Work was manageable today. Confessed that I ordered another Important Document without asking permission first--that's fine. WHEW. Ended up doing it because well, see below.

Yet another international client is throwing shit fits over the mail again and calling and emailing everyone, because he has to receive his Important Document by the end of the month before he goes back home to Black Hole Of Mail Land, and because he actually paid separately for a tracking number (I would have said not to since he is having it mailed in the US and he has better odds of it not being black holed, but he didn't ask me), that will slow it up EVEN FURTHER because we have to have it mailed here, repackaged, and then remailed out again with a shipping company.

He emailed BigBoss and I was told to NOT email the guy back, just explain what was going on. Unfortunately, the way things work, he's not likely to receive it quick and speedy like he wants. The better news for him is because he qualifies via The New System, he doesn't have to wait until the end of the month for the Important Document to get ordered at all in the first place. Our homegrown system for ordering only works once a month, and since that boss left, we can't get anyone else to change it. New System is via our vendor and only applies to the most recent products. However, The New System requires us to have six orders go in before they can get to processing, and I can't order the thing until three more people put in orders (I tried to find some, no dice). Per Grandboss, I tried advocating that he get a free platinum rush order to shut him up. After finding out that this would cost us like $90, my boss said no, which I ain't arguing with either. I will note that this particular order goes out about once a week because we usually hit six people by the end of the week, but that will not calm his anxiety one tiddly bit and I cannot even say "oh, they're processing it right now," because they won't until we get three more orders. SIGH.

I will note that last week's drama has now been resolved, as the one who complained to the governor has now gotten her platinum rush. Whew to that.

Seriously, it's an effing travesty that we don't have tracking numbers for all of our Important Documents, any way to take online payment (much less internationally, which is...guess what, most of the clientele), and any way to just order the damn things individually/on command/in a rush. But I doubt most of this is ever getting fixed in my lifetime. As the vendor said, if we could just throw money at the problem, 95% of our problems would be solved.

Therapy was interesting. We talked about rejection sensitive dysphoria--she got hung up on "what drugs do they use that for?" "Huh, blood pressure ones?" Not that I plan to take anything like that, mind you. Regarding work, she said to accept that that's their reality, but point out the tech issues (okay, works with boss, just not grandboss). She said I'm not suicidal, I just want out of the situation--certainly true--and it's fight or flight going on in those moments.

I found myself recounting last night's semi-bad Hallmark movie for awhile...I don't know why other than stalling about on talking about work, which is nobody's fun. I also read her a quote from this Washington Post article, in which a lady writes an email telling her cross-country pen pal that she likes him. "I wasn’t planning on really liking you — but I do. I am trying not to like you too much, but that is harder than I thought it would be..... In the meantime, I will work on liking you less, so you won’t think I am a pest, a pain, crazy, weird, etc.!!!" I FEEL YA, BETTY. It worked out for her, but I don't think it would for me.

Per both of those, we discussed whether or not there's a point in taking your shot. Considering that he said no/wasn't ready whatever before the pandemic, which of course has made things worse, plus other life shit happening to him, I'm sure any issues he already have have...definitely not gotten better. Probably even worse. So there's no point anyway. He isn't even close to ready, so why bother saying anything (plus he already knows, ugh). At one point I said I felt like life circumstances (i.e. pandemic) have really decided it for now because things can't develop more and she pushed back on that one, like "you've decided." I'm all, I hate my decision, but I can't come up with better, and maybe just going out of contact if he's not wanting to is the right thing to do anyway. We did better in person in the beforetimes anyway, whatever that meant.

That's when she said I should just call him already, which I am waaaaaay balking at for many reasons. ("Just thinking freaks you out, much less doing things," she said.) It feels really invasive to make a phone call, especially with uh, the younger crowd. It's not like phone calling is my favorite thing ever, what with all the complaints about my voice over the years.

After work I went to a talk on burnout, which was not what I was expecting. It turned into a discussion of "values," and "values" discussion makes me want to puke. This lady went through this looooooooooong rigamarole that boils down to "whittle down your values." YOU KNOW WHAT? I GOT ONE VALUE AND IT'S SURVIVAL. (Which was, incidentally, not on her long list of options. Which I pointed out.) Literally anything else I care about doesn't fucking matter compared to the rest of it. Creativity? Doesn't matter. Love? Doesn't matter. Fulfillment? Doesn't matter. Whatever the value is, it doesn't matter because there's only one that's crucial and all the rest go out the window. Jobwise, creativity and survival go together like Demeter and Hades at Thanksgiving dinner. They don't and can't be in the same room together.

On a random note, someone said in chat that "my sister sent me a Wilson volleyball at the beginning of all this because I'm flying solo and need a friend." She who owns a robot cat and robot Baby Yoda cannot judge and she rather appreciates the trying, but the robot toys are way more fun than a volleyball, just saying.

Tonight's Viewing: Palm Springs has commentary on Hulu now! With deadpan remarks like, the earthquake is movie magic because they didn't have the budget to wait for a real earthquake. Cristin pretends to not like Andy. There was a bug explosion during the wedding. "Yeah, I went full butt!" Andy claims to have a butt double, "but my butt was funnier." Cristin says that being in a time loop would be her worst nightmare. Andy says he'd eventually leave, but use a few years to catch up on TV shows."ALL OF MASH? THAT's what's going to get you to stay in the time loop?!" Cristin proves that she kept the hook hand, "I asked to keep two things, this hook and my dignity, and I was only given one." "No one walks away from an indie shoot with their dignity." She is also wearing jeans in quarantine, damn. Cristin: "If I'm ever lucky enough that someone makes a montage of my work, I would like it to either begin or end with "Suck my dick, officer bitch." "Or both! You could bookend it!" suggests Andy. "Watering dog shit" actually happened to the writer(?)'s life. No, you won't get an answer as to whether or not Nana knows, sigh. "What you think it is is what it is, and that's the correct answer."

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