Welcome to the Grind.

Well, it’s official. I’m back to being a temp. My stint as a television assistant production coordinator/unemployed actor/Williamsburg bum has ended. July is dry for the performing artist: unless you are already in a show or part of the 5 percent of actors who are always auditioning, someone like me finds themselves spending a lot of time doing nothing. Which is not to say I didn’t prefer it. On the contrary: I loved it. I’ve been going to the gym, keeping my apartment clean (as it seems genetically impossible for my other roommates to do), and taking it easy in the heat wave-ish weather we’ve been having. Upon logging into my bank account last Thursday, I realized the glory days are over. It’s back to work.

Trouble is, there ain’t no work to be had. So I trekked my ass back to the temp agencies I so involuntarily loathe and smelled them out to see what they got going for me.

Some things never change. A temp agency’s protocol in operating with their “associates” is one example. I’ve had very frank conversations with my two agencies. Every time they call me it’s always with a “wonderful opportunity” that “you’re just going to love”. I tell them unless they have a production contract for me to sign, there is nothing wonderful about it. I have of late encouraged them to change the wording of their agencies from “temping” to “staffing solutions”. The state of today’s economic culture is such that companies can’t really afford to do the true “temporary” position. 7 years ago that was a much different story, but that was before a bunch of jackasses thought it would be cool to ram a hundred thousand pounds of flying steel into a building.*

Back to the point… so sorry about that… I am now temping (I guess) for a “prominent” (the words of my staffing agent) CFO at a large Real Estate Agency (not large at all) on the Upper East Side (the most boring part of New York). I’ve graduated from Administrative Assistant to Executive Assistant and judging from the last two days of work, I do nothing but the same old copy/print/email/sticky/answer crap as everyone else does. I forget that all office work consists of is menial administrative work with an incredible array of acronyms and jargons particular to the field of (dis)interest. The people are slowly detaching from their souls, their postures continually slump, and the men like to metaphorically pee on other men, and the women like to complain about why there isn’t enough YooHoo in the fridge.

Oh wait a minute… that’s just me. More YooHoo dammit!

There are perks of course. I wish my Staffing Locater Assignment Giver or as I like to call her, SLAG, would have said that this was a very “flexible opportunity” instead of “wonderful”. For despite all the commonalties between this office and the other hundred thousand across this country, they do understand my own specific dreams and are willing to work around my auditions. My SLAG still has a hard time understanding that I actually work as an actor, but I these people do.

Plus the office pays for lunch. How awesome is that?

When I came to New York, I made a promise in the dark recesses of my consciousness that I would never temp again. I don’t think it knows that I’ve compromised its wishes, but it’s going to find out soon enough. It slowly rustles to the top every morning at 7am when my alarm goes off wanting to understand why the blazes I’m up so early. It’s dark down there so it’s going to take a few more days for it to fully emerge. When it does, I know I’m going to encounter a roller-coaster-ride of thought and emotion. I look forward to it I suppose. I have to. What else can I do?

I wait for August. Things pick up then. And cool down.

*Can I do a morbid tangent quickly? If the prospect of all this death and doom was 72 virgins in paradise, these people were not thinking clearly. Unless you are a sexual retard (which would not surprise me) who in their right mind would want to have sex with virgins for eternity? Sex kittens: maybe. Virgins: bloody forget about it