Learning new things in old places

So I'm back in the US, and I've probably had more interesting experiences in that time than in my last twelve months in Russia. Before I move on to the boring, concrete things, I wanted to jot down two important things that I've learned:

• Exercise gives me a much more productive mindset. It seems like a massive waste of time when I'm lying in bed thinking about all that I have to do during the day, but it only takes about an hour and it makes me much more excited about getting other things done. Whereas if I just lie in bed, more often than not I end up wasting all my time. This is a fact that I've subconsciously known for a long time, but I'm hoping now that I've made it come out of my brain I will no longer have an excuse to ignore it.
• Attitude can truly make a difference. I am constantly asking people how they are, and responding when they return the question to me. I used to think that this phatic discourse (aka small talk) was pointless. But when I first started working at the grocery store (where I do this), I was excited to be there, so I responded to every question with as much sincerity as I could, with a lot of positive feeling. At the end of the day, I felt good about working, like it hadn't been drudgery at all. After working there a month or so, I was less excited, and often resorted to the response of "pretty good" or "alright", which is only slightly better than the completely bland "good". These days I finished work feeling tired and I felt reluctant to return to work. Since I realized this shift, I've gone back to trying to be positive and sincere in my questions and answers, and work is much less of a toil.

Continuing on from my second point, I was working yesterday (Memorial Day), which elicited sympathy from several customers. I told them that I didn't mind, and that I loved working. They all complimented me on my attitude, which bolstered it further.

Someday I want to make a list of positive adjectives and when I wish customers to have a "good" day, use all of these adjectives in place of good. There are some that sound a little strange to me though--as a guy, saying "have a fabulous day" is a little weird, for instance.

So, what has happened? I came home in January, applied to several jobs and finished my application essay for graduate school. At the beginning of February I started working at Wendy's again, just putting away stock and occasionally doing salad preparation, for about 12 hours a week. After over a month of hounding Food Lion, I finally got a job as a cashier there in March. I got a call from Randolph Community College shortly thereafter and was hired to teach English as a Second Language there. After a week of trying to do all three jobs I decided that something had to give and I resigned from my position at Wendy's. At the beginning of May I was promoted at Food Lion from cashier to office worker. Finally, I started school in the middle of May, and since the class times interfered with my ESL classes, I resigned from my position at Randolph Community College.

So now I'm working at Food Lion and taking one class (Linguistics for ESL Teachers) at UNCG. I say that I was promoted at Food Lion, but that sounds better than the reality. Most of the time I'm still doing a regular cashier's job. I have been trained to open or close the sales area, but it seems unlikely that I'll actually do it unless someone needs time off. Some people call the job being a "glorified cashier," because about half the time my responsibilities are just to help cashiers and become one myself if the store gets busy. But the position has a little more prestige (and probably a raise), so I'm not complaining.

I'm still cooking for the family, although it gets a bit difficult at times with working and classes, and my innovative spirit isn't always around to make things interesting. And that's pretty much life as I know it for now.