2024
28 December 2024, 08:21
It’s been a time.
Don’t remember when I last did a year end wrap up. 2020? The last bit of life, I haven’t been writing much – not to say there hasn’t been much to write, I guess I never thought of doing it – too busy going through things to go through and summarize it.
The year end is upon us. Almost. It’s about four days away.
It has been one fucked up doozy of a year. I haven’t decided if its been one of my best ones or one of my worst – competition for that last one is fierce. But as my mental state is in flux and my anchors have been ripped from the ocean ground, floating and drifting to and fro, I thought I’d just go through what I went through and get some of my much beloved toxic positivity back and churning through my head.
My rule in all of life is to get through it. Indeed, if you look at the haphazard way events have unfolded, decisions have been made, and directions have been picked, I think you would swear I had just suffered a massive stroke. If you know, 2021 saw the end of what I thought was the pinnacle of my vocational achievement, a job that was fun, paid what I thought was well (oh, was I so wrong), and that I thought I’d have long term. It was right on the end of the covid pandemic’s most virulent time, things were changing and I discovered I was out of a job.
After my requisite freaking out, crying binges and excessive drinking and two part time, wildly differing jobs, I landed at the most… unique place I had ever been. Oh, let’s just say it. It was totally fucked-the-hell up. SC Youth Challenge was a state military program for at risk youth, with the most incompetent leadership I have ever seen at any organization anywhere. I was marketing director, designer, social media manager and photographer at this hell hole for about a year an half. If I wasn’t struggling with financial crisis after financial crisis because it paid peanuts, I would have DIPPED THE FUCK OUT.
I REALLY struggled with the fact of actual abuse, neglect and short-changing of the kids they enrolled. It was no place I ever seen or want to see again. I won’t detail all the things I saw wrong, but it led me in December of ’23 to rage quit and decide to become a Walmart greeter. I had enough, and when one gets pushed that far, one thinks very little. I rage quit without a job to go to and very little resources. But. I just couldn’t deal with the abuse of the employees (my friends and colleagues who actually cared about saving these kids), the abuse of the kids, and the financial abyss I was sinking into.
So. Happy New year 2024, I was unemployed and poor. Brian, five dogs, and three cats depended upon me, as I slugged down cheap beer and planned for my new career as a Walmart greeter or internet foot fetish model. And by some miracle, I found my present job as a designer and photographer for another company. They paid me “my ideal” salary I named at the interview, which in hindsight, I was so far off of what the one needed to live on. There was a 100x more opportunities to be creative than I ever THOUGHT a job could be and they treated their employees VERY well, despite being republicans. I paid up my bills, paid off other bills, got some new clothes, had a retirement fund and still had money left over for luxury living that included food and car insurance. Was 2024 the best year EVER? I was floating on air above the clouds, happy. 2024 WAS THE BEST YEAR EVER.
Till it wasn’t.
In April, I lost Hurley. Hurley was a blessing. Although, no one really saw or believed it except for me. Hurley was the cause of so much drama, heartache, injury, happiness and joy in the last 10 years of my life, that I could never adequately sum it up here, nor could I voice the despair I feel when I lost him. He had kidney failure. I’ve documented that here in the past and won’t go into it, because I don’t want to be a blubbering mess, but it is a pain I endure still, and it joins many other wounds and scars I have from decades of fights I have lost. A little after that, I discovered my job was a bit more… erratic and unstable than I had previously thought, so I went through a whole THING on that – distrust, fear, anger and anxiety. The Four Horseman of my life that have regular visits just to fuck with me.
A little after that, the transmission in my car went “boosh” and I had to get that fixed.
A little after that, my landlady’s son wants to move back into this home after his new divorce (number two) and I have to vacate, ideally, by the end of the year. She told me at Thanksgiving, and I was faced with finding a place to live with multiple dogs, packing up 10 years of my life, and paying (at a minimum) a third more rent a month. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, were/are/will be non-existent for me in 2024.
If you know me and my reaction to change, then you know, its not a good one. There’s a lot of panic, anxiety, anger, crying and drinking. There’s also a manic/work the problem zone that is driven by sheer fear. So for a month and a half, I have been this giant whirlygig of a mess, with my only sustenance being terror and beer. I sacrificed my future security for my present day one, got the money, got a potential new home, and probably got cirrhosis of the liver. Suffice it to say, along with the help of a very good property manager, I might have a place to live here in a week and to top THAT all off, I had a first interview for the best job I have ever had been offered to this date, and I am in a different mode, different headspace that involves a lot of panic, anxiety, anger, crying and drinking. Because, I might be doing the whole moving thing AGAIN, or paying two rents or having the biggest mental record scratch in my history. I don’t know. As Robin Williams said, I am the manifestation of the phrase, “riding a psychotic horse through a burning stable.”
I have finally come to the conclusion that I am just WTfucking through life, I have NO earthly idea what I am doing, and it is by the grace of Zeus’ butthole that I am even getting through it. I really don’t know how you all do this. I see people successfully adulting. I see unbearably stupid people successfully adulting. It’s not the end of the year yet, and I still don’t know what rug pull is in store for me – so far, I’ve had 3 places rug-pull me and its only of late I haven’t slugged down a slew of drinks or had one of the dogs crazy pills. And this all might fall apart AGAIN. I’m am just in the FUCK zone. That area where you are just sitting, eyes wide open, brain chanting “FUCK? FUCK!” over and over again. And on top of all that, I’m starting that slow drag through existential crisis land, where fucking meaning of life questions are flooding my head, and for some reason NOW my brain wants to know if I’ve made some impact on life or some stupid shit like that. Jesus christ. I’m going from being in almost religious ecstasy after getting GOOD toys in my happy meals to scrutinizing my place in the universe to scheming how to rob a couple of liquor stores to pay for a run-down hipster duplex in the middle of town that accepts dogs.
I feel so ungrounded, and that I’m playing a crucial game of whack-a-mole with the serious issues of my life and my mental state.
Fuck. And I think the cat peed in here. After MONTHS of being good, she decides to start peeing in the house, on my clothes, in the computer room, stinking up the joint. Just another sprinkle on my sundae of fucking life. And I can’t for the life of me, find any underpants because I prematurely packed a lot of shit.
Happy New Year.
