There’s an upside down buffalo on one of the stamps I put on an outgoing envelope I was working on at the end of the day, but that’s what you get for nudging me outside my comfort zone. It’s a long and pointless story, but there’s a short version: I was tired. I put the stamp on upside down. (And it’s not even the right stamp. I was looking for a 20c stamp, but the closest I had was a 21c stamp, which has a buffalo on it.)

Sometimes I wonder if I’m in the right line of work. (Sometimes?) The construction trade is a paranoid world that is against everything I stand for. Okay, not everything I stand for, but everything I wish I stood for. Even though I’m sometimes a little pessimistic, I’m never paranoid. That’s not a contradiction, no matter how it looks. I can feel down in the dumps without believing everyone is out to get me.

Not the Boss, though, and not anybody else in this business. There’s paperwork on top of paperwork to cover every contingency (and every ass). The Boss always thinks he’s not going to get paid for work that we’ve done. That’s why we file every possible provisional form whenever we enter into a contract, so that we can “go after” somebody when they don’t pay us. (The fact that they always do pay us hasn’t convinced him that people are mostly honest, because he can always come up with a scenario that’s worse than the worst case scenario.)

So here I am after 5:00 pm, and it’s pitch black outside, and I’m getting all the paperwork ready to file a preliminary notice on a company who has told me they’ve already put the check in the mail. (And I believe them!) It’s not as if I need something else to keep me busy, especially since the phone started ringing well before I was half awake this morning. Even working on almost no sleep, though, I won’t let them make me as paranoid as the Boss. They’re trying. They’re closing in all around me, but I won’t let them do it to me.