The Inverse World’s effect from the Tarot Deck of Major Doom kicked in yesterday. And it started with coffee.
- I make coffee with an aluminum Moka Pot. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing because Fuck Early O’Clock, and the only thing that stopped me from putting the pot in the microwave and zapping it was the pot was too tall to fit. I fully woke up and stared at it before realizing I wasn’t paying attention to my environment. Right. It’s on.
- On the drive to work, four cars (in four different areas on the freeway) came out of nowhere to cut me off. Again, not paying attention to the environment and assuming things will be as they usually are.
- Shit has been moved on my desk. That’s grounds for a shanking as far as I’m concerned. Different piles are in different states of processing, and even my boss said my office was not laid out properly when my predecessors had money to burn. So my pretty office is always in a visual state of dysfunction because unlike my predecessors, I actually do the fucking work. There is a designated input box that everyone knows to use when work comes in from unusual sources. It wasn’t used. My environment was fucked up and it took forty-five minutes to sort out what had to go where and if anything was lost before I could actually get to work.
- “There is an error with your user profile. To resolve this error, please reboot your computer.” Hey, what’s another word for “user profile”? If you said environment, you’re correct. Three times before lunch.
- Almost slipped on the wet plastic that had fallen before the door. Almost. I was near paranoid levels of observing my environment by this point.
- Lunch time! Woohoo! An instinct stops me from taking my usual route to the usual place. Good thing, as from the safety of the traffic I was caught up in, I watch a monster truck driver show off, lose control, and bounce off the car that was parked where I would have been if I went my usual route.
- Back to work. I have a 2pm personal deadline to meet, and a 5pm hard deadline to meet. I have informed everyone waiting on my output not to call me or camp out for the results. I will email and call everyone necessary when completely done. Guess what happened. Really. And each one was upset when they were told it wasn’t done and to wait for my notification instead. (One person was double upset when he went to complain to my boss and she backed me up on procedure.)
- The copier ran out of paper. I fill it before I go on a full tear, because I can use up three reams of paper by myself when on a tear and it’s rude to leave the next person with ten sheets. I filled it first thing in the morning to prevent this issue but didn’t get to the copying stage of the process until after lunch. How the fuck does a 12 person office use up five reams of paper in four hours? Oh, Accounting. Never mind.
- Windows Explorer + Adobe Acrobat Reader + The Inverse World = A strange bug that froze everything and the quickest way to recover from it was not to reboot, but to merely logout and log back in each time it happened. Twelve times in all. Because fuck you, that’s why.
- What do you mean they are working on the office wifi right now? Why was no notice sent out? This is the final step in the process and the gear can only be loaded over this specific office connection because that’s the compromise IT made with my boss over this gear and if I have to use my personal hotspot and burn through a gig of data to get this done, I am going to make a CAT5 of Nine Terminals and flay a bitch with it. (I finally mentally yelled at the World card at this point. I felt it apologize but it also reminded me that I’m not as helpless in the situation as I thought. It was right. The right kind of inquiry to the right person made the network guy suddenly realize his test had been finished two hours ago and the wifi was re-enabled. Even better, no one announced the availability, so I had all the bandwidth to myself for the task.)
- This work cycle was completely finished at 3:50pm. The notification and calls went out at 3:52pm. One guy was camping out since 3pm for his gear. Three others arrived at 4pm, eager to get their gear and get home out of the rain. That left one person. I had asked the ambulatory four if they were going by the disabled man’s house in hopes they would take his gear to him. Damp weather really fucks up his joints, the no-slip mats had blown away in the wind, and with all the Inverse World shenanigans going on, I didn’t want to risk him getting hit as collateral damage. Hahahaha, no. Not one of them was willing to take it, even though one guy in particular literally lives twelve houses away! He has to have it by 5pm, or the general manager is informed the work is late. Fine. I’ll take it.
- Company car. It’s 69F outside with light rain. Why is the heater on full blast? Why is the radio volume turned all the way up? Why is the radio on the most shitiest of stations ever? Why is the seat pushed so far up, a smurf would break his leg to get in? I already knew why, and the answer wasn’t Trouble2. Had to fix the driver’s environment before setting out.
- Text from my boss: “Good job on meeting deadline. Clock out BEFORE 5pm please.” But these folks are so nice to talk to. They always talk to me like a human being and not a corporate cog. They understand the stresses of my work, and he always teases me about making sure I have adjusted the conference room environment to be the least pain in his ass possible even though he gives me shit for it. “I don’t need special attention!” “It’s not special attention, it’s making sure your cane doesn’t get caught up in anyone’s chair!” “That’s special attention!” I lost track of time and clock out at 5:09pm. Oops. Lesson learned: A negative environment is not always a hostile one. Too much of a good thing can impact just as hard as its absence.
- Time for the drive home. Hey, where the fuck did this winter storm come from. For the first time today, I’m afraid. Okay. I have tags I can pull and cloaks I can borrow. Long story short, I missed getting side-swiped five times. I lost sight of the road four times, and pulled over to let the worst of the weather pass instead of trying to guess where the lanes are. I did not try race home as quickly as possible, but used the rain-shadow of a big truck to keep as much visibility as possible and more importantly, to keep moving. That #1 lane kept coming to a full stop, but the truck in front of me kept going at a steady (but under the speed limit) pace. Still got home at the usual time.
- The slow pace driving home allowed me to dwell on the World card further. Nearly everything that happened to me were items I had no control over. It wasn’t the events themselves that had the greatest damaging potential, it was my personal reaction to them. If I tried to force my environment to go as it always had gone, I would still be at work, after hours, trying to make two plus one equal four. But by adjusting my reaction to what happened, by flowing around the obstacles instead of trying to blow them up, I still accomplished all my tasks as I had set out that morning to do. I made my peace with the Inverse World, and no further shenanigans happened at home.
I’m still undecided if to walk the majors backward, starting with the World, the Judgement, then the Sun, et cetera, or if to randomize the deck and take what comes as it comes.
We’ll see what happens.