12:32 pm - Fri 5/27/05
A Sermon From Reverend Jim

I'm writing this "on location", at an internet cafe down on Wilshire...

And the reason I'm at an internet cafe doing this, and not at home, is that my computer has died.

(Basically the hard drive can no longer be read by...whatever it is that reads the hard drive. But anyway...)

I'm not thrilled, of course, but I'm also not as down-in-the-dumps about it as you'd think--When Cary called earlier today to give me the news (I called him last night to see what, if anything, I could do about the situation), he said the computer--which he gave me a couple years ago when he upgraded--was seven or eight years old, and had basically run its course.

And while I may want things to last forever, here on Planet Earth, they do not. That's just the way it is (Things fall apart, the center does not hold, blah blah blah...).

Helping this rather Zen-like acceptance of my computer's passing is the fact that I received another Jack-In-The-Box commercial check in yesterday's mail (Another "holding fee").

So when I ordered a Dell Dimension 2400 off their website a few moments ago, I was only about $60 or so short of being able to pay for it entirely with my "holding fee".

So now I sit here, wondering--Is the glass half empty, because the check was gone soon as I got it? Or is the glass half full, because this "crisis" is not really much of a crisis at all, due to the arrival of a timely check?

(I guess if I can choose, I should probably choose to see the glass as "half full".)

And it'll be fun to have a new computer; the Dimension 2400 is their most basic model, but I haven't had a new computer since the late-90s, so it'll probably seem pretty friggin' futuristic to me.

(And it has a cd burner, which I think could really come in handy...)

Anyway...

Until last night, my computer was not going to be the top news story of this entry. If it hadn't given up the ghost last night, the first thing I would be telling you about today is that I finally got myself to the County Clerks office, and made myself official as a Notary!

The process was easy enough--I took an oath, wrote my name and address on a couple things, signed a couple more things, and I was good--the only glitch being that they had reduced their hours without my getting the memo, so I had to wait an hour-and-a-half before getting service (I bought a paper, and had lunch in their cafeteria to while away the time).

In trying to think through "What Comes Next?", I guess the next step on this notarial journey is to find out how soon I can take the loan-signing class: If I can take it in the next week or two, then that's what I need to do first, but if the next available class is a couple months away, I probably want to get some cards made, get on some registry websites, etc., and get that stuff done first.

I also want to look into what it might take to be able to do marriage certificates. I'm a little vague on what's required--okay, a lot vague--because the woman who taught my class didn't do marriage certificates. But it seems reasonable to me that the more you're able to do, the more work you can get.

And have I mentioned lately how much I want to be done with Borders?

It seems the feeling is mutual, too(At least as represented by the GM at my store): I finally broke down, and had another conversation with David about my hours, because the last time we talked about hours (Early in the year), he'd said circumstances might change in the spring.

I'd been holding off on having "the talk", because for one thing, I have a certain ambivalence about working fewer hours; I need to work more hours, if Borders is to cover even the basics of life out here, but that aside, it doesn't exactly break my heart to be spending less time there.

But since I need more hours, the main reason I'd been holding off on talking with David is that I had a pretty strong suspicion that I knew how the conversation was going to go, and I knew it was going to make me angry, and depressed, and generally unhappy.

And I was, regrettably, pretty much right on all counts--All I got from David was "Sales...blah blah blah...payroll...blah blah blah...available hours...blah blah blah...", so on and so forth.

And I was angry, depressed, and generally unhappy about it (I didn't really argue with him much, because for all the genuine human response I get from this corporate drone, I might as well be arguing with a pencil or a coffee cup).

Talking to Jane today, she readily understood that my upset goes beyond the financial here--I struggle wtih feeling powerless and insignificant in my life, and here's a guy who pretty much says, in every interaction we have, "Yes, you are insignificant to me".

Mr Warmth communicated to me fairly clearly, as he has to a number of people who have complained about this or that, that I can leave anytime we like, and it wouldn't matter much to him.

I don't know if I could get a clearer message that it's time to go. And frankly, I'm starting to get annoyed--I want to say, to "The Universe" or whatever, "OKAY,I get it, already! It's time to go! So shut the hell up already, and let me get a plan together!".

Have I mentioned in here that I'm thinking about becoming a "minister"?

There's this website called "The Temple of Earth", kind of a "secular humanist" church, where you can be "ordained", get a "degree", and download templates for business cards and the like.

And they say it's "legal in most states", in terms of being able to do marriages and funerals and the like (California, the home of cult religions, would surely be one of the "legal states", but I guess I'll need to check up on that).

When I happened across this website, I found myself really liking the idea of being a minister (I flashed back to my church days, when Mrs Anibal used to say "The Lord's going to call you to preach, Jim..."). And what really surprised me is that my first response was not "This is goofy" or "This would be a good money-making scam", but something more along the lines of "How cool--I could preside over weddings and funerals".

There's something inside me that finds the idea very...satisfying somehow. Maybe it's that "feeling insignificant" business: Being front-and-center at a time when people are at their happiest and saddest is certainly "significant". I don't figure into people's lives in any meaningful way, by and large, and I'd like to.

And of course, over and above all that, I did think, "Maybe this could be another arrow in my 'not working a straight job' quiver"; If you want a service without the God-stuff, if you don't want it to cost an arm-and-a-leg, if you want something a little different than the norm, maybe I could be that guy.

It's something I'm thinking about.

And I'm running out of time here, so I guess I'd better wrap this up.

(This is my "Monday", but it should be interesting to go back to work today--I think the higher-ups who talked to my coworkers on Thursday are going to be talking to David today. It'll be interesting to see what, if any, fallout will come from that.)

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