All this I should have known…

Would be a great song by the short lived band Breathe (Seriously, it’s kind of a shame they only had two albums. David Glasper has a beautiful voice).

Anyway. I was about to come here and tell you I was planning to move away from using song lyrics as my blog titles, because as one reader told me ‘they hadn’t expected my shitty bitching to come up when they googled some Alan Parsons Project song’, but as the last second I thought of a song title that would fit.

It’s true though, I do want to maybe not use song lyrics as much, but they’ll still be popping up regularly.

Anyway, if you’re wondering what I’m here about, I’m happy to report that it is the 26th, and I’ll ve leaving for my little mini vacation to visit my friend in just about 2 days, on the 29th… Today doesn’t count because it’s mostly over. Hence two days.

The only thing I wish I’d known was… I took the 29th- the 2nd of November off. I just discovered that I actually have the 3rd and 4th of November off, just as random coincidence. If I’d known that, I could have extended my little trip by 2 days.

But it’s too late for that. My dad’s birthday is on the first of November, but we’re going to celebrate it on the 3rd. So even if I did want to go through some bs with the airline to get things switched, I already told my family I didn’t work on the 3rd, so we already made plans. So I can’t cancel out on that, just to stay in my friend’s state (still not saying which state here, until after the trip).

I’m a little bit disappointed, because come on, 2 extra days to spend with my friend would have been nice, but I’ve decided to be happy with the time I’ve got… not bitch because I can’t have more time. Which I suppose is a philosophy I should be applying to other areas of my life. It’s really hard.

I know many people have it worse than I do, but I’m finding it really difficult to stay positive and keep in a good mood when I work at a job I’m not really happy in  and I’m in almost constant back pain.

I suppose if one were so inclined, the job and back pain could be seen as excuses, reasons I’ve come up with to justify continuing being cynical and negative.

It’s just difficult. I’m not really a “work directly with the public” person. I’m usually most content when doing behind the scenes jobs. I’m not really good at dealing with people. I’ve gotten better with that as the years have gone by, but to some degree I feel like I’m forcing it. I’m an introvert by nature (with a few exceptions in some instances) so having to talk to people for hours straight wears on me after a while.

And I suppose all that could sound like an excuse too. “Well everyone has to do shit they don’t like, everyone has to work with the public, etc” and you wouldn’t be wrong there.

I just want a job I don’t dread. I want a job where there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day… not a job that I spend glancing longingly at the clock every five minutes, wondering why time has slowed to a crawl. I want a job where I earn enough money to have insurance, so I don’t have to wait until I absolutely can’t function to go to the doctor or the dentist.

I don’t know. Right now I’m just going to be glad, and thankful, that I actually have a job. Even if it’s one I’m not 100 percent happy in.

It’ll be all right in the end.

That would be me, bastardizing one of my favorite Duran Duran songs again.

It’s a bit odd that I should go for so long without writing regular blog entries here, and then write so many in such a short amount of time, but I have a few things to get off my mind for now, and I think that I’ll feel better if I talk about them a bit, rather than allowing them to fester. Which they might anyway. But I think this will help.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t do a whole lot in the house. Most of that is because I could honestly not give a shit.

I only work part time, in short shifts up to 5 hrs 45 minutes long (they don’t schedule me for 6+ hour shifts because then they have to offer me a half hour long lunch), and I know that’s nothing when you compare it to the grueling work day a lot of other people have.

For me, sometimes I can barely even handle that. I know I’ve said this a million times so you’re probably getting sick of it, but I have a back problem, and crappy knees, and I’m uninsured, so I can’t afford to have any of these problems looked at.  Sometimes my back hurts so bad after just a 4-5 hour shift that I can hardly walk upright afterwards.  When my mother bitches to me that she works full time and does a bunch of housework and blah blah blah… it’s just not the same.

Yeah, I’m a lazy worthless piece of shit. We’ve already established that. But I physically cannot deal with some of this crap. Today I had trouble even bending down to pick things up off the floor. I could barely reach the floor because I couldn’t fucking bend over.

I don’t know. The thing that prompted this entry started a few days ago. My mother was out of town and apparently she got pissed because I hadn’t done a few dishes, even though there only maybe half a sink full of dishes, and she hadn’t asked me to do them. She also got pissed because I left a load of towels in the drier (fully dry, but when I thought of them I had to leave for work or I’d have been late).

She had an event after work today, so when she got home maybe half an hour ago,  at the same time I happened to have noticed I forgot that my show (Elementary) was on, and made a half joking remark about ‘why hadn’t dad told me it was on’, because he was even watching it.

And the first words out of my mother’s mouth were “You’re a big girl you need to stop relying on us for everything you need to do more in the house starting January 1st you’re going to pay us rent I’m not just saying this because I’m pissed blah blah blah”.

She doesn’t know this because she won’t fucking listen, but I have no motivation to do anything. Anything at all. I can do the dishes for weeks and I guarantee you the only thing she’ll remember is the one night when I didn’t do them. I can do well and help buy groceries but the only thing she remembers is when I ate the last of something she wanted and she’ll scream about me eating “all their food”.

I don’t expect a hero’s thanks every time I wash a dish, but it’s really hard for me to have motivation to do anything when nobody notices.

I’ve been making student loan payments monthly since this summer. Only a couple of times have I asked them to spot me 20 bucks for gas until payday, when I can pay them back. So I’ve been paying for most of my own gas. I help buy groceries. I buy all my own toiletries, and my own clothes.

Oh, and I’ve still got a job. I don’t want to rehash the “I’m making progress but they ignore it because I’m so behind others my age and I’ve still got a shitload of progress left to make”, but that’s pretty much what it is.

I’ve worked at my current job since August 2011.

I know, everyone else made that kind of progress at like, 18, but since I’m pretty retarded, I am behind. Better late than never, the saying goes. It’s better that I arrive at these milestones late, than not at all.

I just feel like nothing I do is ever good enough. And that makes me feel like I’m worthless and, as my father has previously said to me “a burden on everyone’s life” and “a leech”.

Honestly, I feel like even if I had a full time job, paid rent and everything and even did a bunch of chores in the house, they’d still find something to complain about (the same way managers at work bitch at us for metrics; no matter how good or bad they actually are we pretty much hear the same pile of bullshit). They’d complain that I needed even MORE hours. Mom would complain about the job I was doing in regards to the chores. Dad would bitch at me when mom bitches at me because he’s got his own fucking problems and can’t be bothered to deal with them. So instead he only bitches about certain things after my mother has bitched about them. Two days later, he is back to his normal state of not giving a fuck and just watching ESPN all day.

I mean, I know that technically this “parents bitch at child, child bitches to parents why their reasoning won’t work, parents bitch to child why child’s reasoning won’t work” vicious cycle could go around and around until the end of time but something isn’t working here.

The other day when my mother was freaking out about the laundry, she was getting REALLY pissed and all I’d done was leave them in the drier. I mean she was shouting and everything, and every time I tried to calmly tell her to take a deep breath or step back for a second and think, or the like, she would just yell louder and get even angrier.

She is going to stress herself to an early death if she keeps getting so pissed she screams… about laundry. And where certain kitchen utensils go.

I am trying to be an adult about this. To tell her to calm down, take a breath, stop and think about things for a minute. I know I’m not easy to reason with when I rage, but honestly, think about how ridiculous it is to start shouting and throwing mean names about when someone forgets to do laundry.

Forgetting to pay bills would be one thing, but laundry? I once got screamed at for washing her “good socks” and apparently turning them a dull bluish color, and once when dad told her he’d done the laundry for her, the next words out of her mouth were “OH NO, those were my GOOD clothes”… Not, you know, “Thanks”.

Her moods are insane. She can be screaming at me one minute, then the next, laughing at something my brother posted on facebook. I don’t know how to deal with it because I have a bunch of my own problems I can’t even really handle.

I don’t know. I feel better now that I talked about this (or typed about, rather) but I just don’t know what to do. I am going to try to make more of an effort to do things in the house but I just feel like even if I clean the whole house, all my mother will see will be the little speck of dust I missed

Random musings on my trip

Well, in the last entry, I was expressing concerns about the trip I was trying to plan to see my friend and go to a Howard Jones concert.

Well, my plane tickets are bought and paid for.

I’ll be getting on my first plane on October 29th at 9:50am, which means I’ll be at the airport absolutely no later than 8:50, which means that I’ll probably be getting up at about 7am, having packed the night before. The first flight is a 45 minute flight to the Minneapolis/St Paul airport, which I feel comfortable telling you.

If everything goes as it stands now, I’ll have a few hours to kill, because I don’t get on my next flight until 3:40pm. This was better than when I was considering the 5:40 flight out of my town. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had to kill a few hours in a strange place so I’ll be okay. I enjoy people watching, plus I’m going to bring along my art journal and a small notebook in which I hope to kind of keep a travel diary. Or at least a “I have time to kill in the airport/on the plane” diary.

I’ll be arriving in Chicago at 6:15, where roughly an hour later I will be hopping on the final flight of the day, which will finally take me where I need to go (and like I said… I’m comfortable telling you guys everything else, but the final destination I would rather keep to myself for now). I won’t arrive at my final destination until about 9:40 at night. So basically I’ll spend 12 straight hours in airports and hopping on flights and whatnot.

I’m starting to get excited. As I’ve said before, it’ll be a great adventure. Of course with that comes the nerves. The last time I had to deal with airports, I didn’t actually have to worry about any of the details at all, as it was a family vacation and my parents handled all of that.

But it’s not as if I have flights really close together. After I get to Minneapolis, I have over 5 hours to kill. Once I get to Chicago, I’ve got an hour until my next (and last for the day) plane leaves.

I’ll admit, I more than occasionally have a tendency towards the paranoid, so having an hour is making me a bit nervous, and maybe even a little moreso now that I’ve realized I have no idea how to deal with getting my luggage after I get off each plane (it can’t be difficult, but I’ve never done it before so I’m nervous) , but everything should be fine. And as I said previously, if I never do anything I’ve never done, I’ll never do anything I’ve never done because I’ve never done it.

I guess I understand the old adage about getting there being half the fun. It’ll be such an adventure, with so many firsts for me.  And that’s not even counting when I get to where I’m heading.

It’s a completely irresponsible use of my money, but you’ve heard me go on about how I need to do some of this crazy stupid shit while I can and am still young enough to do it, so I won’t go into too much detail about that again.

Plus, I said before but I completely mean it. Anything short of another close by Thomas Dolby concert, or seeing like… Duran Duran or something, I will not be going to another concert of this nature any time soon. In fact, I won’t be doing much of anything soon except going to work and making student loan payments. And I’ll be cutting out some of the little things, like cancelling netflix and making sure I don’t bring money to work with me unless I’ve got grocery shopping to do or need to put gas in the car.

I’m almost in between two viewpoints. I want the trip to hurry up and get here, but I don’t want it to hurry and be over.  That’s not something I’d have understood as an impatient child wondering how Christmas would EVER get here when it’s SO FAR AWAY and why can’t it just hurry up. The anticipation, the getting there,  is half the fun

Just getting a bit of random steam off

No song lyric for this one. This is just a bit of random shit, nothing I’m too worried about, but that I think I’ll feel better if I type out.

So, at the end of this month I’ll be doing something a teeny bit crazy.

A couple months ago I became friends with a girl on tumblr. We text constantly and have even talked on the phone a few times.

Towards the end of the month I’ll be getting a flight out to the state she lives in. I’ll be there for 3 full days, not counting the day I arrive there, and the day I depart from there headed back home.

We’re going to see a Howard Jones concert together.

This idea has been met with worry and doubt on my parents’ part.

The thing is,  I am fully aware that this will be a total stretch on my non existent finances, and really fiscally irresponsible of me, but I don’t care.

I realize I’ve never met this girl in person before, and I realize I’ve never flown out of state by myself before

The thing is…

• I’d have never started planning this whole thing with the girl if I had any doubts about her honesty.  She’s not a serial killer, she doesn’t even have a criminal record (yes, I looked).
• I realize how expensive it is, but like I said with both my previous concerts… I have the entire rest of my life to pay off debt.
• On that note, this trip would never have gotten past the planning stage if I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to afford it. I’m not fucking stupid.
• I realize I’ve never flown out of state by myself before, but I’m fucking 26 years old. I can’t live the whole rest of my life being afraid to do things or outright avoiding things completely just because I’ve ‘never done them before’.

I don’t share my parents’ overly paranoid take on the internet. Yeah, there are creeps out there, but you know what you don’t hear about? The thousands of online friends who meet in person and actually don’t end up being eaten with fava beans and a nice chianti.

I mean, I understand why they’re apprehensive about the entire thing, but believe it or not I did take all this into consideration before I told my friend to buy the concert tickets.

Now, I don’t get paid until tomorrow, but getting a flight from here to Minneapolis would be 100 bucks one way, and then it would be about 260 bucks for a round trip ticket to her state (I’m not mentioning what state I’m flying to just… because).

Tomorrow when I get paid I will more than likely be buying the round trip tickets from Minneapolis to her state, and if I have enough, at least one way leaving from my town to Minneapolis. Since I get paid on the 28th, if I don’t buy the return ticket from Minneapolis to my town tomorrow, I’ll just buy it on the 28th

Idk. I’m just stressing more now than I thought I would be. Originally I was going to leave out of a different city (in my state) and that my dad would just drive me to the airport, but he’s really not up for that idea.

Like. It will be fine, and shit will work out. I know it’s awkward and everything, but like I said before… I’m not going to live my whole life never doing anything stupid and crazy because I’m “afraid” to and “haven’t done it before”. Then I’ll never do anything that I’ve never done before, because I’ve never done it before.

This won’t become a regular occurrence. It can’t, because I only work part time at minimum wage.

And I know technically if I was a responsible adult, I wouldn’t even be doing this. However… I have never felt so comfortable with a friend so fast as I do this one. We joke all the time about being the same person. We like a SHITLOAD of the same things, and agree on damn near everything. We text each other random bullshit at all hours. We tell each other not quite everything, but close enough.

I don’t know. After this, I know I’ll have to be much more responsible, in a lot of ways, but honestly, I will only have so long to do shit like this.

Even though 26 is still young in the grand scheme of things, I will not be young forever. I’ve already spent my life up until this point largely not doing anything crazy like flying almost 1,500 miles away to see a friend and go to a concert. I’ve never been able to before. Now that I can do some of this stuff…. I am.

I am completely 100% honest though. Like I told my friend, this will be my last blowout for a while. I need to start making more of a dent as far as paying bills  and other responsible adult stuff is concerned. And I know that. I know that I’ll have to quit spending money on unnecessary things and keep it down to the absolute bare essentials.

I know that. But I need this one last crazy time to pretend like I’m not poor and that I actually can do anything I plan for and set my mind to. I said this the first time I saw Howard Jones in concert, and I still mean it now. It’s the same with Thomas Dolby.  They will not live forever, and they will not be performing or touring forever. I’m going to see them while they’re still at it, not lament about the fact that I didn’t get the chance to see them (like I do with all my other favorite musicians).

I didn’t mean to hit upwards of 1000 words with this little entry, I just wanted to get some of this stuff off my chest. I know I sometimes have a tendency to over-worry about even the tiniest thing.

I think the hardest thing about growing up and getting older is having the proverbial balls to have faith in yourself and trust your own judgement. It’s hard when you’re constantly second guessing yourself, but I know everything is going to turn out, and I’m going to have what could possibly be the biggest adventure of my life up until this point, and I’ll have the memories and pictures  and the whole experience to enjoy  for years to come.

I was right. I do feel a lot better after writing all this down.

Until next time.