freakpirate

I'm not happy. I guess that's the easiest way to sum things up. Work has been pretty much entirely crap for the last two weeks. Nobody is ordering pizza and when they are, they aren't necessarily tipping all that well. No deliveries and no tips means no money for me. A few weeks ago I'd easily make $75 on a slow night and up to $130 if it was really busy. The last two weeks... I've been lucky to make $75 on the busiest nights. A few days I haven't even made minimum wage. Not really sure how that works legally but it's not really my biggest concern. The concern is that I have no fucking money. This means that I now feel guilty every time I spend money that I don't absolutely need to spend. Tasty food? Guilt. Beer? Big guilt. And let's not forget the depressing part of things. I want to be able to buy things. Nice things. Things that will make me happy. More than that, I want to be able to go places and to visit people who make me happy. But there's none of that in my future. I mean that. At the rate things are going I seriously doubt I will ever be able to afford a vacation. I'm finding it very difficult to justify driving three hours to Edmonton (missing one night of work) for my little brother's birthday. Or to go to a back yard roast that is celebrating its eighth year. I want to go to both, or at the very least one but the thought of missing work and paying for the gas makes it seem likely that I'll be sitting at home feeling like a shitty friend and a giant failure. This, of course, makes me unhappy. And, for those of you who have spent more than a few days with me know, when I'm unhappy, everyone seems to suffer.

Well, in this case, Jody does most of the suffering. I vehemently refuse to talk about any of this crap because, while I'm "okay" with being a panic stricken failure, I don't want her to think I'm a panic stricken failure. I don't see her as much as I used to because she works during the day most of the week and I'm gone in the evenings. And once I get home I'm useless because I sit down in front of the TV or computer since I've had another disappointing night at work and want to sit. By the time I've eaten and maybe stopped being such a baby it's usually time for bed. Repeat this 4-6 times a week and begin to wonder why I'm not single. More on that later too...

And finally... my social life. Or, complete lack of. Working evenings makes it a little difficult to hang out with people who work days. They're at work when I'm free and I'm working while they're out doing fun things. By the time I get off work no one really wants to do much since they have to get up for work in the morning. I've missed some video gaming, three US debates, the Canadian debate and goodness knows what else because I was too busy sitting in the back of a pizza place praying that someone would give me something to do. For those of you who remember my short stint at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre, you'll probably remember that this is exactly why I quit. Well, one of the reasons. But I can't afford to quit because I don't have another job to go to and I can't afford to be unemployed yet again. Why don't I find another job? I'm glad you asked...

I have no marketable skills. Okay, that's not entirely true. I have very few marketable skills. I can type, I can drive a car without running over puppies and the elderly and I can lift heavy crap from one place to another. I can't do serious physical labour any more because I tore a ligament in my knee a few months ago and it isn't recovering quickly. So the constant knee pain and threat of increased injury makes it harder for me to do physically demanding jobs. Oh yeah, I have a degree and everything but it's virtually useless as I haven't had a real theatre job in over a year and the field is overwhelmed with people who are a lot better at it than I am. So it's a never ending parade of entry level jobs for me.

Five years ago this might not have been so depressing. In fact, I know it wasn't because I was doing the exact same crap I'm doing now. But I was younger, still in school and everyone I knew was barely scraping by doing shit work. But now, that's really not the case. Most of my friends are doing fairly well for themselves. Getting married, looking at buying houses, starting or into careers. I know not all of them are... but it seems to be leaning that way. At least to me. My situation looks pretty shitty in comparison.

I've had enough of this... fuck...

I owe Jody a lot. Mostly I owe her a million apologies. I've been a shitty friend and a shitty boyfriend lately. The reasons why are none of your business and they make me feel like shit so I don't want to talk about them.

But despite all of that she has not only put up with me but has been there to comfort me as much as she can. She is solely responsible for me not degenerating into a drunken, angry, fire setting wreck. At the very least I haven't set anything on fire yet.

I can't really begin to explain how helpful she has been and how much worse off I would be without her around. Having her around keeps me from walking off the deep end. I know I don't show it and I don't talk about it but I know I wouldn't be able to handle this without having her around. She's the only reason I sleep at night. I know that because when she's away I know what 5 AM looks like. And not from wanting to get a head start on the day.

I should probably be telling her this and not you.