How could you be so heartless?

I had to work on Saturday, when most of the fun Halloween related stuff was actually happening. I'm off today, and was invited to a couple of Halloween parties, but costumes were mandatory, and I don't have a costume. I kind of dig Halloween, but can never really think of costume ideas. You can call it being lazy, but I prefer to think of it as having bigger things to deal with. I decided instead to try to make it a day of horror movie watching. I had to take a break from the movies because there were a couple of things I learned today that really saddened or pissed me off.

My favorite Louisville record store, Ear X-tacy, is closing. They moved to a new location last year in hopes of staying afloat, but it didn't work. I understand that the music business is changing and that the economy sucks, but what really bothers me is how some people can be so god damned callous as to virtually cheer that the store is closing! The way I see it, it's almost like if somebody had been dissing my sister after she died. They sound like fucking Tea Partiers, and some of them are! You can see an example of this here. Hell, I've seen so many of my friends on Facebook talk crap about them that I've put a warning on my Ear X-related posts that negative comments will be deleted. I don't feel like doing a eulogy at this time, maybe soon though.

I asked for November 9th through the 12th off from work. The 9th is when The Pixies play in Louisville, my birthday is on the 11th, and one of my best friends is getting married on the 12th. I found out last weekend that the only day they scheduled me off from the 9th to the 11th was the 11th, probably because it's my birthday. I managed to find someone to swap days with, trading the 9th for the 6th, a day that I was scheduled off. The schedule for the week of November 12-18 just came out yesterday, but I didn't get around to checking it out until this evening. They fucking have me scheduled to work the 12th! When I requested the 12th off, I clicked on "Family obligation" under Reason so that they would know that I absolutely needed that night off. I guess I'll try swapping days again, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to work on a Saturday. If I can't swap it, I'll just say "Fuck you" and call in. You know, if I still worked at Main ex-Employer, I'd just take the whole fucking week off, and go see Judas Priest in Cincinnati on the 8th on top of everything else I want to do that week.

This wasn't the worst Halloween ever, 2003 and 2009 easily top it, but it sucked way more than it had any right to.

I've got to wait how long?

A week ago, I got a call from the University Of Louisville Psychiatric Group, and the earliest I could get in would be December 13th. It's like, "Umm, yeah, I need help NOW!" It usually does take a couple of months to see a new psychiatrist, so I should have expected it. Guess I'll just have to tough it out until then.

Last week, one of my coworkers came in to work sick, like with a cold or something. He just bought a house, and said that he couldn't afford to call in sick. At least one other person has gotten sick from it. I think I'm just now coming down with whatever he had. That sucks. I'm off today, but I'm afraid that I'll have to call in tomorrow if I don't feel any better.

My birthday is two weeks away, but I've actually been wondering what I'm going to do for it for a while. The only thing that I know is going on that night is a Metal show. One of my best friends is getting married the next day, and the ceremony is in downtown Louisville, so I'm considering getting a room in Louisville so I can go out the night of my birthday, and not have to drive all the way home and then back the next day.

While I'm on the subject of my birthday, I mentioned to a friend recently that as someone who doesn't care to drink, that I was afraid that people would actually want to buy me drinks and try to get me drunk, since that actually did happen five years ago, and it was the worst birthday ever. She told me that I sure did have a lot of anxiety about it, and I was like, "Well, I really don't have THAT much anxiety about it." She replied with, "Well, you are talking about it." Then I said something like, "Umm, yeah, maybe you're right."

Hey you...

It turned out that Monday was actually a fairly nice day weather-wise, sunny and not too cold. Tuesday was the start of the suckage. It was cloudy and fairly cold, and to add insult to injury, it started raining around 7-ish in the evening. Wednesday was the same story, except it was made worse by going to work. There were only five of us there to unload a 2500 piece truck, which took about three and a half hours to unload. I'm lucky that we got to leave on time. We actually might not have even cut it as close had one of the managers not taken a couple of our guys to go stock, leaving two of us to finish up.

Today is another cold and gray day. It's not raining at the moment, and I'm not sure if it's going to rain later or not. The forecast for Friday: sunny with highs in the low 60s. I think I can handle that. :) Actually, the sun did just try to peek out, but I don't see that lasting long.

I kind of feel lately like I'm living in Pink Floyd's "The Wall", except for the fact that I'm not a rock star. My depression/anxiety has gotten so bad that I am seeking help for it. I went to the psychiatry office at U of L's hospital to fill out some paperwork, and they should be calling sometime to set up an appointment. The waiting sucks.

I probably won't be writing much for a while, so I'll try to keep in touch with some of you readers personally. At the very least, I'll be posting less frequently than I have been, which hasn't been a lot lately anyway. And while I might not be writing, I'm still be reading blogs.

Seasons

I hate the cycle of the year. At the beginning of the year, it's really cold, and the days are short, not to mention January 1st marks the anniversary of my sister's death. By February, it's still really cold, but the daylight seems to stick around a little later. In March, Spring seems to be playing tug-of-war with Winter. I'm not sure how they decide when to start Daylight Saving Time anymore, sometimes it starts in March, but it seems like there has been once in the past couple of years since they started the new system that they started it on the first Saturday of April. Anyway, Daylight Saving Time is good. Here in Kentucky, I think the threat of wintery precip isn't totally over until mid-May. Late June marks the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. While it is something to celebrate, I also can't help but think that the days can only get shorter from there. It gets really freakin' hot, which isn't good, but it beats the icy Hell of Winter. Football starts in August, and to me, football marks the beginning of the end of the year. Eventually, the days get shorter and colder. Falling back to Daylight Standard Time means it gets dark by 5:30pm. Bummer. Then comes my least favorite time of the year, the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. It's a time to fake being jolly when everything seems to die. It's also the only time in recent years when a good number of people are able to find employment, albeit temporary, thanks to it being the biggest shopping season. Ugh. The only good thing I can say about that period is that the Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year, so the days can only get longer from there. Granted, you still have to put up with January and February, but it gives some glimmer of hope. Repeat.

While I dread the beginning of the football season, I don't mind the Super Bowl sometimes because it means we're closer to Spring. I don't watch a lot of basketball either, but March Madness means that Spring has sprung, or is about to at least.

All four of my immediate family's birthdays fall between May and August, plus there's Mother's Day and Father's Day, so my parents get two additional special days. Mother's Day is always way too close to my brother's birthday, occasionally even falling on the same day.

One of the few good bits of advice my dad ever gave me was not to go to work when the roads are icy, unless you make more in a day than you'd pay for your car's deductible. I hate the idea of driving on ice so much that I've purposely avoided looking for work in January and February these past couple of years. It helps that in 2010 and 2011 that I accumulated enough money from working in November and December to pay the bills through January, and I make it though February thanks to my tax refund. (In 2009, I got severance checks through early February.) But the pay at Mega Lo Mart sucks so bad, and they avoid allowing overtime so much, that I don't think I'll be making that much this year. They're definitely not worth driving on ice for.

I'm really glad that I don't live any farther north than I do, but I would still like to move to some place that doesn't get much snow, or just doesn't have such drastically different seasons. One friend of mine lives in Key West, and brags about the weather a lot. I'd love to move there, but it's expensive, and work is hard to come by. He's primarily been bartending, and that's not a line of work I see myself getting into. Another acquaintance recently moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. It turns out that the weather there is probably more pleasant than you'd think. She has said that it's pretty much either Spring or Fall there, with temperatures never getting below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. She also said that the locals have warned her about the rain in the Winter being really cold, but that to her it still sounds preferable to being buried in snow.

The reason I bring all this up is because today is a warm day, and things are supposed to start cooling down, way down, tomorrow. I have enough anxiety as it is, the last thing I need is the weather making it even worse. And it's supposed to start getting really busy at work pretty soon. I was really hoping to either be in school or working somewhere else entirely by now.

Breakdown...go ahead and give it to me!

(Apologies to Tom Petty.)

You've probably been able to tell from recent posts that I haven't been feeling quite right lately. I really don't know why. There have been some work or school things that I've been meaning to look into, but like I said a couple of posts ago, I can't muster up the energy to want to do anything when I actually do have the time. I can say that I'm feeling unemployable. Let's face it, I'm slow, sarcastic, cynical, and not likely to drink any company's Kool Aid. I had read recently about how France, before the Revolution, would put idle people in asylums along with all the other crazies. At least the French put their Idle someplace, I figure modern American Conservatives would just as soon kill people like me off, or if not actively kill, then at least leave us to die.

I came very close to quitting on Wednesday night, mostly because I'm just so sick of Mega Lo Mart's bullshit. I really hope I find another job before the Christmas season really starts revving up.

I woke up in a really funky mood on Thursday. I really didn't want to get out of bed. For a day off, that's really bad. When I finally did get up, I felt like my nerves were frayed, so I took a Lorazepam. I'm not sure that it helped. As if I weren't already on the verge of a nervous breakdown (or something, I'm not sure if "nervous breakdown" is really accurate), I ended up arguing with my dad. I rarely actually talk to my mom or dad, especially about how I'm feeling because I have a hard time trying to describe my feelings through words, and I sometimes think that even if I could, they still just wouldn't get it. The best way I can describe what I'm going through is that I'm overwhelmed by everything, though overwhelmed would be an understatement. The worst thing that a non-depressed person can tell a depressed person to do is to just snap out of it. What my dad did was basically the equivalent of that. I went back to my room to get ready to leave for the Depression/Bipolar support group meeting, and found myself just about crying. By the time I composed myself, my mom came in, and told me not to take what my dad said to heart, since he had been drinking. You see, every Thursday, he goes to hang out with some dudes and drink. He actually drinks beer pretty much all the time, but he's not always that big of an asshole. She said that he really does love me and wants me to succeed, and I told her that he has a funny way of showing it. But anyway, I ended up crying again, and had to re-compose myself. Listening to Heaven 17 on my way to Louisville helped me feel not so cry-errific.

A lot of times, a piece of music, a lyric, or a scene from a TV show or movie can express how I feel better than I can on my own. I watched the M*A*S*H series finale a few years ago, and there was one of two scenes that struck me as especially poignant, the main part I'm talking about is in bold type. From Wikipedia:

Winchester eventually has to say goodbye to the Chinese musicians, who are to be part of a POW exchange. As they are driven away, they finally play the Mozart piece correctly for him. A public-address announcement then broadcasts the news that a truce has been signed; a cease-fire will go into effect at 10:00 that night, officially ending the hostilities. But the celebration is short-lived, as Potter orders the camp moved back to its original site so the remaining wounded can be treated. Among the wounded is one of the musicians, barely alive after the truck carrying the POWs was shelled. None of the other four survived, and this one soon dies as well. A shaken Winchester retires to his tent, where he plays a record of the Mozart piece they were rehearsing, then angrily yanks it from the turntable and smashes it.

That's pretty much how I've felt this year, in a nutshell. Sadly, I couldn't find a video for that scene. If you read the link, I guess the first couple of paragraphs in the plot synopsis also apply. You can see part of that scene.

Crushed by the wheels of Industry

Just a couple of days after I posted my previous entry, I got a rejection e-mail from the temp agency that Main ex-Employer partnered with. I know I've said it before, but I swear I'm giving up on trying to go back there again. Last week, CBS Evening News did a story about Main ex-Employer hiring so many people for the holiday season. An ex-coworker posted the video on Facebook, saying "Like!" I shared it, and said "Meh." I decided after a few minutes to delete it.

I managed to survive working five days straight. I don't see how people who have to do it every week can make it with their sanity intact. There are so many things there that frustrate me that I try to repress most of the memories. One thing that was noteworthy during that time was that I saw one of my favorite co-workers who I've written about before, and her ogre of a fiancee, right after I clocked out for lunch one night. She mentioned that Main ex-Employer was hiring, and I was like, "Yeah, I've already tried." We talked for a minute or two.

There's a song by Heaven 17 whose title describes how I feel: "Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry". That's almost a more fitting title for a Fear Factory song. :) I don't feel quite as bad as I did two weeks ago when I wrote "Sick of it all", but I still feel beaten down and defeated. Work is draining, and looking for work is draining, so looking for work while I've been working has just about sucked the life out of me. I've been waiting for something like Occupy Wall Street to come along since possibly the Clinton Administration. Now that it's here? Eh. I support it wholeheartedly, but can't muster up the energy to participate. If I were still unemployed, you could bet your ass that I'd totally be occupying something.