big girl job

Woke up in cold sweat from a nightmare after months. This is an attempt at taking my mind off. There's a video call in progress in the background somewhere but I'm too fuzzy to figure out who is speaking. It might be someone's birthday, there's a lot of gleeful clapping. Oh, did I tell you about my birthday? I was scared, of sorts. It was good.  Great, in fact. Won't go over it again here but it made it to the red journal. I'm twenty now. 

I started a little office job you know? It's a little depressing on days when the sun won't show through the smog and the row of office towers are only a scramble of shapes across the tiny balcony behind the closed door at the canteen where we escape to at bathroom breaks. I've been trying to figure out the little ins and outs of the buildings, all the shortcuts to the chai tapri out front, and it's been a minor success. I perhaps only hate the hours. It takes up half my day, the time I could've spent watching a sunset somewhere else in the city, with people I like. I only wish they'd leave us be before sunset. I'm cribbing a lot, it's honestly not that bad. Easy money almost. I'm saving up for a hopeful vacation to the hills up north. That, and a few gifts. Maybe a surprise flight ticket. It's just two months, I'll be just fine. Besides, I have friends and the absence is easier to unthink now.

A lot of things have gotten better. I'm going to start looking at faultlines if I begin now but truly, I'm mostly happy. Things are looking bright. The second half of January will have me traipsing around delhi watching all the sunsets I'm missing out on now. I've begun treating this stipend as an abstract idea. It has no measurable beginning or end, it just is. Or it will be, at the end of the month. I can have innumerable hopes from it and it won't matter. I won't go home in a long time, and maybe I'll miss it too. There's an email I want to send, but that might not be the best idea.