The vortex, Charlie

Recently I've discovered there's a vortex on my desk.
I'm not quite sure why it's there or who's on the other side, but it's most definitely there.

I'll explain.

At my internship, I have a desk. A shitty wobbly one. I try not to touch it too much - I fear it might collapse. I've made a desk (partly) collapse once, in a classroom in Russia, and I can assure you, it's not a good time. Good thing I feel no shame, but still, not fun to accidentaly vandalize a classroom when you're trying to make a good impression.

So, my desk. Not only is it shitty. It is also very mysterious.

And it has a vortex.

The first time the possibility of having a vortex on my very own desk came to my mind, was when I lost two pens. They were gone one morning. I had put them precisely between my computer screen and keyboard, and they had disappeared. I posted the idea about the vortex on my twitter feed and got mocked. Like all the great minds of the world, I suppose.

But.

Yesterday I started the eight and final week of my internship. I had not been at the office for two weeks, so I came back completely energized and happy (Bazinga. It was 9 o'clock in the morning. I'm neither energized nor happy in the morning. Ever.).

When I went to sit down at my desk, I saw it.

There it was.

Between my computer screen and my keyboard.

One of the lost pens. The red one.

I used it all day and put it back where it belongs - close to the vortex - and left. When I arrived at the office today, it was gone again.

But the second lost pen was back.

The blue one.

So there you go. The vortex giveth and the vortex taketh away.

So cool.

Oh dear, look at the time

Punctuality never was one of my strong suits, I must admit. But it has definitely gotten worse over the years. Ridiculous little fact: my sun sign is Virgo, and apparently, we’re supposed to be the most perfectionist and punctual human beings alive. I call bullshit. Seriously, that is the most flagrant lie I’ve ever read in the entire collection of astrology crap out there. 


When I’m meeting friends, I’m usually the one who is ten minutes late. I barge into class rooms mumbling excuses long after the professor arrived. When I’ve made dinner reservations, there’s always a risk of losing my table because I’m not at the restaurant in time. The only exception occurs when I have to go somewhere I’ve never been before: then I’ll most likely be at my destination at least ten minutes early. I always expect it’ll take way longer to get there than it actually does, or I fear I might get lost on the way over there. Don’t laugh, it’s a valid fear – I have the orientation skills of a retarded fruit fly.


So today I had to be at my internship around 9.30. I woke up at 7.15 and decided to snooze for a while. I am the Queen of Snooze. I can’t remember when I last immediately jumped out of bed when my alarm went off, honestly. I woke up again at 9.30. I decided I would send my boss an e-mail right away, explaining that I had overslept and that I would get there as soon as possible. But first I would snooze for another five minutes. I woke up again at 10.20. FUCK. That’s when I really sent the e-mail, got out of bed and got ready. Knowing that I would only get there around twelve o’clock – if I was lucky – and beating myself up over it the entire time: what the hell was I thinking?


I already can’t really afford to be late anymore: I have been late before (nothing too bad, but still), I’ve been absent sick twice, and there was one misunderstanding where I was walking around in the city, gathering information for one of my assignments, and my boss didn’t know about it so she e-mailed me later to ask me where the hell I’d been that day. This is NOT good. I simply CANNOT be late anymore. I’m seriously going to fuck up my internship evaluation if I continue like this. I also fear that people at work are going to start thinking I’m going out every night, or something like that, which is absolutely not true. I stay in every night when I have to work the next day, because I know I’m already having a hard time getting out of bed as it is, let alone when I’ve been smoking and drinking the entire night. But they don’t know that. And I wouldn’t blame them if that was their conclusion.


Anyway. I must stop this.


Therefore I would like to use this opportunity to make a promise: never again will I be late at my internship. I will be the first one there every morning, starting tomorrow. I will also try to be the last person to leave in the evening a couple of times. I mean it. I swear.


N.