Tag Archives: Work

Vacation Sucks (2021 Edition)

It’s that time of year once again: vacation. I couldn’t take all four weeks in a row this year and had to settle for three. My job is a union job so everyone with higher seniority gets to pick their vacations first. Even if I’m about middle-of-the-pack with my time there, the full-timers above me all have like five or six weeks of vacation meaning they shit up the vacation calendar pretty quickly.

I complain about vacation once every year, sometimes twice, so I’ll just skip all of that here.

The First Goal

I’m terrible at holding clear-cut goals but here’s one of them: get 2,000 blog views this month. I’ve been slacking for awhile but July still has some hope. July 4th gave me over 200 daily views — a new record and the first time I cracked 200 — because of my The 4th of July Sucks post from two years ago. Apparently people Google “july 4 sucks” and they find my page. Cool. It was a good start to the month but I squandered it as time went on. I need about 250 more views in the next three days, so it’ll be close, and I’ll try my best, but I won’t be surprised if I end the month with 1,999 views.

And this is why I’m shoveling out this throw-away post. Better to write some trash than to not write at all.

Sobriety

This vacation is already going better than my last vacation, nearly 110 days ago, because I’m not trying to sober up. I know the exact number thanks to the r/stopdrinking ‘days sober’ feature. (I’ll never stop shilling for r/stopdrinking.) You set a date and then anytime you post it displays how many sober days you’ve accumulated. It’s a great feature because you don’t have to remember a date or go mad trying to count the days yourself.

Last vacation sucked because I stopped drinking. Anyone who has been an alcoholic knows that the first week is a rough one as your body and emotions are all over the place. I chose that week to sober up because I had a terrible habit of drinking my vacation away. Boredom is one of my drinking triggers and during vacations I go crazy. There’s nothing else to do besides get drunk, at least that’s how Jeremy usually thought about vacation. So that week was successful on the sobriety front and I haven’t had a drink since but damn did it suck. At least these three weeks I’m not battling alcoholism. Sure I’m bored and drinking sounds like a great way to spend vacation, but it’s a passing thought I can easily disregard.

Random Projects

I like to keep busy doing bullshit random things that aren’t at all related to each other. Making soap is obviously one of them, as well as a few other sorta related things like trying to make my own lye and washing bonfire ashes in water. Washing ashes in water also means I need to burn wood which also means I need trim some shrubs in the yard to have stuff to burn. Luckily my wife has done that part because my motivation is always near zero. I despise yardwork by the way…

There’s a bunch else I sort of want to do but since my motivation is basically zero it’s hard for me to get around to doing them. It’d be fun to take the family to the river and go swimming. Not legally swimming either, just get in the water and fucking swim. I want to visit my sister in Iowa because why not? Camping sounds like a fun thing, and maybe haul my guitar to a park and play some music. Maybe haul it down to the bike path and play in front of people? I want to get a cabin for my wife and I but still haven’t gotten around to reserving one. Oh, I also want to watch one of the ‘homeless’ bums that are begging for money at the corner of 2nd Street and Jefferson to see if they’re really homeless, but that won’t happen.

Bike rides, running, weight lifting. Maybe. Russia just launched a new module to the ISS and Boeing is shooting up their Starliner on its second test flight on the 30th; maybe I can go outside and try to see those zipping overhead. (I don’t understand how I haven’t written about the shitty Boeing Starliner yet. It’s fucking trash.) There’s always my giant telescope too and I’ve always wanted to haul that to a public place and let people look at Jupiter and Saturn for realzies.

Paint-by-numbers. Artwork. Drawing. Writing a story. Recording some music. Finally writing and singing some lyrics. Sitting in the yard meditating? Watching bugs in the grass and wondering what it would be like to be a dandelion. What sort of bats do we actually have here in Northern Illinois?

And this is how I am, random bullshit things I want to do with no reason or logic behind them. Is this how people are? Is this normal? Being a human being is a fucking mess…

Books

I bought three books from thriftbooks, being inspired by a Reddit thread asking about “the scariest books you’ve ever read.” House of Leaves. It. Gerald’s Game. I’m currently reading Gerald’s Game and in case you weren’t aware Stephen King is fucked up guy. The book is about a lady who get’s handcuffed to her bed by her husband in the woods. Just some good ole sexual fun that she isn’t too fond of. She ends up accidentally killing him by kicking him and giving him a heart attack, and she’s still cuffed to the bed with no way to escape. A stray dog wanders in and eats her husband as his corpse is laying there. There’s also something about an eclipse and how she was sexually molested by her dad when she was ten. I’m halfway through the book and that’s what’s happened so far.

My wife thinks some of the stuff I write is strange and disturbing, and can you imagine what King’s wife thinks of him? Does he write a story and ever once think, “My God, what the hell is wrong with me?” Either way, he apparently doesn’t give a fuck enough to not get it published.

It’s a book, but not really. A sudoku puzzle book from the store. I think it’s a Soap Opera Digest sudoku book, maybe you’ve seen them before as you’re standing in a checkout lane at Walmart. I had an earlier edition literally 9-10 years ago. Same cover design, same amount of puzzles, same difficulty of puzzles. Sure there are plenty of free sudoku apps out there, but something about having 100 puzzles physically in a book is satisfying so I bought it for $5. It’ll be fun to have it completed by the time I go back to work.

Insomnia

For the past two months I’ve been setting my alarm for noon. I wake up groggy and chug coffee and rip on the vape for an hour before I remotely feel functional. Around midnight I’m dead tired but somehow manage to stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. without fail. I get my second wind around 2 a.m. and from then on I’m as awake as I am at 5 p.m.

I thought vacation would help this a bit, maybe I could set the alarm earlier and earlier, but the problem is getting worse! I didn’t go to sleep yesterday (today?) until 6 a.m. The day before that it was 7:30 a.m. I’m pretty chill about this as well. I’m on vacation so if I’m up until the mid-morning hours who cares? No point in being upset about it.

In Conclusion

In conclusion? What the hell is there to conclude? I’m on vacation. I’m not concluding a damn thing.

Check out my YouTube channel about off-grid green energy setups!

Or my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Work Sucks: Losing Friends and Imposter Syndrome

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Yesterday I accidentally posted for the fourth day in a row. As before I wasn’t trying to start a blogging streak and was posting crap when I had it finished. Not drinking has put my brain into overdrive so I’m just kinda going with whatever mood I end up having. Todays mood: lethargic. I don’t really want to post anything and don’t think I have anything to post. It’ll be fun to see what happen though.

Yesterday was my first day back at work after having a week off for vacation. Yesterday was also the first day of out ‘new and improved crew rotation schedule’ and that put my anxiety into overdrive. You know how people say your mood dictates your day? Like if you’re in a good positive mood you’re more likely to have a good day? Well, first problem right there; my mood was shit from the start.

My friends tried to talk to me in the parking lot but I didn’t have much to say. I tried to carry on conversations but a week away from these people made me unable to talk to them properly. I felt like some stranger who just randomly showed up in the parking lot. That I didn’t really belong.

I’m always anxious after coming back to work from taking time off. You wouldn’t think you’d adapt to being away from work for only a week but you do. I walked in feeling like I had no idea how to do anything; it felt like ages since I was there when in reality it was only nine days. My Supervisor’s Supervisor asked me if I could train another employee how to marshall in an airplane. This is where you have two wands and wave your arms around to tell the airplane, a large cargo jet aircraft, where to park. I said, “You know I’ve been on vacation last week, are you sure you want to trust me with this? I forgot how to do everything out here.” Not really, it was my lack of confidence and anxiety at work, but I didn’t really want to train anyone on my first day back.

We got split up into our new crews and I sulked away from my friends without saying anything to go to my new crew. Another anxious surprise awaited me; my supervisor wasn’t even there! Not only was I working with a bunch of strangers/people I don’t like, but we didn’t even have a supervisor. As someone who likes order and knowing exactly where they’re supposed to be (I’m insecure as fuck) this was awful. What were we supposed to do? Just roam around without direction and find stuff to do? Luckily our Supervisor’s Supervisor took us for the first half of the day.

(Fun story: At this time we were having a ‘meeting’ going on and in my stressed-out state took a hit from my vape. We are not supposed to vape out in the open, but I needed my nicotine! One of my new crew members is a lady who’s been there for probably twenty years. She said, “Are we allowed to do that out here?” aggressively and I knew I fucked up. I said, “No…but…eh?” and she didn’t seemed too amused. It’s always fun pissing off your new crew members within the first ten minutes of work. It really cemented the vibe of the day.)

I sat in the back of the van while Supervisor’s Supervisor sat in the front with this other dude. He’s like 20-years-old and always in a positive mindset. Always happy and talkative. Apparently this guy has never drank, did drugs, been stressed, or been depressed ever. He’s just one of those guys seemingly immune to mental health problems. We probably don’t have a lot in common. He also likes country music (which I despise without any good reason) so we got to drive around and listen to that. I’m on a big Green Day kick currently, my mood is shit, and I quit drinking a week ago. I’m depressed and stressed and insecure. Country music is near the top of my ‘ten things I can’t deal with right now’ list. He’s a cool enough guy but the country music was killing me slowly. It was like an annoying paper cut on my finger that, while not too bad on its own, just made everything else in life slightly more miserable.

They did their best to talk to me but I was zoned out and depressed and couldn’t be bothered to actually carry a conversation. I replied with quick one or two word replies. I appreciated the effort from them but I wasn’t in the mood for socializing.

Break was also trash. I went back to my “old van” to see my friends. It was fun to know that you can imposter syndrome yourself with friendships as well; I never knew that was a thing! I hopped in with them, sat in the back, and noticed I didn’t lounge around like I used to. I wasn’t relaxed. I was tense. I was on edge. I sat upright on the very edge of the seat closest to the door and kept my head down. I was acting like I didn’t belong, like I wanted to be invisible, that I wasn’t supposed to be there, that these people aren’t my friends anymore, and that I’m intruding on their space. I had my own crew and van and it wasn’t there. It was twenty feet behind us and maybe I should get out, sit by myself, sulk, feel bad for myself, and listen to country music?

It’s depressing because I know that’s exactly how I am. One of my friends (one of them in the van) mentioned that whenever she feels like she’s going to be abandoned she will cut ties first to save herself feeling abandoned and damn if that isn’t spot on for me as well. Ever since we got the new rotation list I’ve wanted to cut ties with these people and isolate as much as possible. But I’m well aware that this is good old Jeremy sabotage tactics and I’m never happy when I’m inevitably successful. A tiny part of me was saying, “No, they’re your friends; quit acting like everyone hates you! You took a big step by inviting yourself into the van, not being awkward, and just being around people! Good job!” It’s a very tiny, weak voice, but I guess it’s good I hear it in the first place.

I started talking a bit and acting like my regular old self and then their supervisor showed up and I had to get the fuck out.

And the rest of the night was trash but whatever. By that time I had no expectations to be crushed. I found my friends at the timeclock after our plane left and took the ride to the parking lot with them. I didn’t say anything feeling like the imposter again — the only guy in their van that wasn’t actually on their crew, some bum just hitching a ride because they don’t want to walk — but tried to feel like I was doing something right. Taking some sort of risk or going outside my massive comfort zone to actually improve myself.

I have another hour until I have to head on in for Day Two of Shit Week. My mood is mildly better than yesterday. I always have anxiety about going back to work so part of it is expected. The first day of anything new, like the new crews, is also the worst; at least I have some idea for what to expect today. Thanks for listening to this rant guys. I know I usually don’t post rambly journalesque shit but it’s kind of therapeutic to write about the shit that bothers you the most.

Check out my YouTube channel about off-grid green energy setups!

Or my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Vacation, Drinking, and Not Drinking

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I guess I’m doing this again. 2:30 a.m. tired but unable to sleep. Might as well write.

I’m back to sober life and today is day four. I fell of the wagon or whatever it is a few weeks ago…maybe? It’s amazing how I’ve lost track of all time and structure since I started boozing it up again. A fewish weeks of being drunk is a whole lot better than my last three month streak. I’ll take the victory and move forward.

Something came along and hit me so hard, or maybe I wasn’t prepared for any life difficulties, that I took up alcohol. It was only for one day but any drinkers/ex-drinkers know how that works. It doesn’t. Anyways, and this sounds pathetic as a drinking trigger, but we’re being grouped into new teams at work. Instead of a big group of 25 people working together like a chaotic beehive were going to have actual supervisors and teams separate from each other. The big news that shit on me? I wasn’t going to be with my friends or anyone I really knew.

This sent me on such a violent downward spiral that I didn’t know how else to cope but alcohol. My mind was racing with shitty thoughts that I couldn’t banish with the cute protips the therapist suggests to me. No calming thoughts or self-soothing (that’s a shitty word really) could do anything. My thoughts went something like this: “No friends. It takes me literal years to make friends. Why am I so scared of not having friends? Why can’t I have friends outside of work? What about me makes me so ineffective at keeping friendships? Work will suck. And why is work sucking such a big shock to me?” It all sounds like dumbest shit ever to kick you into drinking which made it even worse for me. “I’m drinking over this? What kind of insecure dipshit am I?” And as you go down this path it only gets worse. “I’m a defective human being, holy shit. Pathetic. Why am I such a softie?”

And so on. I’ve been pulling myself out of that rut recently so it’s fine. Progress is slow but I’ll take it. I think it helped that we don’t start our new rotation until next Monday which is nice, but life is never that easy because…

…I’m on vacation this week!

Last week at work I was bullshitting with one of these friends I’m scared to lose about how there’s no work to do. He said soon people would be on vacation and then maybe I could actually do some work and not feel useless. This sparked some interest in me and I wondered when my vacations were. Next Week?! Fuck! Yes, I somehow didn’t know I was going to be on vacation this week until last Wednesday. Fun. And that was the day we had our meeting about the new shifts. Fun. I had that strange feeling that the universe was purposefully shitting on me again for some reason. I was a drunk by that time, but a wise drunk. I knew I had to quit before the new crews started because I obviously cope with stress with alcohol; I better get used to stressful situations before that lest I’d be an alcoholic for the near future. And while I tried to sober up I’d be off work, antsy and bored. Boredom is a massive trigger for my drinking. And when I go back to work it’ll be totally different. Did I say insecurity/fear is also why I drink? Fucking three things to deal with! Stress, change, and boredom are in max force and I have to stop drinking? Sheeeeeeit.

I hit that moment Saturday that all drunks hopefully get: the do or die moment. Some probably call it “rock bottom” but luckily I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the ER, I wasn’t on a bridge, I wasn’t in a car wreck, and I wasn’t dead. I was at home in bed, unable to sleep, feeling drunk but also ultra-aware of how shitty I felt. It just clicked in my mind a certain question: is this really who you are? More thoughts followed. “Alcohol doesn’t work for you and you know it. What are you scared of? Let’s just not drink. Sure it’ll be shit for a few days, but you know you’re better without it. You’ll write again. You’ll talk and be social. You joke and act like you’re actually alive, like your soul isn’t fucking dead and rotting away.” And so on. You get the idea.

I guess this is day four, or whenever I actually go to sleep and wake up is day four. I still feel…off? Like I’m in a dream and that feeling is disconcerting, but I’m telling myself it’s the lack of alcohol and it’ll pass. It’s a terrible feeling though and hard to explain, maybe fellow ex-drunks know what I’m talking about. Despite feeling perpetually “funny” vacation is actually going great and I’m not too antsy. Once again I blame the antsiness on the lack of booze and am trying to channel it the best I can, like writing at 3 a.m. I’m surprised at how fast it’s going! Like damn it’s Wednesday already? I tilled our garden yesterday and maybe we can plant some vegetables today. ~~I’m also helping a friend move in today; he’s coming back from a stint in North Carolina~~ (Plans apparently change…). My wife’s birthday is tomorrow and hopefully we can get out of the house and do something. Friday and Saturday we’re visiting my sister who had her gallbladder removed. Most surprising of all: I still feel like there’s a million more things to do and I don’t have enough time. Write. Blog. Run. Lift weights. Bike ride. Visit a park. Play guitar. Clean the garage. Clean the cars. Pick up my meds. Cook some meals. Trade stonks. Reply to an email. Fuck with solar power. Make a YouTube video. This all sounds silly coming from someone who drinks out of boredom. I have tons of shit to do and why would I ever drink because I’m bored? Maybe drinking makes up its own reasons to exist like some parasite on your soul.

Anyways, big disjointed rant over. I feel great. I’ve been silent for awhile but I’m ready to get my shit back together again. I’m skeptical it’ll last long — when is the next crisis going to hit? — but until then, fuck it, I feel fantastic and I’m feeling pretty positive about the future.

Check out my YouTube channel about off-grid green energy setups!

Or my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Where Did the Sun Go?

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Last Monday, Labor Day, was a beautiful day. I was running low on vape juice and pods, and went to the local vape shop to buy some more. I even made it to Hobby Lobby to buy some glue for a model rocket that I’m building. It was a gorgeous day and seemed to be the idyllic late-summer day with the temperatures in the high 70s/low 80s and comfortable humidity. It was a nice change after the prior week with heat indexes nearing 100 degrees, a perfect day to have off work as well.

But looking back I realize this was the last time I had seen the sun. Seriously. Over the past week I haven’t caught a glimpse of the nearest star to us, the one that supports nearly all life on earth. In a way it feels like I’ve been cut off from the very thing that gives me energy to live. Literally.

I kinda miss it too. On Labor Day, after the hellishly sunny and hot month of August, I was looking forward to one of those dreary, rainy, and lethargic days. I was sick of the heat, the humidity, and the dead brown yards throughout the city. I was sick of driving around in our Honda Civic with AC that barely worked while the Focus was being repaired. I was sick of being cooped up inside because it was too miserable to be outside longer than it took to grab the mail. I work outside as well and this is it’s own special hell in the summer. To hell with it all, fuck summer, and could we please have some rain just to change things up a bit?

Be careful what you wish for.

My job assignment last week was my least favorite job, but somehow I was able to weasel my way out of it. I was put on one of my favorite jobs: driving the cargo loader, the big machine that lifts/lowers containers of packages out/into large cargo aircraft. I like the job because it’s one of the most important jobs at UPS. If you’re terrible at it, everyone hates you and talks shit about you, and you can even cause the planes to depart late if you’re incompetent enough. The opposite is also true; if you’re good at operating the loader you become somewhat of a workplace hero. Other loader operators watch how you do your job, and I’ve picked up on my coworkers doing some of the same things I do. Not that people worship you or anything, it’s just nice to see your skills rub off on others and know that you’re good enough at your job to be relied and dependent upon. As a one-man job operating the cargo loader has quite a bit of responsibility, but is very fulfilling knowing how important your skill is to the operation in general.

Kinda a rant there, sorry. The loader operator also stands outside in whatever weather is going on, as you can see above. In the summer you sweat and are miserable and in the winter two pairs of gloves and socks can’t stop your extremities from going numb. The wind throws rain, sleet, and snow into your face while ripping your skin off in subzero temperatures. But when the weather is pleasant, like on Labor Day, it’s a wonderful time where you get to stand outside, enjoy the weather, and do nothing physical besides move some joysticks and hit a few buttons.

Last week? Rain. Rain every fucking day. And I couldn’t complain about it either because I weaseled my way out of a hated job into a better one. You can’t reneg on a deal and I made sure to see the week through despite the terrible weather. Tuesday was rainy but not too bad. Wednesday didn’t have too much rain, only a wind-driven mist, but I wore a t-shirt like an idiot with temps in the 50s; I froze my ass off. More wind and rain Thursday but at least I wore a flannel while Friday only had drizzle here and there. I just find it interesting how shitty my luck is sometimes, and how I somehow bring it upon myself.

Saturday was also dreary, although it didn’t rain. I’m still struggling with sleep (it’s 4:05 a.m currently and I pounded down an Alka Seltzer and a melatonin a half-hour ago, to no avail) and wake up around 2 p.m. feeling fucking dead. Groggy, sleepy, unmotivated, and the view out of the window never helps. The ambient light level looks more like 7 p.m. than 2 p.m. This has been my past week: wake up at 2 p.m. feeling like a zombie despite sleeping for 9 hours, walking through tiny puddles on the way to my car at 3:30, lethargically driving with my eyes half-closed trying to decide what to listen too (upbeat music or something more lethargic?), drifting towards the timeclock, answering “Ehhh?” when my supervisor asks me how I’m doing, and standing out in the rain while I move some joysticks and smash some buttons during an airplane unload. Feeling my pants slowly become soaked by the rain and wind. Unmotivated to write or to read or do anything but also wanting to do something to pass the hours at work. Luckily when the sun does set you aren’t aware that it’s still fucking cloudy out.

According to the WeatherBug app, tomorrow (today I suppose) will be ‘partly sunny’ (is there a difference between partly sunny and partly cloudy?) with temps in the mid-70s. Not sure about the wind because no one cares about the wind. It sounds like it’ll be a beautiful day and I think I’m going to sit outside and bask in the sunlight, at least for a few minutes until I get bored and lurk back inside to play video games, post this, or whatever.

And holy shit, look at this:

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

~~Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all, but I do appreciate more followers.~~

Back to Work Or COVID Testing Sucks

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I got my COVID test last wednesday, May 20th. They told me it would take 5-7 days for me to get my results. The earliest I could expect them was monday, but since that was a holiday I was counting more on tuesday or wednesday of this week. I awoke tuesday and hopefully looked at my phone: nothing. No missed calls, no emails, nothing. And the mailbox also had a pile of junk mail that only got my hopes up. Bills, junk, advertisements, an Amazon package, but that was it. The same story happened wednesday although I did finally get my vape juice and pods in. That was the one highlight of my day and something I could be happy about. Maybe things were starting to look up.

Today, thursday, and nothing. It was the seventh day, or eighth if you want to count Memorial Day as an actual day, and knew I had to do something. Everyone knows testing still is a fucking joke and I was dreading not being able to find out anything. Then what? What do I do with no results at all? If I was totally lost in the system?

Let me digress a bit. I discovered my uncle was also tested last week and got his results friday, after only a few days, so I knew I should’ve heard something. Even worse is they called him. Where the hell was my call? I could’ve been back to work making money and having a routine but I’d been patiently waiting for a call. I didn’t want to be a bother. I’m sure the health department is swamped and didn’t want to be a demanding pain in the ass when there are plenty of them already in the world.

So I had to do something today. I called the clinic that was listed on the paper. After playing “push 1 for english, press 2 for our COVID hotline, for [whatever] press…” for about five minutes I finally talked to a fellow human. She said to call the Winnebago County Health Department and gave me their number. I didn’t have a pen and I’m proud to say I memorized the number on the spot. 815-720-4000 if you’d like to call them for some reason.

So I called the health department to be greeted by more number pushing. “If this is a medical emergency, call ‘911’ immediately. If you feel you maybe have COVID or have symptoms of COVID, please call your primary medical provider…” I eventually ended up on a recording requesting me to leave a message. What? So I hung up and tried again. I expected to get the same spiel all over again, had my phone on speaker sitting on the couch ready for disappointment, when a real human said “COVID hotline, how can I help you?” Oh shit. I grabbed the phone, turned off the speaker, and started my request.

My test was negative. Duh. I probably had a cold and overreacted. “Could I have an email to confirm that though? Just in case work needs it?”

“Sure, send an email here: ‘c’ as in ‘cat’, ‘d’ as in ‘dog’, reporting…at…”

I texted my friend/boss and told him my test was negative and followed that up with my request: CAN I COME BACK TO WORK NOW?!

“Yes, please,” was the reply. Thank God.

And then more anxiety. More dreading. I was gone for a week and what would people say? What would people ask? Would I have to explain myself or redeem myself for being off work for over a week? No, probably not. Think if one of your fellow coworkers took off for a week unexpectedly; you probably wouldn’t miss them much. Everyone does their own thing — you included — and most people really don’t give two fucks if you’re at work or not. I don’t know why I’m so anxious over every single thing that happens in life. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten into a new routine of being miserable and bored just trying to piss time away as quickly as possible. So that routine’s over and I have a new routine, the same routine I had over a week ago but which I’ve forgotten already. I’ll have to socialize. I’ll have to function. I’ll have to be productive. And as much as I dread it I know it’ll be fine. As soon as I pull into the parking lot it’ll feel like I was never off. So what the fuck am I worrying about?

And that’s it: I’m going back to work. Yay?! It’ll be nice to have a purpose again that isn’t decided by me. It’s a pain when you have too much free time because you have to decide what to do. That’s a hard decision indeed and usually leads to total indecisiveness. That’ll be nice to sidestep a little bit, but for now I have two more hours until I must leave. What to do with that time?

Streak Day #26 Sucks (and bitching about coworkers)

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Today is Monday, my hangover day. It being my hangover day, I’m usually dragging my ass through the day trying to scrounge up any and all motivation that I can find. I woke up at like 8 a.m., and feeling really shitty and hungover drank the remaining three Coronas (lol) from the 12-pack. I felt better and went back to sleep. I woke up at 2:20 p.m. giving me about an hour until I needed to leave for work. I chugged a Bang energy drink and sat around doing fuck-all until work.

I went to work and had another Bang energy. 600 mg of caffeine in three hours. Yeehaw. I had electricity running through my veins, a nervous shaking fueled by my hangover, caffeine, nicotine, and it being cold out. There was probably a moderate risk of me having an anxiety attack or a heart attack but I survived.

But what about the blog? Wasn’t I double-shifting tonight? Yeah, whatever, I’ll figure something out later. Put your back against the wall and fight against the midnight deadline. I’d have to post from my phone from work, but surely I could churn something out.

Work went to hell quickly with our first plane showing up a whopping two hours late. Somewhere in the two hours we got like a half-hour break and I sat in our crew van trying to muster some motivation to do anything. Read Wheel of Time? Write the damn blog post? Listen to music? I didn’t want to do anything.

And then a coworker started talking to me. Well, wait, let’s backtrack a bit.

I like to take my breaks mostly alone and in silence. I don’t eat food, I don’t socialize very much, and I try to lay low. The past year I had a tiny break room all to myself, and then we hired a bunch of seasonals that started shitting the place up. I then started bringing my bluetooth stereo thingy into work and camping out in the crew van listening to music. I had a little safe zone of solace, but apparently no place is safe anymore.

We have this one guy who I won’t name who is impossible to be around. He is literally one of the dumbest people I have ever met. Despite this, I still can’t quite put a finger on what bothers me about him, it almost seems like a little bit of everything. Something about him is so immensely frustrating and grating on the nerves that I can’t stand being around him for more than a few minutes.

So I sat there totally spacing out trying to figure out what to do. Obviously this coworker was still camped in the van for some reason. It’s not like it’s my van, my personal break area on wheels, but it also kinda is. He usually goes upstairs and lurks (sometimes in my old break room; another reason why I don’t go there anymore) but for some reason he’s been camping in the van the past few weeks.

I grabbed my book which usually means I’m about to read and he started talking to me about…you guessed it, the goddamn coronavirus. Jesus Christ. I’ve complained before that I’m sick of hearing about it; sure it’s okay to talk about in passing but I’m just sick of having big elaborate discussions about it especially since I’m losing so much goddamn money in the stock market. It’s a sore subject for me. And of course that’s what he talked to me about for ten fucking minutes. “When is this quarantine supposed to end? Yeah, I hung out with my friend yesterday — I think the media is blowing it out of proportion — the H1N1 virus wasn’t that big of a deal.” And something about the federal government and quarantines. Somehow this guy was totally lost on the fact that the states are the ones tossing up quarantines, not the federal government. Anyone ever hear of the federal system? I was about ready to scream, yet being my usual kind and thoughtful self forced myself to sort of socialize with him even though I was dying by 1,000 papercuts to my ear and my brain.

Luckily, my friend hopped in the van shortly afterwards and I gave her this fucking wide-eyed scowl and just stared at her; it was obvious what my problem was and she knew it immediately. Everyone on the crew feels the same way about this guy. Luckily I was able to direct my attention to a conversation with her and mostly ignore the other guy. I felt kinda bad but also not very bad. I hate talking to this guy and sometimes you need to look out for yourself. It sucks not being a saint or a Buddhist Monk at all times in your life, but I’m neither of those and am as flawed as anyone else. I’m guilty of being a douchebag but sometimes I don’t have the patience to suffer out of politeness.

Last week we were all in the van and I was trying to read. Another frustrating thing about this guy is he’s the type to force his way into any conversation no matter how oblique he is to it. It’s okay to be around two people talking and not be part of it if it doesn’t relate to you at all. Someone mentioned that they went out and did yard work this weekend and he had to point out that he hates gardening; he can’t make plants grow and they always die on him. Big conversation about gardening and how he’s awful at it. Okay. Someone had food in the van; he had to mention that he likes cooking and then shit all over his wife because she isn’t a good cook. She got her terrible cooking skills from her dad because he can’t cook either! Awesome bro! Good to know!

ANYWAYS, I was trying to read and he was butting into every conversation going on in the van. He even asked me what book I was reading. I said Wheel of Time and he asked if it was good. Well, I probably wouldn’t be reading it if I fucking hated it. How do you even point something as obvious like that out to someone? He then talked about how he can’t read anything that’s long or boring (I’m assuming without pictures too…) and just, urgh. He kept talking and I kept trying to read but anytime he talked my mind would instantly lose focus and direct attention to whatever dumbass thing he was going on about to my coworkers. I couldn’t do it. I had another two hours on break and it took about five minutes to read a paragraph because of him talking and his voice. Eventually I abandoned ~~ship~~ van and headed upstairs to the supervisors’ office. I don’t like to barge in there and shit the place up, but once again sometimes you need to be selfish. I made sure to stress that I just wanted to read and wasn’t trying to socialize with the bosses or intrude onto others: I just needed a quiet and safe spot away from my dumbass coworkers.

We are trying to make some effort to accomodate the guy so he doesn’t feel left out of forgotten about at work. This is good in a way, but it’s also making him more talkative which is stressing everyone else out. You know, try to see everything in a positive light and appreciate everyone as their own, unique person. Everyone brings something to the table, right? Thoughts about how people pissing you off is your own problem, and maybe you can learn something from them in how they make you mad. All of those wonderful and all-encompassing views of humanity and how we’re all the same, struggling through the same problems. This view works great with people you love to be around, but this guy makes me think that maybe all of that lovey, dovey bullshit is, well, bullshit.

And I don’t like to take the Taoism approach of “bad people make the good people good” because goddamnit it’s frustrating. I really think I could appreciate the people I appreciate without a coworker who’s grating on the nerves, but maybe Taoism in onto something. Who knows. I wasn’t trying to make any big or grand points to teach anyone anything here; I just wanted to bitch and bitch I did. Mission Accomplished.

The Weekend Sucks

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To start this off let me state that this is the 99th post on this blog. Wow. As anyone who blogs knows, starting is always the hardest part and you find yourself constantly filled with anxiety about how you can continue to write posts. Like it was a struggle to write the first, second, third, tenth, twentieth post and how can you keep going? But 100? Shit. I’ve almost done it. I’ve been planning to elaborate on that in the next post — the 100th one — and have been wanting to just bullshit my way through the 99th one which is this one. Not that I’m not mildly inspired, but after a week of working nonstop 12-hours days I just want to get something out, even if it is subpar. (And by it being “subpar” everyone will probably fucking love it for some reason.)

I hit a wall of depression last weekend. And looking back on most of my depressive episodes I’ve realized they mostly happen on the weekend. My mood throughout the week is like clockwork; on Monday I’m kinda lethargic and depressed but don’t think about things, and on Tuesday through Thursday I’m great. I’m at work and busy. Any free time before 4:00 p.m. is filled with coffee drinking blogging/writing stories and then I go to work. This is why I always seem to have a post up on Monday or Tuesday, it’s just my flow or something trying to capitalize on my free time before work. Friday is a really slow off-day where I’m like gearing up for my weekly weekend depressive episode with going to work at 7 p.m.; I’m given enough off-time where I get antsy and don’t know what to do but ultimately still have work to distract me. And then Saturday and Sunday are hell. Some weeks are worse than others, but they’re always really shitty.

With all the hours I’ve been working lately something has been painfully obvious to me: keeping busy keeps a depressive’s mind off of being depressed. Literally for 12 hours each day in the past three weeks I have been so busy to where I cannot reflect or overthink anything about my life. I wrote a quick fictional chapter over at my other blog about my daily routine and while quite a bit is exaggerated for effect the general theme is true. I wake up at 9 a.m. and pound caffeine for an hour until I go to work. I then deal with total chaos and bullshit until my hour or two lunch break. This is usually filled with tagging along with coworkers to a restaurant or their house or whatever. (My car is out of service so I’m driving an uninsured and non-exhaust-equipped 1997 Saturn SL 2 to work everyday. Coworkers offer to shuttle me around between shifts so I don’t have to really think about what I’m going to do. I just tag along.) Then it’s back to work for my second shift. I get off around 10 p.m. and dick around for a few exhausted hours at home playing video games and drinking tea until I go to bed. Repeat for weeks. Grind away with each little problem that arises without care for the general direction of life. Doing this I’m perfectly and happily distracted.

Until the weekend that is. I think it’s made worse by the hours I’m working. When you work six days straight and are so constantly busy that you can’t get your bearings you simply don’t have time to think. No time to reflect upon the position and trajectory of your life. To think about how other people perceive you. No time to think about how you’ll actually die one day, really, and that it is inevitable as the sun rising in the morning. And how every day, hour, and minute you piss away is wasting away the very gift of life that you own. No time to shit all over yourself for not keeping up with writing/blogging like you should’ve been doing. No time to think about all the things you’ve said at work and ponder how they’re received by your coworkers. No time to question if everyone only acts like they like you while secretly hating you. No time to let your mind wander to where you see yourself as the odd-man out, the lonely person that isn’t really part of the group, the excluded one. There are others and then there is you: singular, alone, trapped in a box and unable to bond with anyone. No time to wonder why you feel this way even though there is no reason to do so. The weekend gives me plenty of time for all of these pointless, illogical, and dark feelings to well up in my mind and overwhelm me.

Making it worse is the fact that it’s all so damn irrational. I’ve finally found some self-esteem. I realize that I’m a likeable person, at least towards those I actually want to be likeable towards. Yet the weekend gives me these random thoughts that I’m just not busy enough to kill. I think I almost crave the hellish work of life, because that is what keeps my mind from overthinking and wandering to darker things that lurk around in my head. I really do hate being as busy as I’ve been, but it’s been keeping me sane and happy. Dumb, unaware, and unthinking but fucking happy. It reminds me of animals who live their day-to-day lives in total peace and seemingly unawareness. They just do what they need to do and don’t overthink like us stupid humans do.

I don’t know. Maybe I should try to have a weekend hobby or something, but the problem here is hobbies are optional and I would never purposefully subject myself to the type of hell that was work even if it does make me happy. “Why don’t you just constantly write on the weekends dude?” you might ask. Well, you can’t force yourself to write for two days straight if you’re not inspired and writing also involves some degree of self-introspection that can bring about the dark feelings that I’m trying to avoid. I don’t have a solution to the problem; I hate the weekends for the same reason that I hate vacations and I don’t know how to fix the problem.

So there it is: number 99.

Double-Shifting (and Boredom) Sucks

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It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
-David Foster Wallace

…one of these hideous bastards. Note the stubby and goofy looking wings.

I’m currently sitting in a van on the cargo ramp at UPS. The current time is 11:17 a.m. and my crew (consisting of about 9 people) is scheduled to unload an Airbus A300 cargo airplane due to arrive at 12:09 p.m. It’s a little less than an hour away. And what will we do in the meantime? Nothing: we sit. This is what we do at UPS. The motto tossed around to new-hires is usually this: Hurry Up and Wait. I’ve been there so long that it’s basically lost its meaning to me.

The coworker in the front seat has his phone’s volume on full-blast playing some shitty mobile game. I don’t even know what game it is or if it’s even shitty, but it’s a mobile game so it probably is shitty. Also considering the certain coworker that’s playing it leads me to think it’s certainly a shitty game. I hear the cheap sound-effects of change clinking and crowds cheering feebly spewing out of the phone’s minuscule speaker which gives the sound a tinny quality. It’s like someone rubbing crumpled aluminum foil directly on your eardrums. The coworker next to me sometimes glances over in my direction and his breath is terrible. The people in the rear of the van — a Chevy passenger van that seats about 15 people fully loaded — are small-talking that everyone does when there is nothing to actually talk about. Because silence in and of itself is terrifying and scary. Two coworkers are in the back silent ripping away on their vapes. At least they’re not bothering anyone so I give them credit for that.

I’m working the UPS day-shift this year because there is no reason not to work it. UPS is a union job so it’s all-around a pretty comfy affair. Our contract with the company dictates that anything worked over five hours in a day is time-and-a-half pay: my typical $19.95 wage skyrockets to nearly $30 after the fifth hour. In a nine-hour day we’re taking some serious money here, and because I’m bored trying to kill time and math is something fun to do, this is a gross daily pay of exactly $219.45. Holy shit. Maybe double shifting isn’t too bad after all? While the money is good it’s not my primary reason for working the extra shift in a twisted sort of way if you can believe it. I’m a bum. I don’t do anything productive. I usually sleep and write during the scheduled day-shift hours. Sometimes I play video games. There is no reason not to work because making $30 an hour is hard to pass up when you literally have nothing better to do.

My typical shift at UPS is the twilight shift, 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. By doubling on days I work an 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. shift with an hour-ish lunch break in between. And why can I pick up these extra shifts around this time of year? Because I work at UPS. We deliver boxes. And it’s December. Fucking think about it. We’re being swamped by packages and UPS as a company throws around money with complete disregard simply to get people like me to stick around longer than usual, take extra shifts, and get those damn packages shipped. Mostly so the stereotypical American in the fury of ~~Christmas~~ Holiday shopping doesn’t become pissed that their boxes showed up a day or two late. Weeks before ~~Christmas~~ the Holiday itself obviously, but still they will be very upset nonetheless.

Knowing the shift was going to be terribly long and boring I brought in something to read: David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. I almost feel bad complaining about taking extra shifts where I have enough downtime to read a book, write blog posts, and get paid nearly $30 an hour to do so, but the way anyone gauges anything is from their own relative personal experiences and it’s difficult for me to see anything that pisses me off in a positive light even if it is, logically, a positive thing. I hate being bored even if $30 is being thrown at me every single hour.

I started reading the book about a month ago and became bored, yes bored, about halfway through and only recently began reading it again (curious timing, looking back on it). The major complaints about the book are that it’s boring as hell, and even throughout the book the author explains (or maybe it was in the forward?) that the book is almost meant to be boring. Wallace’s most well-known novel Infinite Jest had it’s moments where it lagged a bit, but was a much more riveting story overall. Hell, The Pale King is about IRS employees and the whole IRS being central to the story almost forces it to be a boring story. So it’s not that Wallace is just a boring writer, it seems that he made the book boring on purpose. It’s the theme of the book: boredom. While I don’t know exactly what he is trying to say about boredom, I know he is trying to say something about it. And the book forces you to face the boredom directly; it doesn’t talk about boredom as much as it forces you to live through it by boring you to death. Some chapters are so full of random boring details about forms, procedures, codes, and acronyms that it had to be a conscious choice on the author’s part. And in my current bored state of double shifting, the novel seems like the universe’s way of talking directly to me (again). I find myself immensely engaged with the story that is so bland and devoid of anything obviously purposeful at all.

I realize that what I’m scared of with my extra work hours is not being burned out, or not having enough free time, but of being bored. Something about being bored is a personal affront to my very being it seems. My normal UPS shift forces me to find things to do for sometimes literal hours, and by taking on a second shift I get to double my boredom! And in some ways it’s worse than that; by working a nine or ten-hour day my phone inevitably dies. No writing. No blogging. No social media. No music. No internet. Nothing. Sometimes the work is so chaotic that the boredom comes in bursts here and there and doesn’t allow you enough time to sit down, relax, think, read, or grasp onto your fading sanity. It’s work just to stop minutes later. And then work again. And then stop. It’s Hurry Up and Wait. Let’s also not forget the one or two-hour lunch wedged in between the shifts either. Not enough time to go home and relax but long enough where you can’t sit around at work. Hence me grabbing McDonald’s, sitting in a parking lot at the end of runway 25 at KRFD and watching planes take-off and land. Like this:

And reading the book I run into this, the end of which I quoted at the top of this post:

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breath, so to speak, without air.
The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and ’85, two such men.
It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
-D.F.W., The Pale King

The universe compels me to listen to what it’s trying to tell me. Apparently this time the universe works through the dead author David Foster Wallace and his unfinished novel The Pale King. And if Wallace in his boring-ass book is right, and if double shifting is as torturingly boring as it is so far, well, it looks like I’m well on my way to success, maybe even enlightenment. The key to modern life! I’m going to learn to be bored. To be okay with it. To sit for hours and hours in an airplane cross-legged and perfectly at peace being the embodiment of boredom. Totally fine staring out at the twinkling runway and taxiway lights that appear as bright, vivid, twinkling stars strewn over the ground admiring them endlessly.

(Closing Note: I was trying to make this more of an “update post” but was carried away with my mindset for the day. I wrote the post while bored and just went with it and it ended quite differently than how I originally intended it to end. So I guess this is the “update part” just tacked onto the end. I’m working a bunch of hours. I probably won’t be very active on here unless I knock some stuff out on the weekends and schedule them to post on the weekdays. I can write on my phone just fine, but I can’t edit or post. This also explains the “thanks guys!” post on Sunday. December probably won’t have any record blog views because of this yearly hell I live through; posting will surely suffer. I also might not be very active commenting on other people’s blogs. So if I disappear it isn’t because I forgot about you, it’s because I’m bored and I can’t help being bored and I have no escape from the boredom.)

Everything Sucks: An Update 2.0 (Or Something…)

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If you’re a hardcore fan of this blog you might’ve realized that I’ve seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth the past half year or so. But since I don’t actually think I have any hardcore fans let me state that I’ve basically dropped off the face of the Earth in the past six months or so. This is due to a ton of things but it boils down to a basic lack of motivation. Keeping with the tone of this blog, this Sucks and I’m going to bitch about it.

You see, I’ve written a ton of shit about motivation and for me at least it does seem to be in short supply. Even if I intend to blog, if anything more important or taxing comes up I will immediately drop blogging (unintentionally) to focus on what is most stressful/important/whatever. It’s sort of a theory I live by but continually try to sidestep; like I believe the whole “finite motivation” idea is true but continually try to overextend myself into tons of different matters. It’s even more insulting considering that I’ve written a few blog posts about blogging, consistency, motivation, but still seem to drop the fucking ball on writing and posting blog posts. Like the dude preaching about motivation and consistency continually drops the ball on actually making consistent posts.

Currently I’m taking flight lessons, writing like two or three books (depending on what you consider “writing a book” means), trading stocks and options/dealing with a fucking terrible market, working peak season at a delivery company, being a father/husband, and trying to cope with depression/alcoholism. My life is a fucking hellish mess where I don’t seem to have any time to recoup, find myself, or to just relax and listen to music. There’s always something I feel I should be doing even if I don’t end up doing a damn thing.

Obviously given that mess it’s no surprise I haven’t fucking made a blog post in a few months…

What has changed recently was that I made the mistake of checking this blog a few weeks ago. Thinking that the blog had crashed and burned and that no one would give two shits about what was going on here I found myself pleasantly surprised: I was somehow netting about ten views a day even though I haven’t posted anything in a half year! This somehow bolstered my motivation in regards to my blogging and — I assume — bumped my blogging priorities up quite a bit.

So I suck at keeping a schedule and I guess I have reasons for that even though I’m a slacking piece of shit, but seeing how this blog has had consistent views even while I have been neglecting it gets my inspiration up. It makes me want to work on it. Maybe this blog isn’t something to let wither away and maybe I should keep working at it? I’m not looking for inspiration or justification or for anyone to spur me on to keep posting — because fuck that — I just wanted to make a(nother) post about how much of a bitch inspiration and motivation is and how priorities suck. But if you hang in there maybe you can still start over and that even if you have pissed away quite a bit of time you can still jump in and make progress. But what the fuck do I know? Everything Fucking Sucks.

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.