Couldn't have said it better myself

I got this email from a dear distant friend about her new job. She and I are friends through other friends kinda so it's not like we talk often or in great detail. However, her email so clearly articulates how I feel about my job that I had to post it. She's smart, so she totally communicates better than I do.
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Hello, my much esteemed friends and family --

After six months off the clock, I'm happy to announce that I have a new job working for the [ABC Nonprofit]. Because some of you have heard all about it and some haven't heard from me for a while, I'm writing this as a little diorama into what's going on with me. Consider it a job-focused annual-holiday-letter or a travelogue, and if that kind of mass emailing annoys you, you've already seen the lead and can go on with your day. But if you've been sending me good thoughts and prayers and wondering after my welfare in my unemployment, here ya go with some satisfying updates to chew on.

I've been working for the [ABC Nonprofit] folks for a week now. Basically my job is to be the keeper of the enormous database [description deleted]. This work has more in common with being a librarian and resource broker than being a counselor, so it's a totally different direction in the social work world. No crisis. No one cries, not all day. No one really laughs either, or stretches, or burps, or talks about her period -- it's just a weirdly bland office job.

Honestly, that's suiting me just fine. It's boring but easy, and they pay me enough to start working down my debt and go to the movies every now and then. I'm in a kind of in-between resting place, not sure in what direction I want my professional life to go. It's a good place to hang around and figure it all out without the urgency of rent pushing on my decisions. It's a temporary 3-month position, but this is a "once you're in, you're in" kind agency and it seems likely I'll get absorbed by this or another project when it's over. I am happy for the stability, after having traversed some uneven ground of the recent. It's also kind of nice to have a job that is not my passion, it's easier to draw boundaries. But it's not going to satisfy me forever, it's clear that I was made for different work in the world -- and made for work that fewer people can do well, I'm certain that in time I'll feel my heart called by the need for me again. But until then it's pleasant enough -- I can see doing a couple years here.

Working for a huge corporate nonprofit is FASCINATING, if not entirely comfortable. I've worn makeup and a girdle every day (I skipped it today, it's "casual Friday"), but I've still been tagged as "funny" and "colorful", though to my estimation I've been neither. I have an office, but most of the floor is a cubecity -- it looks like a rabbit warren to me, an elaborate network of underground tunnels where everyone is busily workingworkingworking with no discernable product. 78 people work here, and I am dispatched to see "[name deleted] in Finance" or "[name deleted] in HR" on the regular. I am the only (ONLY!!! really????) openly queer person in the agency -- hence the makeup in the attempt to mitigate my coworkers' under-exposure and not get too deep in gossip. It also helps me feel a little more armored, a femme trick [name deleted] has instilled in me. My job doesn't really need to take 40 hours (actually, company workweek is 36.25 hours), but I'm of course going to make it do so.

We have a written "casual Friday" dress code, which includes no jeans or t-shirts or tennis shoes -- what else could casual mean, I'm unclear. The people in my office are not mission-motivated, are mostly Christian and suburban, and talk about their diets quite a lot. They say things like "she dropped the 'F-Bomb'" or "I'm going to go home and watch TV...in my underwear [scandalized whisper]." They're certainly nice enough to me, I'm not trying to put them down. It's just a big change from work where everyone had a body and that fact was acknowledged, where the word "pussy" was part of my professional language, and where I wouldn't think of working without a box of tissues on my desk.

I'm not sure they're ready for me. So I'm trying to do a little stealth, find allies, do my job in an exemplary manner, and acclimate the office to me and me to the office a little at a time. I told them I'm playing a Gnome in an Artscape (huge local arts festival, non-[colloquial city alias deleted]) exhibit, they're still taking that in with much giggling and head shaking. One thing at a time. If nothing else, this job is an excellent immersion experience in a sociological experiment. What is the lifecycle of the Office Worker (corporatus wonkius) in her natural habitat? Who are her predators and prey? How will I assimilate, how will I resist, how will I engage this place in a way that feels authentic but doesn't make me a dimissable curiosity? That's the point of the research, I guess we'll just see.

In the meantime, I'm proud and grateful to be employed. I think you for your care and support as my community, it's meant a lot to me. Blessings to you all, be well.

Love,
Super Smart Long Distance Friend