Self-knowledge? Who’s that?

Our cub reporter said yesterday — a Monday, a dark day, the first Monday after a four-day work week which had started on a Tuesday — that every week he feels like he has to force himself to come to work, telling himself that it’s just a week, while knowing it was eating his life away one week at a time. My response was to share a related story that went like this: Oh, I know! Once upon a time, I blah blah blah. Me me blah — then I squawk squeak squawk, so I squawk squawk squeak my blah blah until blech.

Ha ha ha. A polite chuckle was had by all.

The possibly more important point about his comment didn’t occur to me until I was getting ready for bed, when all my really deep thinking goes on, or more accurately, the really desperate thinking as my addle-pated psyche ransacks my brain, before my sleep coma, for lost thought-opportunities from my day, like they’re a misplaced set of keys or that last piece of beef jerky you think slid between the sofa cushions.

The thought was this: I wonder if I’m making Cub Reporter’s work environment into a living hell?

Huh.

That would’ve been a nice thing to ask.

I went ahead and did so this morning to see if he was experiencing a general work-related malaise brought on from his place of employment or a poor choice of career track, or if I was somehow responsible for his anti-work affliction. He assured me that I was not to blame and went on to briefly state his issue and his career goal for his current position, all of which sounded remarkably like blah blablah squawk bleep blah.

And then I laughed at him.

Not with him.

Perhaps tonight I will ponder the virtue of sympathy,

a.k.a., not being an ass clown at pam[at]viewfromthenorth40.com