I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... Today there is no target, no real issue at hand other than my future. I feel angry, and it's maybe unwarranted, maybe not. I won't be keeping my job past my pre-determined period. I didn't expect to but I had a small sliver of hope that maybe, they would keep me aboard. I worked hard, and I did my best to be as good as I could be. The most I can hope for is that if Coles has an opportunity open up, they phone me to fill that position, but really the time for bitterness is past.
Why was I bitter? A large part of me feels that I wasn't given a fair opportunity as the other holiday season part-timer. They got more hours than I did every week, and in the end, they were the one to keep their job past the Christmas season and I wasn't. It's pointless to idly speculate as to why this was the case, assume that it was prejudice and bias that influenced the decision when that probably wasn't the case. I could blame myself and my work ethic but that probably didn't play too much in to it either. I showed up, I never flaked on a shift, I gave every shift my best effort even when it maybe didn't call for it.
Now that my future has a relative uncertainty I feel partially responsible. Maybe excluding a job from the kitchen restricted the few "opportunities" (a rant I will get to in a moment) that were avaliable for me. I wanted to work for a retail outlet as a chance to flex my customer service skills. Contrary to what you may conceive (as, I really do hate people and by and large cannot stand their consuming habits) I do like working around people, helping them and talking to them. I'm a better salesman than I give myself credit for, but if it's not something I'm interested in I hate trying to sell people anything. I fully endorse reading so, I love selling people books. Working in coles was something I really enjoyed.
I've worked Kitchen jobs the better part of my working life. The Kitchen is a rather rabid environment of hostile personalities and hostile practice. It's a very downtroughten profession with very little praise. Often thankless, the hard work people put in to the kitchen is often given very little to no praise. This makes working in the kitchen fruitless and very un-endearing. It's something I've had more than my fill of and if I have to go back to it, so be it, i'll hardly consider it an opportunity, just a paycheck.
"Opportunity" is a bullshit word we've thrown around far too gratuitously. An opportunity is something good, in my opinion. Where as sure, it would be nice to be working and making a pay check, it's hardly an opportunity for anything other than to sustain a concrete living situation. There's so much bullshit to worry about, paying bills and buying food to keep on fueling the vicious cycle that I have no time to even worry about any TRUE opportunities that are open to be. Heaven forbid I have enough stability to shed away all this extra clout that's on my mind so I could fuel my hobby that makes me happy. Nothing kills my muse faster than the depression of many of the subjects that have been on my mind lately. Losing my job, losing the car, the possibility that I will get to live on kraft dinner for a little while.
A true opportunity would be me, getting to go to college, for that I would need my drivers license, hooray, there's more fucking money down the tube. I would love to go to college, but for what? I don't even know what I want to do with myself. First I believed I wanted to be a journalist but when that holy light came crashing down and the truth eroded any faith I had in that profession, writing came a calling. I enjoy writing but I haven't felt motivated to write anything in months. So I don't feel as strongly in it as I once did. There are things I'm passionate about but to aquire a college education to further my life in a direction that I'm unsure about is not an investment that I am sure I want to make. My highest priority right now is happiness and the best way to ensure that, is to get some stability to my situation. College is bullshit.
When the people around me are a bit happier, that will give me room to be happy. Right now, things are far too unstable, people are not happy, people are stressed the fuck out and there's nothing I can do about it which in turn, stresses me the fuck out. Yeah, you may feel like I'm bitching and I am, this is my forum to do that and I'm taking that opportunity in stride.
Blame the economy, blame the suits, blame the government. There are a lot of places I could point the finger, and I'm going to point it at myself. I'm accountable for where I'm at right now, and there's no finer truth than that. I am responsible for righting my own ship, even if it means I have to swallow some pride and happiness to take a less than desirable job somewhere I will probably not (but maybe) enjoy.
I must feed my cat, a terrible way to an ending but she's starting to annoy me. Next time I promise I'll have something less selfish, and hopefully, more opportunistically important to talk about.
PEACE.
3 comments:
You're right in that as far as writing goes college is mostly bullshit. You're good enough at it that you could manage in a newsroom or as a copywriter once you get the general feel for what's required.
The big thing is networking. Decide what it is you want to do and start networking the shit out of it. That's what I've been doing in game-design and it's slowly starting to pay-off. Game design is a stupid thing to want to do for a living but designing intellectual property which runs parallel to it has the potential to make bank.
The trick is keeping food on your table in the mean-time...
My honest-to-god suggestion is cement your goal. If you want to write figure out what it is you want to write. If you don't care then put a bunch of writing orientations on a wall (copywrighting, comic writing, story writing, playwriting, screenwriting etc...) and then throw a dart. Once you've established what you intend to write, look for every blog that talks about doing that kind of writing and start commmenting on it, follow their twitter feeds and @reply back to them until they follow you back. Then friend them on facebook and interact. Write your own blogs on the same topic to impress them, and keep working your way up the ladder until one of them has a project that you can get in on. It's a process, and you've got immediate concerns I know, but if that's your ultimate goal it's a road-map to achieving it.
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Do not blame yourself. Thats what the elite members of our society (those who run the show) want you to do. We live in a society that believes "anyone can succeed no matter the obstacles so long as they work hard or believe," well thats bullshit. The plight of the working poor is one of alienation and hegemony. As you aptly pointed out it is exceedingly difficult for someone in your position to go to school, this isn't by accident, this system was put in place for a reason. They want you to feel like its your fault so you don't demand your piece of the pie, they want you to be downtrodden instead of angry and revolutionary.
Nobody gives a shit about the working poor. Nobody cares about class in this country. Although all of my professors confess the paramount importance of class it is not taught in universities, and ideas on how to overcome such obstacles are hidden from view or marginalized. Basically your in this on your own. No help is coming.
I posit we storm parliament hill. With our combined knowledge of first person shooters the Canadian military will never stop us. The RCMP may taser us in the nuts though.
On a more serious note though I don't know what you should do. I shall not give advice as thats what idiots who don't understand the others situation do, and can only make things worse.
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