The Familiarity of the Unfamiliar Ceiling

Approx. 3 months later, I got a job...but the fun ends there.

I landed in retail. For about 8.40 an hour, I now work a register at a store. On a seasonal basis.

It's a band-aid, a pacifier, a drug for a terminal illness...that is, it will come back, but you have to face it all over again in a short while.

To be honest, I didn't want to work at BJs, especially during the holidays, losing weekends and nights, forcing a lot of things into unsure ground in the process. And I really don't like how it was out of desperation, essentially returning to the same conditions in the first place, only for lower pay and shaky job security.

I'm working on an exit strategy so I am in total control of a situation that could slip out of control. Getting let go to start 2015 is not how i want to do things. I want to get things going in the way I want, not the way someone else wants.

So I wake up with a new ceiling that's the same one...only in a different room.

Fighting a Lonely War

To all those people who wish they "didn't care":

You have no idea what it is you're talking about. None. Imagine waking up one morning, and having no motivation to do anything. Stuck in bed and frustrated at yourself but with no initiative to do anything about it. Screwed up, huh? It gets worse. Instead of doing things, you just idle around all day, unable to muster up the guts, the will to change your situation. You become nothing and you feel that you were something but that's fading into the background like a one-hit wonder. And as the days go on and on, it gets worse and worse, to the point where you stop caring about the one thing you can't afford to not care about, yourself.

What I just described is what I'm enduring right now at this moment. Blame it on everything blowing up in my face one after the other, a dead-end career path, apathy towards my personal life, but this is what happens when you "don't care". You burn out. And it'll take a lot more than a day to fix what you've broken along the way. So do me a favor: CARE ABOUT THINGS.

Fixng The Fine Focus

What took me so long?

After 1 year out of college, there was no movement forward. No viable job opportunities. Comm arts was a dead end, barring a move that I can't afford at the moment. So what am I to do, wait for the day that never comes? Change to another job industry?

Or look deep inside and find what I wanted from what surrounded me?

After a lot of soul searching and long lonely nights at work, I made a choice. It was time to go and pursue my dreams as the priority. It was over, the days of waiting and waiting for things to fall into place. Instead it was the right time to finally chase what I wanted since high school.

I came to the conclusion that at the age of 26 years, with no relationship, no children, no job, and no obligations to any institution, I was best suited to make a career-defining run in music. Since high school I wanted to lead a music-centric life. I was finally gifted the chance to do so and now I am.

It was either working jobs that would end and start and doing it over and over...or working bum jobs...or moving out and trying my luck in a better market with all my contacts gone or just do something awesome and be able to tell my kids that when their daddy was younger, he had an adventurous post-college life.

I don't know how or where this ends but I know it starts. With one foot out the door.

3 Months An Employee

3 months a wage-slave.

That is the nice way of describing my time at my former job.

Let's start with some background shall we?

• With the Bruins potentially being eliminated in the future, I realized the sudden need for a second job/backup to keep myself financially afloat. So I began searching and threw my application at a gas station.
• Next few days: called by the manager to interview. Ace it.
• Get the job. Bruins eliminated within 1 week.
• Work is fine until the following happens
• People quit/fired/vanish - which turns this whole process into trial by fire.
• Began to see the ugly side of things
• Long hours become longer
• Call-ins.

And thus here we are, the slow but steady breaking points of working a gas station job.

1. Call-ins don't give no fucks.
2. Working til midnight again and again.
3. Weekends are vanishing
4. No rhythm to life.
5. Inconsiderate customers representing the bottom of the barrel.
6. Long nights = expensive eat-out dinners or wonky meal times.
7. Working nearly 15 days in a row. No breaks.

So after all of this and the constant overkill, plus the potential lack of a real situation in sight, I sense it's time to escape, before 3 months became 6, 6 became 12, 12 became 18 and so forth. It's a trap job.

In that period of time, those two weeks, my manager up and quit the job...out of nowhere. Huh. She tried to get me to stay...picture that.

Anyways, I gave my two weeks and quit and now live in the realm of unemployment, again. Just like last year.

But it's weird. I feel this crippling freedom to do anything but can't really do anything due to bills and whatnot. Kinda sucks.

But that does lead me to another point that I will save for a second post.

may-days

A conversation with a co-worker last week brought me back. But not in a good way.

We chatted about relationships. Primarily about hers and how she quickly rebounded from a 3 year one into a new one and dropped her ex like a sack. And she asked me "are you in a relationship?" ... I told her no.

I then said that I had never been in one. Laughter intensifies. And she remarked "seriously?!"

I told her I had my chances. And that started a downward spiral.

I remembered the last two times. And then I drew upon my attempt with Emma.

I felt some regrets over dropping the idea of a relationship, because of our age gap (20 vs 26) and our life experience gap (going to college vs being fresh out of college). I thought about how awkward it was for me to talk about it with friends and family, how the opposition to it would have been immense and drove us apart. I realized that in the end I became every guy I hated in college, the older off-campus BF who only rolls in on weekends dating a girl younger than his sister.

I felt bad but then again I felt I did the right thing, to remain friends.

I came home that night and reflected on the bridges I've burned. I thought about Ari again and it only confirmed the obvious: she's gone forever.

So I thought about it, do I need to fall in love to feel complete? Do I need someone else?

I realized I'm better off single for now, because I have no need to worry about someone else that way. And I'm not there yet. I'm 26 and going nowhere right now professionally so why bog people down with that? Are we that so insecure about being alone that it's a point of humilation for not being in a relationship well into your adult years?

While I'm on that note, I'm also finding it really really hard to start a band now. Just had to respectfully dissolve a partnership because we both had different styles of working and we just weren't clicking. It was either make it work and just remain that way or change it, take it to someone else with your knowledge of music and what works and what doesn't work live and do it better.

I'm getting worried. I have no time for music, video games, photography and working 30 hours and save for sacrificing sleep, I don't know what else to do.

Debating making a change and doing open mics by myself and building a network on my own to get this band started. Going against my words.

paranoia

I've been burned by the fear and the reality that somehow, something is going to go wrong. To the point where it can't be fixed.

It's the reason why I'm unsettled as of late. Worried that a close friend is coming upon the realization I am too toxic to be around and they are just giving me the vibe that I don't want you around me anymore. Worried about a possible relationship putting my job into jeporady, if not to say that I am so unsure of myself with her, and all the inherited issues that could arise.

Specifically, age. She's 20 and I'm 25 (virtually 26) and I'm concerned that she's too young, enough to cause a stink.

Also, I'm worried that attempts to engage will only end in humiliation and being black-balled from being around her and her friends/co-workers. So it's a tough place to be in.

Doesn't help to be dealing with a creative burnout, that's only becoming a full on disillusionment/depression/panic induced shutdown as of late and a sense of jealousy, regret, shame, and loneliness. I'm OK...in a masochistic kind of way.

Something has to change. Either I give up my dreams, get real, or I risk everything and chase it and stop being paranoid about things. I'm sure this is just my frayed mind jumping to conclusions again and I'm allowing myself to run with it, taking little things and drawing illogical conclusions. Thinking that she hates me when I don't even know anything and I've only tried to talk to her 2 times since.

I lost the woman I loved and trusted 4 years ago. I'll be damned if it's going to happen again on two fronts.

But for now I just don't know.