10,000 Hours - Hour 48

This year's been a real bitch, huh?

It's becoming quite ironic to me that both on here and the Steemit platform I created what was supposed to be a "daily" mental health-oriented ramble directly before disappearing from the blockchain. Each time has had it's own reasons, but they have aligned pretty accordingly.

> this post will be filled with random phone pictures of clouds I took at work because 5 months of phone photos is too much for me to sort through right now

Almost five months since I wrote the first post of this series, deciding it would be a regular brain exercise for myself. So where have I been all this time?

The honest answer to that question is I don't really know. I always use the word "busy"; in relation to all aspects of my life. Whether it be seeing friends, family, cleaning my house, taking care of my cars, keeping my plants alive, creating art- "busy". "I've been too busy". But with what? Those are the things that keep me busy. And I can't place what I actually do with my time.

Around the time I made my last post, I had started a new job. I was really excited about the new prospect when I started it, however over the past 6 months the way I view the position has rapidly declined. I hate to go into my work history, but this all comes full circle. If anyone cares to read.

About 4 years ago I was working as a supervisor for a helical piling franchise. Many people don't know what helical piles are- and honestly, while they themselves are an interesting building alternative, I'm getting sick of describing that position so I'm just going to say this- they are steel supports with helixes on the end your screw into the earth. Then put whatever you want on them.

Anyways, this was my first "real" job. My first "good" job. I was a young punk living in my small home city, that has been increasingly more of a college city, with too many people and not enough housing. More college kids who are working a few shifts a week to pay for the bars= less jobs for the locals that work to live= raised all around cost of living(coupled with no wage increases)= homeless kids that work full time. I could go on and on about the economic problems with my hometown but I'll save it- it's like that in so many places and it is a topic for another subject.

That sort of culture eats you. Couple it together with some psychological issues from a childhood- and you really start to accept that you're "shit". That "this is always how it's gonna be". Working in restaurants, odd jobs, some landscape work here and there; whatever you can to survive in an environment like that. No prospect of getting a decent job because in order to do that you had to go to one of the universities in the town. In order to do that you needed to work at least 60 hours a week to pay living expenses. And, well, that doesn't really work with school. I tried that.

Ok ok ok. I'm really going on about this bullshit. ANYWAYS, I was getting pretty fed up with the restaurant I had been working at around the time I was 21/22 (I think?). We had a "local" facebook group with about 10,000 members in the town that kind of served as a public forum. For sale, wanted, apartment/sublet postings, free shit, lost animals, etc. A random guy had posted about a job opening for a start-up franchise branch and I decided to send him a message. 20 minutes later, he called me, and being one who cannot sit still while on the telephone, I decided to take my dog for a long walk and give him a call back.

I bullshitted him a little bit about my experience in the construction field but not too much. I felt he could tell I was leading him on a little bit. It was true I had minuscule building experience before and a few other things that were kind of relevant, but not really. Anyways, he decided to give me a go and I took it. He could certainly tell I wasn't nearly as experienced as I said I was, but he liked me, liked how hard I worked, and gave me the benefit of the doubt. At the time, he was only really looking for a "helping hand" anyways, as he was trying to get the Vermont franchise going. He himself had been hired by the owners off of Craigslist, I believe.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm leading a crew. Max(the aforementioned GM) turned out to be the best boss I ever had. I was in charge of people almost 3 times my age with more years in experience than I had been alive. They were still getting paid more than I, sure, but the responsibility and title gave me a lot of hope for the future. There was one big problem though.

I wasn't happy. And that wasn't entirely work related, but it didn't help. I missed my friends. I had moved outside the city and I never saw them after work anymore. I worked a second job in town but I would always rush home to get to bed to wake up at 5am the next day to do it all again. I was stressing out pretty badly about the winter when I was laid off. I didn't have a reliable vehicle. And the people I was now supervising were... well, a little non-PC. Dickheads, in another term.

The next spring I broke my ankle snowboarding. I lost my apartment due to a whole fiasco that I continually plan on writing about but it's almost too traumatic to. A whole bunch of shit went wrong for me all at once. And, the promise of getting a company truck fell through again. Coupled with many other empty promises, the people working under me that Max refused to fire, and well a whole shitload of stuff contributing to my feelings of being "stuck" and unhappy, well, I left.

I decided then and there I would move to another part of the country. What I really wanted was to move to another part of the world, but in your early 20s with about $100 to your name, that wasn't a realistic short term goal. I ended up moving into a crawlspace in a house full of my friends near the base of my home snowboard resort- just to get some things together before the haul out west.

I ended up staying. I worked snowmaking and in the terrain park that year and I had never, ever had so much fun working in my entire life. Then and there I decided that I was going to do what made me happy and figure out the "money" and "career" aspects later. And I couldn't be happier that I made that decision, because that year I met my fiancee, and never would have had it not been for myself staying in Vermont that winter.

After the winter ended, I continued to work a few different part time jobs in preparation for some time in Chile. I was trying my hardest to head down there, where my fiancee was from, to make the relationship work. I worked in two different restaurants, a CBD lab that my friend had started, and a property doing general care-taking. I was also trying to bring my dog down there which was complicating things further- along with the fact that we would leave our house prior to my trip and I had no idea where I'd be upon return.

And then Chile happened. And it was amazing. I had saved barely enough money to survive down there, and although it did get dangerously close to a financial disaster, I somehow made it work. Her family was extremely helpful to me as well; without myself even expressing my financial concerns. I am forever indebted to them <3

Jesus christ I can ramble. This wasn't even what I planned on talking about when I sat down to write this.

So, I came home. Worked in more restaurants. More odd jobs. Found a place to live back near the resort(which was important, because she would be returning that winter and I hoped we could live together so that she could work at the resort again). I went back to snowmaking and parks. I had an absolute blast. She came back, I proposed to her. I am oversimplifying everything but only because I have written about all of this on this platform before and knowing myself, I'm sure I'll do it again.

Then, COVID.

COVID fucked up our plans yet again. I know I already ranted about this quite a bit in the past, so I'll spare you the details. But I will, finally, jump forward to why I'm going on about all of this again.

The job.

COVID didn't do me any favors financially. I know most working class people in this country were either benefitted by it or it did not affect their work life at all, but I got the unlucky end of all the sticks on this one. Laid off, problems with unemployment office, problems with IRS.. no unemployment(aside from a couple weeks long after I had run out of money), no tax returns, which meant no stimulus checks, and no possibility of sorting out any of the IRS issues in any reasonable time frame due to them being short staffed. In other words, I had to figure out a way to survive.

And I did. I was lucky enough to find some work from home. I eventually started working at a Thai restaurant part-time as well. And then, one day, a friend was over taking a look at my car which had decided it wanted to fail at the beginning of COVID as well. He started mentioning different job openings at the resort, and began to talk about a chairlift mechanic position. I was intrigued by the work and the experience; learning something new, and then he started throwing around words like "CTO, vacation time, benefits" and I got a little excited.

I applied. Was hired. I felt really excited about this new stage in my life. I could learn a new trade and accrue enough CTO to take paid vacations with my fiancee in the future, after the wedding. I could have health insurance. Not just for me, but possibly for her as well, which I'm sure will be a complicated process once she is living here for the near future. And at first, I loved the job. The prospects. I still had no idea when I would be able to see her again. But, when I did, I'd start having some sort of shred of my "adult life" going so that we can make concrete plans.

Then, winter. Then, the realization, finally- THIS JOB IS NOT FOR YOU. The off-season was great- working with a great group of guys, actually doing some really interesting and difficult work. Learning something new in a workplace for the first time since I had left the helical pile job.

But the winter.

Jesus fuck, the winter. What a shitshow. First off, our mountain has two separate peaks, which an individually staffed resort on each. So, I was shuttled off to our smaller peak, which is honestly where I wanted to be. But that came with a price. Whereas I had been working with a great group of fun-loving guys beforehand, I was now working with a bunch of grumpy old mechanics who wanted to complain and yell about every single little thing until they started heavily drinking. A bunch of good, interesting guys, but god, a really shitty work environment. Constantly walking on egg shells. Being yelled at simply for being new(not a lot of training). The fucking attitudes.

And all of this I could deal with. I've worked plenty of jobs like this before. I'm there for the work, not the environment. But then it started dawning on me.

I'm working for a ski resort. Why? Because it makes me happy. Snowboarding is my biggest passion in life. I've been at a resort for 3 years and I'm still making less than I did at my last job. So I'm not doing it for the money.

I'm doing it to be happy. To snowboard. And the mechanic job, in the winter; well there is no being happy. And there certainly is no snowboarding. The job consists of arriving before 6 in the morning. Rushing to get all the lifts up and running and giving clearance for the operators to use them. That takes up about 2-3 hours. Then.....

Nothing.

Sitting in a shop with a grumpy old guy who has, once or twice, let a couple of slurs leak out of his mouth. Other than that, he's pretty silent. But relaxing? Spending that time snowboarding? Fuck no. Radio in your ear. Fully dressed, ready to go. For like 7 hours a day. Because once a lift has an issue, we have 10 minutes to get there on snowmobile and fix it; and we're fucked if not.

I slowly started to realize this amount of stress was worth my shitty wage. Is it a career with the possibility for some good openings in the future? Absolutely. But I'm not going to waste the rest of my youth being miserable so I can be miserable in the future like my co-workers. And, especially, it is NOT why I work where I work.

So, you might be asking, what does this all I have to do with where you have been? Well, it does and it doesn't. It does, but I certainly didn't mean to speak that much on it. I've been working. I still work in the restaurant a couple nights a week. I usually work about 60-70 hours per week, and I cut down from more. When I get home, I have "so many things to do", but most of it is just stuff I've had the entire winter to do; the projects are just so large though and the job has been really pulling a number on my mental health that usually I just start and then go lay down. Or I drive around aimlessly. Or even the normal things I do take up all my free time. I surprise myself every day with how long I can take to take my dog out, make food, do the dishes, and shower. Next thing I know it's time to try to sleep. And then I spend my whopping day and a half off trying to do the things I enjoy; the reasons I live here.

This spring I am going back to Chile. Isi and I will get married at the end of April. When we return, I will either finish out the off-season work at this job or find something new- that's their call. I have a feeling they might be a little pissed about me leaving after only a year.

Then, we figure out how to go back to my original plan- to make happiness work for a positive-minded kid who let depression and isolation consume his whole life and identity. Isi is open to anything- she is a jeweler and wherever we go she can have her workshop and with that, she is happy. I have been spending weeks brainstorming and researching a way to work for myself. Or make everything work. Some way I can either travel for work, or make enough all at once to have some time to do the things we enjoy in between.

It's not going to be easy, but we're going to figure it out.

On the topic of doing the things we enjoy, I have started writing again. My computer has rarely been opened over the past five months and for that I am a little upset with myself. However, no matter how unrealistic it may be, I'm never going to forget my dreams of being a writer and they will always haunt my mind. So I might as well try, no?

I have been writing two longer-style stories as of late. One is a semi-fictionalized version of my life. A longer, more serious project, that I hope to use to bring some attention to mental health and how to see signs that the typical person may not see from struggling individuals.

The other is a short horror novella that I hope to release in parts on here. It is related to COVID, as corny as that may be, but I hope it turns out ok. If not? Well, it won't be the first story I've thrown away.

I really do miss this community. I miss reading and writing. And I'm coming back, I promise. Today's rant over. I hope everyone has been well and I look forward to creeping my way back into your cyber-lives.

I promise these won't be so long and sloppy in the future :)