I drew this as a card for a friend who is retiring. He’s leaving the rat race, get it?
The Inktober prompt for today was Tranquil, so that worked out.
So far, I feel like Inktober has forced me to draw, but it’s also rushed me to finish in one night. I won’t make that mistake on the next one though. I’m going to take my time on it! …hopefully.
An icy little wind devil
kicks up the air in my cube
leans against my left shoulder to read what I write
blows on my soup
peeks under my blanket
keeps making grabs for my toes.
The office AC has summoned him.
Only he who has been granted
the power of the thermostat
can send him back to the ninth circle
from whence he came.
I have Imposter Syndrome so bad today. I am not cut out for office work. I keep waiting for someone to notice.
I send emails with incorrect data, retract them, send them again. Leave stuff to the last minute. Oh look another typo on some vital spreadsheet. Sure I took care of that email yesterday… oh wait I’ve been neglecting them for three days why do I have no sense of time?? Basically I seem to get away with murder. Then a supervisor gives me a piece of candy and goes, “Thank you for your hard work!” and I’m like, “Oh they are so sweet, fuck I don’t belong here.” I feel like a horse in an aquarium. I’m waiting for someone to gently shoo me out of here. It’s exactly what happened to me at my last job, I got gently shooed out. They were like, “You are the nicest person but we need someone who will sacrifice their soul to this place, secretly put in extra hours, you know. Not you. We don’t want to fire you but it would be nice if you left.”
The funny thing is, I think I was better at that job than I am at this current one. But the current job, they care about their employees and try to make them feel valued, which has the strange reverse effect of giving the crazier ones Imposter Syndrome. What can you do?
I just need to go for a run. Everything is better when my blood sugar stabilizes. Until then, poetry is my only recourse.
I don’t belong here.
I watch everyone smile
and talk about the weather
like it really is fascinating.
Everyone seems so stable.
Everyone is caretaking dying people
Yes, you heard me right
and they still manage their lives pretty well
and their work gets done
and they fi gi===
Okay. I know this isn’t true.
I know that the one who is caretaking a dying person
Is stressed out of her mind.
And the other one
has withdrawn deep into himself.
I know that the really beautiful ones
who eat organic food out every day
and are probably in debt
and lie with the smiles on their faces.
And there are several here
who are just as crazy as me.
But it’s hard to talk myself out of my crazy.
I’m just as human as they are
They are as human as I am.
I’m very grateful to have a job.
I’m too grateful to have a job.
Dear god make the gratefulness stop
So I started to draw this cartoon about the fire drill at work, and the way nobody gave a damn. But I made a bad mistake on one of the people, overcorrected, finally gave up, rolled with the mistakes, and made it a full-on wookiee.
Of course this was wildly distracting and since the paper is pink, I can’t white it out. I’m too lazy to redraw the image or photoshop it out. I thought it would be a funny, lazy fix if I just cut it out.
Somehow this made the whole cartoon a lot darker, especially when you look at my desk as a whole. Suddenly it’s a commentary on isolation and depression. I’m generally a pretty upbeat gal, but my dark sense of humor always ends up taking my work to horrible places.
Poor lonely mistake of a wookiee. It got ignored and went away… but where can it go, really? Its whole world is that one piece of paper; even if it tries to leave the paper, it’s still a part of it. Heh.
It’s that time of year.
The office break room table is littered with free produce.
They’re never normal. There are always skinny u-shaped cucumbers, zucchini the size of hams, overly muscular heirloom tomatoes.
Oddly shaped vegetables that say things like, “New gardener,” “How in god’s name can anyone eat this many vegetables,” “I don’t have the energy to can or freeze foods,” and “Maybe somebody else will eat this penis-shaped one because I can’t handle the vibes it’s giving me.”
Sarah D. Silvey 