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I am miserable. Just miserable.
Ive been miserable for a long time, but it's starting to feel like it's taking a real toll on me. I've always just tried to power through the dark moments of hopelessness, but as I get older it just seems less and less worth doing. I'm a quarter of the way through my life and I the best I can do looking back at any period of my life is view it with a sense of blighted nostalgia. Best case is I didn't realize how shitty it was at the time. I've gone past the point of not realizing how shitty it all is.
I sit here at work, I work at an Amazon warehouse in Virginia making about fifteen dollars an hour, it's Saturday morning which means the first morning shift I'm on is starting soon. I have four shifts over the weekend, since Amazon will only hire part time (don't have to give their part timers benefits after all!) and I crammed in as many hours as they would let me. However, I share my car with my mom who works very particular hours, and the only way that this whole situation works out is if I'm doing early morning and late night shifts. What that basically means is that on the weekends I sleep in my car in the 90 degree weather. I try to anyways, I've never done well with heat, and I've always had difficulty sleeping at the best of times, so really I wind up sleeping an hour maybe and waking up as if having dreamed of a monsoon and given that dream physical life. Lately I've just tried to stay up as best I can, go to the gym to shower the sweat off, but sleep seems like a more and more outlandish wish as I continue to work this shift.
You might be asking why I don't drive home, the answer is simple. I have to commute an hour to work and an hour back, and if I went back and forth from home I would be spending 200 dollars a month on gas and I can't afford that. Not with the crushing weight of student loans, not with a car payment, not with this addiction to food and water. So I sleep in my car. I embrace, as much as one really can, this self imposed homelessness.
It's not the first time I've done it. In fact, late last year I spent several weeks living purely out of my car. I could have gone home, but living in my car, showering at the gym, and living off of half-off baked goods from Walmart seemed more attractive at the time. Y'see, I hate being home, I hate the people there, I hate my situation there, I hate the sounds, the feeling, just everything about being there. My family is garbage. That's one of those things that really took me a while to realize was so bad. I grew up in a poor, shitty part of Florida near Tampa. The house was severely termite infested, the wood floors were decimated, no surface was not rotted away by termite, full of dead termites, termite droppings, termite wings. We had an awful sinkhole in the back yard. My neighbor, Conrado had a back yard farm of sorts, he had dogs and chickens, it was built out of scraps of tin and fencing. I didn't know the guy well, but he always appeared to be a nice, friendly fellow. Anyways, being from a poor area family problems were hardly unique or special, drugs, abuses of various kinds, other traps of poverty were the norm, so I don't think it really ever struck me that life could be different. It seemed normal so I accepted it happily enough. My older half sister has been emblematic of everything I hate for as long as I can remember. It's in it's forties now, and it's had issues with substance abuse and violent behavior for as long as I've been alive. It takes it's issues out on others, it feels as though it's owed the world, it never wants to change, and it never does. It's a whirlwind of viciousness. Several days after last Thanksgiving I woke up at about 4PM, my door had slammed opened and there was yelling. I knew almost immediately what this meant, so I crawled out of bed, went upstairs following the trail of screaming vulgarities, expletives, and racial slurs and put myself between my mother and it. They were fighting and it was beginning to get rather aggressive. I told my mom to go back to her room. It pushed itself up against me, I presume trying to intimidate me as it often does in these situations, it shouted, "you're an ape! N***** child! N****** child!" (I'm half Puerto Rican, which I suppose just isn't white enough these days) at the top of it's lungs as it attempted to push me backwards. Forehead to forehead she approached her typical endgame, she bit me in the chin, fell backwards and began to fake-cry. It's all very distinct, drunks are terrible actors. After I turned around and left to my mother's room, I hear my mother calling it's father, "she can't be here, I can't take this any more," I proceed to take the phone and hang up, this is all familiar, it's always this same thing, over and over. I call the police. This was new, I don't normally do this, I've been asked not to by my mother, but this being the... Seventh? Time this sort of thing has happened (that I know of and have been involved with, realistically it's much much more.) Anyways, I call the police. It enters the room while I'm doing so, the racial epithets continue to be thrown around, both sides. I was very... Nonchalant about it at this point. Disgust lingered below the surface, but nothing was going to change this behavior. This situation is who these people are, I've long exhausted feelings of hope about improvement. It retreats to it's basement lair before the call is done. I leave the house, awaiting the police, they arrive and I go to greet them, I am greeted back with a demanding shout of "HANDS OUT OF YOUR POCKETS." Charming. It's 40 degrees outside and I'm cold, but I know how this goes, guy with his hands in his pockets? By God I might as well be pointing an AK47 at his wife and family's temple. Anyways I raise my hands above my head, brief them about the drunk animal with a toddler downstairs in the basement and wait outside. About ten minutes later another cop car arrives. Backup, oh goody. Two cops join the two already in the home and drag a squirming, screaming wretch out, one cop per limb, they force it into the squad car and two of the officers drive away. The cop goes over what happened, charges, etc. He mentions this is it's third aggravated assault charge and it should mean it gets updated to a felony, which is welcome news as I dream of a life free from it's presence. Evidently while in its lair she threw her toddler at the cops, so child endangerment charges were added. The entire altercation started because my mother saw it's year and a half or so old toddler upstairs alone, which meant the toddler had climbed some steep stairs which is obviously dangerous. My mother goes down to it's lair to figure out why and notices that it's drunk. The fight ensues from there. When the cops have left, all forms signed my mother asks me, with this tone that to this day makes me want to punch her in the mouth, "why are you so calm?" Why indeed. Experience? That's my answer. This isn't new. This isn't special. This has been happening for years, she's known it's been happening for years, she enables and accepts these frequent violent substance abuse fueled outbursts. The gall, the actual GALL, to ask why I was calm. That was likely the most infuriating moment of that night.
I find out a week or so after this lovely event that I have a court date, fantasies ensue about getting to lay bare her miserable character in a court room, but wait. It's in December. I had been planning to go back to China to resume teaching... Well, it's just five weeks I can put it off, my apostilles visa paperwork doesn't expire til March. So I wake up a few days later. It's back. It's out of jail and its back here. I pack what I need to live and I go to my car and I drive away. There it is. More of the same. This same trailer trash cycle starting over once more. I'm very done. With all of it. With all of them. They're irredeemable, they don't want to change, theyre content to live this way, but I'm not, so I leave in my car. I shower at Planet Fitness, I go to Barnes and Nobles during the day. The nights are cold, it's beginning to consistently be in the 30s, so I utilize any and all cloth at night as a blanket. Fast forward to December. Court dates moved back. To March. Right after my apostilles documents are set to expire. Once more, my life is derailed, if I had known that this is how I would be punished for breaking up a fight I would have let them have at each other. Never again. I'm still here in Virginia, I went back to the house, I live under the same roof as it, and the cycle is in action again. Drugs and alcohol, I am confident it's still doing both, as I said there's no desire to change, it's a cycle and they're content to live that cycle. I've stopped involving myself. They can kill each other at this point, I won't be dragged down by being involved. I have opted to step out of their circle of white trash violence.
But now here I am, in the US, bills to pay, my own mouth to feed, Corona virus is here, the job market is ruined, work was hard to come by before and COVID 19 certainly didn't help. I've been working rag tag assortments of work since graduating from school, insurance agent, foreign English teacher, Home Depot, now I'm here at Amazon. None of these jobs have paid above 20 dollars an hour. One was in Shanghai, and the wages I made there let me live for what I can only describe as the most comfortable time in my life. It wasn't perfect but I was AWAY. From the bills. From the white trash. From some part of the misery. I went out, had friends, went to bar quiz nights, went on a few dates. Life wasn't perfect, but it was nice. But that's over now, that track was ruined by the white trash circle of violence, the white trash black hole, ruining everything in its vicinity
I feel so very done with it all. When not at Amazon I work at home on a portfolio for 3D character art. It is inadequate. I am inadequate. It's reaffirmed every time I apply somewhere and am rejected. I've been at it for years, getting better sure, but how much better do I need to be, will I ever achieve that level of quality? When I left school I told myself I would be a 3D artist before I was thirty. Thirty felt like a cut off, if I was thirty and still not good enough then it wasn't going to happen, it would be too late to happen, I should die. I still feel that way. You spend a third of your life at work. Half of your waking life. I dont want to live half of my life miserable. Life isn't long, but it isn't short, I see no signs of improvement, no signs that I'm not going to 30 years old forever. I'm not sure if I hate the idea of doing it more or less than I hate the idea of having to wait a few years til I can.
It's... 8:12. Work starts in three minutes. So I guess I'll wrap this up.
I suppose I'm just of the opinion that a long miserable life isn't worth living, and I'm not a gambler, prolonging a miserable life gambling on some chance of life taking a turn just sounds like piling the misery on.
Time to go and scan packages on to a pallet for a living. And then I'll sleep in my hot car. Best I can, anyways.
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Hi. You don't need to be miserable my friend. It doesn't have to be way that way.
I'd love to chat with you if you want. If you're not interested, that's fine too. Just remember that life really does have a way of giving you just what you need if you are willing to give in to that possibility, and stop worrying about how different you want everything to be.
Anyways, I'm sorry you've had to deal with all of that. Hope things get more pleasant for you.
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Northern Ireland23003 Posts
Brutal man, I’m in vaguely similar territory. Am 30 too.
Going back to school for software engineering in September. Was doing ok for about a month of lockdown and was getting 60/70 hour weeks at my job. Cleared my overdraft, cleared some credit debt and was saving.
Been stuck at my contracted 10 for 2 straight months now, cannot get any overtime despite working my fucking arse off when the company needed it. The temp staff they took on had more hours to me and as an additional kick in the teeth they had ME train them.
So now I’m back to worrying about money every single day, and the viability of trying to better myself. Having to turn down social engagements because the cost of a few beers and a taxi home is too much for my current budget.
It’s a horrible, dehumanising existence to be on the fringes of poverty and it’s shameful really. I could get by on my hourly wage if I actually had hours, but hey let’s keep people on ‘flexible me contracts because that’s great!
Can’t say much more other than keep at it man, I know how it feels and it’s shit. Had near a year in psychiatric hospital and I’m trying to rebuild with the handicap of a mental health condition (bipolar) and having to fight against stuff my mental health team say is bad for me there (having to work night shifts for one).
Take care bro, feel free to hit me up on PM if you so desire. Post is a bit short as my youngling is torturing me currently.
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I wish I had something smart & encouraging to say but I just don't.
Suffering is the default value of life, everything good has to be actively chased, and it practically never works the other way around.
I think what I would do in your situation is to just accept & actknowledge that things just really suck right now, but subsequently work and try to figure out a solution, I don't know how many hours a week you work, maybe there would be room to get a second part time job? Save up whatever money you can and rent somewhere cheap away from your family.
Things doesn't neccesarily get better but at the end of the day there is always something you can do to keep yourself going.
I hope this helped somehow.
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This leaf started growing very small with her default partitions, as she got bigger her increased size created more partitions that are only seem very close and got made by stress, then she will get yellowed and fall.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/9ywft5d.png)
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I appreciate the responses, unfortunately me trying to take control and manually right my life has almost unanimously resulted in it rebounding and my life being a step shittier.
To continue the blog rantventing:
I think I began to really escalate in my feelings if misery in college. I think it was easy for me to accept my shitty life when I had nothing positive around me to compare it with. Before college I was surrounded by people in similar situations, at least not different enough to make me feel that my situation was all that bad.
I went to college in Rhode Island, I went to the Rhode Island School of Design, right below Brown University on College Hill. Before then I had never encountered a real rich person. Like a RICH person. Someone whose family vacationed in Europe, someone whose parents could afford to fly between countries every single weekend staying in high class hotels, children who grew up with specialized education opportunities, who had the money to pursue internship in outrageously expensive cities... Real moneyed people. I think that was a turning point for me. When I realized just how much of a handicap on life being poor was and how much of an advantage having money was I started to appreciate my situation.
I could look back at my life til then within a fuller spectrum of what different income stratas could mean. I actually realized that I wasn't middle class like I assumed, in fact I grew up below the poverty line! It wasn't crushing, per se, I was still insulated in a college environment, I just figured that I had to work harder and want it more. You know, the good ol fashioned American Bootstraps horseshit. That mentality really changed for me in Junior year. We have this big Portfolio Review session with a bunch of companies, and I got REALLY lucky, there was a huge blackout in my building and I managed to snag one of five spots at the Hasbro portfolio review. I went, and shockingly, it went well. I was just beginning to learn 3D modeling in Maya, frankly what I showed up with was trash beyond words, but it materialized the one and only opportunity I've ever received in the world of art to this day. An internship.
Given the tone of this blog it's not hard to imagine exactly where this wound going. Nowhere! Yep, I couldn't accept it because I couldn't afford to live in Providence. This was and is a defining moment of bitterness for me. The first tangible experience I had where I was just too poor to be able to accept an opportunity. No federal student loans could help me here.
Other people, wealthier people, went on, got their internships or went on their fancy transcontinental summer vacations or the like.
To this day, even if I were to get an art job, I'd have to live in my car full time for months before I could even fantasize about thinking about getting an apartment. That's something I'm sadly prepared to do, unfortunately I can't even really get that far, I'm still not good enough to get past immediate stages of rejection. I don't know if I ever will be, I don't know if I can. Frankly I have no idea what else to do, so I plug on, but that can't last forever. Eventually I will succeed or I'll have to give up. If I give up I will have nothing. A mountain of debt, RISD isn't cheap, I'm over 100K in the hole and that's after all of the aid based scholarships. I doubt I will ever pay that off in my life time. Looking back it was a mistake. I was a first generation college student, I didn't know any better, my mom didn't know any better. If that four years doesn't pay off then I will have nothing.
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Ah, money issues. Of all the things that trouble us, money seems to be the leading cause for frustration. I can chime in with advice from experience as well as for some men that have distinguished themselves as pillars of the western civilization. The opinions of men like Marcus Cicero, Lucius Seneca, Markus Cato, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Socrates, Plato - they all claim that no worthy man has ever had money as his goal. How so? Because they reason that money are not a good; money are in the category of things indifferent to happiness. This is so because money can be found in the possession of even the most evil and disgraced among men while virtue can be found only in good people. I will not bother to explain more about this now, but the bottom line is that people should strive to develop human virtues and not material wealth in order to live a happy life. If you want to read more and I strongly suggest you do, look for those authors. You might change your entire perception.
And form my experience - I happen to know plenty of wealthy people, both from when I was in high school as well as in university. Oh, if one could just only see how vain and superficial they all are! They go here and there, have a vacation like you say, they play on they play of feigned happiness, the girls are made up to look pretty and appealing, they seem to not have a care in the world. Then something will happen, an inevitable twist of fate or chance, call it however you like. And one sees those people without their masks - their somewhat nice look hides a most repulsive character. If you can think of a vice, it is there - every kind of fear, lust and most of all - avarice.
Such is every wealthy person I have happened to meet and I have grown a feeling of regret towards them. Enslaved in every passion, their desires are whipping them now here, then there, not giving them a single moment of peace.
Do not envy them, do not wish to have their lives. Those are lives of everlasting anxiety, sorrow and turmoil. True tragedies indeed, much like the tragedies of antiquity were about kings, those are our current tragic actors. Only they are not actors but the actual pieces of fate and vice, thrown upon the playing board of life.
The best thing I can advice you is this: try to know yourself, try to improve your mind and reasoning. It is far from easy, I know from first hand. But the reward is immense - it is freedom from fear, it is tranquility, it is peace of mind, I am talking about freedom. Put your efforts there, not in material wealth. If you choose so or not, anyway - it is up to you.
I wish you all the best!
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Most of my friends that I know from this generation grew up to be computer programmers. They all had their different passions and aspirations, most studied those in college (some had to take out loans and some didn't), those who went to college accumulated debt and couldn't find suitably salleried work in their field, and eventually ended up teaching themselves how to code to get a decent job. The ones that didn't are all waiters or bartenders now.
If I was you I would take a long hard look at my 3D character design skill and evaluate if this is the best "exit plan." There's a limited amount of payed work available for skills people are passionate about. It's your call whether you want to stick it out or refocus your efforts, whether that means picking up another trade, narrowing your skills to make them fit a niche, or finding a different way to market yourself to people who may need your services.
Anyway it sounds like the COVID crisis really made things tough where you live so I wish you the best of luck in getting through it.
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Problem is what do I refocus my efforts to? Like if I was playing a video game and I had the equivalent of 100,000 dollars and 4 years of time invalidated I'd turn that game off forever. And that's aside from the point that spending half my waking life doing something I hate is something that I basically consider out of the question. What I do is already a niche, you can't really focus down any further than what I do, I'm about as focused as you can realistically get, lol.
Also, about money, the best money quote of all time is, "having money ain't everything not having it is." I don't strictly envy the wealthy, I don't really want money beyond affording a basic standard of comfortable living, but the amount of money that it takes to achieve that seems ever out of my grasp, y'know.
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Northern Ireland23003 Posts
On July 13 2020 04:34 Zambrah wrote:
Problem is what do I refocus my efforts to? Like if I was playing a video game and I had the equivalent of 100,000 dollars and 4 years of time invalidated I'd turn that game off forever. And that's aside from the point that spending half my waking life doing something I hate is something that I basically consider out of the question. What I do is already a niche, you can't really focus down any further than what I do, I'm about as focused as you can realistically get, lol.
Also, about money, the best money quote of all time is, "having money ain't everything not having it is." I don't strictly envy the wealthy, I don't really want money beyond affording a basic standard of comfortable living, but the amount of money that it takes to achieve that seems ever out of my grasp, y'know.
Indeed, money isn’t everything unless you don’t have any:
It’s rather trite for people to claim it doesn’t really matter if the money issue is the impediment to realising one’s other goals.
For me I’ve been broke my entire adult life, had a kiddo, had a mental breakdown etc. Merely trying to get retrained and boost my income a bunch, fuck even getting the money to just study is horrendous.
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Just want to say I hear you Zambrah, and I'm probably not the only one.
Many of the vocal posters here are full of shit and haven't had to go through 1/10 of the suffering you have. Of course they will define it differently. But you know what I mean.
I'm happy that you are breathing and still striving for a better life. Best of luck to ya. Odds are against you but I believe in you.
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This is a very sad story to read and I empathize with you. Showcases that growing up poor in the US is nothing desirable. I fortunately grew up in Germany, where all public schools are pretty much tuition-free and you only have to get a loan from the government for your living expenses from which you only have to pay back half at most (max. 10k€). Makes me really wonder, how anyone is able to go to university in the US without any parental support and maybe get out of being poor instead of fucked afterwards.
I was wondering about one thing regarding your internship in your story. Isn't your school also in Providence? Couldn't you go to the internship from the same place when going to school?
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that sucks. There isn't any advice I could say without sounding very ignorant but I hope things get better for you in the future.
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I almost instantly felt a ton of sympathy when reading this. Yeaaaaaah. Talk about getting some. Damn, bro. Holy shit. You're getting some for real.
I'm gonna tell you something. Not "real talk", not "never give up", not "you're gonna make it, never surrender" etc. None of that shit. I have absolutely no idea if it's of use to you. Or even if it makes any sense to you or others. For what it's worth, I have found it practical. It also sounds cheesy af, as useful things often do. So I'm just going to share it.
It's a fucking hyperbolic time chamber, man!
The explanation, the rest - spoiler. Be warned. It's cheesy.
It's so cheesy, you will eat your teeth out of cringe. I don't give a fuck. To me, it was practical and made a lot of miseries into something awesome. It turned a lot of miseries not only into something awesome but into sources of inspiration and into practical instruments to help myself become that much better.
Beware - when I say it sounds cheesy, I mean it.
It's just a perspective I came up with when staring down into the precipice ahead of me, with empty, desolate ruins behind me, no realistic options in sight, engulfed in total hopelessness and intensities of resentment, sadness and negativity that are hard to describe.
+ Show Spoiler +
IT'S A FUCKING HYPERBOLIC TIME CHAMBER.
NAME IT WHATEVER ELSE YOU WANT. NAME IT SERIOUS, NAME IT CHEESY.
I DON'T CARE. THAT'S WHAT IT IS.
IT'S A FUCKING HYPERBOLIC TIME CHAMBER, MAN.
THE WORLD IS VAST, COMPLEX, ENORMOUSLY RICH AND VARIED. YOU AND YOUR LIFE, ALONG WITH ALL OTHERS, ARE LIKE A SHIP SAILING THE SEAS OF ALL THAT INCOMPREHENSIBLE MIXED UP BULLSHIT AND NONSENSE AND AWESOME AND UNEXPECTED AND WONDERFUL. UNDERLYING ALL OF THAT ARE CURRENTS OF EVOLUTION BECAUSE THAT'S SOMETHING THAT LASTS - CHANGE ITSELF.
IN THIS WEIRD AF, VAST SOUP OF ALL THINGS, THERE ARE PATCHES OF DARKNESS OR REALLY DARK SPOTS. YOU CAN THINK OF THEM AS EXACTLY WHAT I'VE CALLED THESE - HYPERBOLIC TIME CHAMBERS.
ONE OF THE MAIN CHALLENGES OF THESE, IS HOW HARD IT IS TO SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS WHEN LOOKING INSIDE OUT. IT COLORS EVERYTHING BLACK SO IT'S HARD TO SEE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ANYTHING GOOD OR POSITIVE ABOUT ANY OF IT. THAT'S PRECISELY ONE OF THE THINGS THAT MAKE THESE SO CHALLENGING.
SOMETIMES YOU HIT A VERY, VERY, VERY, V E R Y DARK PLACE.
BUT THERE'S MUCH MORE TO IT THAN JUST WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE FROM UP CLOSE.
ANOTHER CHEESY LINE - BUT IT'S FUCKING REAL - THIS IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF EVOLUTIONARY OPPORTUNITY OR GROWTH OPPORTUNITY. THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT IT IS. THAT IS L I T E R A L L Y WHAT IT IS.
YOU EITHER GET TOUGHER THAN IT, YOU GET SMARTER THAN IT, YOU TURN IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE, YOU FIND WAYS TO USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE, YOU GET IT TO HELP YOU MAKE YOURSELF INTO SOMEONE FAR GREATER, SOMEONE MUCH, MUCH, MUCH GREATER THAN YOU COULD HAVE BECOME OTHERWISE. OR YOU DON'T AND YOU'RE RUINED AND FUCKING DIE OR LIVE IN PATHETIC MISERY AND THEN DIE.
THAT'S THE REALITY OF IT.
BUT STILL, THERE'S MUCH MORE OPPORTUNITIES AND ALL KINDS OF NON-OBVIOUS RESOURCES THAN WHAT MEETS THE EYE.
THAT'S WHAT IT IS.
IT'S A FUCKING HYPERBOLIC TIME CHAMBER, MAN.
Aside from the spoiler content - I will give you another example. Think of the folks who voluntarily go to the military. Now, you experience ABSURD levels of misery there. And yet, many of the military folks, not only do not hate it, they embrace it. They use it to get that much stronger, and smarter, and faster, and more resourceful, more flexible, and more clever, and more adaptive, and so on. They see it as challenge and trainings grounds.
In short, you either keep finding ways to use that situation to your advantage, or it keeps finding ways to keep fucking you more and more until you're done.
Remember how your papers were, somehow, moved back to March? And how all of a sudden your plans are derailed and ruined? More over, not even so much because you fucked up on your own but rather because YOU PLAYED THE TEAMWORK CARD and YOU'VE ATTEMPTED TO HELP.
Hahahhaha OF COURSE, my man. AHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHAH. Yeah, man. You got some, you got some real nice right there.
I'll share a bit of my story, on the financial end.
I was working a warehouse job since new year. I was almost starting to get things together financially. Had virtually no spending, except for the post web dev job room, which was way too expensive. I also got kind of good at the job. It was becoming quite stable. March, had I done 160+ hours = I was fine.
Then COVID hits for over 9000 damage and all non-long-term contract employees are suspended. GG, no money, had to loan. Okay, then, can loan from the bank. BUT THEN, I can't fucking loan from the fucking bank because guess what my friend, my ID card happened to be expiring in that exact fucking time period. (I'm swearing a lot for the effect and to reflect my mood from back then, in case it bothers someone). In that exact fucking time period. Are you shitting me. Seriously, are you shitting me. Are you fucking kidding me? And not only that, it wasn't expired yet but banks didn't accept soon-to-be-expired ID's, in terms of taking a loan.
So I had to borrow from non-bank institution. That or not be able to pay rent. Holy shit. Well. So I borrowed and paid rent. Then came april, no job. Had to loan a bit more to pay the fucking rent. Then came May. Boss calls, job's back. But by then I've entered a long-distance relationship with reality and fucking declined to re-take the work.
Because I was so fucking frustration, depression & delusion-derailed out of my fucking mind, I had a grand hyper-ambitious plan to make that money in some other way, with my great plan, and just believing in myself, and working a thousand billion hours, and get that money and pay before rent time. You know, that kind of a thing. Ahahhahahahahh. Holy shit. Yeah, you're definitely better off sticking to reality but thankfully, I realized what I was doing soon enough.
Then, I noticed I'm making great dives into deep depression and hopelessness, instead of money. I will only mention that throughout all that time I had absolutely 0 friends, 0 dates, 0 relationships, 0 genuine connections, 0 social interaction pretty much, even 0 online interaction because even there I was alienating myself. So I chose to do a work marathon and work 40 pomodoros straight and set myself on the right track or collapse trying. Instead, after about 24-28 pomodoros, I realized how fucked my thinking was on the issue, and the extreme importance of work, and the extreme importance of having a job and re-introduced myself to reality. Took the job. Did my absolute best during May. Then in June. Did quite well.
Then in July the new manager lady came. We got along really well because I was super eager to learn from her, had ease in changing my assumptions and admitting errors, had tons of energy, routinely did extra work (e.g. writing notes from her 1,5 hour team introduction meeting and making a thorough, clear google doc out of it, that concisely covered nearly every detail she mentioned, when nobody else even took any notes whatsoever; then did the same for writing down rules for effective work from her out of my own initiative; generally did my best to work for the team, contribute and be better with every day).
Except for one scenario in which I fired myself off that job. I wrote a blog post about, not long ago, too (it was 20th June or so).
After my shift ended, she was supposed to take me off the cash stand. I got intel that I'm probably replacing another colleague. Staying a few more hours - but to be confirmed. I was ready. I was so ready. Already a great day, did 5 palettes in 1 hour and 40 minutes, great performance in other things.
Then, well, the situation happened. I don't know what in the fuck caused it. It seemed to be after the first after work party. Anyway, she did not have 10 seconds to tell me if I'm going home or need to stay a few more hours. After already not taking me off the cash stand after shift time. It was almost quarter past shift time. When I came to ask, she treated me extreme disregard, to say the least. Far too severe for anyone with a sense of dignity to gloss over. So basically, I had a choice - risk getting myself fired or stand for my dignity.
Guess what I chose. Not a nanosecond on even considering there was any choice in that scenario.
So I confronted her on that, then defended my rights against her very disregarding, belittling, condescending rebuttals, attacks and denials, then wanted to sort it out with her directly via phone, never went behind her back in any way. Ended up in her firing me from the job right then and there.
And guess what, GOOD. Gooooood. Goooooooood.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.
G O O D.
Fucking awesome. Even better opportunity to get better and stronger and smarter and tougher and more flexible, and more prescient, and more experienced, and just overall better and stronger in all kinds of ways. That's AWESOME.
Anyway, I have no idea if any of it helps you feel any different about your situation. But it's not my intention to help you because I don't think you necessarily need any help. You just need a different way of looking at things. And that's just my opinion and nothing more, anyway, I don't know, man.
Best of luck, you better fight well, crush it. And you better crush it real nice out there and go on to live an awesome life, man.
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On July 13 2020 18:12 Cryoc wrote:
This is a very sad story to read and I empathize with you. Showcases that growing up poor in the US is nothing desirable. I fortunately grew up in Germany, where all public schools are pretty much tuition-free and you only have to get a loan from the government for your living expenses from which you only have to pay back half at most (max. 10k€). Makes me really wonder, how anyone is able to go to university in the US without any parental support and maybe get out of being poor instead of fucked afterwards.
I was wondering about one thing regarding your internship in your story. Isn't your school also in Providence? Couldn't you go to the internship from the same place when going to school?
Dude, no one in US goes to uni without parental help, 3 jobs (not exaggerating), or becoming a debt slave to the US Government. Or some combination of the 3 that adds up to tuition. I myself turned down admission to the literal best uni for my major in the country because scholarships weren't enough to cover all costs.
Best case, there are some nice state universities funded with public money that are somewhat cheap, and some of them are actually really good (my alma mater, UW-Madison, ranks top 10-20 in most programs in the nation, even as a public school). Most of them are not great though, most don't carry good name recognition/instant job opportunities, and they are still like 9-10k a year (if you live in the state) and 16-30k a year (if you live outside the state). IN some cases a state university will accept someone from a neighboring state as 'in-state'.
Not to mention its actually common what happened with him internship wise. I assume he meant the internship would have started after school, he can't just live in the dorms then, he'd have to find an apartment. Rich kids here always get the easiest opportunities to do unpaid or low paid internships at the best companies, its just another form of 'nepotism' or whatever you wanna call it (I know its not actually family, but...)
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On July 14 2020 06:35 nath wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2020 18:12 Cryoc wrote:
This is a very sad story to read and I empathize with you. Showcases that growing up poor in the US is nothing desirable. I fortunately grew up in Germany, where all public schools are pretty much tuition-free and you only have to get a loan from the government for your living expenses from which you only have to pay back half at most (max. 10k€). Makes me really wonder, how anyone is able to go to university in the US without any parental support and maybe get out of being poor instead of fucked afterwards.
I was wondering about one thing regarding your internship in your story. Isn't your school also in Providence? Couldn't you go to the internship from the same place when going to school? Dude, no one in US goes to uni without parental help, 3 jobs (not exaggerating), or becoming a debt slave to the US Government. Or some combination of the 3 that adds up to tuition. I myself turned down admission to the literal best uni for my major in the country because scholarships weren't enough to cover all costs. Best case, there are some nice state universities funded with public money that are somewhat cheap, and some of them are actually really good (my alma mater, UW-Madison, ranks top 10-20 in most programs in the nation, even as a public school). Most of them are not great though, most don't carry good name recognition/instant job opportunities, and they are still like 9-10k a year (if you live in the state) and 16-30k a year (if you live outside the state). IN some cases a state university will accept someone from a neighboring state as 'in-state'. Not to mention its actually common what happened with him internship wise. I assume he meant the internship would have started after school, he can't just live in the dorms then, he'd have to find an apartment. Rich kids here always get the easiest opportunities to do unpaid or low paid internships at the best companies, its just another form of 'nepotism' or whatever you wanna call it (I know its not actually family, but...)
Thanks for clearing it up. To me, these are just crazy facts, since it not only hurts intelligent but poor people but also the US itself, since all this talent is not used.
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College in the US is basically a scam, it exploits the financially illiterate who don't really know any better, people who can't be expected to know better because they've never gone through college and have spent their whole lives within the myth that a college degree is the key to success.
Im not saying that its worthless, but the kind of debt people get saddled with is truly an affront.
Anyways, its one of my week-work days, and I cant seem to stay awake more than ~6 hours at a time, I think these weekends living in my car are fucking with my sleep in a big way, but at least I can sleep in a bed during the week.
I appreciate the kind words, its nice to vent once in a while.
Speaking of venting, I was real irritated during my weekend shift because earlier I had checked the scheduling website and noticed it had counted SEVEN days of me being late. Only for me to find out that apparently their online schedule at Amazon is just useless, I'd been leaving after four hours per that schedule for a month and NOONE had ever said JACK FUCKING SHIT about the fact that apparently its wrong at all times and shouldn't be used.
So when should I have been leaving?
Apparently I have to pester a fucking manager-type every fucking hour because THEY SERIOUSLY DONT KNOW UNTIL ~2 HOURS BEFOREHAND?
Amazon. The big, ultramassive, Billionaire Jeff Bezos owned Amazon. One of their company principles that they plaster all over the fucking place is "frugality," and I guess how they express their frugality is to make sure to keep employees on a permanent flex time upheaval. I mean, nothing saves money like hiring purely part timers so you dont have to pay benefits, and then making sure that you exclusively have to pay them whatever you barely need at the expense of them, BONUS, you dont have to pay anyone to do any real scheduling because the scheduling is a sham!
Living in the US feels like a cavalcade of exploitation. Dusk til dawn, we exist to be exploited, chewed up, spit out. I can't tell if I'm experiencing it in a hyperbolic time chamber fashion and being conscious of it is just making my experience of it worse, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not capable of living with this sort of existential feeling of being trying to keep my head out of the water. Gasping for air, backed turned to the tidal wave that looms behind, guaranteeing my doom. Is it worse to catch sight of the wave? Know how long you have? Or is the ignorance of it the strength to concentrate on keeping the water from your lungs before the wave does crash down?
I made this sculpt in Zbrush to practice polypainting when I was going through a depression a few months ago,
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ybrGAx
Whenever I think back on it, or look back, I feel like I've fallen far from even this. Like its a fight that Im losing in real time.
Well, in a half hour I leave to another shift at the warehouse, maybe Ill get lucky and a piece of equipment will malfunction and maim me so I can take Amazon to court for any and everything I can get.
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Northern Ireland23003 Posts
It’s a fucking shitshow man. One that isn’t likely to change any time soon.
I withdrew from college due to stress on having a newborn. Was on a high 2/1 with a few first class modules, just couldn’t handle it. Turns out subsequently and after a year in a psych ward that my inability to handle stress was being undiagnosed with bipolar, despite going to doctors many times thinking something was wrong with me. I still had the grades to still get a low end degree even tanking my entire final year dissertation.
Nonetheless employers for even basic grunt work want a 2/2 degree minimum.
Did some volunteering with the disabled and they’ve given me a lot of extra responsibilities on top of what I came in for, which was to assist folks doing various educational programs. Get to source and order technical equipment, devise projects, have rewrote their stock program from a spreadsheet into a basic SQL relational database.
Can I get even BASIC office work? Nope!
Then after half a decade I have friends and family saying ‘why are you so hellbent on doing another degree, it’s not the be all and end all?’ Why are you putting yourself under such strain with your condition?’ When I was working 70 hour weeks against doctors orders.
Well, maybe I’m just fucking desperate at this point to have some autonomy and some dignity in my life, to actually employ at least some of my talents?
Amazon’s corporate practices are shameful. Alas I have yet to stop using their services, I do intend to, outside of their digital offerings. I already refuse to use many, especially ones in the gig economy because of the kind of lifestyles they force on people and that I’m sadly very much personally familiar.
Now lockdown is relaxed and I can frequent actual shops again my need is much less, feels a good time to try and wean myself off Amazon’s tit.
It’s a losing battle, half my Facebook feed likes to pontificate on social issues ad nauseam, ask them to just stop using companies that behave like complete shitbags to their employees and ‘oh but it’s so convenient’.
Fuck off moaning about the companies then?
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Northern Ireland23003 Posts
PS apologies for over-venting here. It’s your thread after all man, just spoke to me a lot!
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No no, please, if there's anything I learned from working at GEICO it's that feeling safe to vent about the bullshit around you is cathartic beyond belief.
RANT AND VENT TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT!
EDIT I'm off work: Yes, I hate how qualifications work nowadays. At Amazon the warehouse people bust their asses for some reason, the faster the work the fewer hours they get the less money they make, and yet they bust ass. I can only presume it's because of the promise of opportunity, but I also see Amazon hire batches of people they explicitly intend to promote into the managerial type positions, lol.
In my field of Character Art, and art fields in general really, almost every position is for a fucking senior artist. Have decades of experience! Have shipped multiple AAA games! What's the position for? Obscure low budget indie game! I'm told that it's best to pretend what they want doesn't exist because at the end of the day your portfolio will be what they look at, but how far does ones head need to be shoved up ones ass to not see that requiring so much experience and degrees and shit is asinine. Train people, give them the opportunity to learn the job and you'll likely earn a more stable worker than some business degreed shitbird who'll hop out once he's got his first piece of job experience to leverage for a better position.
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EPT
