a new cruel stress

Grocery store workers have it rough rn because we have to worry about getting the virus and dying and making enough money to pay for rent and food. At the same time. I’m tired. $15 with taxes out is not it.

more than just a working girl… or not

I got home today around 10pm after working not one but two jobs (one boring office job and then some manual labor).  I feel very grateful to be employed but it gets to a point where especially on nights like this when I get home and Nick is sleeping, I feel like I’m missing out on so much of the good stuff in life.  I’ve been working at least 50 house weekly and its crazy to realize that’s more than two days of the 7 day week in which I’m not operating on free will.  These are hours in which my time does not belong to me, it belongs to my employer and I don’t do what I want to do. I do what has to be done next and I play games with time, hoping that if I don’t look at the clock time will speed up.  I felt so much guilt when I walked into our house to find the lights off and Nick sleeping.  I felt shitty cause I hadn’t seen him all day and he’d wanted to do something but my cleaning job ran long (it was the largest apt I’d ever been in in NYC).  I also felt robbed because the only thing I was looking forward to today, spending time with Nick was gone.  I so badly wanted to wake him up and as I write this still do (it’s midnight) but that would be no bueno since he really needs his rest (also he looks like a peaceful greek god when he sleeps).  I still wanna wake him up though lol.

Tomorrow I leave straight from work to go upstate to work a wedding and I’ll be gone two nights which seems like a lot to me right now.  I love working weddings and I love cleaning but unfortunately, my wedding gigs are only paid internships at this point and my cleaning job is my side hoe of a job.  I love weddings cause you create something beautiful by working together with strangers and I love my cleaning gig cause it’s totally mine and I created it from nothing (even though at this point it’s barely more than nothing).  My maybe attainable dream is to be able to quit the soul-sucking job that is my 8-5 in which I sit in a very uncomfortable desk chair and file bankruptcy claims for 8 hours straight, looking at not one but two computers at all times.  Also my seat has just been moved from sitting next to a nice guy who hated this place too to sitting next to a man who literally started a fight cause another guy at our desk was yawning and he thought it was unprofessional (!).  I mean,… can you believe?! A supervisor had to be called and the yawning guy changed seats so now I’m sitting one empty chair from a crazy man who thinks yawning is unprofessional and now wants me to sit next to him (not in this lifetime).

The worst thing to do to your self when you hate your job yet are there all the time is to think about all the things you could be doing.  So course, this is the special brand of torture I inflict on myself.  I think about 1) all the dates I’m planning with Nick but may never get to go to cause I’m at the soul-sucking job 2) the poetry book I’ve been working on since middle school 3) panic out of nowhere that I’ve forgotten someone’s birthday 3) how dirty my room is and that when I get home I’m gonna be too tired (i.e lazy) to clean it and on and on it goes.  I have all these passions and projects that stay half started and not fully committed to for the longest time.  My heart lies in things I don’t have the time to give my full efforts to.

It really hurts that the love of my life and I fight about how much I work when I feel like I’m doing the bare minimum to feed myself and buy a metro card and not be homeless and then when I look at my bank account, it looks back at me wide-eyed as if to say “you think this amount is gonna stretch how far, keep dreaming sweetie.”  It’s crazy that I work so much it causes strain on relationships with my family and boyfriend and yet I don’t have savings and I am by all accounts broke.  It’s seems wrong to me that you can work 9 hours a day, 6 days a week and weekends and still be steadily scraping by.

On my lunch break I mindlessly scroll through Instagram.  Mine is full of travel bloggers and girls with brand collabs and money from something or other.  They’re more or less my age and they’re making money off a photo of them holding a protein shake.  I find it upsetting because it looks so easy what they’re doing and not time-consuming enough that they’re seemingly always on vacation.  I am stuck in a cycle of comparing myself to them, thinking toxic half thoughts like, “hmm, if I was blonde and with a booty would enough people like my thirst traps to get brands to want me to selfie up with their product and try to con my followers into using something that I got paid $100’s to pretend I use?”  I am constantly thinking of a way to get out of my cycle, working all the time to have enough and yet not having enough of the most precious thing; time with loved ones.  I am constantly working and then when I am not working I am straining to create a life outside of work that is a happy and healthy place.  I  wanna be someone who makes breakfast and puts a little aside for savings every month.  I want to be not struggling to juggle everything all the time.

new job same broke girl struggle

I just started a new job at a bridal store as a bridesmaid dress consultant and I’m pretty happy cause I get to be around beautiful sparkly things all day long and the majority of the employees are women. Yesterday was my first day and all the ones I met are really interesting and enjoyable to talk to. It pays minimum wage which is a bummer not to greatly consolidated by paying $2 for every dress sold. Yesterday I over heard a girl who works above me in bridal saying her rent was $3000 and for a second I was like there’s hope … if I work my way up and get into bridal then one day I can afford $3000 rent ! and I thought for a second that it was possible to get paid well and then the boss who was who she was talking to was like “who’s rich in your family?!” and she was like my dad owns a hotel. It’s sad that the boss was like no way in hell you’re affording a $3000 rent working for me. lol so yea. I guess it isn’t too good at the top.