My fucking job. I keep wishing for one of these jobs from hell with a dumb and screamy boss who overloads me with goofy shit work to do. At least it would make me feel wanted. When it comes to work, I’m stuck in a leaky rowboat meandering down Apathy River in the Uncanny Valley.
My fucking weight. Yes, I’ve made progress, but the transition to weight workouts isn’t as smooth as I thought it would be, and I really don’t like the weights. It has to be done, though.
This weather. We should have gone to NorCal or Oregon eleven years ago. We really, really should have. A better class of people, and more jobs in my skill set.
I’m pushing 40, and I just don’t know where it all went. I’ve learned a lot, I guess, and I’ve worked hard at what I’ve done, and I’ve made friends, and seen quite a bit, but I’m still rudderless. I’m a fucking circulation librarian in a fucking useless academic library. *WHAT *am I doing here? I’d be more useful as a garbageman. When you start envying the garbagemen, it’s time to get another job. I’m going back to grad school, and quite possibly teaching English in Korea for a year, but that’s kind of my point. Doesn’t there come a time when you’re supposed to put down the books and do something *useful *with your life? It’s not as if I’ve pissed the past 14 years down the drain. I should have been bibliographic instruction librarian of the fucking year by now.
Still, there’s only so ticked I can get. I have a great wife who’s always stood by me, and so what if I didn’t do anything deserve the bad times above. I sure as hell didn’t do anything to deserve the best woman in the universe. We’re not starving (see my comment about my weight), and we’ve got jobs and a roof over our heads. I look at some of the people here, and I feel grateful for what I have, but damn I’m still ticked off.
It’s not a big deal compared to the problems many people are facing, but the recent revelation that I’m not and seemingly will never be capable of having a romantic relationship is weighing with particular gravity right now, owing in no small part to the recent holidays and all that brings, recent success being enjoyed in those endeavors by friends, fielding questions by well-meaning but persistent associates about why I don’t have a girlfriend, and sporadically enticing but unacceptably inappropriate romantic opportunities, all of which tend to magnify my frustration and sense of detachment. It is a seemingly intractable problem that manages to defy any attempt I put to it to organize or resolve, and my ineffectual efforts to make some headway or acquire the requisite social and interpersonal skills necessary serve only to further discourage me.
On the other hand, I have a few really great friends that I’ve learned to open up to and share interests, vacations, and occasionally emotions and other icky stuff about my past with in the past couple of years, a stable job that at least occasionally engages both my analytical and creative impulses, a boss and coworkers who think I’m knowledgeable and mostly effectual, a whole bunch of cool man-toys and outdoor gear I never thought I’d be able to afford, a cabinet of Irish and Scotch whiskeys to rival a connoisseur bar, a book collection that doesn’t quite threaten the Library of Congress but provides sufficient reading and reference material for even the most obsessive insomniac wordhog, and the The 16 Ton Monty Python Megaset on backorder at Amazon.com. Sometimes I even manage for a few minutes not to worry that it’s all going to come crashing down if I don’t keep the balls all juggling in the air simultaneously.
So save for one aspect, I can legitimately say that I’m doing consistently better in life than in any past time. But not being able to share that or think of having a long term future sometimes squeezes the enjoyment right out of all of that.
I am most unhappy about the fact that I am about to finish a master’s degree that it has taken me three years to complete, and which I undertook for the specific and sole purpose of teaching journalism and English at the local junior college, and now, just as that goal is within reach, the governor of Colorado had mandated such deep cuts in state funding that the very college at which I want to teach may be forced to actually close, after more than 65 years of serving the people of this community, and I will be stuck with my fucking master’s degree, in a goddamn call center telling great swarms of white trash that no, the bank will not refund their fucking overdraft fees! I am mightily pissed off right now!
My business is struggling right now and I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to get it healthy. Which is a bummer not just from the financial standpoint, but from all the things my business partner and I want to do with it. It’s very frustrating.
But, the good far outweighs the bad right now. Despite my worry and frustration over money, I still have many things to be happy about.
I’m still single, and can never seem to get past one or two dates with anybody. Also, I live in a mayonnaise-with-white-bread suburb with absolutely nothing to do for singles. To do anything fun, I have to drive 25 minutes to the Skokie CTA station, then take a long ride on the El train to get into the city.
Last week, my boss at my part time job told me that he was basically cutting my hours fro 20 to 5. Enrollment numbers are down and there’s nothing to be done about that. I almost just said “Fuck it” but decided to stick with it even though it’s like a whopping $40/week. It actually turned out okay, because I’m monitoring a distance learning class at the local community college campus, and I got a job at that very location teaching writing. And I thought, “Well, at least I still have my job writing SEO content.”
Except…
About two weeks ago, my boss informed me that I needed to write the 250 word blurbs like they were goddamned wiki articles. That included research so I could write like an actual expert in the field. I said fine, I’d do that, but it would take extra time and slow down my speed. He wanted me to write 3 articles an hour–did I mention he was paying me $10/hour? So tonight, I sent in my invoice for 169 such articles. It took me 65 hours, and my sister 25 hours (she’s been sort of sub-contracting the work with his permission for the past year). He said “That’s almost 1 blurb per hour” (apparently math isn’t his strong suit or he was unaware of the assignments he sent me himself) and basically threatened to fire me if I didn’t get up to 3 per hour. He also said he would pay me now, but then I’d have to write another 200 blurbs to make up the money that I would then owe him, or he would just pay me based on what he deemed fair. He also implied I was trying to steal money from him by inflating my hours. That was not true, but I revised the invoice to 80 total hours. Which is 2/hour + research time. He emailed me back and said he wouldn’t pay that much either. He wanted it to go down to basically $500. So he was basically saying I should work 40 hours for free.
So I quit.
Freelance writers are typically paid 10-25 cents per word. He wanted $75 worth of work from me for $10. I didn’t want to quit. I know the economy is bad, and though I have 3 other jobs, they are all very part time. But I just could not take his shit anymore, and I feel relieved, and guilty, and happy, and awful.
He sent bask a pretty shitty email. “Sorry. I did my best to work this out.” Right. Ripping me off, implying he was overpaying me, and threatening to fire me was his best. Honestly? I’m scared he’s going to forget to pay me (I told him I’d accept $600), and if he does, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. I was obviously counting on that check.
My house is so messy, and cluttered, and it just gets worse and worse.
I try and tackle a small area, and end up moving half of it to another area.
I am not one of those compulsive pack rats that have been on TV lately, but you wouldn’t know it from the looks of my house!
And tomorrow my mother is coming over for the first time in over a year. She will be on the phone as soon as she leaves to tell all of my siblings and whomever else will listen, what a failure as housekeeper I am. I love her dearly, but she just has to spread bad news for some reason. It is starting to grate on me.
Oh and I have been feeling quite depressed for a long time. I am hoping it is just lack of sunlight and this messy house, because I have been through some pretty sever depression before, and I don’t want to go back there EVER!
huge sigh Nice to vent a bit.
Now, I better see if I can at least vacuum around a few things tonight so my mother won’t think I am a total waste of space.
Hmm… where to begin? My husband has been laid off and we have no idea when he’ll return to work. Meanwhile, he can’t even get through the unemployment system to get registered. Gee, the phone system for unemployment in Michigan is getting slammed? What a shock!
My last job opportunity was not the place for me. It wasn’t a good experience, and now I’m back at square one in an extremely competitive job market.
Our daughter is not heading down the right path right now and there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s 19 and I irritate the crap out of her, as mothers often do. I miss the old closeness that we once had. She’s living with her boyfriend, his mom, and his sister, and her boyfriend just had some sort of breakdown. Now I’m worried about him, too.
All our son wants to do is play computer games and video games. He doesn’t give a hoot about sports and rarely socializes. I’m used to it by now, but wish that he had more interests. There’s a big world out there beyond the computer and TV screens.
Dad, stop being such a mean grouch. Can’t you see how hard you’re making things for mom? She hates you half the time.
One of my favorite quotes is this, "I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. " It describes me pretty well.
The cards always end up playing out in my favor, but I do the best I can to prevent it.
I’ve somehow left one good job to go work at another good job, neither of which I fully appreciate. I can’t decide which was the better of the two…or which I hate more. I’ve done the same thing in my marriage before. And so with everything in my life.
My marriage. I asked / forced my husband to move out today. He’s with friends and looking at apartments now. I feel bad about it, but he has a car and I don’t, and it isn’t really workable for me to move further from my job/off the busline, and I just couldn’t take it any more.
We’ve been together since I was 16- 10 years. We got hitched in August and it was a wonderful ceremony. At the same time we moved to a new state, got new jobs and he started college. Stuff got really stressful really fast- all our negative behaviors toward each other started coming out at once. I got clingy and hostile and he pulled away and basically started acting like a punk kid. I’ve been trying to work things out, listening to him tell me all the horrible things I’ve done to him over the years and trying to figure out how to be good for him and myself, but it seemed like every week there was a new issue, a new overarching problem- and his mantra became “I don’t know” as in he doesn’t know what he wants from me, our relationship or maybe life itself.
I had a bunch of days off for Christmas/New Year, and we had planned to take that time to make a plan, including finding a counselor. Instead, he somehow had to work late or early every day, or just plain didn’t come home. Everything finally fell apart on Sunday, when I discovered that he’s been building a simultaneously elaborate and childish web of lies, all to avoid being with me. I couldn’t handle it, so I walked out and spent the day with the only close friends I have in this area, people he’s been effectively alienating me from through his lies. Even through the pain that day, I still felt willing to stick it out and work through it- I agree that I need to make changes in my behavior to bring the good things about our partnership back and move forward into our grown-up life/lives- as long as working it out is what he wants.
From our conversation that night, it became clear to me that that isn’t what he wants, at least not right now. Every time he has told me about something I’m doing that hurts him, I’ve been trying really hard to take responsibility for my actions and not blame him- but now, when these hurtful lies and behavior come out he jumps instantly to blame me: I’ll stop lying if you stop yelling at me. Bullshit. I need to stop yelling and guilting him, he needs to stop lying and pulling away- they can’t be contingent on each other or nothing will happen.
I’ve basically been crying uncontrollably whenever we’re together, which really sucks because then he tries to hug me and “make it better” but without actually wanting to make our lives better. He’s been going on and on about needing space for months, and it’s clear I can’t give it to him while we live together. He suggested a separation, and last night (while I couldn’t sleep from the anxiety over what would happen when he got home) I realized that it needs to happen now. He’s the kind of person to drag his feet about everything, and if I left it up to him, he’s sleep on the couch till spring, and I can’t face living with someone who treats me this way, and who fundamentally doesn’t want to make our relationship work.
I made sure there was a spare bedroom for him at a friend’s house, and told him I needed him out. Again, not fair, but with the snow on the roads I can’t really get to work reliably from their house, which is why I didn’t just go myself. Also, I’m staying in this apartment for the long term. My family is going to help me with the rent and then I’ll find a roommate once I figure out what’s happening. He hasn’t made a move to make this place his home- he hasn’t even unpacked his books, and the only reason his records are out is because I did it. I, on the other hand love this place and it is literally the closest rental property to my workplace, plus it’s on the bus line. That’s why I couldn’t just leave for a while and trust him to find a place soon- I’d end up couch surfing for months, and begging for rides which I hate to do.
I’m sorry this is so long- I just feel so lost. The biggest thing in my life is just gone. I’ve always had trouble making friends, and he’s been the big constant in my life since I was just a kid. Friends, lovers, partners in business, aesthetics and snark- all gone. I feel like I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I really really really don’t want to lose him, but it’s just become too much.
More later, but, for now…Take Care of You! You did what you needed to do and now, hopefully have the time and space to take a breath. Give yourself a break.
I think this is the first time I’ve posted anything personal like this, but I am wary of repeatedly crying to the same 2 friends (sympathetic as they are) and my mom and sisters- they can only hear so much and I don’t want to wear them out. The big problem on that front is that most of my friends who are close enough to talk to about this live in other states and have no idea that it’s gotten bad at all, and I just don’t know how to bring it up. It was hard enough with my mom…
Now, outside my own damn head… I’m so sorry to hear about all this stuff.
I know exactly what you mean. It was once so easy (once in my life, not once in history)- a group just jelled into place and for a long time you didn’t have to try- people moved in and out, there wasn’t any pressure to “find” anyone- and then you wake up and there’s nobody, and making friends is like trying to get a date, but more nebulous and frustrating. Argh!
It sucks to see how things could/should be better. My job went all to hell last month, they laid off 5 people from a staff of 19, and I really don’t agree with the way the decisions were made- it seems like a panic move and not strategic at all, plus I’ve lost a lot of respect for my supervisor. I’ve been trying to focus on small things that I can still like about the job- for example I fell in love with the building when I first interviewed, and I’ve been making a point to really experience it as I move through my day, and it really has helped.
I am so sorry. I hope you can get to the root of it all soon and start feeling better.
I’m glad to hear about this breakthrough, though sorry about the problem in the first place. I’ve always had a lot of respect for you as a poster. I lurk a LOT, and your posts have always made me feel that you are a shining example of a person living a thoroughly examined and ethical life. Your posts about your therapy and progress in overcoming problems have been an example to me. So, I guess, thanks!
and
for both of you: again I am so sorry that you are in these situations. Feeling frustrated and useless is understandable, and I hope that things can shuffle around to be at least more acceptable, if not super- awesome, within the year.
What an asshole. I hope you get your money, but I’m glad you quit. Tough times are not an excuse to rip people off. if you can’t afford to pay your people, tell them that before they do the work, and suck it up when the work doesn’t get done, don’t try to make them feel guilty about wanting to be fairly compensated.
Ugh. I know his feeling, too. Can you afford to get someone to help you? Either a professional organizing service, or just put an ad on Craigslist for someone to come and help you get a handle on the chaos. There are people who live for that sort of thing. Then, once the clutter is tamed, get a maid service or cleaner in every week or two. There’s no law that says you have to do it yourself.
If you don’t have the funds, maybe you can work out a skills trade with someone you know, or someone you find on Craigslist- they help you get your house in order, and you provide them with some service from our area of expertise for a comparable amount of time?
Anyway, this isn’t an advice thread, but try not to let anyone make you feel like a failure for having a messy house. Personal accounting (for example) is just as important of a life skill as housekeeping, yet millions of people have professionals or skilled family members do their taxes every year, no guilt involved.
It sounds like you have a lot to offer, and the fact that you are making progress in your relationships with friends is a very good sign. I’m sorry that you are lonely.
I gots the treatment-resistant depression, which has been getting pretty debilitating. So that’s kind of an endless pit of misery and despair in and of itself. A day that would be seen by many as barely functional is unusually productive for me. Am on my fifth successive prescribed antidepressant and it’s not doing much apart from making my gums bleed. Oh, and I don’t have insurance (asthma + depression = no health insurance for you!); if talk therapy doesn’t do any good, my family might have to pay for me to get ECT. Can’t wait for the social stigma.
I finished my master’s degree at the end of the summer and now am completely exhausted and disgusted with my field of study; have given up all hope of employment or further study in the field, despite it being my passion and focus for nearly ten years. Which leaves me with very few fucking options or ideas for employment right now, since I have no interests or willpower left (see above). So I’m stuck unemployed and penniless in a city where I know almost nobody, with an excellent, expensive and distinguished education, years of specialized training and experience, and no prospects and no light at the end of the tunnel.
I hate my mother and don’t ever want to talk to her again due to an awful upbringing and my intense dislike of her as a person, and am terrifically guilty about it because now she is a sad old woman who has been completely abandoned by her entire living family. There are eight messages from her backed up in my voicemail that I can’t bring myself to listen to. She’s coming to “visit” in a few days and she’s found out where I live.
Oh, and I think I’m incapable of feeling love.
In summary, shit is fucked and 2009/Age 26 is looking to be the rankest turd on the heap thus far.
My health. I think I’ve reached the top of how far I can recover towards functional and it’s not possible to go farther. It’s not far enough. I can do some stuff and be in pain, swollen and other reactions to start or I can do absolutely almost nothing for weeks to reduce this. I’m really holding back on how bad it is, and I try to only think of what has become better, but I can’t right now. I can barely use my hands right now, and I screw up everything I try to do because of my coordination. I can’t hold something like a pencil and use it right now. i have to plink out words on the keyboard with two fingers, because there is no way I can hold my hand in place and bend the fingers like typing requires.