bitch sesh.

I'm a bit over my job at the moment.

I think I'm good with lists. Let's list.

1. I've been there nearly 3 years, and I've seen the coming and going of about a gazillion managers. I've developed good relationships with a bunch of my co-workers, even supervisors, but never the managers. They get moved around too often, and all of a sudden, I'm required to change the way I do things in order to please the particularity of this whole new person. There's no connection and I feel like when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter how long I've been there, I'm lost in the anonymity of getting new managers ALL THE TIME. I'm just drowning.

This point seems to be the start for all the others to come...

2. Last Sunday I left a note for my dept. manager to tell her that I really would like to change my contract, and not have to work on Sunday's anymore. I've done Sundays for 3 years straight with no complaint, but it's really gotten to the point where the extra money doesn't make up for all the beaches, birthdays, lunches, concerts and events I've missed. As much as *I* live here, at my home, as much as this is where I am based, I'm rarely here in a sense. All my extended family live at least 30 mins away, most more. My family are beach-junkies, and all the beaches are an hour away or more. The list goes on, but the point is, all this stuff happens without me, but because I haven't got my licence yet (or a car), someone always has to be up for either missing out or taking the long journey to work with me from somewhere else. Within the next two months I want to attend 3 concerts, all on Sunday evenings, so I really need to get my contract changed within the next week. Anyways, today I remind my manager, ask her if she got my note and she tells me that at the moment she is not changing contracts, because if she does it has a domino effect on everyone else's roster, but that she will look into trying to fit me in on a Thursday night and that she'll call me. Bahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don't even know what that means. Will she even try? Will she forget?

3. My manager's ridiculous changing of rosters last minute. NO JOKE. The roster for the whole store goes up in the staff room showing this week and next week. I check it every week. Then she decides to make changes to it without calling you to tell you, or even writing it on the main roster. It's down in the dept., the one she alters. And then when you're late, like I was today, she calls you up saying "did you know you were supposed to start 10 mins ago?" WTF? I seriously believed her when she said I was supposed to start at 3 instead of 3:30pm, but after i finished my shift, I checked the roster upstairs and it had been untouched from my usual contracted hours. This is the first time she's done this to me, but not the first time she's done this. She seems to be doing this to everyone, and I have NO IDEA why. It's not productive, AT ALL. I see no point in this, and yet it continues. This shoddy management practice continues... All day we tell people "oh we're out of Winfield Blue's" - one of the highest selling cigarettes. The 25's, 20's and twinpacks, nothing out front to sell. Near the end of my shift, when it's quietened down, my supervisor and I go out the back to bring more cartons to the front. Lo' and behold, there's like a million cartons of Winfield Blue's. This practice is ridiculous: pay minimum wage, cut hours, understaff the store and overwork the ones there, in the mean time you're turning away people from buying things because you're too lazy/not organised enough to keep things stocked. This is some sort of exercise in mediocrity.

Ugh. I could go on, but I think I've had enough thinking about this for one day.

nothing to prove

These past days have been a blur

I cooked 2 dinners today. One for today and one for tomorrow. I feel so Nigella. I don't know if Nigella does that sort of thing, but I'd imagine she would. All these cooking shows are trying to make people cook by advertising their recipes as being time-saving and simple. I try to not write numerically when referring to numbers in the middle of a sentence like that. But for some reason, I'm becoming more attracted to not using capitalisation in facebook comments, using an ampersand (&) symbol instead of writing 'and' at times and using numbers in amongst a bunch of letters. How odd. How 360 degrees is that?

So my Windows is currently infected with a virus that we cannot for the life of anything, wipe off the computer. I'm using Ubuntu Linux at the moment. Not really doing anything but Internet-ing on it. I can't access my music files for some reason. They're all backed up anyways, so I'm not afraid of losing them, it just annoys me that I can't open them easily. So every day I open up one or two songs by this youtube user called phillypepper1000, who is amazing. He has been my background music for the past week.

We like to think we're in control. We're in firm grasp of what's around us. But think about all the secrets you have, all the things you cannot say for some reason. Multiply that by the amount of people you're in contact with on a daily basis. Those are all the things you don't know. All the things you'll never know.

Tomorrow I'm going to cook blueberry muffins. That's one thing we all know now.

ill at ease

"I think it has got to do with that whole ill-at-ease feeling, the 'what next culture'." - Sarah Wilson.

This quote, is taken from this ( http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/february-is-a-fine-time-to-embrace-a-dry-argument-20100109-m008.html ) article and is presented in the context of using alcohol as a crutch but that is not the context I wish to use this quote.

What was the last thing that made you squirm? Or perhaps the last thing that made you feel uncomfortable - with your thoughts, with yourself, with other people etc.

I am plagued by this feeling all the time. I try and ignore it with my mind. This is my defence mechanism. My reaction to feeling uncomfortable is to try and forget it was ever there.

But I am always reminded of these things that make me feel ill. It is in pessimistic moments I look at the scars on my body and think that I am not perfect, that I am tarnished. In those moments I can't simply ignore. Those scars become a testament to my own fallibility. For some reason they tell me I'm at fault. The fact that they're still there. That I couldn't erase a somewhat permanent mark. They fade, they fade. Over time. But it feels like I'm always working and always waiting in a sense. Nothing comes for free.

I live with myself. As you do too. You invite other people into your worlds...sometimes you don't and they still arrive. I wait and wait and wait. And then I realise I need to do something. So I work. And life becomes defined by numbers again. By moments in time. By measurements. I can count them up and weigh them and move them forward in my head. So I'm always thinking about them. Always thinking about how I'm never satisfied. I'm unbalanced ALL THE TIME and it kills me.

welcome to the new year

I thought to myself that I should probably update. Seeing as it is the new year and all, and I am home finally =]. I came back from camping on Sunday afternoon and I really did have the best time. I very literally approached this holiday with brand new eyes and I even tasted food differently. Haha, so weird. Everything was very hypercoloured and fun. Except perhaps the last 2 days where things went a bit topsy turvy and I really wanted to go home!

I've set a couple new years resolutions into motion. One I'll share is that I am going to keep a diary/journal again. I re-read my 2004 diary the other day and it brought the LOL's =] But it also made me kind of sad that I didn't document 2005 and beyond in such a natural, free way. Blogging for me usually turns out rather vague, unless I'm feeling like taking a very literal approach like I am now.

I'm really ready for this year. I'm excited!
I hope you're all doing well and having fun =]