Barrel, where they were dumping the remainder of their summer sale items, and bought two outdoor sconces for the patio that I’ve been wanting for a couple of years, but they were too expensive...I got both for less than the price of one, because I got the two remaining floor samples. I love to shop, but only if I can get a good deal. My house is furnished almost entirely with Pottery Barn & Crate & Barrel floor samples. I think in another life I must have been a hunter-gatherer...I think shopping for bargains uses all the same instincts.

Things are changing at work. The company’s been bought by another Big Pharma, and there are new people in place at the top. There are lots of rumors and a great deal of discontent. I’ve been asked to lunch almost every day in the past few weeks, by various colleagues, and most of the time I’ve gone...but I don’t know if I’ll continue to do so. I’m sort of “lunched out”. I’m such a grind...usually I just go to work and work straight through. I have a high volume of work and there’s no other way to keep up with it. Not that I haven’t been keeping up since I’ve been going to lunch, but it means staying later to make up the time...and I’m sort of tired of that. I’m a little discontented myself. What I do seems so pointless...I guess that’s what really troubles me. I shouldn’t complain, I know. There are many people who don’t have jobs at all, or who certainly don’t have positions where they can, if need be, telecommute on occasion...in so many ways, this is a “good” job...but empty...incredibly empty...and so maybe it’s not so surprising that I dislike Sunday nights, the eve, always, of getting back on the merry-go-round...