So yeah, the blog is back

"Why don't I strap on my job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into Jobland where jobs grow on little jobbies." -- Charlie Kelly, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Charlie Kelly is a fictional character and Jobland is a fictional place. But the advice on finding a job is as valid as any you're liable to find these days. Everybody I know who isn't independently wealthy (ie: everybody I know) who has a job considers themselves fortunate. They may not be happy with the job itself, but they're happy they have it. This applies to me too. I have to do something to pay my bills. Employers know this and seem to be pushing boundaries as far as how they treat their employees (which is something somebody in the government should be keeping an eye on, I think, because it has potential to get worse). My employer certainly knows that they can do whatever they want to me and as a result, my work schedule is never the same from one week to the next. It frequently consists of quirky little joys like night shifts (2PM-10PM) followed less than 8 hours later by a morning shift (6AM-2PM). I've also worked every single holiday since I started with this company.

EVERY ONE?

Yep.

SO WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE BLOG?

The short version is there was an incident involving a co-worker who works the overnight shift that any reasonable person would expect to be fired for. However, the way the incident was dealt with was apparently taken directly from the Dunder Mifflin corporate manual and the person was merely given a week off suspended. This created gaps in the schedule that had to be filled by, for some reason, me. But not just a week of overnight shifts, which would have been unpleasant enough, but mixed with a new hybrid, red-headed bastard child shift, created just this week, and just for me, that runs from 6PM to 2AM (if you don't get why that is inherently heinous, think about what hours you normally interact socially with friends and loved ones; if those hours wouldn't chew up every available minute of any possible hope for a social life, they would certainly leave a gigantic shitstain right in the middle of that prospect). It occurs to me that I should mention that I'm held in some regard there; I am actually the current Employee of the Month. Let that little nugget of absolute truth illustrate the atmosphere I'm trying to portray.

THAT'S IT? A CHANGE IN WORK SCHEDULE?

Well, the arbitrary and consistently inconsistent nature of my schedule, requiring me to work any combination of shifts during a given week has finally caught up to me and my metabolism and internal clock are shot. My body and brain have absolutely no idea when to sleep, when to eat or anything else they normally like to keep track of. "Sorry boys," is all I can tell them. "I don't know what to tell you." Because I don't. As a result, I'm finding myself in bed a lot, tired, but unable to sleep, alternately all wound up and wide awake at weird hours (like now). This has had a major, and drastic, affect on my health...and my writing. Since I can't seem to figure out when I should or shouldn't be in bed or eat meals, I can't seem to figure out when I can sit down at the keyboard and pound out some verbiage.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Okay, fairly significant personal revelation time: I am subject to periodic bouts of severe depression. I mean the kind that cripples you to the point where you can't function socially. These dark periods hit me without warning and often without a catalyst...and then, just as suddenly, lift by themselves and I'm back to normal. I can't control it and I don't know what to do about it. Every time it happens, it seems to get worse and the periods between these bouts seems shorter and shorter. That's a concern for another time and place, though.

Now, I'm pretty sure that all the stuff I listed above was a factor in my latest bout, which has consumed me for the last three or four or five days (I tend to lose count) and from which I'm just emerging tonight/this morning. When I get like that, I can't write at all. The only thing I produced of any kind of merit at all since I shut the blog down the other day was a really ugly and dreary poem, that had it been published, would have resulted in phone calls from deeply concerned people near and far (at least, I'd like to hope so...if not, geez, talk about depressing). So I didn't publish that.

SO NOW WHAT?

Well, I can't quit my job (at least, apparently I don't have to worry about being fired) and there's no reason to think they aren't going to keep screwing me over in regards to my schedule (zebras being unable to change their spots and all that) so I've decided to stop worrying about how my job is fucking up my social life, because, let's be honest, I don't really have one. But I'm not willing to abandon my writing and being...I don't know...something valuable, worthwhile...or at least somewhat interesting...through that. So I'll keep writing. My output may be more sporadic; I've tried very hard to publish at least five times a week. That may not be possible going forward, but I'll do my best. Simply because I'm pissed off now and I refuse to let them completely kill me just because occasionally I need to buy cat food. Take that, you fuckers.

So that's it.

Let's get back to monkey jokes and talking about robots.