The Working Class

How do people do it—hold full-time jobs in fluorescent-lit rooms using crappy computers and drinking crappy coffee? How do they do it and maintain their senses of humor let alone their will to live? I have been dragging my carcass to an "office" every day for two weeks now, and I can barely summon the energy to sit upright on the evenings and weekends. Still, at dog park time, I am roused by the sounds of the clicky toenails jingling tags of dogs who ARE READY TO GO TO DOG PARK, and I must get up and serve those who wait.

This work thing has really cut into my enthusiasm for Dog Park. I spend more than eight hours a day filtering out necessary work-related chatter from all the other extraneous human noise created by 20 people stuffed into a room with bad acoustics and terrible lighting. As a result, I have no patience with the normal Dog Park exchanges. I have nothing to say about what's going on in the news because I don't listen anymore. I have no plans for the weekend except to do laundry and cook and get ready for next week. I don't know who the new people are or what their dogs' names are because I just can't take in any information that doesn't help me do my job. 

So on Wednesday, when a mob of young people showed up at Dog Park and set up kleig lights and cameras and musical equipment in the middle of the field next to the south parking lot, I was more annoyed than intrigued. Those stupid people can go anywhere to do their cutely creative musical thing, I thought. They do not need to come to Park and mess up my routine. People kept asking, "Who are they? What's their deal? What are they doing?", but I had no idea and, frankly, I did not care. Normally, I'd have been all over them, taking photographic evidence for the blog, expressing my opinion. Instead, I sat stupefied in the dust on the berm and watched the other Parkers swarm like ants in a flooded ant hill. Now I remember why I gave up working like a normal person. When I do, too much of live just passes me by. 

-z