2014 in Review
It sucked.
No, really. There were highlights, but the majority was a stressful mess of fuck.
When the year started out I was at Assurant. They changed my job description on me as call centers seem to want to do, and the new job was not something I could handle. I already have ridiculously high levels of anxiety and stress over normal crap that most people don’t even think about. Throwing me into a situation where I have to somehow deal with justifiably angry people without actually resolving any of their issues doesn’t work, at all. “But it’s just a job. You get paid for it.” Yeah, fuck off. I have a hard time not taking things personally. I was having what I’ve learned are panic attacks routinely, ended up taking out the stress on the projects I was working with that I actually *liked* (and quitting a number of them), and fell into a pretty severe depression that I’m still dealing with. It was not a good time.
When my pleas for any way out of the position I was thrust into completely fell on deaf ears, I was done. I got out of there as fast as I could and returned to el generico Meijer night stocking job.
The position had changed a bit, I was now stocking grocery instead of hbc. Whatever, it wasn’t much of a change. Apparently I was slow, though, since grocery had a different method of tracking stats. I was getting better with practice. We continually ended up with a smidge of overtime since grocery had some bullshit conditioning job that we had to do after all the stock was thrown. I hated that bit, but it wasn’t terrible enough to make me want to quit or anything. Biggest problem was the usual issue of not enough income for anything above my share of rent and bills and no insurances to speak of. My health doesn’t want to wait any longer -_-
Then TrotCon happened. It was a pile of spaghetti, but in a good way. It was far more mild than previous years. Still stupid fun. I was very glad that I got back into staff for it and hammered out my actual job description, so I wouldn’t have to take the stress of things that I didn’t even want to deal with any more.
Come back from TrotCon to discover that I’ve been fired from Meijer. ‘Cept they don’t actually bother telling me. I just have no hours on the schedule. The second week I go in with still no hours, I call up the manager, and he tells me he had to let me go. Because I requested off (and got approved) for TrotCon. Which they knew about in advance, and also knew about the previous year and had no problems with it. All of my wat.
In the middle of this my significant other gets an offer to attend college for free… in North Carolina. She moves down there and roughly a week later breaks off the relationship. We’re still friends and I hope she finds what she’s looking for out there, but… I miss her, I guess. The relationship wasn’t even going well and we were constantly stressing each other out over stupid things… but I miss having that close of a friend around. Very much so.
Anyway, I end up having to borrow money from a friend to make my share of bills and rapidly acquire a new job at Dish in Columbus. It’s… alright. Another call center position, which I am not cut out for. I spend a month in a friends’ closet in Columbus just to get to work, and end up getting pulled into paying for a share of bills and rent there as well as my normal at home. Big fukken mess, as things are want to be.
Acquire license, can finally start a somewhat sane routine. Or so I thought. Dish gets fucked over by Turner, dropping some of the most important channels in their lineup. They’re not giving us ANY info to give the suddenly thousands of customers calling in rightfully saying “where the fuck are my channels?! I have a contract! How can you do this?! Aren’t you breaking your end of the agreement?!” We’re getting no extra advice to deal with it, just to explain the situation. Oh yeah, and now we’re being pushed to sell shit too. When I interviewed, I made sure to ask about sales and was told that they weren’t required. So what the fuck. If there’s something I’m worse at than dealing with angry people, it’s trying to sell shit to people. -_- All of this coupled with ever-increasing gas prices has me decide that I’ll start looking for a new job in Springfield come January or so, because something that I can walk to would be useful (considering I was borrowing Red’s car for all this in the first place).
Meanwhile I’m supposed to be getting some life insurance money payout that my grandma had set up for me. Which I’m thinking I can use to acquire my own vehicle. That… turns out to not go as planned, and then vanishes. Because the company providing it is a pile of dicks, as companies are want to be, and grandma doesn’t want to deal with their mountains of paperwork and convenient misplacement of the important ones constantly, and gives up. Whatever.
Then I get sick, and the low amount of points one can have gets me fired.
Seriously, fuck my health. Fuck my immune system. Fuck my psychological bullshit. It keeps ruining shit for me.
So then I have to scramble for a job, find one at Sears, and so far it’s been great. Back to the part-time low-pay no-benefits situation, but it’s enough to pay my share of things and I actually enjoy the work, which hasn’t happened since before CodeBlue changed everything on me.
Except my share isn’t enough because my roommate got fucked over by his job and had no money for bills and rent come November through a combination of bad budgeting and relying way too much on credit. Except he *could* pay his share, but then would have to miss a payment on his car. And his credit is more important to him then the roof over his head. >_>
So we’re gonna be a month behind in bills and playing catch up in January, and I’m *hoping* I’ll have enough to make rent. Isn’t life wonderful?
Meanwhile my so-called “friends” yell at me for the entire situation, saying that I need to suck it up and deal with shitty job and shitty life issues and learn to budget. I know how to budget. I have a budget. I don’t earn enough to counter stupid bullshit like roommates suddenly and without warning saying “oh btw I can’t make my share, sorru”.
So I have left the IRC where so-called “friends” lurk, hopefully never to go back. I tried that once before when things were dumb and should’ve trusted my gut then. Now it’s for real. The last thing I need is for people I’m supposed to care about to sit there and berate me for being poor, for being unable to handle shit jobs with shit companies that honestly I’m not sure how anyone can deal with. It’s not worth the compounded stress from the self-hate I already have from not being able to fit in society like the stable and grounded red-blooded American capitalist I’m supposed to be, or something. I’m anything but.
So in wrap up, the good were the conventions, especially TrotCon and Crystal Fair. The bad were the jobs, the home life, the so-called “friends”, all of that mess. I’m done trying to please everyone. I’m done trying to hide my feelings and opinions, because it doesn’t work anyway and it’s simply doing myself a disservice. I need to be myself, not some politically correct watered-down bullshit version of me.
My resolution is to make 2015 not suck. I’m going to write routinely, I’m going to practice drawing until it kills me or I get good, I’m going to attempt to relearn Digital Performer and start churning out music. I’m going to make sure the game room at TrotCon is the best damn thing anyone’s ever been to. I’m going to follow my passions and stop getting caught up in the bullshit of life. I’m going to follow a couple leads I have on potentially acquiring a bachelor’s degree, which would open up an infinite assortment of possible career doors that I might actually care about. Or I’m going to die trying. One of those.
Berry out.
No, really. There were highlights, but the majority was a stressful mess of fuck.
When the year started out I was at Assurant. They changed my job description on me as call centers seem to want to do, and the new job was not something I could handle. I already have ridiculously high levels of anxiety and stress over normal crap that most people don’t even think about. Throwing me into a situation where I have to somehow deal with justifiably angry people without actually resolving any of their issues doesn’t work, at all. “But it’s just a job. You get paid for it.” Yeah, fuck off. I have a hard time not taking things personally. I was having what I’ve learned are panic attacks routinely, ended up taking out the stress on the projects I was working with that I actually *liked* (and quitting a number of them), and fell into a pretty severe depression that I’m still dealing with. It was not a good time.
When my pleas for any way out of the position I was thrust into completely fell on deaf ears, I was done. I got out of there as fast as I could and returned to el generico Meijer night stocking job.
The position had changed a bit, I was now stocking grocery instead of hbc. Whatever, it wasn’t much of a change. Apparently I was slow, though, since grocery had a different method of tracking stats. I was getting better with practice. We continually ended up with a smidge of overtime since grocery had some bullshit conditioning job that we had to do after all the stock was thrown. I hated that bit, but it wasn’t terrible enough to make me want to quit or anything. Biggest problem was the usual issue of not enough income for anything above my share of rent and bills and no insurances to speak of. My health doesn’t want to wait any longer -_-
Then TrotCon happened. It was a pile of spaghetti, but in a good way. It was far more mild than previous years. Still stupid fun. I was very glad that I got back into staff for it and hammered out my actual job description, so I wouldn’t have to take the stress of things that I didn’t even want to deal with any more.
Come back from TrotCon to discover that I’ve been fired from Meijer. ‘Cept they don’t actually bother telling me. I just have no hours on the schedule. The second week I go in with still no hours, I call up the manager, and he tells me he had to let me go. Because I requested off (and got approved) for TrotCon. Which they knew about in advance, and also knew about the previous year and had no problems with it. All of my wat.
In the middle of this my significant other gets an offer to attend college for free… in North Carolina. She moves down there and roughly a week later breaks off the relationship. We’re still friends and I hope she finds what she’s looking for out there, but… I miss her, I guess. The relationship wasn’t even going well and we were constantly stressing each other out over stupid things… but I miss having that close of a friend around. Very much so.
Anyway, I end up having to borrow money from a friend to make my share of bills and rapidly acquire a new job at Dish in Columbus. It’s… alright. Another call center position, which I am not cut out for. I spend a month in a friends’ closet in Columbus just to get to work, and end up getting pulled into paying for a share of bills and rent there as well as my normal at home. Big fukken mess, as things are want to be.
Acquire license, can finally start a somewhat sane routine. Or so I thought. Dish gets fucked over by Turner, dropping some of the most important channels in their lineup. They’re not giving us ANY info to give the suddenly thousands of customers calling in rightfully saying “where the fuck are my channels?! I have a contract! How can you do this?! Aren’t you breaking your end of the agreement?!” We’re getting no extra advice to deal with it, just to explain the situation. Oh yeah, and now we’re being pushed to sell shit too. When I interviewed, I made sure to ask about sales and was told that they weren’t required. So what the fuck. If there’s something I’m worse at than dealing with angry people, it’s trying to sell shit to people. -_- All of this coupled with ever-increasing gas prices has me decide that I’ll start looking for a new job in Springfield come January or so, because something that I can walk to would be useful (considering I was borrowing Red’s car for all this in the first place).
Meanwhile I’m supposed to be getting some life insurance money payout that my grandma had set up for me. Which I’m thinking I can use to acquire my own vehicle. That… turns out to not go as planned, and then vanishes. Because the company providing it is a pile of dicks, as companies are want to be, and grandma doesn’t want to deal with their mountains of paperwork and convenient misplacement of the important ones constantly, and gives up. Whatever.
Then I get sick, and the low amount of points one can have gets me fired.
Seriously, fuck my health. Fuck my immune system. Fuck my psychological bullshit. It keeps ruining shit for me.
So then I have to scramble for a job, find one at Sears, and so far it’s been great. Back to the part-time low-pay no-benefits situation, but it’s enough to pay my share of things and I actually enjoy the work, which hasn’t happened since before CodeBlue changed everything on me.
Except my share isn’t enough because my roommate got fucked over by his job and had no money for bills and rent come November through a combination of bad budgeting and relying way too much on credit. Except he *could* pay his share, but then would have to miss a payment on his car. And his credit is more important to him then the roof over his head. >_>
So we’re gonna be a month behind in bills and playing catch up in January, and I’m *hoping* I’ll have enough to make rent. Isn’t life wonderful?
Meanwhile my so-called “friends” yell at me for the entire situation, saying that I need to suck it up and deal with shitty job and shitty life issues and learn to budget. I know how to budget. I have a budget. I don’t earn enough to counter stupid bullshit like roommates suddenly and without warning saying “oh btw I can’t make my share, sorru”.
So I have left the IRC where so-called “friends” lurk, hopefully never to go back. I tried that once before when things were dumb and should’ve trusted my gut then. Now it’s for real. The last thing I need is for people I’m supposed to care about to sit there and berate me for being poor, for being unable to handle shit jobs with shit companies that honestly I’m not sure how anyone can deal with. It’s not worth the compounded stress from the self-hate I already have from not being able to fit in society like the stable and grounded red-blooded American capitalist I’m supposed to be, or something. I’m anything but.
So in wrap up, the good were the conventions, especially TrotCon and Crystal Fair. The bad were the jobs, the home life, the so-called “friends”, all of that mess. I’m done trying to please everyone. I’m done trying to hide my feelings and opinions, because it doesn’t work anyway and it’s simply doing myself a disservice. I need to be myself, not some politically correct watered-down bullshit version of me.
My resolution is to make 2015 not suck. I’m going to write routinely, I’m going to practice drawing until it kills me or I get good, I’m going to attempt to relearn Digital Performer and start churning out music. I’m going to make sure the game room at TrotCon is the best damn thing anyone’s ever been to. I’m going to follow my passions and stop getting caught up in the bullshit of life. I’m going to follow a couple leads I have on potentially acquiring a bachelor’s degree, which would open up an infinite assortment of possible career doors that I might actually care about. Or I’m going to die trying. One of those.
Berry out.