Some jobs you take because you need the experience and, more desperately, the money. No matter how temporary you tell yourself it is, hours can blow themselves out to weeks. Days even. Desert days. Parched entertainment-free, crushing-to-the-point-of-depressing days. Taking your insignificance and dividing it by itself.
A few years ago I tried to scrape out exit-hope in a hijacked sticky pad, transformed into a make shift calendar, with removable days/countdowns. Most days carried pointless workings finding the percentage of the month down to pay day – and the distance to the end of year (or where soever your exit day may exist).
In an effort to prove to yourself (through the mire of cold calling) that the person you were before you took the job still exists, the days are marked by haiku. You know, spend enough time sitting still and that stuff can happen; it can break up a day. At your desk by 9am, remove yesterday's sticky 9:30. 10:30 figure out, percentage wise, how much of the gap between pays you have navigated. 11:30 work out the percentage of the year down. Fit in a haiku where you can and before you know it, its time for lunch.
Bung all these discarded days in a notebook, and you have a ready made reminder of how dull things can be for when you have moved on to new jobs with new dark dips.
