I love watching the USA show "Monk". Monk is so funny and I so relate to him because he is so very strange. I know what it's like to be weird but still respected because you're smart.

There was an episode on Monk where he had to infiltrate an office. People in the office started liking him, and it was so poignant because you could tell that this was the first time Monk ever felt accepted by people. Then of course, Monk being Monk, it didn't last and in the end the office people thought he was weird and things were back to normal for him.

I am so having a Monk experience at my job. I heard the secretary who was promoted to an analyst whisper loudly to the summer intern "don't talk so loud, Brenda is here." I am such a freak at my office. I know I shouldn't care because I deliberately don't hang out with the office crowd, but for whatever reason it still hurts. I wish it didn't hurt and I thought I was too old for it to matter, but you know it still hurts and I'm like thinking "JC, why have you abandoned me?"

Okay, I know I am being dramatic but that's what I feel like right now. I know it's all my fault because I don't hang out and I don't gossip, and I'm one of those office workers who keeps to themselves and don't really hang with people in my group, but other than that, I don't know what I did to deserve such treatment. It's not like I snitch on people like the other people in my group, who are the biggest gossips and snitches I've ever come across in any office.

People in my group act like they're still in junior high or high school and it's like some popularity thing at work. I have not come across such clickish behaviour in an office in such a long time. It's like totally alien to me. I wish I could be like the two other women in my office who don't hang out and don't care, and are senior managers. But I'm not a senior manager and I guess some part of me does care.

Honestly, I have never worked in such an immature office before. I'm like, I used to be really well liked in other departments at other companies I've worked for, but not this one. I hear gossip about our group all the time, about how we're so strange. We are a strange group! I thought the new director would change our group dynamic, but I think it's gotten worse.

I have to get out of my job. I spoke to this guy in another division in muy company on Friday about an open position that he has, but the timing for me to move into his group will not be right until September. If I have to work with people, I want to work for someone who recognizes me and likes me and this guy so does. We can talk for hours and hours about healthcare and its problems. He treats me better than anyone in my current department. Sad isn't it?

I don't know why I feel so sorry for myself right now about my working situation, but I do. But you know, it's always like this before I make a change in my life. Before I moved apartment, things got really bad and I started to hate living in my old place. Before I change any job, things get really bad. It's almost as if the universe is pushing me out the door and moving on to my next step in my life. Things get so bad that when I do move, I have no regrets. It's an odd way to move on to your next step in life, but one that is probably necessary for me because I'm the type who tends to get rooted very quickly. It takes alot for me move one and things have to get really bad before I even consider. Once I make up my mind though to move one, then things happen pretty quickly for me whether I'm ready for it or not.

I expect the same thing to happen now. I am so ready for a new job that I know things will start to happen very quickly so I can get out of my current situation. I've been thinking for about a couple of months now that I will not be in my job for the whole month of July.

When I first had this thought, I was so confused! I wasn't actively looking for a job and things weren't so bad. But as the month of June has progressed, my job and my attitude towards it have gotten progressively worse. Things have gotten so bad that I want out of my job at any cost! God, I hope something happens soon! I don't know how much I can take my job anymore. I hate not fitting in and having people talk about me like how our ex-secretary spoke about me today. I'm like what the hell did I do to deserve this?

I think M-Square is sick or something. I haven't spoken to him since we broke up but I can still pick things up from him, and I get that he is really sick. I have no idea what's wrong with him, and part of me wants to call and ask but I know that would not be a good thing.

The man obviously did not want me in his life anymore and for once I'm going to heed my friends' advice and not beg him to take me back. S0 many good things have happened to me since we broke up anyway, things I know wouldn't have happened had we still been together. So I am in the firm belief that it was all for the best that our relationship fizzled out.

This is so creepy! I was reading the headlines on SFGate.com when I see the name Darren Mack refusing to surrender in Mexico, and I'm like I know that name. Around 10 or so years ago, I took a Communications course from a guy named Darren Mack. He was dating someone named Charla, who also worked for the organization giving the course. I even saw Charla one night, and she had this stop you dead in your tracks diamond engagement ring on her finger. Darren said that Charla was the perfect woman for him. He also told the class that he was going through some terrible child custody court case with his first wife and their two kids.

I wasn't sure it was the same guy until I saw his picture, and it was him. How freaky! He was a very intense guy, and we kind of had a little run in on a conference call once. I had to hug him once after a seminar just because everyone was doing it, and I don't know ... it was very awkward ... I gave him a hug anyway but it was so awkward. He kind of creeped me out for whatever reason. No one else I knew was freaked out by him, but I was. I read in another news article that he and Charla left the organization I was taking classes from back in 2002. I stopped taking courses from that place in 1998.

Now Charla is dead, stabbed by Darren and he is being hunted by the police. Wow! You never know what people are capable of, until you read about them in the news or see them on TV wanted for murder.

This quote is from an article in the LA Times that came out on June 14 on A Wok With Jesus: Saving Souls in Chinese Kitchens: Thousands of Chinese kitchen workers live on the margins. A former restaurant owner tends to a subculture most Americans never see.

"Nationwide, more than 1 million immigrants work in 41,350 Chinese restaurants — from mom-and-pop takeouts to mammoth buffet enterprises employing hundreds, according to the Fremont, Calif.-based Chinese Restaurant News.Though many restaurants hire non-Asian workers, Lou's ministry concentrates on the Chinese — the people she knows best.It's a subculture hidden from most Americans. Speaking little or no English, many Chinese immigrants must settle for dispiriting kitchen work — laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week.Many, here illegally, have no access to labor unions or social service networks. They live in cramped restaurant-owned dormitories or in rented garages without cooking facilities, bathrooms or running water.To cope with their harsh living conditions and mind-numbingly mundane work, many fall prey to gambling, drugs, alcohol and prostitution.Among the worn wooden chopping boards and flashing meat cleavers, hissing deep-fryers and walk-in freezers, the desire for a higher calling is fierce.

"In every kitchen, there's always the same tired old man hiding in the corner near the stove that is his life," Lou said. People in the restaurant business acknowledge a regimen called going "from the pillow to the stove," with no other life. Sadly, it's true," said Betty Xie, editor in chief of the Chinese Restaurant News. "Workers are lonely. They came from far away and don't have family with them. With no English skills, they don't have any choices."They're trapped by the restaurant life. They see no hope."

The phrase I red-fonted just brings tears to my eyes ... I don't know. Somehow I so relate to this image of the old man hiding in the corner. I feel like this in my job right now. My job is not my life, but I am so unhappy at my current job. It hasn't felt like home for these last years, and I keep getting distracted from leaving. It's all been for the best I know. There were lessons I needed to learn, people that I needed to meet, but I had such high hopes for this job that it was going to be a place where I could stay for awhile.

I know I need to give up this hope of ever being at home in job, and that my true job, my true life purpose is to focus on creative writing and not my job business writing of drafting a quality update for a regional medical directors meeting.