if you can cheer me up, i can learn to love you

The quote of the day concerned two awkward goof-balls attempting to wax poetic about social cues.
this is something we do every day, pick apart a social structure or two until we've beaten it like a bad dog, until it's on the ground, begging for air, for the chance to show us a "different side."
these conversations last days. we can pick up where we left off, always, and let the disintegration begin.
i could potentially describe the bus ride that i had the other day,
the one that began with my partner-in-crime and i walking to the bus stop on a cloudless morning, i hadn't noticed until we arrived at the stop and he followed me that he hadn't lit a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows. The #3 comes every ten minutes. Of course it was full, it was nearing 8:00, filled with junior professionals heading down the hill, downtown to the high rise cubicles that we all occupy, even on beautiful days.
And then the Can Lady got on. The Asian lady with the half-drooping face. Some sort of deformity that i cannot define. She carries cans in ripped black hefty bags onto the bus, and they leave a slithery trail of flat beer and soda to the back door, where she absolutely needed to be, even though there were shoulder-to-shoulder bodies in the aisle.
I think the drippy mess crept onto my jeans as she dragged her bags on the floor through our legs. I smelled old beer all day.

i wish i were a better writer, i could describe what we talk about on a daily basis.
i could describe a certain friend's descent (or ascent, really) into unemployment. fun-employment.
everyone looks and says, "tsk tsk. jeez, aren't you looking? can't you find anything? aren't you bored?"
the answer i received, once, was..."no, i'm not looking."
not looking not because she didn't want to, but because this forced break from the rat race was exactly what she needed to be able to sit down and really take a look at herself and her own needs.
We work in this giant machine.
I'm a firm believer that the machine works. It serves its purpose.
That micromanagement is how people are "motivated" into doing "work."
That nagging barb in the back of your neck that walks by your desk, employing some secret mix of formulated bullshit to suck your soul out and thereby rendering you able to do no more than make charts and graphs (not using red).
The machine means that we all have a place.
But when she left it, it meant that she didn't have a place.
Accepting this was the first step. Because it doesn't come without withdrawal
that longing...wishing you could score a job, any office job, temping
anything to be able to prove your worth for 8-10 hours a day.