But you're really not going to DO anything about it....

Things seem like they're heading in a downward spiral to hell at "corporate."

The other night, I referred to the place as a "gaping hole of depression," only to be immediately and defensively questioned by another individual. However, I think that the feeling of being upset, disdainful, lethargic, melancholy, underpaid, trapped, etc, warrants my labeling. Anything that is of another opinion I would gladly welcome, but I would probably end up using the logic of "defend it or go piss somewhere other than on my shoes."

Everyone is overworked to the point of exhaustion, making fallible errors out of sheer lethargy, and trying to pin one another to walls. In addition, I have on more than one occasion heard a superior insult the character of a subordinate, just because he/she "could," and the sheer defamation of the subordinate's character gave enough of a morale boost for him/her to successfully complete their evening without committing suicide.

When human beings feel trapped, it's almost comical to see them gnaw each other to bits.

Relationships that once held meaning are now replaced with anti-social and cold platitudes. People stare at one another and forget moments they had together. Everything just burns into a semi-blissful haze, that can easily and somewhat frequently turn into a bad trip; a nightmare.

I watch some who sometimes have a good grip on reality turn into slovenly beings with absolutely no comprehension for what is going on around them... and see their peers defend them, like they are the few dying members of some "has been" elite cult.

Labor laws have exhausted me, as I fight weekly to maintain a decent amount of hours. New York State has changed the labor laws, naturally to protect the very poor because that's the only thing this country can do right. (Meaning protect the very rich and the very poor...) I count my fair share of money every night, spending far too much time being criticized and pushed to nearly my breaking point. Meanwhile, people in other departments are making more money for the same amount of work.

My training team is absolute garbage. Only one of them has ventured to complete his action list since the last meeting, a meeting which I thought went very well. I do not know how to motivate these people any better than I've been trying to. I am not a "feel goody" person, but even I, who wouldn't care to see most of that staff alive or dead, can say the team is a cut above the rest and can be very efficient when probed to do a job correctly. Still, without the perks of discounts, a schedule, insurance, or money, these people could give a rat crap about the team... and I don't blame them.

What I do blame is certain individuals getting testy with me for not accepting their apathy with open arms. Naturally, I know the problem would be solved if everyone worked just 10% harder than they currently are doing... But those people will not give me that 10%, and find it obnoxious that I expect it... even too demanding?

Certainly I feel I have taken a spiky probe to my anus with a lot of these changes, but the sheer work ethic that has been instilled in me prevents me from doing a damned thing half-assed.

Should I become a half-assed fool, I will work less and make less money. I will be viewed poorly, which will severely inhibit my chances for future employment. In addition, since I am still (in my mid-twenties) paying for my mother's stupid fucking financial mistakes she made in HER mid-twenties, I must make damned on-time student loan payments of almost $600 dollars a month or this could hurt my siblings' educational endeavors. I can't ever get away from this wretched past of mine, can I?

People think I do this for my health, but in reality, I am just trying to keep some sort of order in my disgusting life.

I am watching what I knew would happen at 'corporate,' happen.

I, months ago, knew a dissipation of this nature would brutally unfold. Still, nobody is willing to do anything about it. Nobody is willing to give even an extra 10%. Nobody cares.

One of my colleagues gets angrier and angrier by the day because he is trapped, living in his in-law's basement because he cannot get a job in another state where his family is that pays enough money. Yet, he's not man enough to put his foot down and make his wife get a higher paying job. He says she doesn't have time because of their three children. She has the fucking time. If my mother had time to work three jobs when my brothers and I were very, very little, she has the fucking time.

But then again, my mother had the time, and hence, here is my work ethic. Here it is! It's here because I was raised by someone who MADE THE TIME.

I find most people in this world have this attitude that they're unhappy but completely unwilling to do anything to rectify their unhappiness.

People just want to stay unhappy. They don't want to make change.

And the sad thing is, instead of wanting to make change, those people get angry at people like ME for even proposing that change be made!

"Well how dare you ASK US to be angry that they are nickel and diming us to high hell!? How dare you ask us to ask for a simpler solution to problems? How DARE YOU ask us to work just a little bit harder? Why don't you do the work yourself!?"

And then, of course, as things play out in public sector jobs, conversations like these arise.

"Well, we're MANAGEMENT, so we do x, y, and z, which ultimately makes YOU incompetent."

To which retorts follow like "the only reason you're management is because you can live on $35,000 dollars a year, and you were too incompetent to do anything else..."

And the cycle blows out of proportion, creating a hostile, negative environment that nobody wants to be a part of. How does this affect me? Because when they quit, I have to train a whole new slew of actors that are good for nothing except singing and eventually reproducing... 8 hours a day with no small talk to be made. Lovely.

I was trying hard to make myself a member of the elite management, for job security, because I'm tired of waiting on people, and because I figure with the amount of nickel and diming they're doing, it won't be a pay cut come six months from now. But of course, I will not be afforded that opportunity because first I must do a job called "MA," which essentially means I have to work for slave wages. Rich parents would come in handy at this point in my life.

:: static :: "Fish to God, can you please send down some lovey dovey honey money so I can go fuck off as an MA, and then get a big girl job?"

Of course, my desires in that department are slowly dwindling. I must resign myself to the fact that I cannot make a damned difference. Of course, it is not in my blood to think I cannot make a difference.

I am starting to see, more and more as I grow older, that the categories of people I created when I was very young have not changed. People still fall into the same groups, for the most part.

Everything is a big ball of hot mess. I know the solution is to withdraw.

I kind of want to publish something before I do... However, I seemingly cannot find the energy or time. I just need a chunk of money to start my new life as a Ph. D student and avid bicycle rider.

The master plan

Her name is Phoebe and she's silver. She stays in my hallway and comes with me to work. In fact, her spokes shine so wonderfully I almost feel guilty dragging her through the dirty streets. Still, she's part of my master plan of escapism.

All of the negative energy they've left me with will fall on her. It will savagely be pounded into her peddles and burned off somewhere along 1st avenue.

I don't need anything but this.

I am a machine. Machines need not eat, or sleep. Machines only require fuel.... I have enough of that.

Machines feel nothing of rejection, damnation, or humiliation. Machines know only how to be.

The choice between living and survival has drastically grown too close to being the same.

I will give them the image of the object they always wanted to see... And then I'll let them covet it. Reciprocity and mind over matter is a theory I've always practiced. Now, I am solely unavailable.

I will simply be an object.... an object like Phoebe. But unlike Phoebe, nobody will be taking me for a ride through a dirty street.

Make it better.... Take the time.

I can't write words that aren't worth reading.

I could have easily written.

I'm so tired. I'm just so tired. I have nothing to say. I'm so tired.

Sing me a lullabye.

Gonna ride me that southbound all the way to Georgia--

I live in a great city.

I live in the city of dreams... "Concrete jungle where dreams are made of."

I live in a place where you can get any type of food you want at any hour; a city with 24 hour public transit, and I live in a neighborhood where you can get off the train at 5:00 a.m. and still see young women and men walking around as if it were broad daylight.

I live in an aesthetically eye-pleasing city. I live among the blood and sweat of generations, working to erect structures that would house the greatest of geniuses, and the most indigent societal ingrates.

I live in a city where the booze flows 'til four, your gender and sexuality are irrelevant, your race, culture, class and creed can melt gracefully into a niche and stay there for all your years here.

But... I live in a city with some of the most washed up, shallow, poisonous, schizophrenic, terrible souls to spawn from the United States of America.

...and I'm tired.

I'm tired of it.

I'm tired of undesirables running me ragged. I'm tired of the culture clashes, the inflation, and the bad music.

I'm tired of the pure boredom I feel when I interact with just about everyone.

I knew it was time to leave the other night outside my favorite bar on Avenue A. I was smoking, eavesdropping on a conversation. It was between a few twenty-somethings, discussing the movie Love Actually. They were talking about the scene where the Portuguese woman lifted the paperweight, and the English writer's papers flew all over the lake. I interjected, and we all had a laugh. However, in the middle of our laugh, five fire trucks pulled up and people started running into the building across the street.

"Hey!" I said. "Take a look at this!"

...but they ignored me, and kept discussing the movie. That's all people do here. They talk about movies and TV. It's like they have no life experiences or stories to draw on of their own, so they just talk about pop culture. I'm sure whatever caused the slew of fire trucks would have been more interesting, but they weren't interested.

It's time to go.

I want to go south, south where people listen to classic rock and the word "vegan" isn't even in the dictionary.

I want to go south where it's warm, and where everyone moves at a simple pace.

I want to have a large apartment with a porch, and I want to smell the sweet air while I smoke cigarettes that cost me four dollars a pack.

People say I will be bored. People say the narrow-mindedness will get to me. But see, it won't. I'm from NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA! It's the same damn thing, but with snow.

I could really give a damn if the people around me are narrow-minded. I have my wits about me, and I'm ready.

I want to go to Emory, which is in Atlanta. I'm not really advertising this to people. A few know. Those who find out on their own will find out. I'm not doing anything to restrict the information. I don't plan to keep much contact with anyone I've met in New York, save for those who provide interesting stories.

I'm planning to apply, and if accepted, will go to school there for five years (probably starting in September, 2012.) I want to get my Ph. D. in Sociology, and teach communication in society. I want to research and publish in journals about socio-economic class, and team teach with my best friend of many years.

Of course, I don't want to teach in Georgia. What a waste of time that will be.

I want to study the southerners. I want to see them behave. I want to have time to have peace of mind, and actually continue to let my mind grow.

By the time I'm finished, I'll be 31.

I think 31 is a good time to get married, right?

Well, we'll see. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't. Maybe I'll fall in love with the south. Maybe I'll come running back to New York? Who's to say what's right and wrong? Oh well... Who is John Galt? ;)

I'm stalking you.

Dirk,

I never realized you are a scorpio. That explains a lot.

A scorpio alpha male... How many of you can there be in the world?

I find this to rile my curiosity. Strange.

I read what you wrote to me. I think you're just denying your basic human instincts. Now that I know you're a scorpio alpha male, it really doesn't surprise me. You feel uncomfortable when you feel those things, because you're a very black and white person in that regard. The truth is, I guarantee she does similar things... And she probably allows herself to enjoy them more.

Fish

postscript- find a way to find me on facebook.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rational and irrational ranting

She's been gone for over a week.

I feel like it's been longer because I drank a good deal of the time since she's been gone.

I'm not sure I can physically afford to live on my income this month. February is the absolute worst month in the world. The morale is awful. The people are terrible. The filthy vermin that do not belong to my race plague me with all sorts of inadequacies.... I find them trite and unbecoming. I think, sometimes, that I'd like to light them on fire while they are alive and in front of me. I dream of lighting mass amounts of them on fire, just to help me suffer another second of starring at them.

If she was here, I would tell her these things, and she would laugh and pet my head. But, she is not here, and instead I am looked at as if I have just boiled a newborn baby in a pot. I'm seen as an undesirable leper, probably because the idiots I am now forced to speak to don't see my story-telling for what it is; an obnoxious display of my vocabulary and macabre imagination.


I haven't spoken to the other one in over a week.

I slipped and asked him for a favor yesterday. I ended up yelling at him.

He did nothing about it. I screamed and he did nothing. He let me squeeze him for a moment, or five. I just squeezed his arm as if it was the most soothing object in the entire world. I felt stupid about it, but everything hurt and I needed to touch someone, or something that didn't absolutely despise me.

I shouldn't have asked him for anything. I hate the sight of him. I hate knowing he shares the same air as I do. I hate this raunchy, barren feeling he has left within me.

Furthermore, I hate being in a position where I have to deal with him.


...he did nothing about it, and I am angry. If she was here, I'd talk to her about it. If she was here, I'd tell her about it so I wouldn't have to write it here for the child of a man I date to read it and relentlessly interrogate me about every syllable.

Every syllable... I miss their friendships. I don't know how to remain friends with either of them.


...the bar I went to last week charged my card too much money.

I can call the man today on his cell phone and give him the info he needs to give me my money back. However, I know he won't be at work, and thus he'll write down my full credit card information, probably lose the piece of paper, and then I'll end up with a hundred odd charges. I might suck it up and pay the 45 dollars. People think I'm crazy. I think the human race is incompetent, and no matter what situation I find myself it, human stupidity will always fuck it up. That's why I almost always pay cash.


If she was here, she would laugh when I told her I thought it was pathetic how morbidly obese women at work lust for the 17 year old talentless child, Justin Bieber. He's only about four years shy of stepping his big toe out of the closet. Yet, they wiggle their fat bellies at the MTV studios when the pathetic pop sensation makes an appearance. I could vomit, but I'm not sure I could project it far enough to hit the MTV studios.


The morbidly obese people are on diets. They are trying to lose weight for a competition. They run.

Generally, when people around me go on serious diets, I binge eat around them to make them hate their lives.

I figure by the time the challenge is said and done, I'll have gained 25 pounds.


If she was here, I'd tell her that. She would probably tell me how she loves the same junk food as I do, and make herself a nice medium rare cheeseburger. That's why I love her.

But.



She is not here, and thus I am irrationally ranting. I want her to come back and make things better. Maybe I just don't know how to make things better.

I want to move away from this city.

The most beautiful woman in paradise... has left.

February 23, 2009....

I wrote for her, nearly two years ago. She never read it.

She grew to be my mentor, my friend, and someone I loved and respected very much.

She has left me for a better life. She has left to be closer to her family. She has left to pursue her dreams with a better education.

She got prettier every day I saw her. Every day, she was more special to me.

Now, I look around and want to ask her a question... and she isn't there to answer it.

I said goodbye to her over wine and friends and Cool Ranch Doritos last night. She was lovelier than ever. I spoke to her honestly. I spoke to her happily. I spoke to her like I'd see her the next day.... but I knew I wouldn't.

And so, I must start my new chapter as well.


...and you can read it too.