Anyone’s who’s worked retail knows how true that quote is.

This is partly why I want to work as a web designer. Minimum social contact. I’d love working as a web designer and just sit in front of my computer and not have to deal too much with people. Of course I want to be the web designer of my own company since I’d prefer to live without co-workers doing things the wrong way and bosses telling me to do things in a way I don’t like. When it comes to my work (whichever work) I’m kind of a control freak. I do things my way and really hate when people mess up and change things I’ve done in a way I think is good. I was in charge of the book section at my old job and it really bothered me when co-workers messed up the system I maintained. I knew exactly where to put things and then people put things in the wrong place. It bothered me more than it should since mostly no one but me noticed these errors. Yeah, I’m a perfectionist as well and it’s really not realistic to expect people to fully grasp my way of doing things all the time.

So yeah, working alone is my thing and hopefully in the future that’s exactly what I’ll do.

Want to hear something funny? Of course you do. So this is what happened. I was organizing books at work, standing in a pretty secluded area of the store, when all of a sudden the lights went off. I was like WTF? Then I realized OMG the Christmas lunch! Everyone’s leaving and no one noticed I was standing here! I ran to the door – which was locked – and knocked frantically. I was lucky because everyone were standing outside deciding who were going in which car so one of the bosses let me out. They were like “where were you?”. I think they assumed I had already gone home since they knew I wasn’t going to the lunch and they couldn’t see me anywhere. Jeez, wouldn’t being locked in at work for the rest of the day have been fun!

I’m still looking for people to exchange Christmas cards with. Are you interested in getting a card from Sweden? If so E-mail me your address to quende[at]spray.se

Besides whining I’m not doing much. Right now I’m listening to the angriest industrial music I can find because it gives me energy and god knows I need that. The weather is so grey here. I’ve barely seen the sun in weeks and it makes me so tired. Sunshine always gives me energy and makes me want to get up and do things. A total lack of that obviously has a great effect on me. So, I listen to fast and furious (no pun intended) music. It livens up the day. Recommend me some more of that will you please. Industrial, angry, fast.

I haven’t been up to anything lately. I just work at my new job, go home and watch TV and then sleep. My life have become even more of a routine and every day is exactly the same. Today I didn’t even know what day it was. First I thought Tuesday but that didn’t seem right so I decided that it must be Wednesday. Obviously it’s Thursday. I’m not used to this working every day thing. I haven’t had a place to go to five days a week since I was in high school and that’s quite a while ago.

I do different things at my job every day. Today I organized books in the store and then painted a glass that we’re now selling. Things are very different from my old job since I’m no longer in charge of anything. I’m not allowed to use the cash register, I’m not the one that decides prices, I don’t do any paper work and I barely put new stuff out since I’m not sure where to put it. I just do a little of this and a little of that and often work alone. I like working alone but not having any real responsibilities makes me feel less important than at my old job.

Other than working I don’t do anything. I’ve been feeling quite asocial lately and haven’t seen a friend or partied for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow is Friday and I’m not sure I want to do anything tomorrow either. Right now I’m fine spending all of my free time alone in my apartment.

I really don’t like the thought of being the new girl. The one who knows the place the least.  At my old job I had pretty much free hands and could change a lot of stuff without even asking my bosses. I won’t have that freedom in this store. Obviously everyone would hate me if I as the new girl came with all these opinions of how the store should be ran and organized. You simply don’t do that when you’re new. I think it’s probably one of my flaws, the fact that I want everything to be done my way. I don’t like others telling me how to do things but obviously that’s how the world works. I’ve just been very lucky having all that freedom at my old job. I don’t think it’s common. Espescially not when you’re young.

This is why I want to work alone. One day I will be a freelance web designer with my own company and be my own boss. That’s the plan and step one of the plan is going to college in january. It’s just two distance education classes of 7.5 högskolepoäng (high school points) each but it’s a good start. For the first time in my life I’ll do something I’ve actually chosen myself. I haven’t really chosen my jobs because even though i liked my last two jobs they were just something I did for a while, not something I’ve dreamed about doing.

I think many people start working after high school thinking they’ll only work for a while but then they get comfortable and never go back to school. I’m glad I’m finally taking the leap away from that because it’s too easy to postpone your grand plans.

But school is in january. For the next four months I’ll continue working as a sales clerk.

What I’m up to: I’m in the middle of a Lord of the Rings marathon which I started saturday. So far I’ve watched movie 1 extended version, movie 2 extended version and movie 1 extra material. Since the extended versions are like three hours long and the extra material to each of them is at least four hours this has taken me a while and I’m not even halfway done!

Calamari: (a fancy word for squid!). Am I the only one who like this food? It barely have any taste but I love the consistence! Like rubber, most people say. Well in that case I like rubber.

Party: Friday I went to the fair fest (marknadsfesten) or whatever I should translate that to. Yeah, fair fest I guess. It’s this lame ass small town event that takes place the night before the fair. A bar, carouselles etc. Well since I live in a lame ass small town I also attend it’s lame ass fair fest. And as long as you’re drunk everything is fun you know. So yeah, I was drunk. My knees have scratches so I must have fallen some time during the night. I can’t remember it though. I also asked my sister to take my bag with extra clothes home with her. I really can’t remember why. I don’t even live with my family so it makes no sense. Oh well, neither do I when I’m drunk.

Work: I still have none and this week will be my eight week doing nothing. First my job had summer holiday, then I was sick and then I had my last day at work. So, here I am, doing nothing. It’s ok.

Life in general: In waiting I guess. Waiting for next year when I’ll start college. Waiting to find an apartment in Jönköping so I can move. Waiting for life to begin.

And hopefully I’ll start two distance education college classes in january. I want to study one class called “Designing for the web” which is about the coding aspect of web design and one called “Multimedia for the web” about creating graphics (mostly flash animations) for the web. I’m so thrilled about this. I mean, college. Wow. Of course I’ll do all the studying from home but still, it’s college. I’m finally getting a proper education. And after I’m done with those two classes I’ll probably take some more advanced ones.

Life’s good. I have a plan. Now I just need to get out of this town.

I’ve now been sick for eleven days and counting the rest of this week I will have missed out two weeks of work when I hopefully go back next tuesday. I’m getting a bit bored. Two weeks without any social contact besides phone calls is a bit much, even for me. I would like to go out and party with my friends but that’s a no can do.

Me getting different kinds of infections, having to take penicillin is kind of a summer tradition of mine. In the past eight years I’ve been on penicillin four times, every time during the summer. At least I barely ever get sick but when I do it’s usually something serious.

Oh well, I’m gonna go back to watching The X-files now. I’ve been having a re-watch marathon during my isolation and I’m now on season two.

I’m still very pleased. It looks good. The only thing that bothers me is that my next layout have to top this. I’m thinking shadows, highlights and gradients of some kind. Too bad the only graphics oriented thing I know how to do is blends. And I don’t use blends in my layouts anymore. My current web design goal is to make a really ace web 2.0 layout. This layout is pretty web 2.0 but not ace enough.

My current goal in life is to study web design for real. I’m gonna start looking into distance educations and if I’m lucky I’ll be a student in six months. I’ll start out with basic web design. Obviously after ten years of building web pages I already know the basic stuff but at least I’ll have what I can do on paper. And after the basic stuff I can apply to more advanced classes and start to really learn and improve. I hope that I’ll one day will be able to work and support myself as a web designer. Except for my more crazy plans involving hippie vans and travelling web design is the only thing I can see myself working with for a longer period of time. The thrift store job has been fun and all but it’s not what I want to do with my life.

Oh and I decided not to accept affiliates anymore. I prefer finding cool sites to link myself rather than having people apply for it. Plus I really hate turning people down. No matter how you put it it’s so personal. It’s like saying “No thank you, I don’t like your site”. If you’ve been my affiliate there’s no need to worry though. Except for dead links and people who haven’t commented in months all of you are still linked, but now as “favourites” instead of “affiliates.

I still don’t know which day of the festival I’ll work. It’s either thursday, friday or saturday. Personally I hope for thursday but we’ll see. I hope the job doesn’t mean I have to stand still in one place for twelve hours. Watching the entire area and thus being able to walk around sounds a lot better. It’ll still be pretty boring since it’s a night job and all but hey, at least it gives me a free ticket.

I hope I can get off my regular job for the festival. My attendance is really good so I hope my bosses will take that into conscideration and let me have some fun. This is the only thing ever happening in Hultsfred! I only work tuesday, thursday and half friday but working means I have to go to bed early the day before so I’m missing a lot more festival time than just those three days. That would really, really suck.