Work

Agony- 13.5 Years

I have quit jobs because of moral reasons. I have quit for ethical reasons. I have quit because I was unpaid and undervalued. I have quit because I had to move and couldn’t afford the commute. Hell, I’ve even quit a job because my paycheck earned me everything I’d wanted when I picked up a bag of pot, a pudding cake, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. But I have only once quit a job because I could no longer physically do it. At least, until now. To be clear, I haven’t quit my job yet, but even Flor has suggested that it might not be the worst thing which could happen. The fact is that the only reason I haven’t given notice is that I’m too damn proud to admit to myself that I might not have what it takes to do a minimum wage job. I went from being very good at what I do for a living, knowing what I had to do and when I had to do it on an instinctual level, to being someone who doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, and unable to do what he’s been assigned with any level of competency. I am aware that it will take some time to bring myself up to speed, that the jump from food service to retail is involves a fairly decent learning curve. I know that I will get faster with every shift I work, that it’s only a matter of tenacity.

And so it would be, if it weren’t for the nearly maddening level of agony from which I have been suffering since halfway through my shift yesterday. I mentioned before that I had quit a job because of my physical limitations. It was the winter of 2001, and I had just moved to Lake City (a drive through suburb north of Seattle) with some friends who’d decided that I probably shouldn’t be stuck living in a thicket behind the Safeway of our hometown while working at McDonald’s. I’d been contributing from savings while looking for a job, but nothing was coming through. Big surprise. One of these days I’m going to have a laugh at the predictability of my life, although back in December of 2001, it was the first time that I had ever had to leave a job and immediately look for something else. The only thing that I could find was Labor Ready, which allowed me to wait outside the office in the freeing cold so that I could fight for shitty manual labor gigs with all the other people there without any other skills. After about a week or so of digging ditches in the frozen earth, I discovered that I wasn’t built for labor of a physically demanding nature. There came a day when I could not get out of bed, when my muscles were so tense and stiff that even though I knew that I would lose the job, and have a hard time getting anything else through that agency, I just couldn’t move my body.

I got back into another McDonald’s, after pestering them with applications (which they were kind enough to reference when they called the apartment to let me know that I’d scored myself an interview- my roommates hadn’t truly been convinced that I’d been looking, you see, much like the Flor these past few months), and decided that restaurants were definitely a step above killing myself for a living. But even restaurants, fast-food though they might have been, can take their toll. With every move, with every resignation, I told myself that the next time around, I would find myself something that didn’t have anything to do with food, and every time I wound up back in the embrace of food service. I got good it at. I started getting promotions, and then worked my way up into senior management. I developed a skill set. Hell, I even started remembering the Spanish that I’d taken in high school, and within a few years, managed to make myself conversationally fluent. Aside from the normal wear and tear of multiple hours on my feet, the worst that I really had to deal with was the constant stress and pressure of running a business and giving a damn about my employees. The stress did a number on musculature, but I managed it as best I could. I’d spent so long being at the top of my game, that when I left this last time, I felt that I could do anything. Hell, I even thought that I could write.

My first non-training day was yesterday, and it almost broke me. I have never, never, unloaded that volume of product off of a truck before. It was a constant flow of cases ranging from nearly weightless to considerable heft. The boxes were all shapes and sizes, and it was our job to sort them into their departments’ pallets, stacking them as best we could, and keeping up with the neverending flow of more and more cardboard containers. By the time we’d finished, I thought that I might have caused permanent damage to myself. Honestly, if we hadn’t finished when we did, I might have had to notify the manager that I couldn’t continue. I realize that I’m entitled to see a physician if I am hurt while I’m at work, especially if I did everything correctly, but I didn’t want to be the white dude who just couldn’t cut it doing basic grunt work. It’s been a sobering experience, I have to say, proving to myself that I could not, in fact, do anything I set my mind to.

But there is the slightest of silver linings: I got a call yesterday that a fairly well-known Chinese fast-food place would be interested in talking to me about a management gig. It’s been over a month since I applied, but at least they’re getting back to me. If it turns out that I can score this job, it means significantly more money, steadier employment, and something that I can do with almost killing myself. I’m crossing my fingers that this works out, because now that Flor’s on board with me walking away from where I’m at, it’s hard to keep going back.

Family

The Eyes Have It

No pun intended (this time), but I should have seen this coming. From the time when he was just seven and a half months old and stabbed me in the eye with his very first Valentine’s Day card, David William has had a… unique relationship with vision. We thought that after his spastic attack upon my cornea, that he would be done with eyeball-related crises, especially considering that I started wearing glasses, and for a few years we were right. But he’s always rubbing at them, and half the time we’re convinced that he needs to see an optometrist. Actually, I’m not entirely sure why we haven’t taken him. I should probably ask Flor about that. Regardless, however, it was only a matter of time until karma repaid him for his Valentine’s Day massacre of my right eyeball. It would have been more appreciated if he had been spending time with his grandmother or mother, as opposed to his former victim, but apparently that’s not how karma works. And so it came to pass that after I had gotten not nearly enough sleep so that I could wake up early so that I could get to work by four a.m., and then work four and a half of the most physically demanding hours in recent memory, walked home exhausted, and collapsed onto the bed to watch a little Netflix, he jammed his grubby little finger in his eye and deprived me of my chance to unwind a little. Come to think of it, I’m almost positive that he might have done it on purpose.

Shortly after I got back home this morning, he decided that it would be okay to run around the house and drag his knuckles on the kitchen floor while hiding beneath the kitchen table. And when I say drag his knuckles, I mean crawl around on all fours because I told him that he couldn’t drink his sister’s juice (which his mother wound up giving to him anyway). About ten minutes later, back in the room, after kicking up some dust, he ground his filthy little fingers in his eye to relieve the itching, and immediately exclaimed that his eye was hurting. We rinsed it out, and I took a look to see if it was an eyelash or other foreign body, but the only thing which I could see was a strange affectation of the eye which he had contaminated. The best I can describe it as is if he had a blister on his cornea. It was yellowish and translucent, and seemed to have collected toward the bottom of his eye. I’m not ashamed to admit that I may have freaked out a little. If he had hurt himself almost anywhere else, I would have felt comfortable enough to triage him to determine how much I could take care of here, or if we truly had to pay a visit to the clinic. Eyes, though, are not my bailiwick. Give me a fever, a cut, a sprain, and I am gorram Doctor House. Present me with damaged optic organs, and I am running to the nearest doctor’s house (not really their place of residence, I just liked the symmetry- bite me!).

I had already changed into my pajamas (because reasons!), and he hadn’t actually changed out of his, so it was a hectic dash to get us both properly dressed and out the door in timely fashion. Someone has been letting him leave the house in his pajamas because they don’t want to have an argument with him, and now he thinks that that’s okay. Which it isn’t. Because if I have to put on pants, he has to put on pants. I managed to get us both dressed fairly quickly, all things considered, and we were almost ready to run out the door, when David informed that he couldn’t find his other shoe, and that his eye really hurt. This, of course, was all that was needed to summon Lecture Dad (TM pending), who shimmered into being right where I’d been standing and informed David that if he left his shoes in the same spot every time he took them off (we have one of those hanging things of pouches for footwear adorning the inside of our bedroom door), he would always know where to find them, and that if he would wash his hands occasionally and quit picking at his eyes, he wouldn’t have gotten himself into his current predicament.

“This is the worst day ever!” he informed me. “Today is not going in my diary!”

“Be that as it may,” Lecture Dad (TM pending) replied, tired of his son’s shenanigans, “We’re going to the doctor, and they’re going to check out what’s going on in your eye.”

“But I want to play Xbox!” he began to whinge.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have jabbed your bacteria-laden digits in your eyes!“

“But I don’t want to go to the doctor!”

Lecture Dad (TM pending) was having none of his son’s excuses, “Neither do I, but since your eye looks freaky, and you did it to yourself, we’re going.” I tossed the missing footwear in David’s direction, and said, “Here. Here’s your shoe. Put it on your foot, and let’s get going!”

“Okay, Dad.” David wiggled his foot into the remaining shoe, pulled on a jacket, and we finally managed to leave the apartment.

As I may have already mentioned these past few weeks, money is kind of tight. I mean, let’s face it: I didn’t get a job doing what I’m doing (for no hours at minimum wage) because the writing has been unbelievably profitable (actually, it has been unbelievably profitable, in that I’ve made $17 in royalties, and I frankly cannot believe that all my friends who said that they would by my stuff when it came out have somehow managed not to do so). So when David started in about not wanting to walk to the clinic (a sentiment with which I could relate, having done more exercise today than in all the six months in which I wasn’t working), I may have snapped at him a little. I was tired, my muscles ached, and I was fairly well and truly chapped in a couple of very tender areas, due to my superhuman ability to sweat normally for three average people, but only in my crotch. So we gimped along the twenty-minute walk up to the doctor’s office. The wind was blowing fiercely (as it always does in the wind tunnel which I’ve come to know as Not Quite Richmond, California), so I offered David my glasses to keep the random bits of debris from striking his already sensitive eyes. This, however, was not apparently enough, as halfway into our walk, he pulled his jacket over his head, and had me lead him the rest of the way as if he could not see (which he couldn’t).

We finally arrived at the clinic, which was filled with kids with stuffy noses and the like. I told the nurse that I needed someone to take a look at David, and, to her credit, she bumped us up to the head of the line. Like every visit, they checked his height and weight (it seems he’s not growing all that much), his blood pressure (perfect, according to the nurse), and temperature (within human norms), and then led us to a room. Normally, when the waiting room is filled like it was today, they make us go back out until it is our turn, but apparently my description of his eye was enough to make them want to keep him away from the other children. Not that it made the doctor see us any sooner. If there is anything I dislike more than having to take David to the doctor, it’s having to sit with him while we’re waiting for the doctor to see him. Look, I get it: no one likes to wait. What doesn’t help, however, is flipping out every fifteen seconds because it seems to be taking a little while for the doctor to arrive. Lecture Dad (TM pending) reminded David that if he had put his Kindle Fire to charge last night instead of leaving it upon the kitchen table, he would have had it ready to bring along with him when we went to see the doctor. Whinging Boy (TM also pending) did not seem to believe that point was relevant, but in an extremely high-pitched and aggravating manner.

Finally, the doctor tapped upon the door, and it was time to get down to business. Before I go any further, however, I need to share a minor point: I’m not sure how horrible a person that the following revelation makes me, but I tend to get a little skittish around doctors with a German accent. I know that there are medical schools in Germany (well, I don’t know, but I assume), and that to practice medicine in the United States, he has to have been able to prove that he knows what he is doing (in theory), but there is something deeply unsettling about an older man with blond hair and blue eyes, thick German accent, lab coat, and a stethoscope talking about medicine. He seemed to know what he was doing, however, as he agreed with my assessment of the situation entirely, and prescribed antibiotic drops for the affected eye. While he was preparing to send over the prescription to our nearest Walgreens, he took a page from the playbook of Lecture Dad (TM still pending), and told David William to make sure to wash his grubby hands with more frequency than he seems to be able to manage now, and to stop jabbing his filthy fingers into his eyes. I thanked Herr Doktor, and we were on our way.

As it turns out, those words of gratitude may have been uttered a tad prematurely, as by the time we’d made our way back to the pharmacy (narrowly escaping the Crazy Dude who’s been roaming around the city for the past several days, screaming at passersby, and trying to instigate a bout of fisticuffs), nearly twenty minutes later, the prescription still hadn’t been sent. Almost an hour later, with both David and I pushed to the limits of our patience, we finally picked up his bloody eye drops, and made our way back home. While we were waiting, I also picked up some more Children’s Claritin, in the hopes that maybe it was just a case of allergies which had inspired my son to endanger his vision, and therefore, I could protect his eyes from further damage with five millilitres of liquid loratadine a day. We got home to an empty apartment, and I informed my son that it was time for me to administer his medicine, the same medicine that I had previously advised him that he would have to have, and which he agreed to receive without throwing his standard-issue tantrum.

There are few things more damaging to the well-being of a parent’s psyche than the child who refuses to take his (incredibly important) medicine. It’s not one of those cases where you can just give into his fears, and not give him what he needs. I tried for nearly fifteen minutes to get him calm enough to sit still for the one drop of medicine which I had to put into his eye. I tried explaining it. I tried showing him what it would be like by squirting a dose into my eye. I attempted bribery and threats. He still refused to tilt his head back so that I could do what I had to. Finally, I had to hold him down and launch several drops down toward his eye (in the hope that at least some of the medicine would actually reach its target), all the while fighting off his flailing limbs and screaming in my ear. It reminded me of when he was just a little baby, and we took him for his vaccinations. The look of absolute betrayal frozen on his face as I had to hold him still while the doctor pierced his skin is still burned into my mind. He broke my heart today, just as I’m sure that I broke his, but at least his eye is now feeling better, and I’ve even seen him wash his hands a few times since we’ve gotten back. Presidenting may be hard, but it’s nothing compared to parenting.

I think I need a nap.

Family

The Job That Could Have Been

For exactly one day, my wife worked a second job. You remember the one? Where she just walked in off the street and picked up a waitressing job? Yeah, so it turns out that the type of job you can pick up almost by accident isn’t really the type that you really want to keep. Most places are slightly harder to get into, but offer at least the minimum number of federally mandated benefits. But, every little bit helps, and she thought that if she could bring in a little extra, well, we might wind up okay. As it turns out, I was right to have my suspicions, though it wasn’t as bad as I had been expecting. Let’s just say that the idea of my wife working at a Pool Hall/ Mexican restaurant on the late shift didn’t do anything to calm my paranoia or the thoughts of… experiences from a different life that nearly killed me the last time around from bubbling up and staining my psyche. I believe that my wife would never do anything to hurt me, but I don’t know what to think about drunk idiots who like to flirt, having been one myself at one time or another.

After spending a fun-filled day with David and the little boy of some friends who we’re looking after, she got ready for new job and headed out the door. I’d managed to get home in time so that she wouldn’t have worry about leaving the Minkey at home. We’d agreed that I would go to meet her at the end of her shift so that she wouldn’t have to walk back home alone after midnight. So, while she was walking to her second job, I laid down in my bed and fired up the Netflix to help me while away the hours. At least I had only had to be at my new job four and a half hours, and that was at noon, so I wasn’t worried about exhaustion, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had to suffer through an involuntary television marathon. At least it wasn’t daytime programming. Anything to help me not think about all the terrible things which might happen in the alternate reality that exists within my head. Every now and then, I tried to send her text messages to see how she was doing, but she never got back to me. I just figured that she was busy.

The evening passed without incident, and I managed to finally get David to sleep. I still hadn’t got any response to my text messages, but her phone has been acting up a little, so I figured that I would give her a hard time about it when I met her at work. I left home a little bit before midnight, figuring that it would take me several minutes to get there, and hoping that I wouldn’t leave her waiting in the cold. Ironically, it was me who wound up waiting in the blowing wind and sprinkling rain. I’d also brought my Kindle (on the chance that I might have some time in which to finish reading the seventh Harry Potter book), but as I looked around and took in the scenery, I decided that it might not be the best idea to take out anything worth more than a pack of cigarettes. As the hour kept ticking by, with no response to either text or call, I began to worry just a little bit. Flor had told me that she might have to work a little extra, if it was real busy, and I didn’t want to barge in there and look like the jealous husband who has come to disrupt the business.

So I walked up and down the street, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and trying to keep myself from freaking out. Everything that might have gone wrong began to swim before my eyes. As one o’clock in the morning came and went, I popped into a corner store for an energy drink to battle back the boredom and as soon as I had drained its contents down my gullet, I could feel a little stabbing pain from somewhere in my chest. It turns out that I probably can’t keep chugging caffeine and chain chain-smoking cigarettes. I pushed thoughts of my mortality to the back of my mind, and walked back to the Pool Hall/ Mexican restaurant to see if Flor was done yet. As I was walking back, she finally answered her phone. She said that she would be leaving soon, and that I should be ready to come get her. It was another half-hour before I was to see my wife again, and when I did, several of my worst fears had been confirmed. At least, my worst fears from reality, and now the scary place which only exists within my head.

She’d worked for over seven hours without being able to take even a single break. Her feet and back were killing her. She’d been harassed by drunken idiots, and had chosen to remain as close to the kitchen as possible so that she might avoid them. Her shoes weren’t quite the right size, and she’d dressed too warmly for the kitchen, and too lightly for the night outside. Seven hours she worked without a respite. So, as we were walking back home, she informed me that she wouldn’t be going back. I couldn’t blame her. I can barely go three hours on a really busy day without being able to sneak off to smoke a cigarette. So she didn’t go into her new job yesterday, and she didn’t go in for her shift tonight (which I thought was actually better as she worked at McDonald’s this morning). We were going to be relying on her one job and my one job to try to see us through. I’d hoped that I would get bumped up to full-time before too long, or nudged into a promotion (or at least a raise). And then…

As we sat eating dinner, I asked her if she’d gone in for her money. It was a clever question, as I wanted to spend time with her, and also go for cigarettes. We walked up to the place, Flor inviting me inside for the first time (she had insisted that David and I remain outside when she went in to ask about the position), and spoke to the woman who’d given her the job. It turns out that the woman responsible for keeping her from taking her breaks in on her way out, and it was done to haze the “new girl.” After about twenty minutes, and receipt of her pay for the time that she’d worked, Flor somehow talked her way back into working Friday and Saturday nights. She now has permission to take her breaks when she needs or wants them, and might have talked herself into a raise (after having not shown up for her second day). I just cannot believe the pair that woman has. I mean, she seriously makes me feel testicularly challenged on any given day. It’s a good thing that I have my snark and wit to fall back upon.

Uncategorized, Work

Lots of Big Fun

Yet another day of frivolity and fun done and gone, and it is only now that I have a better idea of what lies in store for me. I’d forgotten just how much of a pain it was to work oneself up from the bottom. If I thought that I could live off of part-time and minimum wage, I would have done so long ago. I’m hoping that by the time next week comes to an end, the Store Manager will have a better idea of what I can do, and adjust my schedule accordingly. I’m trying not to freak out about it: I frequently was only able to schedule new hires for minimal shifts until I got a better idea of what they could do, and I’m hoping that this is just the same. Because honestly, I don’t think that I can live off of just a hundred dollars a week or so. But enough about my worries concerning finances and hours available. You guys didn’t come here to read my whinging about the minor problems which affect me. If anything, you were probably expecting something either much more catastrophic or unimaginably wonderful. Well, I can’t offer either of those, but I can tell you about my day today. That almost works, right?

Sadly, it was more computer training today, and by the time that five o’clock had come around, I was eager to get out of there. I just wish that instead of being forced to sit through narration which takes up far longer than I believe necessary, I could read the information at my own pace, and then answer the quizzes following each section. I still have a few more sections left to get through, but I don’t know that I will get back to the training programs. Starting on Monday, I’ll be working the super early shift, and that usually indicates that a delivery will be coming. I mean, other than not being interrupted by customers who seem to think that I know where things are located, there isn’t any reason for me to come in at four o’clock in the morning. Actually, all snark aside, I’m really excited about this development, as it means that I won’t have to deal with any customers. And maybe it will lead to the position which the Store Manager informed me was available, some kind of delivery manager. That would be an immense relief, as it would mean more money, full-time, and the chance to start earning benefits.

At least it hasn’t been as terrifying as I made it out to be in my head before my first shift. It turns out that retail and restaurants have a lot in common, and I’m really still only learning store-specific things. And I noticed that I’ve been in management too long, when I got up several times to try to help the random customers who thought that I could help them (to be fair, I only directed them to someone more knowledgeable), and wound up helping my fellow trainee get through some of her technical issues in the training program. Actually, it was kind of nice to feel moderately useful once again. And it helped to get up out of my chair and stretch my legs a bit. Hell, I even used my mad Spanish skills to help out someone who didn’t really speak much English. All in all, it wasn’t too bad, I suppose. I guess that I will just have to reserve judgement until I can see how this is all going to pan out.

As for writing, I need to really get back to it. I wasn’t going to write anything tonight, but then I remembered that I basically took two weeks off when I had no internet and was feeling sorry for myself, and I have a long way to go if I am going to still make it to my goal of 365,000 words by December 31st. I had been hoping to take some time off in December to do something that didn’t necessarily involve the written word, but I’m down by eleven days, and I have to get back into my rhythm again. I guess what that means is that I’m not likely to get any more days of from the blog until I’ve made up several thousand words. And I’m not going to be getting there if I keep on like I have been. What I need is something to fire up the blood, spark the passion, get me riled up and ready to share my opinions with the world, preferably at the top of my lungs. I’m in search of a good rant, I think. If anyone has any suggestions for me, please feel free to contact me.

In the meantime, I suppose that I will just have to carry on as best I can in hopes that something will irritate me. Don’t worry too much: I’m bound to find something soon. I mean, it’s not like I’m the calmest individual in the world. Perhaps it would be easier if I didn’t have Doctor Who playing on the television next to me. I don’t care that I’ve watched this episode dozens of times before, it’s still Doctor Who, and it’s a David Tennant episode, so there’s even less of a reason for me to shut it off. I don’t even particularly like this episode. Werewolves in Victorian Scotland? Yeah, not so great. But, like I said, it’s still decent installment, and it’s better than most everything else that’s on right now. It does make it harder to focus on the task at hand. I kind of wish that there weren’t so many blogs dedicated to the subject. If no one else was writing about it, I could feel better about going on about a show I love. As it stands, however, there are better musings on the subject, and the most that I could hope to contribute would be sharing with everyone that I really like the show, which I have already done.

Oh, hey! I totally forgot to tell you all how Flor’s second job is going! Well, I guess I’ve got something to write about tomorrow. Have a great night, everyone!

Work

Working

What a week it’s been: Got an interview a week ago, sweated over the weekend, had my phone die (which meant that I had to talk my wife into buying me a replacement), got a call back, and went in for my first day of training today. I still have another training day tomorrow, at which point I think that I’ll be on the schedule for the next week (hopefully somewhere nearing full-time). So far, so good, although I did laugh through the anti-union propaganda video I had to watch, where it portrayed unions in their worst possible light, while minimizing benefits which unions have brought to the entire workforce. I especially enjoyed how the video framed its message as “maintaining your right to bargain with your employer.” Because we all know that large corporations will seriously consider the needs of its common employees out of a sense of decency. Whatever. I’m not that worried about it, to be honest. I’ve spent so much of the past twelve years in management that it really hasn’t been an issue for me. Now if I can just get through the mind-numbing computer training tomorrow, I’ll be home-free.

Today was pretty simple. I went in, filled out the necessary paperwork (in short order, with no mistakes- the benefit of having to supervise paperwork from the other side of the table), watched some (unintentionally) hilarious videos about how amazing my new employer is, and then went down to finish the day on the computer training. The first part was familiarizing myself with their POS, which I suppose was made easier by the fact that I have used three different systems over the past decade, and have the general idea pretty well sussed out. For the “Mastery” section, where I had to demonstrate that I could follow the steps laid out for me on the left-hand side of the screen, I snagged a perfect 100. I spoke briefly to the Assistant Manager about it, and had a nice conversation about how training programs are all well and good, but you don’t really start to understand a system until you’ve actually been using it. And you don’t understand everything wrong with it until there is a line out the door, and the manager has just stepped out for his break. But I’m not worried about it. Like I said, I’ve used a handful of systems over my career, and I already know the basics.

And then we got to do the “Harassment” section of the training, which almost killed me. As a manager in the “Great” State of California, I had been required to take a Manager Harassment Course every two years. The last time I took it was last summer (it might have been autumn). And, of course, it must last at least two hours, which means that instead of being able to read through at my own pace and refresh my knowledge of when it’s not appropriate to grab someone’s ass and say, “That’s a handful of sexy right there. What are you doing in the break room in ten minutes?”, I had to keep myself from falling asleep as I waited for the glacial pace of the narration to catch up with me at the bottom of the page. I’m not saying that this training isn’t necessary, just that there has to be a better way to do it which doesn’t involve some type of psychic euthanasia. By the time my shift ended for the day (all four and a half hours of it), I had only managed to finish seventy-five percent of the course, leaving me frontal lobe analgesia for tomorrow. I hate dealing with people, but it is at least slightly more tolerable than being read to as if English wasn’t my native language.

Also, they sort of lost me when the narrator said, “expecially.”

I’m trying to view this change in careers as a positive thing, as opposed to a desperate move to put some money in my pocket and pay off my bills. It’s not entirely untruthful that I am looking forward to learning something new (outside of restaurants), as this will only serve to educate me in an area in which I had previously never had the opportunity to experience. I did try to get into retail six years ago, when I wound up taking the job at Blondie’s (I dropped my resume off at the pizzeria as an afterthought, unaware that the owner there was the same as the record store down the street where I was actually interested in working. I’m trying to keep an open mind about this, and hoping that both full-time and a promotion are just around the corner, which isn’t an unreasonable expectation. My first job down in California, I made management within my first six months. My next job provided a promotion after just a couple of months (to a training position), management in less than six, and senior management in nine. I started at Blondie’s as a “Manager In Training”, and wound up as Assistant within several months, getting shuffled around to put out company fires, and then finally given my own store as GM.

Like I told the Store Manager when he interviewed me, I have no problem starting at the bottom and working my way up, although, after all these years in positions of responsibility, I would much rather begin a few rungs up. I believe that it’s important for a manager to know how everything works, and to have at least one station which he or she can rock way harder than his or her employee, while being at least competent on the others. No one expects the manager to be a specialist. He is there to make sure that everything runs smoothly, and to deal with things should they go wrong, not run a register all day. And at least at this job, there is very little chance that I will have to work with dough, which had been a point of frustration for me at both Fuddrucker’s and Blondie’s. Kneading dough just makes my arthritic fingers ache. And shut up. I know that I am a little young to have arthritic fingers.

So that’s been my week. Now that the internet is back, and I have something to write about besides my general anxiety, I’ll be getting back into a more regular schedule of posting. I don’t know if they will be done by noon everyday, like I’d been doing, but I’m definitely back for good. Tomorrow, when I get back from another fun-filled day at work, I’ll put up something new for all of you to read. Thanks for bearing with me through these trying times.

-Tex

And, if you haven’t picked up my books yet (or left a review), please do so!

From The Vaults of Uncle Walt, Volume One

U.S. $5.00 USD

Canada $6.01 CDN

Mexico $75.04 Pesos

Terracrats

U.S. $0.99 USD

Canada $1.19 CDN

Mexico $14.86 Pesos

I’m trying to check out what’s going on with the links for the U.K., but I can’t seem to get anything for them. If I haven’t listed your country, and you are interested in picking up one (or both!) of my e-books, please go to your country’s Amazon.com, and search for “Tex Batmart”.

See you all tomorrow!

Uncategorized, Writing

Isolation and Connection

It’s great to be back.

I’ve had a nice little break, here in isolation, from the worries of needing to think up entertaining things to write, and been able to fully explore the depths of my self-loathing. So, all in all, it’s been a productive couple of weeks. I just wish that I had better news on the employment front. I did manage to get a call back for an interview, but haven’t heard anything since then. Meanwhile, Flor just walks into a place and walks out with another job. Seriously. Of course, apparently they were only looking for female employees, but still. It’s frustrating. I just feel like I’ve managed to experience myself out of the job market. No manager wants to bring in someone who will be able to dethrone him (or her), and most owners don’t spend a lot of time glancing at resumes. Still, I suppose that I will eventually be summoned in for an interview that will result in something other than a complete waste of time.

But, as dire as all of that sounds, it has come with a slightest glimmer of a silver lining: Flor has seen that I have been trying to find work, and has come to the conclusion that I will be hired when the time has finally come that the universe wishes me to be gainfully employed. In the meantime, she has ordered me to continue writing, to take full advantage of this free time which I have in abundance, and continue pursuing my ultimate dream of getting down with the clackity-clack. And that’s not such bad advice. In the couple of weeks in which I haven’t been writing, I seem to have lost a little bit of focus. It’s not so bad as it was when I started this blog back in December, but the words aren’t flowing as easily as they had been in May. Or it could be that I am in pajama pants, with my son narrating some sort of adventure in the background.

Summer vacation is upon us, you see. In the midst of this mad scramble to seek gainful employment, with the prospect of the adult children moving out, we are also faced with the looming problem of what we’re going to do with David while he’s on break from school. He’ll be turning eight in just a couple of weeks, and while he’s shown moments of brilliance and hints that he might not die if we were to leave him alone for small periods of time, I can’t imagine him being okay for hours at a time. I’ve done my best to try to teach him a modicum of self-reliance, such as how to prepare a bowl of cereal and heat up corndogs, but I don’t know that I would trust him on his own in an emergency situation. Part of that is due to his unique application of “logic” and “reasoning”, but part of it is directly tied into his utter dearth of experiences from which to draw when dealing with a crisis. I just want to know that when we leave the apartment, that both it and David will be fine when we return.

Now for something completely different:

Like I have mentioned before, I am now a professional author, in that people have paid me for things which I have written. It hasn’t been as great a start as I might have hoped, but at least it’s something. Flor has been reminding me that it takes time to build up some momentum, which I understand, but I usually counter with, “I had been hoping it would have been more than $17.”  But, I am not terribly concerned, not really. You see, one of the lessons I learned after high school has prepared me for this moment.

I was always upset when I couldn’t get whichever girl I’d fallen completely in love with that week to agree to go out with me. I was sensitive, intelligent guy, occasionally amusing, and decent at kissing, and yet completely hopeless with the ladies. I just wanted them to give me a chance so that I could show them how awesome I was. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the only way to attract the ladies was to make myself into someone who might actually be attractive to the ladies, as it turns out that angry love poetry alone is not terribly romantic. And as made myself more interesting, by having more experiences, and trying to find satisfaction (if not happiness), I discovered that people began to want to talk to me. This didn’t solve the problem of my anxiety, but it did lead to some moments which were worth the effort.

So my writing at this moment is my teenage self. There are many good things about it, but it isn’t what it needs to be. I mean, a collection of blog posts and a 6,000 word short story are not a true foundation upon which to build an empire. So I have to find a way to get past the swollen bruises of my ego, and simply write better. I have a few ideas for novels, some of which I have actually started working on, and half a year of near-daily writing under my belt. I know that I can do this. I refuse to just let this be a hobby. I have dreamt of this for nearly thirty years, and I am going to find a way to make it happen.

It’s amazing how many times I must relearn the lesson of the importance of getting over myself. And yet, it’s also important not to get too down upon myself. I am a man of extremes, and it seems that I am capable only of self-aggrandizement and self-loathing, neither of which is particularly useful to me right now. I once found a virtual middle ground from which to launch my romantic campaigns, so it might be time to dust that off and give it a whirl again. Not for dating, obviously.

Uncategorized

An Unexpected Holiday

Things have not been going exactly as I’d planned. Well, that, and I am apparently only capable of moving at the speed of chilled molasses. I’m sure that everyone has enjoyed a little break from me and my incessant ramblings, but it’s time to try to get back to normal, so that is what I am going to do. And in case you were wondering, yes, I will have bonus columns in the Quarterly Edition to make up for this time that I have taken off, and no, I’ll not be posting them on the blog. Think of them as an e-book exclusive. And before you start complaining, yeah, a writer’s got to try and make a living.
So, what have I been doing for all this time? Mainly just stressing about bills and my lack of return phone calls from the business to which I have submitted my resume. Oh, and sneaking peaks at the little bundle of cuteness that is my newborn granddaughter as she’s being snuggled by my wife. I do not feel badly that I have not been asked to hold her. She is still significantly smaller than David when he was born, and anyone that small makes me just the slightest bit nervous. But she is cuter now. Her face has lost that initial scrunched up reddish pucker which makes all freshly born infants appear to be old men, and now she carries a look of wonder and frustration throughout her waking day.
And the crying… I had almost entirely forgotten about just how much crying newborns do. It’s like having a completely useless alarm clock for things you don’t need to remember. At least I can just roll over and go back to sleep without feeling guilty. And I don’t have to worry about changing newborn diapers, which, as I recall from my days with David, were an adventure in horrors I was ill-prepared to face. And, to be honest, I’m terrified of changing a little girl’s diaper. With boys, everything is fairly straightforward and easy to clean, and any direction will do, whereas with girls there is a procedure to follow, and it’s especially important not to get it wrong. That’s too much pressure for me to deal with when facing down a wailing, squirming infant. I’m glad that I’m not her dad, but I have a feeling that I will enjoy being her grandfather. If she’s anything like her brother, she’ll have me wrapped around her little finger in no time.
And what of David, in all of this? I think that he is handling this new baby ordeal better than the first time that he became an uncle. He’s learned to steer clear of his sister, and try to remain as quiet as an eight-year-old is able. But deep down, he is as enamored of her as the rest of us. Sometimes I forget just how full of love children are, when they aren’t wrapped up in their assholery. Sure, David can be bossy and manipulative, and have no idea about boundaries and abstract concepts such as personal space, but he is also compassionate, and loving, and has the makings of being a truly awesome uncle. When they are all a little older, the three of them, Minkey, Cream Soda, and Jenni, will be a force for mischief that will hardly be able to be contained. I don’t expect them to stay out of trouble, but I feel comfortable in the thought that they will probably manage to stay safe. Well, as safe as teenagers can stay.

Now it’s just a matter of getting from this moment to those. I could use a miracle right now, if I believed in them. I know it’s just a matter of finding the right avenue (not a euphemism! Wait. Maybe a euphemism?), finding the lock which my spirit can open. I know that there is something which I am meant to be doing, and a time in which I must do it, but I hate not knowing the next step. And before you all nod your heads and mutter that you knew that I had lost it, remember this: I moved to California without a plan, just something I did on a whim (I used to be more fun back then). I got a job at Fuddruckers, and wondered what was going to happen. I wound up meeting, and nearly marrying, La Diabla, and then the whole thing fell apart around me. I wondered about my decision to move to a different state, and how I would extricate myself from the mess I’d gotten myself into.
But after a few months, and almost complete financial ruin, I landed another job, one which would not have been available to me any earlier than I got it. I was hired to be a replacement for someone who wanted to leave, and would otherwise have been overlooked. They weren’t looking for management, they said in the interview. If I hadn’t gotten that job, I wouldn’t have met my wife. My son wouldn’t have been born. I don’t know what would have happened, but I can imagine that it probably wouldn’t have been pleasant.
Now, let’s skip ahead to when I left that job, a few years later. The ownership had changed, and my ethics demanded that I get out. I thought that the new owner was just an aberration, but it turns out that he has been more of the norm among restaurant owners. I spent a lot of time, when I’d resigned, bonding with my child. And when it came time to look for work, I couldn’t get anything. Now I had a family, and I was out of options. Fed helped me out with a chunk of a loan (which he later forgave), and we managed to hang on until I began working at Blondie’s Pizza.
That job started horribly. The manager was a complete ass, and despite the owner’s assurances that I would work full time, he scheduled me a couple of days a week. Were it not for the tips, I don’t know that I would have made it at all. I was trying to figure out what had led me to this place. I hadn’t met anyone I felt I needed to have met, and I was barely making ends meet. And then I was transferred to San Francisco, and became friends with my new boss. That boss had been renting out a room to a tall guy with glasses and large hair. Around the time I met Nerdenn Events, I also met my daughter.
And so it wound up that Blondie’s introduced me to my son-in-law. Were it not for that job, I wouldn’t have either of my grandchildren.
So now I am wondering who it is that I have left to meet, and when it is that I will meet them. Whoever it is, and wherever it may be, I just hope that it is soon, because I’m running out of options.

Uncategorized

Update

You may have noticed that there have been fewer posts lately, and that the last one was fairly short and disjointed. We’re having some connectivity issues here in the Vaults, and it’s a major pain to try and write one thousand words on my cell phone. I did take the weekend off for the birth of my granddaughter, but starting tomorrow, I’ll be working on the blog again. The only downside to this is that it will be offline until everything is up and running again. I’d give you a set date, but I’m not sure when that might be, or if I can work something out with copying and pasting.

In the meantime, I do have TWO ebooks on sale at Amazon, and I’d love for you to pick them up (especially Terracrats, though I make less in royalties- I’m just kind of proud of it). Just go to your country’s Amazon.com, and search for “Tex Batmart”.

Well, that’s it. Have a good night. I’ll be back as soon as possible!

Writing

Things That I Am Good At

I have now published two things on Amazon, which should make me ecstatic, but has so far only reinforced the voices in my head which while away the days constantly berating me for every single stupid hope and dream upon which I dare to cling. None of this is working out remotely like I would have hoped, and now I feel like I am in the same untenable position which I have been in, but without the confidence that everything will work out for the best. I guess I should have learned by now that… well, hell. If I’d learned it by now, then I guess I’d know what exactly it was that I was supposed to have learned. Probably something about looking before I leap, or not jumping out of a perfectly serviceable airplane.

If only I wasn’t a man of extremes. When I I’m up, I tend to do fairly well for myself, but when I’m down, I tend to stay that way for quite awhile. I just wish that I could have learned to be happy making money, as opposed to hoping to make money by doing something which made me happy. I don’t know that I’m cut out for all of this. Not the writing part: aside from a sprained ego, I seem to be doing alright. I just mean trying to keep everything in air as I flail my hands to and fro as I teach myself to juggle. I have to make this work somehow.

I know that it can be done. Flor says to have faith. I guess we’ll see.

Mental Illness, Writing

Walking On Sunshine

So I am a published author, kind of. Maybe it’s not the way in which I ever thought that I would make my first money as a writer, but everyone needs to start somewhere. I was hoping to have sold more than the two copies which I have currently managed, so that I could talk about raking in the tens of dollars, but as it stands now, I basically have enough to repay my wife for that pack of smokes and energy drink she bought me yesterday, so I can’t really complain. And, if I am to be completely honest, I wasn’t really counting on a collection of things which I have shared with everyone for free for months to be a money maker. Sure, it’s convenient, and it’s only $5, but it’s nothing new for those of you who have been with me since the beginning. Terracrats is a step in the right direction, being fiction and all, but it’s only a short story. I’m not going to get down on myself, though. This is more than I have ever done in the twenty-eight years in which I have known that I wanted to be a writer, and I’ve waited so long for this to become a reality that maybe a little longer won’t be the end of me.

I just wish that I didn’t feel so damned… chipper. I mean, since yesterday evening, I’ve been wandering around with a bemused grin, uncertain exactly what’s going on, but somehow pleased, nonetheless. It’s positively infuriating. I just want to slap the smug joy off of myself while sternly reminding… me… that it’s all well and good, but unless I somehow manage to connect with a lot more people, I’m still basically in the same position I was yesterday, but with some pocket change in a month and a half. Wow. It’s sobering to equate my writing sales to date as a ten dollar bill which I’ll find in the pocket of a jacket that I haven’t used in months (and yet don’t remember having misplaced any money the last time I used the jacket). But as jarring as I find all of this optimism oozing from my everywhere, I have to force myself to remember that it’s better than feeling miserable all day, no matter how much I love to remain curled into the fetal position. I guess there’s just no pleasing me.

So what lies in store for me in this slightly happier world,where things appear to be just a little bit more positive, and I might stand a tiny chance to be able to do something I want to for the rest of my life? I don’t even want to imagine a world like that! Where things happen as they are meant to, and I don’t feel like finding clever new ways to just end it all, playing them over and over again in my mind. I’m not prepared in the slightest to face a lifetime of contentedness. My whole “thing” up until now has been to be a mopey type of individual, railing against injustices and complaining that those damned kids need to get the hell off of my lawn. I haven’t the slightest clue of how I am supposed to function in a reality where I am not facing constant disappointment. I mean, it hurts to smile. Years of scowling at the world and its inhabitants have carved my face into a grotesque mockery of me, and now that I am feeling rather chuffed, my whole head has begun to ache, though the stabbing pains behind my eyes might be the key to my salvation.

I suppose that there are plenty of things for me to still get bummed out about, like the fact that, for the most part, the novel which I have begun exists only in my head, or that I still have bills and rent to pay, and pocket change just isn’t going to cut it. Ah, there it is: the sweet agony of self-doubt. Oh, how I’ve missed you these past several hours. It’s nice to see you once again. What say you and I find somewhere kind of chilly and overcast, and spend tonight cuddled up beneath that bridge I found when I was wandering?

See? It’s no use! I’m finding amusement in almost everything, including my misery. Is this what it means to finally grow up, because, if so, I want no part of it! I would much rather sit in shadows and write about how sad I am than risk a moment of pure joy. Okay, that’s not technically true, but it’s still hitting a little to close to home for me to feel entirely comfortable writing it. Perhaps it’s because the future is infinite, at least as far as it applies to my own life until the moment that I finally expire, and full of uncertainty and variables which I may not have taken into account. The past, on the other hand, has already happened, and it is infinitely more soothing to my savage brain. I can pick away at my mistakes at whichever pace I choose to set, and take the time to really examine all the ways in which I managed to screw up. Also, everything seemed better back then. Of course, that could be because there is no impending stress left in the past, whereas the present is chock full of it, and the future is nothing but decisions which I will probably fail to settle to my satisfaction.

Ughhh… this is beginning to unsettle me. I guess that it’s time to get thinking about shiny puppies and the whatnot.

Anyway, overall, I guess that I am doing better than I was the week before. Or the week before that. I suppose that I will have to discover how to survive the pitfalls of success, with all of the brand-name cigarettes and microbrews which it is purported to afford its victim. Now it looks like it is time to get back to work, so cross your fingers to grant me the courage to sit through an electronic editing session of Terracrats with my Kindle Fire. Just turn the sunshine down a little, will you?

Exploring the Universe through Snark

Translate »