Sunday - 04.30.23

The following is a rant that I wrote two weeks ago, but never got around to posting. It provides more context for something that I'm going to write about more later in this entry. (Also, there's a crafting update at the end of all this, or you can jump directly there if you don't care about my personal angst / work drama. I don't blame you!)

~ start flashback ~

If you're a longtime listener, it probably won't shock you to hear I had another crying fit at work... This time, it was because I felt bad that I always take so long to do things. I went in to the boss's office to ask if she had any tips to be more efficient, but ended up just completely breaking down.

You probably don't care, but for future reference, here's a rough outline of my day:

on days without desserts:

on days with desserts:

after lunch:

It's the first five or so hours of the day before lunch that are my problem. It's not, like, that bad, but, unfortunately, I've learned that I have a strong sense of pride. I want to do a good job. I want to do it properly and efficiently, self-sufficiently. But, unfortunately, I'm not at that point yet. The menu often doesn't make sense, with frequent typos or inconsistencies. You also don't really know what's going on -- like if a wing is having a party or not later in the day and what needs to be prepared for that. In short, I often have to ask questions -- and I hate that so much. Like, I was an honor's student in school and took all sorts of advanced classes, but prided myself on doing good without ever having to ask for help or clarification. But, here, I have to constantly ask questions!

Anyway, like I said, dessert days are awful, because they add an extra hour or two. That's generally fine, though. And recently, on days without desserts, I've been finishing a bit early, actually. Like, today, I got done with the 8pm snacks a bit before noon.

The big issue, though, is that, like I think I said before: I'm supposed to also be occasionally baking desserts ontop what I'm doing, but I haven't been able to do that. A coworker has been doing it for me, and I feel bad.

It's kinda funny -- every time I cry, my boss asks: "Did someone say something to you? Was it [lady who's training me, let's just call her D]?" And everytime, the answer is yes... but she isn't actually, like, saying anything mean. She said, "Y'know, it's your job to do the prepwork (baking cakes for the next day, etc)." And it is! But I literally do not have the time for it! Not yet, at least...

~ end flashback ~

For the reasons above, I've been feeling really inadequate at my job. This peaked on Thursday: I skipped my lunch break entirely because I was running a bit late and planned to eat after all the food was dished up, but D asked, "So, you're gonna mop tonight?" I said, "Sure, but I kinda wanted to sit down and eat something first..." She said, "Yeah, well, the mopping still has to be done." So, I just went ahead and mopped, but I was kinda tearing up all the while and I felt so ridiculous and childish for feeling that way. And by the time I finished, it was time for the wings to come down and get their carts, so I still couldn't sit down or anything. So I had a ten hour shift without any breaks...

On Friday, while we were washing dishes, K told me, "I'm so angry for you and how D treats you! It drives me crazy how we're the only ones who do any work around here!" And that really struck me because, this whole time D has been making me feel like shit and like I haven't been doing enough, even though I've literally been working my ass off, barely taking any breaks!

I'm crying and I feel so pathetic and worthless, but am I supposed to be angry? Am I supposed to be standing up for myself??

...I found this article, "I Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore," by Leslie Jamison, that talks about how women are socially conditioned to avoid anger while sadness is more "socially acceptable," the juxtaposition of female sadness and anger and how they're actually often intertwined. It's a really good article -- I'd highly recommend it! Much to think about...

(´ヘ｀;)

I finally finished the needle felted budgie I mentioned a while ago! I got confused by the detail on the wings and decided to simplify it way down. I think I should practice a bit more with simplification and stylization... but, without any further ado, here he is:

I think he's really cute and I'm quite proud of him (even if I feel like the wings are unfinished / am I not sure what to do with them...) I also ended up making a little sketch of a head to try and better understand what's going on with his stripes:

I think for future projects, sketches from various angles would be really helpful. I kinda just jumped into this guy without any major plans, which kinda just ended up confusing me. (Also, there are surprisingly few images of budgies from the back on Google images, at least. I ended up finding a British pet care supplies site, though, with plenty of info about budgies and photos from both the site owners and random budgie enthusiasts!)

Have I mentioned that I convinced K from work to buy a kit and try out needle felting as well? It's a pretty fun, easy hobby and you get a little guy to hang out on your desk or whatever, also.

Wednesday - 04.19.23

Since we work the same shift and eveything, I've been talking quite a bit more with that coworker I mentioned in the last entry (from now on, I'll call her K). In particular, we got to talking about games and open worlds -- long story short, since Red Dead Redemption II was on sale, I ended up buying it. Up to this point, I've only ever really played Nintendo games, so I'm not familiar with Playstation controls... My Arthur must look so silly, taking five minutes to figure out how to crouch or pull up his bandana...

I'm just now starting chapter two and haven't really been able to explore freely much yet, but it's a very beautiful game! K said that it's like GTAV where you can wreak all sorts of chaos, so I'm looking forward to that (but also worried about hurting virtual people, especially since they remember you and what you have done to them). Also, I love hunting and fishing minigames!

It's cool that it lets you skip ahead if you keep failing a section, also. I'm really bad at shooters, lol, so it's nice that that's an option if it comes down to that.

( ´ ▽ ` )

I had another panic attack in my boss's office last week. The most embarassing thing is that it was over me feeling like I would never improve at this job, but then immediately the next couple of days, I've been finishing my tasks early, even! The lady who has been training me (hereby called D), who up to this point has been harshly criticizing my every move, even told me she noticed how much better I've gotten!

She's also been telling me that she doesn't know why I'm working here. For example, since everyone other than K is several decades older than me, the rest of my coworkers ask me for help with their phones and computers. One day, she tells me: "You're smart enough to get some nice tech job -- like at a call center! Why don't you do that? Or don't you want to go back to college? Do you really want to work here all your life?" And it's like... god, I don't know! When my dad worked in a call center, yes, you get paid very well (like $20 an hour), but they literally have a designated crying room. Your job is to just sit there for 8+ hours a day while strangers yell at you on the phone for things out of your control. As for college, idk... I really liked learning about Chemistry, but it seems like the job market really sucks -- people on the chem subreddit constantly complain about not being able to find work...

All things considered, this doesn't seem like that bad of a job. Like, it's frustrating that management doesn't communicate with anyone and we're severely short staffed and over regulated (someone apparently had a freak out over email, cursing everyone out and making complaints and now we've been examined by the state inspectors the past couple of days. they won't even let us listen to the radio...) and lacking in terms of budget, but, still, it feels better to provide tangible help to people in need in our community than to just be a cog in the capitalist machine, y'know?

...Idk, I don't have anything figured out. I have a job, but I still feel like a loser. I still feel like I'm missing something. I still feel empty inside... And worse than that, now I hardly have any free time, and, when I do, I feel too exhausted to actually engage in my hobbies or do anything more mentally taxing than watching some TV show that I've watched so many times I practically have every line memorized while idly scrolling through social media....

_(´ཀ`」 ∠)_

On an uncomfortably related note, I've been reading Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata recently! I saw that a few people on here reviewed it and it seemed interesting. It's a little scary how much I relate, actually... Like, I just got to the part where she has the weird chat with the weird incel guy in a coffee shop:

"And so I realized. This society hasn't changed one bit. People who don't fit into the village are expelled: men who don't hunt, women who don't give birth to children. For all we talk about modern society and individualism, anyone who doesn't try to fit in can expect to be meddled with, coerced, and ultimately banished from the village."

I've written several rants along the same lines, both in my personal journal and elsewhere on this very site... And her memorizing the store manual and basing her entire life and personality around it -- I feel that so much. For a while I got super into astrology / MBTI / etc trying to reverse engineer a 'persona' for myself. I often have trouble figuring out how to respond to people properly and don't understand what they want from me. I've read several internet guides about "how to have conversations," but it didn't really work.... Even the work thing, where that's the only thing going on in her life... There was a Tumblr post recently that I can't stop thinking about:

redrivershore:
heyy this is awkward but I noticed your life is like... embarrassingly small lol does that bother you

... (×﹏×;)

Besides that, I love how blunt Keiko is! "Everyone was crying that these boys were fighting, so I hit him in the head with a shovel. It was the most logical solution, but still people were upset for some reason." Also, the way she talks about "adopting" the incel guy like a pet, lol.

I've still got another quarter of the book left, so I'll write a proper review when I finish it!

Sunday - 04.02.23

We were supposed to get some pretty bad weather on Friday, so at work we "did everything in paper" (in other words, used styrofoam containers to package the food -- I don't know why the people here call styrofoam paper, it's very confusing...), so there would be less dishes to do and we could get out early. At one point, the building went in lock down, meaning we were supposed to go hide in the stock room, but that happened while we were in the middle of dishing up meals, so we just turned out most of the lights and kept at it.

The worst of it missed my town, but several nearby towns got it pretty badly, with roofs taken off or entire houses being reduced to rubble. Aside from the one freak storm with like 70mph straight line winds a few years ago, I've never experienced severe weather like a tornado before. I can't even imagine what it must be like...

(＞﹏＜)

In the last entry, I mentioned how I have nothing to talk about, but I actually have been chatting with one of my coworkers quite a bit. Mostly about how much we hate the job, how horribly everything is managed, how pointless a lot of the things we have to do are (why do we have to keep making milkshakes for a guy who doesn't even eat them??), and other little things (ex: "look at how this cup broke in half straight down the middle!"). We've also expanded into arts and crafts.

On that note, here's a minor needle felting update with some random unfinished projects:

featuring: a donut (that doesn't have sprinkles yet), a pumpkin (who doesn't have a stem yet), and the body of what will eventually be a parakeet.

I'm still just learning and testing things out, so it's pretty basic and not perfect!

(＞﹏＜)

I went to a thriftshop and a secondhand bookstore and got a pretty good haul today, also:

• Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) by Gloria Steinem
• a female-centered SciFi anthology by female authors from the 70's
• a collector's edition of Tomie by Junji Ito

It's been a while since I last went to that secondhand bookshop. Previously, I had been picking up a copy of Lucky Star or Azumanga Daioh whenever I went, but they didn't have either this time. They did have another manga that I read as a kid, though (Kamichama Karin -- they just had volume three in the school library and I kept reading it over and over), but they only had the first and fourth volumes, so I didn't see the point in getting it...

I noticed that my taste in books has changed a lot over the years, and now a lot of the things I want to read aren't really available at the local library or bookshops, which is pretty sad. What's worse is my college library actually had one of the largest special collections of lesbian memorabilia in the country, but now I no longer have access to it!

(＞﹏＜)

Also, I should talk a bit about this month's journal design -- it's the border you get when you plug your GameBoy / GameBoy Color games into a SNES. All of the backgrounds for various games are on the Video Game Museum website. Some of them are super cool, like this one from Pokemon Red! There were also some others that had landscapes or repeating patterns or used the borders in really clever ways, like making it look like a movie theater or changing as you got to different parts of the game.

And I wanted to thank people for leaving nice comments in my guestbook or sending them to my Tumblr! I really can't overstate how nice it is to hear that people have been reading my essays and rants and liking them! It might still be a while for the next substantial update, unfortunately -- I've been researching the origins of shojo manga, but haven't gotten back to it for a while...