I haven’t diaried in some time for a couple of reasons. The first is immersion at a new hotel. It’s a boutique style environment, with fewer rooms than the behemoth property I was employed with before. This means fewer bizarre encounters with people overnight (although I’ve already had to mop up urine, and help an extraordinarily disoriented elderly woman back to her room) and I get to provide more genuine service rather than process people in and out of rooms. The new place pays a shade higher wage as well, so that’s helpful.
The thing with the old woman was disturbing. She didn’t even know what city she was in or who she was staying with. She wandered up and down the floor shouting "Help!" until four people called me, afraid to leave their rooms. I went home and told my partner about my end of life wishes.
The second reason is the new place doesn’t have chairs or a back office I can utilize to do night audit work, so I have to stand at the terminal for the majority of my shift. Typing from this position is awkward and painful, so I’m limited to computer usage during breaks and on my own time at the other job with the library.
The library is weird, too. I talked with my boss about unattended children and how upsetting it was to see parents dump their kids off in the branch. He gave me a copy of a book about behavioral norms and patterns of people in poverty, how the priorities are different, and why it’s possible a child named Diamond, who cried into my stomach saying she wanted her mother, can be named after a beautiful gem and not know how to read at her age. I disagree with my boss that I shouldn’t pass a judgment here. Teaching children to read is a moral obligation to me.
I guess I am okay. By this I mean I can do a self-inventory and register a reasonable level of physical and mental health. I lucked out when I picked up a refill of my anti-anxiety (I tend to say ‘anxiety’ instead of ‘depression’ because for some reason, anxiety is a ‘real’ thing to people and depression isn’t) medicine and the pharmacist put down a discount card on my file until the new insurance kicks in.
I don’t have a laptop yet. I am not sure if I want to get one, or if I like the idea of knocking out as much as I can in an hour session in the library. We’ll see.
I will probably go back to school this spring or summer. I have no idea where to begin. I only know it’s time.