On nerves and power structures

OK, forget everything nice I ever wrote or said about Windows 8. It's a complete fuck-up. Akito, I love you, but you were born with a serious case of The Derp. I've yet to figure out how to access Skype, and their weird aps settings are just upsetting, if you'll pardon the pun. It's completely impossible to understand intuitively. I'm sure I'll get around to it sooner or later, but as of right now it's just another source of rage quit for me. Fuck you for forcing me to merge my Skype account with you, Microsoft. You may have won this battle but you'll never take me alive!

I love my computer with a passion, and I would never harm it like that, but fuck me, Windows 8 is annoying.

I don't know why, but lately I've felt terrified of being left out, and thus have been feeling left out all the time. It's like I suddenly think that everyone thinks I'm annoying or uncool or all those things, and whenever people I like are interacting in ways that don't specifically involve me, I get a little bit nervous and am torn between wanting to go away and wanting to butt into their conversation to get the reassurance I crave. People can tell me they like me to my face, and I'll still think that they think that spending time with me is a bother a week later. I think it makes me play cool and distant, which alienates people, furthering the vicious cycle. "What if people don't like me! I'd better act like I don't care whichever way by being stiff and a little chilly." Then again, letting people know that the reason I play aloof is that rejection scares the absolute crap out of me is being far more vulnerable than I feel like being. Until then, I'll keep freaking out about if I'm contacting people too much, or putting myself out there too much in terms of trying to get people to like me. All this social stuff is hard, and as someone who's always been constantly uncool and never pretty enough in the eyes of my peers (with even my idiot ex boyfriend at one time commenting on how I'm not 'conventionally pretty like all his other girlfriends were'), I'm just scared that the people I like will see all that stuff that the people that didn't like me did.

Trying to keep it together

It's funny really. Anything short of gushing makes me nervous, thinking that people don't like me. Unless there's a constant joking and/or exchange of personal and intimate secrets or stories, I'll think that I've lost the person I'm trying so hard to be friends with. On the other hand, if they praise me a lot, like Mafune did in front of her friend, I'll just figure it's done out of pity or insincerety. Reading this back, it sounds like my self-esteem really is rock bottom, and sometimes it is. Some periods of time are better than others though. It's a bit of a rollercoaster ride, with its ups and downs, but truthfully, it's probably not as good as it should be. Or rather, what I have is like a mix between low self-esteem and ridiculous narcissism. I like me. I think I look pretty. I crave for others to think I'm as cool as I think they are. I just don't think that they could ever think I was. The more I like someone, or the cooler I think someone is, the more I'm convinced that they don't like me back. I don't know what's up with that. I wish it would stop.

Work was slow today, which opened up for gossip sessions with Mafune and the other girls about the dishwasher Mongolians and Karate Husband. One of the Mongolian women disappears from her post every now and again, and we're wondering where she's hiding. Probably in Karate Husband's office, which is generally locked and the only place we mere mortals don't have access to. What does she do there? Why does she have the key? "Maybe she's cleaning. Maybe she cleans for Karate Husband. He has business with the Mongolian women. He needs a cleaning lady." All the things in italic were said with a voice of something seriously questionable going on, and my Nancy Drew-senses are tingling. I want to learn more. I don't know if I'm just automatically assuming that everything is far more sinister than it is, but it makes me a little uncomfortable.

Noir-styled detective work is needed for sure.

All in all, it's pretty much like Game of Thrones at work. Game of Sushi maybe. Sushi of Thrones, or maybe Throne of Sushi. Karate Husband may be on the Throne of Sushi, but according to Mafune, the one orchestrating everything is Karate Husband's very quiet and unassuming wife, which surprised me. I don't know if it should've. A woman who marries a man who now (including the children he has with her) has a total of eight children with five different women is either passive to a fault or assertive enough to deal with his bullshit. I don't know which.

Karate Husband is a difficult man to handle. Apparently his hobby, according to my co-workers, is to fire people, and I've been around unusually long. He's made new people run away mid-shift, and has fired people with a lot of restaurant experience for looking slouchy and uninterested. He's notoriously mean when it comes to Swedish people apparently, but according to Mafune he 'really really likes' that I can speak Japanese, and truly, he's never been unkind or bad to me. I suppose I should feel good, but this just makes me feel pressure to not fuck up. Karate Husband likes me now, but will he like me later? What happens if I fuck up? I've fucked up small before, and due to language issues I know I'm not as curteous as I should be every time I speak to him, since I'm used to using short form with everyone else instead of the longer more formal versions, but I try, and I hope it translates more as youthful spunkiness than insubordination, and yet he's been nothing but nice. Yesterday he swung by the restaurant to ask me if I really was okay working so many days in a row, which I see as a sign that at least he's looking after his assets.

I'm pretty good at keeping jobs that people seem to lose. I was a nanny for a very demanding family for six months or so when I was around 18-19 and had just moved away from home. This family had gone through probably six or seven nannies before I came along, and stayed until I quit (at which point they offered to have me work less hours or pump up my salary, but I still declined). I can work bullshit jobs at bullshit hours for bullshit people any day of the week, because I have some serious work ethics that have been propagated around my family since I was a toddler. You do the job required of you, and you do it to the best of your ability, because you're being paid to and people are counting on you to fulfill your duties. That's how you do a job.

No wonder my family's overworked.