Aggressively Mediocre Internet Use
SWOT ANALYSIS: MONA BUCKET’S LIFE
Strengths: Can recover from scandal! Can repress emotions, including shame. Am the right amount of insane about work to succeed.
Weaknesses: Tends to get annoyed quite easily. Has trouble hiding it.
Opportunities: Returning to work in six weeks. Have time to do things like study branding and industry trends and research potential clients
to bring in. Have time to make the five hundred recipes I bookmarked. Can train for a marathon. Purchase a loom?
Threats: I only like running as a vague concept. Might be evicted. Possibly my mental health is suffering.
I close my notebook and look at the clock on my phone. Damn, the SWOT analysis only ate up twenty minutes.
It was the worst of times, aka Saturday, three days since I fucked up my life. The rest of the week has passed with a (mostly)
silent phone and empty schedule (the water shut-off the day after the fire alarm turned out to be only a minor inconvenience).
But I’m determined to nail this leave by making the best use of my time, to turn this into an opportunity to come back stronger, like my boss said.
But that is proving harder than expected.
I’m trying to maintain a routine, but it’s veered slightly.
I blame my environment. The constant sounds: the blasting TVs, random yelling, and hallway wall bangers (I swear the thumps must be on purpose at this point).
The smells: always someone burning or smoking something—I think Old Couple Below Me even had a small garbage can fire on their deck for some reason; and the sights: always someone picking up a delivery in questionably held-up pants.
The problem is, they don’t prepare you to be thrust into having no life.
And as it turns out, when I don’t have work to hyperfocus on, I don’t relax and reflect—rather, I simply find other things to satisfy my urge to fixate.
I am on a sliding scale further away from the realm of normal.
And without work to occupy me, all my senses feel heightened. Every little thing feels louder, more intense. I’ve lived in
this building for five years, but now that I’m stuck inside all day, it’s like exploring a new world. If I hear someone in
the stairwell, I can’t help but check through my peephole to see who it is.
I lean against the window and watch people coming and going. I lie on my couch and listen to them doing their little routines.
I’ve learned that Fancy Widow below me is a mediocre violinist and every morning she practices for exactly one hour. Off-key.
Divorced Dad across the hall uses some kind of buzzing appliance way too often in the evenings, and my visions of what it
could be have become increasingly . . . creative. And yes, that means I’ve witnessed more distressing sights in my brain.
Across the street, Sami goes for a jog every morning at six a.m. and does elevated push-ups against the benches outside the
café before opening it up. Seemingly without shame.
I am being kind of freakish. If I truly lose my job, maybe I’ll spiral so far down the drain that I’ll be forced to ask Divorced
Dad if the shit show of a call center he seems to work at (based on the aggressive amounts of times I’ve heard the phrase
“thank you for holding” through his door) is recruiting.
At least there is Ernest, who makes me feel more stable by comparison.
Three times a day we trot to the park across the street while Ernest shakes uncontrollably, acting as if he’s terrified of every single person who passes, the birds chirping, life itself.
The poor guy needs Irene, and every shudder makes me feel like an even worse human being.
After all, I’m the reason she isn’t the one taking care of him right now.
On our very first walk together, in a rare bout of optimism, I took a picture of him in nature (the inner-city green space).
It didn’t pick up his shaking or his peen, so I posted it to my Instagram story so that everyone at work who follows me would
know how great I/mysterious dog was doing.
Forty-five minutes, and dozens of views but no hearts later, I no longer related to the version of myself that had posted
it, so I deleted it.
Better to fix myself internally before going online anyway. So I turned to cleaning out my fridge. Behind the crumbling wall
of meal prep containers—I was starting to run low on food—I found some artisanal kimchi I remembered purchasing at a farmers
market six months ago. At the time, I’d been all about it—proud to be getting my probiotics in and confidently getting the
bigger jar, chin held high like a total tool. I took the jar down to the trash area to dump the unused contents into the compost.
When I opened the bin, I saw an empty can of Pepsi sitting there among the rotting banana peels and potato skins. Didn’t that
just sum up the culture of complacency in this apartment building beautifully? This is what life can lead to, not even caring
about the bin systems.
My friends’ group chat has been strangely quiet in a way that indicates they probably created a new side chat that doesn’t include me.
I shouldn’t feel offended: I’m not there for the day-to-day anymore, and they probably just don’t want me to feel left out.
At least they’ve been responding to the interesting (if I do say so myself!) links that I’ve sent: a start-up skin cancer detection camera; a video of a guy bouncing really high on a trampoline; and a brief history of Alberta’s rat control program.
Olivia texted me on the side to ask how things
were going (“really great!!!” I’d replied, way too quickly, but the three exclamation points were the true overkill).
How long would it take before things started falling apart in my absence? The excessive hours I put in, the extra effort I
took to keep our clients happy—that wasn’t the kind of hole you could easily fill just by shuffling around my client list.
I ended up checking my boss’s socials for some kind of clue that she was overwhelmed, understaffed, in over her head without
me. But after viewing an Instagram story of her oldest kid’s piano recital, I felt like a garbage human (again).
Finally, I resorted to reading the entirety of the internet. Did I find what I needed? Absolutely not, but my algorithm is
in complete shambles. I looked up old clips from Kim’s Convenience, got curious about a specific episode, and realized there was a whole subreddit dedicated to the show. And of course I felt
like I could become one of the people who commented! I could be a joiner. But then I saw the last comment was posted thirteen
months ago. They’d all simply . . . moved on. How depressing. I clicked the window shut and vowed I would never let myself
end up in a lonely corner of the internet again if I could help it.
It was on Sunday morning that I started to freak out again, certain that my luck will run its course and Irene will still find a reason to kick me out.
I search rental properties and find the market to be depressingly lacking.
With my current situation and no proper job references, the only apartment on the rental website I’d be able to afford is a yellowed basement suite in the Deep South.
The landlord didn’t even bother to clean up after the last tenant before posting pictures of the bare mattress and questionable floor bucket.
I need to make sure things are good with Irene. Some of the tenants mentioned they’d check on her in the hospital. If I did
the same, wouldn’t that make me incredibly kind? A model tenant, really.
So I buy the flowers. I plan the words. And make it all the way to Rockyview General.
If only she wasn’t at the same hospital that my dad . . . where we lost him. As soon as I pass the reception desk for the
elevator bank, something about the smell of the disinfectant mixed with the laminate flooring brings me back to that day.
Me racing into the building, trying desperately to make it on time. I figured it was just another drunken incident that landed
him in the hospital, so I didn’t rush out of work at first, until my mom called to explain the urgency. I’d just stepped into
the lobby when I got the text from my mom.
He’s gone.
I was too late. Fitting, really. He had a tough time sticking around when I was a kid. And when he started reaching out again
a few years ago, I made sure to be busy. That was our rhythm—we kept missing each other.
Reminders of that day flood my mind as I push the elevator button to make it to the room I’m told Irene is in.
She’s in a private room at the end of the hall. When I enter, she’s sitting up in bed staring moodily at some off-brand Jeopardy! show silently playing on the television. Her leg is in a chunky pink cast propped up on a stack of pillows. The sight of
it makes my stomach curl with guilt.
Sitting beside her is a younger woman I’ve never seen before, who’s intently reading something on her phone.
“Irene, I’m so glad to see you.” I force the words out through my dry throat. I’d dressed in a clean button-down shirt and jeans, hair in a tidy bun, new tang under my pits. But I feel like she can see the shame clinging to me like dirt.
Mystery Woman looks up from her phone and stares down her button nose at me. Now that I have a better view of the sharp angles
of her face and signature auburn hair, she’s not a mystery. This is Lana Winston, a well-known commercial realtor. I’ve seen
her face plastered on bus benches and in the front windows of closed-down storefronts. But I especially recognize her because
she came into the Westmore Communications offices four years ago as a potential client. Carolyne was desperate to woo her—I’d
even been sent to buy special cookies for the meeting because Lana had posted about liking them on social media. But ultimately,
she ended up signing with one of our competitors. I’d been an associate at the time, sitting in the back of the meeting room;
I doubt Lana would remember my face.
I nod toward her in greeting. “I’m Mona, Irene’s tenant in 4C.”