I'm a slave to society and don't know what happiness and fulfillment are.
Well I agree.
I'm in a foul mood most of the time, primarily because I am obligated to work by systems I didn't have a choice in and never could have a choice in. The wheels are rolling and they're grinding my fucking soul in.
First few jobs: Odd jobs in construction with family and friends - Hated it, I'm not practical and unfortunately no amount of exposure (which has been ongoing since...the last 14 odd years) has ever helped in this department.
Working in retail as a stock assistant - Hated the work, but I got paid immensely well for the weekend hours and I had tons of time off in the week. For a comparison I'm currently employed full time as a veterinary care assistant (worst decision I've ever made- kids do NOT go into animal care) and I earn less working upwards of 80+ hours than I did working around 35 or less. Of course that had to stop because it's never a good idea to have employees who are capable of doing tons of work in less hours for more pay, so us newer generational employees got our contracts changed and the special pay for weekends went bye bye, but the older staff kept their pay and privileges. Cool beans.
Working at the local hospital in an admin department - Absolute hell. My first day an enormous lady from physical therapy (and who the hell was she helping to fucking walk? She couldn't fucking breathe) squeezed her way into our tiny photocopying department and asked where her 'fucking leaflets were'. My supervisor had popped out and so I asked her who she was and which department "I'm from physiotherapy you idiot, you people are always fucking slow with my stuff". And I told her it was my first day and I was unsure how to use the machines as I hadn't been shown yet (this is the first 15 minutes of my first shift) and went on a rant about how useless we were and how I shouldn't use it being my first day to excuse no knowing how to do stuff (that I hadn't even started learning yet).
I stuck it out two weeks. That lady was not even the worst of them, each department was filled to the brim with miserable cunts.
General retail and cashier - Well I worked at one retail outlet and nearly got into a fist-fight with a team leader on the shop floor, because he was a bullying piece of shit who would wander around doing fuck all and criticise everyone else around him. Including me for not shaving one day (despite the fact the reason was that I had been told I was on a late shift and then it was switched on me the previous night which I knew because I took a damn picture of the rota and they had me in that night as well and I didn't finish till 4 am and they were calling me at 8am, which I'm fairly sure is illegal) < read the parenthesis..I had no time to shave. But from a man with his gut hanging out...who had an actual beard...that took the cake...yeah sure..my appearance...right.
The other retail cashier job...that lasted until last year, but I was miserable the entire time. The staff was..okish...very unreliable and a lot of part-timers who didn't pull their weight or kept phoning in sick (with hang overs) but I generally got on with most of them and only had a few clashes. Problem is the council estate was rough as cat balls and in the time I was there I was spat at, nearly assaulted, my manager and myself have had knives and on one occasion, an axe, pulled out on us. Verbal abuse, constant thievery, drug dealing in broad daylight on the car park. One guy took a shit in our trolley bay. An alcoholic woman pissed herself in the queue. Another time I found a well-known criminal of the area sleeping out the back of the shop in our delivery lane. This is alongside mind-numbingly shit work and having to work every weekend. Also getting up at 5am and knowing that most likely I'll be at the place till 10pm as yet another person wouldn't show up.
Around this time I had a second job working at a haulage company. But it was an odd arrangement, the lady I worked with was the wife of a family friend and she worked from home. But she lived literally less than a hundred yards from the previously mentioned shithole shop above. You can see it right from the office window. So I would work at the shop on an early till around 3pm (if I was lucky) and then go to hers till around 9-10pm. And that was 5 days a week, at the weekend I only did 2 10 hour stints at the shop.
But that job was boring as all fuck and I hate admin and bureaucracy. I did it because she and her husband asked us for some help after her twins appeared (they weren't expecting 3).
I left that place around May 2017 thinking I was going to continue to work at the shop and do an english course on the side. But that course got cancelled. So I went back to her for a brief time from December to Feb. It was around this time that I fell into a deep existential misery which culminated in the dumbest decision I have ever made.
And that is my current pursuit of attempting to get into Veterinary Nursing, which my first year has been spent doing 9 months of non-stop work in order to get my VCA certificate. I am then supposed to start my level 3 (actual nursing) course in September, but after a big meltdown recently I discussed it with my tutor and I'm leaving it for next year...if I ever do it at all. I am too exhausted to begin to list the the problems with this job.
All I'll say is...don't do it. And I wasn't naive, I never assumed anything to do with cuddly animals or avoiding people, I knew it would involve the worst, guilt-tripping-pieces-of-shit-humanity on the planet and me mainly being thrust into situations I have been unprepared for and...lots of cleaning up piss, shit and vomit. But nothing really prepared me for the sheer misery of all the other aspects involved. Although I think a lot of them are to do with this area and it's problems.
And I know that from many a perspective, I'm being a whiny little fuckwit myself, taking for granted what others would kill for. Yet for some reason that realisation does not suddenly make the pains of life easier, maybe because the kind of people who say it are not really in a bad position themselves, they're just doing it on someone else's behalf, or trying to guilt you into keeping everything bottled up so they can pretend that life is ok, or that they're winning in the pain-olympics.
I do try my best to keep it bottled up, I really do. But it does come at the cost of intimacy, no one deserves to get close to me only for this stuff to come spilling out all over them like red-hot bleeding pus. I just struggle because nothing ever seemed obvious from the get go and I wondered what internal facade people use to keep moving forwards in their lives. Assuming that is that they ever feel the same way, which I'm sure many do.
But I'm not that bright and I keep going back to the grindstone (a grindstone that was built for a tiny % of the population who are addicted to productivity and work which is great for them but not for the rest of us) because of my inability to maintain a stable mental state long enough to make intelligent decisions. Its fascinating how the poor and bad experiences build up...unknown, and then blindside you at inopportune times, coming out of fucking nowhere.
Where am I storing these memories?
A year or so ago there was some captain of industry on the radio, talking about how he had gone from the stereotypical successful life of wealth, power, family etc...and left it behind for life as a man of the cloth. I know it was supposed to be moving and inspiring and the man was smart as a razor and I respect his achievements immensely. Yet I couldn't help but think that this is a nice life to hear about and then leave behind, but it's a life most people will never even scratch the surface of or come close to in their entire lives.
Most spend their time trying to get to even a minute amount of that life, and maybe the lesson was some ethereal notion of materialism, traditionalism and their inadequacies. But all I could think is that must have been a nice life to have tasted, yet it is so far from those of us who lack that brilliance. And I'm not so petty that I would stand in the way of someone's brilliance that way (I'm fair too self-guilting to do it) but it just left an empty feeling, not an inspiring one.
I think people like to believe that emotional content is manageable without an upper limit, but sadly the truth is you're working with a set amount from the start..and sure you can maximise...accessorise or whatever it is the delusional self-help and free-will types like to peddle. But the reality is that it comes to chance, and if the chances are that you have a low emotional content or do not experience intense emotions...well bully for you. The rest of us have to constantly manage a shifting tide of bullshit in the pursuit of stability.
The job requirements read: Sanity need not apply