2001-07-15 - 3:29 a.m.

I made much progress yesterday on many fronts. I have to say, overall yesterday was a very good day.

It started, like so many have in the past couple of weeks, with a bus trip into work. The difference being that I didn't put my bike in the luggage bay on the bus like I have been, because Molly was coming to pick me up after work and we had the elaborate plans that we were going to Do Something.

And so, 8:45 I walked off the bus, went across the street to the bank to take out some money, and nearly walked face-first into the automatic doors. Turns out the bank doesn't open until 9:00. And so I stood outside for 15 minutes and waited for the bank to open. I remember a guy pulling up in his car at one point, walking into the bank, and walking back out with a little red bag, and knowing immediately that he was the courier and he was off to another bank's service center (or possibly my own, but I didn't recognize him so I didn't think so). But anyway, so I finally went in fifteen minutes later and got some money out and started walking towards work.

I realized as I walked toward work along Route 1, cars rushing past me, my jacket laying on my left arm, my laptop bag hanging from my left shoulder over to my right hip, that if one of those cars swerved and hit me and I woke up in a hospital bed, my first thoughts—after, of course, the excruciating pain I'd probably be in if I didn't have so many drugs in me I couldn't think straight any more—would be on whether my computer, or more specifically, my hard drive, was okay. I may have a problem. Oh well.

Anyway, so I get to work and start in as soon as I'm done with Statement Rendering (read "envelope stuffing"), doing all of this stuff that I've just started learning in the past couple of days. And the good news? I made a *ton* of mistakes. That's right, that's the good news. Because I made all kinds of mistakes that, hypothetically, I'm not going to make again, because I actually learned what I did wrong, I didn't just make them. I had people noticing that I seemed to actually know what I'm doing, even more than some other people that have been working there for longer. I also impressed coworkers, my boss Sharon, and Cute Belfast Girl who I met at the job fair and got a teller job and was on tour with a couple of other tellers by trying to explain why I was right and Carol, the weird unpleasant woman who thinks she knows everything, and, despite being the rookie, being right AND not backing down when she cut me off with "Are you trying to argue with me?" in that condescending/aggressive tone that only certain people can pull off AND not flying off the handle or making her look bad in front of anyone because of it AND, finally, writing the longest, least coherent run-on sentence about it possible, and not regretting it in the least. Okay, so maybe that's only a personal achievement, but dammit, it's mine, and no one's going to take that from me.

So anyway, yes. Made much progress not only learning the trade but also on a personal level with my coworkers and boss.

But more importantly, I made progress on a bit of a social level that really meant a lot to me. I was picked up by Molly at work and off we went to Do Something. All we knew when we left the office park was that we were 1) hungry and 2) hungry. So we headed toward my house (half an hour away) to make food. Halfway there we realised "food" isn't really a plan for the night. So we headed over to the Movie Gallery and rented "Run, Lola, Run" and "TimeCode." We sat and watched those for a bit, then between we'd talk, then after we'd talk some more. Eventually, topics that I'd never really talked to my friends face-to-face in a serious context came up.

A while back, probably back in January or shortly after, I was writing about how it seems with my friends at times I'm more a target than a friend. And one of the things that always comes up is a stupid mistake I made in a Political Geography class that was mainly based on the fact that the program I was using sucked… um…something really unpleasant to suck. I'm sorry, it's almost 3 AM. And it's really frustrating because this was over a year and a half ago, and it happened because of the program, not because I can't read a map or don't know where that Austria is. That's right, I couldn't find Austria on a map. A map on a computer that was on a blurry TV so the borders and roads looked the same, and had no country names. So I had a nebulous blur of land colored stuff with lines of road/borders and was supposed to identify a country based on that. Yes there was some human error (I didn't think to zoom out *or* simply look for Vienna which, inexplicably, was on the map, despite the fact that the word "Austria" wasn't), but it was mainly the badthing sucking computer program. Now, for a year and a half, I've had friends asking me where Austria is, like 1) it's still funny and 2) I honestly didn't know where it was. And in all that time, not a single one of them admitted that they knew I was right. If one of them had admitted it, it would have been a lot easier to deal with. But the way it looked, they just all thought I was a complete idiot.

Finally, last night, someone admitted it. Molly finally said that yes, they all knew it was just the program. And hearing that meant a lot to me. Because not only did it show me that I'm not just a target or a moron in their eyes, but more importantly, it showed that from Molly. And it's important that I hear it from her, because if there is *anyone* who makes fun of me a lot, it's her. Little jabs at me here and there all the time, at least when people are around. But she opened up and sort of actually gave for a bit. Actually admitted to me that she realized I wasn't as stupid as this made me look before.

That, and making her understand that yes, I am going back to school in the spring, not because people have been telling me to but because I truly and honestly *want* to, and no, I don't regret taking this time off because I've made more progress than ever in my writing in this time away, and I still have more to go. So honestly I think last night was very good for me. I made progress. I honestly believe, despite the innocent seeming unimportant-ness of the little parts of yesterday really changed my life for the better.

I'm starting to like the real world. As much as I still plan to go back to school and get out of it. It's not so bad once you get used to it.