will work for cookies

This afternoon was slow. My work is never slow. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of things to do. I was just… slow. My head was kind of in a fog. I felt off all day. Subsequently, I needed a kick start at about 4 pm.

They provide the staff at my firm with snack-type food on a fairly regular basis. For a while it was just those Dad’s individually wrapped two-packs of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They’re good, yes, but if you eat them enough over a summer they can start tasting pretty bland. Upstairs in our department we have a lonely box of Toppables crackers that I’ve been slowly picking at; they’re hidden in the top of the coat closet. Okay, they’re not hidden. They’re right out in the open, but I say hidden because if those puppies were out on the counter they’d be devoured in five minutes.

Don’t get me started on snack day.

It must be some sort of Pavlovian routine– we do work and get rewarded by bits of junk food. Not too much, no– they’re very careful about not letting us have an unlimited supply because obese people do not provide good legal service (sorry, that was discriminatory), but there are often Oreos and regularly hot chocolate packets and sometimes Ritz crackers. Ring that bell, print that letter! Eat a cookie. Perpetual cycle of fat secretaries.

So anyway, at about ten to 4 I started jonesing for a treat– nothing as calorie-laden as the monster Second Cup cookies downstairs (for all my lovely Vancouverite readers Second Cup is like Blenz, only about a hundred thousand times better. Still not Starbucks, but a worthy runner-up). I didn’t want to venture far as I’d already used up a fifteen minute break by wandering out into the sometimes rampant heroin-addict park across the street and sitting in the sun for 12 minutes, doing nothing, looking extremely pale and probably a bit forlorn, waiting for my day to end.

If this had been MAC in Vancouver a low-fat fruit bar from the ‘bucks would have definitely done the trick. But it wasn’t.

So I amble downstairs to the main staff room, in which I prefer to be alone. There are doors on both sides of the room and often people cut through it in an effort to save time, which can lead to an awkward encounter if you only come down to steal cookies like I do sometimes. Picture it: they’re professional lawyers grabbing a Coke Zero on the way out the door to their big investor meeting and I’m stuffing Dad’s cookies down my throat like the lowly corporate slug that I’ve turned out to be, usually trying to save the situation (don’t, don’t ever save the situation– I’ve learned that but still can’t seem to follow my own advice) by saying– or garbling with cookie bits flying everywhere– “Oh, hello” or, even worse, “look, they have cookies now- we’ve been waiting awhile for the good ones” whilst blushing profusely and feeling just how much of a loser I must look.

And hence, as luck would have it, today I was not alone.

Just as I open the snack cupboard door (and holy dinah! It was like snack mecca in there today! I guess Mondays are the day it gets restocked.) Good thing the presence of another human saved me from myself and stopped me from taking more than one kind of cookie– and they even had chips! Since when, Witten? Serious snack business has taken place during my absence(s).

No, one of the female lawyers walked in. There are a few at the firm. Okay, a few isn’t quite fair. Some might be a better term. Anyway, I have a relationship with this one– she’s known me a long time and actually talks to me, whereas most of the other ones don’t.

“Hi Andrea! How are you? How are you liking the work?”

What a loaded question. Perhaps it was my slow, foggy day, or perhaps because she caught me at the height of my vulnerability– sneaking Chips Ahoy at the end of the day– that I actually answered her truthfully.

We ended up talking about my career path for at least ten minutes.

Now, later, typing on my laptop in bed, listening to The Shins and thinking fondly of Chips Ahoy (here’s a bit of a sidebar: Chips Ahoy? Are we on some sort of cookie ship? They’re not my favorite cookie– I prefer soft and chewy to store bought packaged stuff, but who the hell am I kidding, I’ll put anything with sugar in it in my mouth. But I do love the name, I have to give it to them. Land ho, matey! Chocolate chips be ahead! Ahem, anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here).

All I can think of right now is: okay, Steen, it’s crunch time. Why have you not figured out your damn career situation yet?

The lawyer also took the aptitude test. At the top of her list? Law. She loooves her job. Oh, I’m so happy for you. If only I had taken this aptitude test before I got my undergrad, I might be in as good of shape.

But she was enthusiastic– and maybe that’s why I walked away from our talk feeling inspired. Wish she was here right now too– we could eat pirate cookies (oh MAN! They need to get those. I should put in a request. Peanut butter and oatmeal sandwich cookies? YUM-MY. I was simply trying to make a play on Chips Ahoy) and get excited about my future.

I need to get excited about my future.

The only thing I get excited about these days is cookies.

Okay, that’s not true. But it’s time I devote some serious thought/research/effort into planning out the next while of my life. I like my current job. I do. But it’s temporary, and unfulfilling. The trouble is, everything I get excited about doing in my future is kind of unattainable. Or I’d be a starving artist. And I like Prada too much to not make enough money to buy stuff every once in a while.

She suggested I contact the University to see what I could do with my H degree when it comes to Psych (which is at the top of my list). I was always intrigued by psychology because it wasn’t really anything I had ever considered, but I do really love listening to people’s problems and helping them come to different solutions. I think I’d be really good at that. I like that the hours are fairly flexible, you can work within a team yet independently, etc. I’m into it. The pay is also really decent.

But I don’t want to walk into 7 more years of school.

So I’m going to set up an appointment. I’m going to go and talk to someone and convince them that I have an arts degree, and maybe I could swing some sort of combined Masters program after taking a few preliminary psych classes– and by preliminary I mean essential. And hopefully they say “no longer than three years and you could be a practicing psychologist.”

Because unless this career falls into my lap like I’m hoping it will, I’m going to have to go out and do something about it.

But I’m scared, and I’m tired, and I’m trying to buy a house, and who’s going to pay the mortgage when I’ve got school up to my ears?

some friends of ours are getting married this week (I say week because it’s an epic event) and everyone around me is growing up. I’ve been in Edmonton for 12 weeks now and I haven’t moved an inch. Why don’t they prepare you for this? I keep saying that they need to change school completely; revolutionize what they’re teaching young people. Who cares about chemistry? Teach mortgage payments and amortization. Aptitude tests should be mandatory, as should relationship counseling, social skill building exercises (real ones) and basic life skills- like food preparation, hygiene and child care.

All the stuff they actually teach us should come later when we’re ready to learn them. Like history. I love history! But I sure didn’t ten years ago.

All this out of one little break to eat some cookies.

Chew on that.