WEARINESS...

     I'm weary.

     There's a certain heaviness that comes with knowing your suffering is pointless.

     Now, I want to be clear. I'm not suffering in any physical sense. My body, its organs and limbs, are doing quite well for themselves. I've managed to take good care of myself and avoid catastrophe. But my mind...my mind is weary. I don't want to do this anymore...this purposeless of being...this monotony.

     I don't like working for a living. It sucks. I never wanted my life to be defined by how I earned money. I didn't want my life defined by my job but my job most certainly defines my life. I work overnights and I've worked overnights since 2001. I thus keep odd hours and on top of that my job requires me to work weekends...all of them. My job pays me enough to survive but not enough to live. To make ends meet I cannot drive. I can't afford the car payments, the car insurance, and gas & miscellaneous expenses associated with car ownership. You can imagine how difficult this makes it to meet girls. How difficult you (didn't) ask? I went on my first date when I was 33 years old. My job is not responsible for all of that...but it is responsible for enough.

     Maybe things will get better... - something I've said for many years, but - ...I'm starting to see a girl at a time every now and again. There's definite improvement over the nearly 20 years of nothing. It's heartening to find girls who will give me a chance despite knowing the difficulties I enter in on...even if the majority of them have been one-date-wonders. Still...I'm weary.

     I don't want to work anymore. Not just my current job but any job. I wish I could just stop but the bills won't stop just because I want to. It's frustrating but it's a frustration I feel I could endure if I only had a reason to endure it. I'm not enough. My selfish will to live means less and less to me each day. The only official thing I have to look forward to is New Horizons reaching Pluto in July 2015. I do want to see what this world looks like after all these years. That date is fast approaching and then what?

    I feel like if I had a girlfriend or a wife (as I have wanted one since I was 24) and/or a child to raise, I feel I could muster the requisite strength to endure the monotony, to endure the purposeless because I would thus have a purpose. My suffering...my anguish?...it could be rationalized.

    I don't like having these fantasies but I will admit one of my darker ones today. Maybe doing so semi-publicly will prove cathartic. I'm not an immediate suicide risk and the reason for that is simple: I've been diligent in saving my money for old age though I've been able to save far less since moving out. The inheritance I received from my father was, in the beginning, less than a third of my net worth. Now it is possibly over half thanks to a rising stock market. Still, it's blood money so I don't want to spend any of it except in my old age. Killing myself would mean leaving all that money behind unused.

      What a waste...

      What I daydream about when I'm weary is cashing out my IRAs and summing it up with my savings to see what I've got. I keep detailed financial records so I know how much my life costs. Presently, it's just under $20,000 a year. I think my financial happiness would peak at around $30,000 a year take-home pay (I really could give less than a fuck about gross pay...if I don't see it, I didn't earn it so stop using my gross as a basis for aid calculation). I could be happy on the $20,000 if my rent were halved but that won't happen unless I get a girl to move in with me and just getting a girlfriend has proven ridiculously difficult.

      But that would be nice...a girlfriend who loves me enough and whom I love enough to want to live together and pool expenses in preparation for marriage. That'd be the best thing that could happen to me both as a human being and financially...someone to share the burden-of-living with. Hell, at this point I would take a fucking cat but my apartment strictly forbids pet ownership and there isn't another affordable complex within walking distance of work...additional sorrow...

      My net worth is around $200,000. I don't know what the tax penalty would be if I cashed out all the IRAs I have but even if it was half, and I highly doubt that, I'd still have a minimum of five years worth of money...and if interest rates would ever rise, up to seven.

      That's some fantasy. Five years of freedom. The only problem is when the money would run out I know I would not have the courage to kill myself at the end. I'd be a coward and run...or desperately get a job to keep alive, however miserably...but those five years...they could be good ones. Five years to do whatever the fuck I want. I'd be like one of those Inca sacrifices (except they only got one year...I'd get five).

      It bothers me because usually I can talk myself out of these fantasies within a few hours. I'm usually just cranky. But this one has lasted a full week and as far as I know will continue tomorrow. I blame my job and by extension myself for not getting out of it while I still could. Almost thirteen years I've put in there. What pisses me off is how the words don't match the deeds. For my entire tenure there I've been told what a good and dutiful employee I've been. I've been given numerous awards in recognition of that. What have I wanted in return? Full time. That's it. Full time. I've been bidding for ten years and still have not gotten it. In fact, in all my years there I have not known anyone to have gotten full time. How shitty of the store. The store doesn't give full time...that's basically what I'm told...yet they have to present bid sheets every six months (which they make a pain in the ass to get). It feels so fraudulent. If they don't give full time and only offer it to satisfy some union demand...it just feels wrong. Like holding a contest but never declaring a winner.

     Additionally, despite my glowing reviews, I have been given a pay cut. For the past year I've consistently had about 2 hours cut from my schedule each week. It's not even something I can bump for. It's a very calculated move on my employer's part and it's costing me about $1000 in lost income over the course of a year. My income has been stagnant or falling since 2008. I don't feel like a valued employee...I feel like an unwanted expense.
 
     Word-deed mismatch. I would cry out that I feel like I've earned a little respect from the store but then I feel like I would be met with the same words Lyta Alexander got when confronting Ulkesh over the same idea..."Respect...from whom?"
 
     Hell, I'd even settle for "full-time lite". I'm old school. A full time job to me is a 40 hour workweek. Sundays are paid at time-and-a-half and Sundays are separate from regular pay. The rule for part time is less than 29 non-Sunday hours a week (5 weeks or more above 29 equals automatic full time but my store is just as diligent about preventing that as they are at denying full time status to begin with). But anyway, it's workable within the system. 28 non-Sunday hours plus 8 Sunday hours straightens out to 40 hours of pay. Full time with the status of part-time...but I can't even get that. My historical average was 27.5 + 7.5 which, quite frankly is close enough but nowadays it has been averaging 26.75 + 6.75 which hurts, albeit slowly. It's like death from a thousand small cuts. My budget is already tight as is. I already endure a cold apartment in the Winter (I keep it at 60 degrees and dress warmly...I only turn it up to 72 degrees when I know I'm having company. I have not had company in over a month) and a hot apartment in the Summer (I only turn the air conditioner on when my apartment's temperature rises above 90 degrees and I'm off work or when I have company [see Winter]. In the meantime I sweat it out sitting around in my underwear) so I've already squeezed what savings I can from my electric bill. The only room left for cuts is cable and food.

    I know cable seems like an obvious luxury to eliminate and while I have no problem with that conceptually, I am trying to date girls. It's already bad enough that I work weekends, overnights, and can't drive. Must I be without entertainment capabilities as well? How much poverty must I ask a potential girlfriend to endure? But it will go if it gets difficult since I'm already stretched thin enough as is.

     I'm sure I'll get over this but it's been a hard week. It's all psychological...it's always been psychological. I've been blessed with a healthy body but cursed with a poisoned mind...

     I don't think my problems are as big as I imagine them to be. I can't imagine there aren't throngs of people who'd happily trade their problems for mine. I hate that I even consider that. I want to be selfish at times. I want it to be about me sometimes. Stupid brain...

     I wish I were less lonely. I've never been truly alone before. There's always been someone living with me even if we largely ignored one and other. It's been just me for 2½ years now. It's soul-crushing. Someone to pass the time with...someone I could hold and who would hold me...that would be nice. It would be nice to have some of the voids in my soul filled with joy and comfort. Definitely nice...