An interesting thing happened at work last week at the bookshop. I quit.I informed the boss that I would soon be moving on, and that I felt he was a reasonable fellow* and we ought to be on good terms, so I was happy to still work for a few weeks as long as he needed me. He told me that they didn't need me that day, and I should go right then. So, I tore my timecard in twain, and headed over to my new job as a customer service representative.
Naturally, given my cheery disposition and love of talking on phones, this would seem the perfect job for me. But it gets even better, because I am serving as customer service for the two types of websites that suit me most, given my devout orthodoxy and dedicated nutritional regimen: Diet websites, and religious websites.
Within my first full week at the new job, I had already discovered that "Customer Service Lad" is an anagram for "Eviscerate scum, Lord!" This being my main accomplishment, I continue to help people with their spirituality and nutrition plan while I eat chocolate and curse them to hell as I hang up the phone. I assure you that the curses are well justified, and that dieters can be almost as crazy as religious fanatics.
Anyway, the real upshot of quitting the bookshop is that my love of reading has returned. I've spent most of my life as a voracious reader, but since getting the job at the bookshop last year, my appetite for books had decreased. Well, the weekend after I had quit, a friend came to visit me, and brought the newest edition of Harry Potter, which she had just purchased.
She, having taken the trouble of driving from out of state just to visit, proceeded to ignore me and read her new book. Luckily, I had just borrowed the British versions of Potters one, two, and three, so I decided to hunker down and read for the first time since quitting the bookstore. We spent roughly the entire sunday sitting around reading Harry Potter. It was impressive, in the scary kind of way.
But it felt good to sit down and read three and a half books in a day (even though they are short kids' books-- I had the American version of Potter four kicking around). It's that bizarre non-accomplishment sense of accomplishment, the same kind I get from beating a video game. If I was the sappy sort, I could end here by saying something about how there's a little magic in the Potter books after all.
Rubbish and balderdash. They're light fun reading with no particular literary merit aside from a staggering popularity, no better than many a fantasy or sci-fi book I've read in my day. But on the other hand, they are a hell of a lot more fun that complaint emails.