Wednesday, November 19, 2014

A bad day

Greetings.

At the end of October I took a contract that, turned out to be a better fit for me than most of the work I have done for a long time.  On paper it was going to be three months at nearly full time.  As I am writing this in the mid afternoon of a weekday is evidence to the contrary.  The good news is it is not me.  There has been a slump in the demand for the service and as an expendable pawn I was first to go, typical.  This would sit better if the preceding weeks had came through on their promise of full time hours, but they have been hit or miss.

So once again being whipped around by the economy, leaves me in a mood.  Usually I write around these moods, I don't want to face them, or they suck the urge to write from me.  They go against how come off in public.  To publicly come across as bitter, angry, lonely or depressed is not how I choose to be seen.  I will be silent at home rather than be a burden at other people.  Yet they are common enough that they are part of my identity.

Today I am all those things.  The day began after another patchy night's sleep.  Worse, the day started with no goal, for me so much of what separates a good day from a bad is waking knowing what I am facing.  Or if waking with a few options a day can be ruined by simply failing to pick one, the rest is wasted waffling between choices.  So I awoke largely thinking fuck.  It was very nearly a productive day, I started cleaning, tossed out some odds and ends that cluttered my closet.  The energy fizzled.

A TV Show was watched while eating what would have to be the worst stew I ever cooked, made over the weekend with no plan or attention to detail. Despite getting some protein rich calories in me I still felt underwater.  That feeling you get when you have holding your breath too long and your body is screaming for you to come up for air, that feeling only in my brain.

It is the same impotent anger, at my life that I have seen time and again during periods of un and under employment.  It is worse now, because, I am running out options and ideas.  Commingled with frustration and capped of with anxiety.

Quite honestly I don't know how to get ahead.  Or right now stay where I am.  I want to work, I can work often I can be good at things.  Yet two steps into the process I clamp shut.  As I try to rewrite my resume or send off a soulless cover letter the rage kicks in.  Anger and anxiety at having to do it again, and again, and again.  Doing anything else is better than that.  I don't want to fail that way, but I don't know how to hold myself together while I do it.

Today saw me recycling those thoughts while lying immobile in bed.  A bed in an apartment I have not be properly able to afford since the EI ran out.  An apartment I feel trapped in, because I know moving can be expensive, and the prospect of giving notice only adds to this disabling cocktail of emotion.  

There is a reason why I call it an impotent anger.  It is anger at a life lacks the desired form, but I don't know how to get it bent back up.  It is the anger I have at dictionaries and spell checkers, to have and idea trapped in my head because I can't remember if the word starts with Th or D, and gods help me in trying to sort out the e's from the i's.

An ironic twist as to why I don't often write about these moods is that, as it turns out the catharsis of writing softens them, it can feel hypocritical to change tone halfway through.  Yet this alone is an important reminder, these moods are never permanent, and they can be managed and prevented.  The management is hard right now, underemployment does not cost any less time than the better alternatives.  And right now it is not wrong for me to unhappy about my life.  The trend of each job paying less than the one before somehow manages to continue.  Despite paying off my student loans, am struggling with the rest of my bills.

Once again I default to the conclusion I reached in the spring or summer, I have to move to get the costs down and manufacture some extra breathing room.  Breathing room where a lost work day does not leave me panicking about rent but simply reduces what I can do for fun.

Here then is what I want, a suite nearish to a skytrain line, in a pet friendly house.  Must have useable kitchen.

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