Tag Archives: Depression

Vacation Sucks: Life Without Work

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I’m currently at work having just returned from a week-long vacation, and I must say it’s pretty shitty being back. Despite me having a job so simple that I can write a blog post at work, it’s still awful being back. It’s obvious to anyone that returning to work from vacation sucks, but in a strange way it’s nice to be back. I realize Work Sucks, but looking back and realizing Vacation Sucks more than work is pretty depressing. It makes no sense, but without fail when I return to work I think my Vacation Sucked and that vacation was pretty pointless.

The Second Job: A Halfway Vacation

First up on the “Vacations Sucks” post is the gripe that I work two jobs and only have a vacation with one of them. In case you didn’t realize my “vacation” is simply time off from work and not an actual “go somewhere and do something special” thing. This might not apply to some people, and if you’re one of those lucky people who only has a single job or who can get both jobs to allow you time off to do something, well congrats because this doesn’t apply to you! Working two part time jobs like I do leaves you with the typical situation where one gives me time off when the other doesn’t. This sort of “halfway vacation” sucks for all the obvious reasons. I’m not working as much, but still working enough to make life not enjoyable, and it probably makes work and vacation suck more because of the juxtaposition of the two. Working only one job isn’t really a vacation, it’s just normal life that doesn’t suck quite as much.

Motivation? Where U Go?

The prospect of having tons of free time while off of work (even one job) always seems promising to me. I feel that by having more leisure time I would be able to focus on a few of the goals I have. There’s this blog, and my derelict blog, and I also (try to) write short stories on Wattpad. I also have a few really stupid ideas for small businesses. Obviously, I have a bunch of crap going on in my head and time is a premium when it comes to making meaningful progress on anything. Working two jobs simply makes it hard to focus and get anything done and vacation should allow me to actually be productive.

Then I was on vacation and how many blog posts did I post? Zero. How many short stories did I write? Zero. Did I work on my business plans or revamp the blog’s Facebook page. Nope. I did basically nothing. What the hell happened?

You see, having a bunch of free time seems to have the counterintuitive effect of making me less motivated. I’m assuming I’m not unique and other also have this problem. Having more time allows me to escape the feelings of doom and desperation that working two jobs fills me with, and without that awful feeling staring me down daily and hourly, I have no drive to really be successful. When I’m working and I’m miserable and my schedule is busy there is no time to worry about motivation: if you want to write a blog post you fucking write one and post it because need to get on that shit if you want to do something with your life! But on vacation you’re like “Meh. There’s no rush. I have plenty of time!” Somehow having more free time gives you less motivation and drive making the vacation look ultra-depressing and pointless, especially in retrospect. You didn’t work, and you didn’t get any hobbies or goals accomplished. You basically wasted life without actually enjoying it.

Vacation is what Life Isn’t

Despite those two previous whine sessions, they aren’t really why Vacation Sucks. They’re facets of shittiness, contributing to vacation being awful while being offshoots of the primary reason: Vacations Sucks primarily because you have to go back to work. “Yeah, no shit.” you’re probably saying, but let me elaborate.

Vacations are what we all want to achieve out of life. Vacation is not working and having enough money and time to do the things you want to do. Some even call vacation by another name: retirement. We all want to save enough money so someday we don’t have to work and can have a “perpetual vacation.” If you’re really lucky you can retire earlier or might not have to work at all. This is a perpetual vacation called “being rich.” There’s this grand idea that if you accumulate enough money you don’t have to work at all, and this laziness to not want to work might be a large driver of the world’s greed. Retirement, being rich, living off the land, and vacation all serves a single urge: not working and doing something else you’d rather do! Chase your dreams! Do what you want to do! 

So vacation is a little taste of this for the lowly lower-class worker, especially if it happens to be a paid vacation. Here you have a week with no work and you still have money. You can do whatever the hell you want (or don’t want to do) with no obligations to a job. While you might not have a ton of money and aren’t actually rich you still get a temporary taste of not having to answer to anyone. This is life without a job, and it’s pretty refreshing.

Except the dream and experience has to eventually end of course. You always have to go back to work because you’re not rich and you’re not retired. You’ll probably have to work nearly the rest of your adult life with little to no breaks and you have to do it sustainably so you don’t burn out and just fall apart. Or get so discouraged at life you kill yourself or descend into alcoholism. Life is one big grind to make money to survive and to support your family, and compared with the wonderful fantasy that is vacation, it’s awful. Vacation gives you the perspective to what life would be like if you didn’t have to work. Going back to work from vacation just hammers the point home: this is your life, you hate it, you’re stuck here. How was vacation btw?!

Making it even worse, you might not even enjoy your vacation and this leads to some more troubling thoughts. If vacation is a microcosm of being rich and not working, I’d be a fucking miserable mess. I made no progress on my blogs and business plans and whatever other stupid shit I wanted to do. I didn’t travel anywhere and I didn’t do a bunch of housework. I don’t even think I mowed the yard a single time. In fact, I spent a bunch of money on fast food, drank about 50% of the time, and gained about 5 pounds. Apparently I’d be a fat, lost, unmotivated alcoholic mess if I didn’t work my jobs, so as much as work fucking sucks, it almost seems that vacation is shittier than work. It’s like I need to work to keep my ass in line, focused, and sober. Vacation makes me realize how much work does and doesn’t suck while work makes me realize how much vacation does and doesn’t suck.

In short you can’t win. Vacation, Work, and Everything Sucks.

Spring Ahead is Awesome, Fall Behind Sucks

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You better make sure you set your damn clocks back otherwise you’re going to have a pretty screwy Sunday ahead of you. The one nice thing about Daylight Savings Time (DST from here on out so I don’t have to type it over and over) is that it occurs on a Sunday; if that shit went down on a weekday at least 35% of the workforce would show up early/late to work depending on which direction the clocks are moving. Anyways, it’s that time of year again to set the clocks ahead which means you’re going to get one hour less sleep than you usually get. Have fun with that, I’ll be sleeping in anyways. We all know the drill by now: set the clocks ahead in the spring and back an hour in the fall. (Spring ahead and fall behind if you forget which way the clocks are moving) Thanks to this, we get an extra hour of daylight in the evening (by losing an hour in the morning), and in the winter there is no daylight whatsoever and everyone is massively depressed, pale, and sickly. Winter sucks enough so why make it suck even more?

A key point I want to make is that we are on DST in the summer; DST begins when we set the clocks ahead in the spring and ends in the autumn when me move them back. So while I’m complaining about DST Sucking, I’m really complaining about changing the damn clocks year after year and the fact that DST has to end; I actually like being an hour ahead and you should too unless you’re a damn vampire. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just set the clocks ahead an hour and just leave it? That sounds like a fantastic idea because DST is Awesome and changing the clocks back in the fall Sucks. At the very least, it’d be lazy and hassle-free.

A Quick History Lesson

Everything Sucks isn’t supposed to be a history class, and if you really want to learn more about DST I’m sure you can figure out how to do a proper internet search. This site is all about complaining and whining. But I’ll give a quick, very brief rundown of why we have DST in the first place. Something about Benjamin Franklin and the French a long time ago. Then the Germans apparently started it during World War One in an attempt to save coal or something. The allies then copied the Germans because of some reason or whatever. Maybe they were upset because the Germans were saving so much coal? I don’t know. But after the war, DST sort of disappeared. Then, when the Germans decided to start another World War (oh, those Germans…), DST was resurrected for (probably) the same reasons that it was during WWI. Once again, after the war, DST was killed and banished for good and we never have to worry about it.

Lol no. Gotcha.

The US enacted DST nationwide in 1966 for whatever-the-fuck reason. Apparently the railroads didn’t like a bunch of local areas having whatever time they felt like–and that makes sense–so some national standard was needed. Currently the only states that don’t play along with DST are Arizona and Hawaii. Arizona is hot and if the daylight is longer people run their air conditioners longer and waste energy. Okay, and Hawaii is close to the equator so they really don’t know about these “shorter winter days” that us continental Americans are aware of. Curiously, Alaska hates DST because of the opposite reason: they’re close to the North Pole. In the summer it’s daylight a lot and in the winter the sun doesn’t exist, so moving the clocks an hour ahead/back is pointless. But apparently they still officially use DST? *shrug*

DST is Awesome, Non-DST Sucks

There are some supposed benefits to DST: lower energy usage, lower traffic accidents, reduced violent crimes, and even improvements in health thanks to people being outside longer. Even though these sound good, in many cases the effects are pretty damn small and/or debateable. Energy usage, for example, is a pretty complicated matter and just because the day is longer you can’t assume that power usage will be lower (like the example from Arizona earlier). But who cares? You don’t need hard data to back up the fact that the longer days are nicer, just think about it. In the summer you have all the time in the world to do whatever the hell you want outside: shopping, bike riding, sports, hiking, yard work, car rides, picnics, and many other things. I remember as a kid playing outside seemingly forever in the summer with the extended DST hours. It was amazing. Sure you lose an hour in the morning, but who the hell cares? I might not be a morning person, and I don’t see who the hell can actually be a morning person, so I might be a little biased. But those never ending summer days at the expense of an hour later of sunrise? Sounds like a good tradeoff to me.

And don’t even get me started on winter. The sun sets so damn early it’s insane. Like I said, winter sucks enough already with being cold and with the shorter days, so why would we want to set the clocks back and have sunset even earlier? Fuck that. We need that extra hour of daylight in the winter so we all don’t succumb to seasonal affective disorder and kill ourselves in depression. Our bodies’ vitamin D supply requires that extra hour of light! Some people like to point out that the poor school kids would be getting up and out of the house in the dark but that’s no reason to hate on DST; the school days start at a ridiculously early time and should be moved later anyways (maybe a future blog post?). Farmers also like their standard, non-DST time because they can get up and moving naturally with the sun. But so what? We’re not an agrarian society anymore so they can start work an hour later. Sorry farmers, no hard feelings….

So DST sucks. Well, DST itself doesn’t suck because that’s the reason we can actually do shit in the summer evenings thanks to the endless daylight. DST sucks because it ends in the fall and we have to change the damn clocks back an hour. Even though you “get an extra hour of sleep,” who cares? It’s then going to be dark and the sun will set around 4 or 5 p.m., people working that 9-5 shift won’t see the sun after work, and everyone is depressed and lacking vitamin D. These time changes also jack with people’s schedules and we all need a week or so to properly adjust to the new daylight times. And, once again, at the very least it’s a chore and is something else sort of pointless to worry about: “Oh! I gotta remember to set my clocks tonight! Hurrdurr!” DST sucks, but only because we have to end it in the fall. Let’s be lazy and just leave the damn clocks ahead an hour and roll with it.