Breakfast @ 10

So I’ve been slaving away submissively alongside many, many others, to the dullness of the nine-to-five humdrum for the last decade or so, fantasising about the things we office rats consider unspeakable and unmentionable. Late mornings; the absence of an alarm tone; breakfast in bed; the 11am show at the cinema; the hot chocolate, good novel, warm duvet, rain, hail and thunderstorms scenario; grocery shopping at 4pm... – true happiness, the stuff that dreams are made of, thoughts too lofty to attain, exalted far above our office-indoctrinated mindsets. The extent of our joy is limited to the victory of a
balancing spreadsheet, or the invaluable discovery of a keyboard shortcut. Our biggest enemies at the workplace that drive us batty are things like a slow internet connection, an empty stapler, or if someone secretly swopped your chair with another one. Really, every time it is a huge surprise that the stapler is empty.

Well, as it happens, I am between jobs at the moment. The good Lord has considered it appropriate for me to not work for an unspecified period of time. The first few days were frightening unknown territory – my first problem was to figure out what to wear. What do unemployed people wear? I was advised to consider as a guideline my usual Saturday attire. Eventually decided on jeans. From there it was a journey of finding out where to connect, internet obviously, until eventually you get smart and know which coffee shops blocked facebook, which coffee shops would let you plug in, which ones had free parking, which ones had unlimited cap, do they have peppermint tea and so on.

Mostly, I’ve been trying to keep a routine – go to gym in the morning, put bubbles in my bath, find my jeans, have brekkie, make my way out to vida e or cafe neo, fire my CV off to prospective employers, gmail chat my friends at the office, maybe hook up with a friend for lunch – that sort of thing. The one week I sent a fax. Ok, that doesn’t help with the illustration, the point being that it’s not been entirely unproductive.

The job front has been quiet though. I’ve had various interviews, some went excellent – others were interesting. Mostly, it’s quite a bizarre idea – one has to have such profound insight into self, being intimately aware of both strengths and shortcomings and have a detailed outline in mind for the next ten years. (And you can’t say stay-at-home-mom – that’s interview suicide. Don’t even mention holidays or retirement – you say you plan to work until you die. You’ll get some typing done for them while you do your last will and testament. Overtime – you put it down on your CV under interests and hobbies.) I’ve done numerous skills and personality assessments which have left me both better informed and feeling like a failure. I’m pretty sure that I’ve failed my one personality test where I had to select out of three statements the one which describes me the most and the one which describes me the least. I couldn’t access the concluding narrative after I completed the marathon of questions, but I think it must say something like – I am incapable of making any decisions, I hate rules, I avoid not talking about my achievements which basically means I like to brag, and I don’t trust anyone. The numerical assessment may have gone worse. Nevertheless, after much deliberation, I’ve concluded that I’m not a liar and a cheat and I am actually able to add and subtract, even do a few other more complicated formulas, and I simply have to trust that I’ll find the right job at the right time and that it will be before homelessness and starvation sets in.

So while I’m resting in God, I made eggs on toast this morning. Oh but it was beautiful. It was not early, the sun was up and the day was in progress. After it felt like I had enough rest, I leisurely made my way to the kitchen. Sunny side up eggs, sautéed black mushrooms, coarse salt and black pepper, finely grated gouda cheese, crispy warm white-bread toast, butter (not margarine, butter, real butter), strawberry jam and peppermint tea. Duvet, laptop, Tamboerskloof noises. Happiness. Bliss. 10am-ness.

“What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil – this is God’s gift to man.”  Ecclesiastes 3:9-13