I got my ID picture taken at work today and it was all neck. I think the HR lady was mesmerized by my 1992 Manic Panic red hair and glowing white cleavage and she just fritzed. Even the bullshit gals at work, the PYTs that speak in unison, they who said my horrible hair "totally looks cute"--even they admitted that I will have to show my neck to the security guards or risk being shot.

Every half hour I get cold sweat panics that I have made a horrible, horrible mistake. I chose the job that wanted me most, had better hours, a terrible salary, and good supervision. However now I see that my supervisor is crazy in the precise way that I most despise. She is a know-it-all without the calm arrogance--that's more my thing--instead staking her claim with an underlying tone of panic and insecurity. The kid with her hand up, waving that arm, nearly out of her seat with the desire for validation.

Also everyone brought in their prom pictures. Although that was actually fascinating, sociologically. My supervisor revealed her new money background and her painful exclusion from the debutante season (it all makes sense.) And the gal from southern Illinois was showing us pictures of what I took to be homemade Barbie cakes, but were actually young women involved in some kind of prom pyramid scheme and livestock show.

Sadly no one asked me about my prom and I didn't get to quietly state how prom wasn't really my thing in a way that conveyed that I was, even at such a young age, above all that silly bullshit. Yeah and I weighed 300lbs, but seriously, I could have gone to fucking prom.

Big beer stein, drinking to stave off boredom, a waste of money I should send to New Orleans, or Armenia, or at least spend on music. How many times do I pledge to myself that I am going to quit drinking, or cut down on drinking, before I become a problem drinker? And with me, it's not even that much of a social lubricant. I'm generally all loose and lubed up, with no real sense of embarrassment. It's the consumption that I love. You know it's sexual repression.

"Lastly, to the poster who commended the original poster's bravery in sticking it to Johnny Cracker. I agree with you, but the premise of this post just fuels stupidity... Until later...My friendly semi-enlightened whatever...take care and be safe. Try not to get too caught up in stupid shit. I'm out. -rv "

This is from craigslist, from a posting I responded to that a Black woman had written looking for some platonic white friends to "stop her from hating Whitey." I honestly wandered into the whole thing and am now convinced that the original poster may be a women I went to college with, with whom I had a brief non-friendship marked by racial and hipster tensions; this then reminds me of other paranormal psychic experiences I've had and then back again to the idea that time is not linear, and I can see the future because I have such a good memory.

The point is. I like the phrase "sticking it to Johnny Cracker" better than I like being called a "friendly semi-enlightened whatever." I like all the po-mo thought and race politics, and I like being an annoyingly proBlack white woman. Exactly what that means, too, with pc capitalizations and total knowledge that the whole thing is bullshit. I don't really know what percentage of everything I do and think is completely ridiculous; I try to find comfort, at various times, in 1) Christ, 2) the Annie Dillard "For the time being" super view of human history; and 3) the pithy plaque my sister has about "making a difference in the life of a child." What is NOT comforting is how cerebral I want to be but how biological and cultural I really am; that I am deeply fretting not about big issues but about the pervasive sense that I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing that all 28 year old middle class white graduate degree holding smarty types feel. CS Lewis is right, humans are crap, selfish nasty monkeys.

And living with my fucking sister has me thinking that a new hair color and more varied makeup color palette is going to make my ennui and panic just slip away. While knowledge of my basic sinful nature has me angrily resigned to the fact that she is right.

So I figured it all out. I was just celebrating our new jobs with my friend David and trying to explain the disconnect I feel, socially, from many of the women at work. Sister reminds me that I always feel this way, first of all. And then in my discussion with David I realized that I am not really, you know, dying to myself; I am stuck in an eighth grade, obese, alterna version of myself. What I am freaking out about when sweet social workers reach out to me to eat lunch is that they think I am like them. I no longer wear men's clothing, use music as my basic reference point, and most salient to me, I am no longer fat. The way I used to mark my outsider status, my superior depth and intellect, has left me. Or I ditched it because it was a hinderance and an illusion. In the absence of a subculture, a subculture that I never really fit into and that I loved liked a fool hugging a cactus, I am left feeling all vulnerable and defenseless. Like I felt before I found punk rock and after I found the warm embrace of compulsive eating.

What lurks behind all of this is that the identity I really want is that of a good, God-loving woman, a warm and compassionate heart. Which is not sexy and not cool and this struggle is really, really difficult, because I can't keep hiding from myself what a jackass I am.

I have a job, now. I was fully collapsing under the weight of my own insecurities and debt and then job offers started rolling in. I chose one, I felt good about it, and today was my first day. It was the first boring day of my new Real Job.

I have been focusing on the Job part and not the actual work I will be doing. Today offered more things for me to freak out about--office dynamics, fluorescent lights, free, damaging, and tasty coffee--but I was reading case files and remembered why this work is fascinating and why I want to do it. If I can just pull my head out of my ass I will be able to do the work and enjoy the work and be a loving presence in the lives of my clients and co-workers. The thing of it is, I am a jackass, and all of this loving will take some finesse and grace and prayer.

The ladies at work--and this is social work, people, so it is all ladies--are really into shoes and a fair amount of banter. While they are dealing with the same troubled clientele they are much livelier and interactive than my last workplace. Since a part of me likes to be an outsider and the thorn in an agency's side, I wonder how all this camaraderie will work. And will I still like to dress sassy when everyone else does too?

I am tired, because as the last four months have shown, doing nothing is exhausting.