Dayworking

Tomorrow morning, for the first time in three seasons, I am required to work outside of my home.

Yes, I have been working entirely from home for an amount of time nearly equal to the gestation period of a human female, but tomorrow morning that changes.

I am not sad about this. I like the people I'll be working with. They are like family to me in many ways. Especially since I have blown off invitations from some of them to attend holiday functions. I have almost nine years of history with this company. That's a fair amount of history.

I'm a little nervous, because a lot has changed for me since the last time I was in there. It's hard to make changes solidify in front of people who have known you for a long time. When I was last there, I was a bitter freelancer and little else. Now I am a world-travelling novelist, a blogger, and way less bitter. Will they notice any change? Will they accept the new me? Is there a new me? Ah, questions, questions. It's entirely possible that I'm still fundamentally the same, just doing different things with my time.

I suppose it'll help that I look totally different from the last time I was there. When I left there last May, I was still attempting to grow out an unfortunate haircut known as a "Bonto," which was short and pretty conservative. One of the people there suggested that, like Samson's strength, my creativity was tied to my hair, and that I wouldn't be able to do much until I got my "creative" hair back. These days I have much longer hair and a beard. This is not entirely deliberate, and I do not know if it qualifies as "creative." My hair is the longest it's been since landing my first leading role in a high school play, and I was forced to cut my long locks for the part. That was about 17 years ago.

I had a beard while working there a few years ago. I wore a white shirt one day while I had this beard, and while smoking by the door to the building, a coworker told me I looked like Jesus.

"Jesus?" I asked.

"Yeah, Jesus." She stressed the name as though she thought I hadn't heard of him, and made a circular hand gesture possibly meant to indicate that all of me looked like Jesus. "You know, the beard and the glasses."

"The glasses?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah. I was just this morning thinking of the part of the Bible where Jesus goes to the Lenscrafters in Gallilee."

"Shut up," she said, going back upstairs to avoid an extension of the conversation. I seem to recall pestering her about this for days afterward.

Even though I still don't think Jesus wore specs, it'll be nice to see everyone again. Plus I'm pretty sure that I'll have a four day weekend when I leave there tomorrow afternoon.

You know, to recharge my batteries after my grueling ordeal.