A Question

I was looking online at pictures of lockets because I have a coin I'd like to put in one, and was looking for one of the appropriate age/size/style, etc. Through my browsing, a question formed in my brain, one I can't quite shake: Why the hell am I working in a hotel when I should be out designing jewellery and writing books? Worded another way: What the fuck am I doing with my life?

Don't get me wrong, my job is great. I mean, I've been here for an hour and I've spent half of that looking at pretty things online. In a few minutes, I'll do about ten minutes of work, then I'm free for another couple of hours - so I don't mean to make it sound like things are bad... but really, what am I doing? What are any of us doing? Why do we reach adulthood and discard that mantra of you can do whatever you want in favour of doing what's responsible or expected, or, hell, let's just call a spade a spade, whatever will make us the most money. I'm a capitalist to the core, but doesn't capitalism give us the inherent right to be poor - to try doing what we want to do, and to fail if we must?

Me, I've been poor my whole life. I'm sure that most of my childhood (and certainly all of my adulthood to date) were spent well below the poverty line. But that's the thing: poor is relative. If you took me and my living situation and dropped us in the backwater of some third world country, it would blow the people there away. What? Clean drinking water? Heat (usually)? Hot water (most days)? Electricity? A TV that works if you smack it really hard (or sometimes sit on top of it)? Sounds like Heaven. So I've been poor, but life hasn't been hard, not really. So why is being poor taboo? Why is there this stigma, like, Oh, you're poor? You must be kind of stupid and lazy and suffer from an inferior education? I'd love to know where that comes from. Actually, I'm not stupid, thanks. I've made some poor choices in my life, sure, but I'm not stupid. Lazy? In my day-to-day life, sure, but since that day-to-day has included working full time since I was 15, in an overall sense, by Canadian standards, I'm pretty badass - and yeah, my education wasn't great. I dropped out of university three years in. Why? Because I wanted to write. If I had to do it over, I don't know that I would do the same thing, but I stand by my decision. One book in four years isn't terribly impressive, I guess, but when I think of all the people who never finish that first novel, who are so hung up on writing a best-seller that they never write anything, I think that maybe I've done pretty well for myself, busted-ass TV and all.

I guess it's all about expectations - our own, our friends' and families' and society's. Unfortunately, I think too many people (myself included) let society's expectations shape their own. Society expects that I will fail if I don't make a plan of some kind, a template for how my life is supposed to play out - and in our little cookie-cutter land of lifetime blueprints, my life, all our lives should have gone something like this: Elementary school, high school, university, crap job, slightly better job, Kids, marginally OK job aaaaaand, plateau. Retirement. Death. Somewhere in there, if we can, if it's convenient and responsible, it wouldn't hurt for one or two of us to go backpacking in Europe, so the rest of us can live vicariously through them. This is the kind of life we're supposed to content ourselves with, be happy with even.

I don't mean this as a rant against The Man. I'm actually more angry with myself right now than with the retardedness that is our society. I don't understand how I keep convincing myself that I can be happy with a mediocre life. I can't. Maybe I can't be happy with any kind of life, who knows? But I do know that this daily grind, working week, make-ends-meet kind of bullshit isn't for me. I want out.

So rather than ranting, in an attempt to be proactive (and, unfortunately, a little bit responsible), a list of things to get, in order, with the money from the job that I won't be quitting until I have something better to go to:

1. A Netbook for writing. Should have it by the end of the first week of November.
2. A decent point-and-shoot; good SLR to follow.
3. Supplies for jewellery (specifically: damaged or incomplete antiques from EBay, pliers, various types of wire, glass beads, strong glue, lacquer, a sketchbook just for my designs, some books about various techniques for manufacturing jewellery)
4. Supplies to build a desk (I may have do do this after the netbook and before the camera; we'll see how my back holds up during NaNoWriMo.

And actually, for right now, I think that's it. Four things, and I think I'm on my way to a happier me.

The One Good Thing about Night Audit

I actually have the time and means to update my blog. What I'll update it with I don't know; my non-work life is blissfully simple right now, consisting mostly of eating, sleeping and watching British TV - and being so happy and content that it's almost painful.

I've been reading Russell Brand's My Booky Wook over the past few days and finding myself, as well as wanting to track the author down and give him a hug, so moved by it that (there isn't a that. It's just that you shouldn't have a so without one). I can't really connect with the specifically drug-abuse-related aspects of the book, but the emotions he writes about and with are crystal clear to me. I'm getting into the bits about rehab and taking life one day at a time, and feeling a bit of a tit for being actually inspired by an inspirational book, which I know is a stupid attitude to have - but I think that anyone who has been exposed to the Canadian version of inspirational literature will understand my reluctance to be moved by any inspirational literature.

I'm rambling. One of the bad things about night audit: by the time I've done all my work for the night and read a bit and completely exhausted all of the new content on roflrazzi.com and all of it's affiliates (guilty secret), I'm usually a bit too tired to actually make sense on my nothing blog posts. No matter; only 37 minutes to go, unless my relief is late again.

The day before yesterday I was here an hour later than I was supposed to be, yesterday, an hour and a half. Since I got to Jasper, I've been showing up to work hung over more than I ever have in the past - but at least I'm showing up. I usually have to run to make it to work on time, but I still manage it. Oh well. Can't have everything, and I'm resolved not to complain too much on account of wanting time off in the near future and possibly needing something to barter with.

Also, I'd love to know why I'm so effing hungry.

Whell.

It's 6:15 in the morning and I'm just killing time now, until my shift is over. They put me on night audit after just two training shifts. I hope I didn't eff anything up. The night audit thing was a stupid move on my point. I never think before I talk and it always gets me into a world of trouble.

Anywhom, life right now is pretty good. It's been wonderful, really, this past month, and if it weren't for the fact that I can see the end of the road, when the wonderfulness will disappear, I would still be spending all day every day wearing a huge, dorky grin on my face. But I can see it, and it's been a challange to stop myself from breaking down and/or having an anxiety attack every time I breathe or notice that they sky's blue or something like that.

Enough about that; I'm at work and can't afford a breakdown. Good stuff: right now, the offspring is playing on the radio and it's not being censored, and this channel is one of the ones on the official list of designated radio stations we're allowed to listen to at this time, so if guests come in and complain about the swearing, my hands are clean.

Also good, NaNoWriMo is coming up again and I've to decided to participate this year. I'm going to be completely rewriting a story I've been writing little bits of for... I think a year or more now. Don't worry; it's not cheating. Why? Because I'm going to start from scratch and literally rewrite every single word. NaNo is going to let me survive November. It's going to stop me from breaking down - and at the end of it, I'll have a story so emotional and depressing that publishing houses will be beating down my door. That's my plan, anyway. Obviously, there's nothing up there yet, but if you want to check out my story, Eleven Eleven Wish come November 1, you'll be able to find it here, as well as, probably, FictionPress.net.

I think that's it. I have way too many blogs, and I should probably update some of them.

123+

My last post was number 123. That's sort of funny, if you're lame like me and have no sense of humour.

Unfortunately, I have no way to upload photos, otherwise this entry would be swimming in scenery. I suppose it's probably a good thing that it's not; I took 250+ pictures yesterday (would have taken more but for the memory card filling up) and it's nice when my blog actually loads.

My sister is in town, so yesterday, she, myself, my older brother and our friend Clayton took my brother's cab and went a-travelling. We went to Maligne Canyon, which is amazing and scary and just awesome. We went to Medicine Lake, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, a perfect mix of bounty and stark emptiness. I'm a little in love with it. Then we went to Maligne lake, which is absolutely beautiful, one of the places you're 'supposed' to go, if you visit Jasper. We didn't go on the tour of the lake, due to not really having the $$, but we walked along part of the shore and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Since I had planned to go swimming in the lake (I'd say the water is about 3 degrees or less), I went, despite the warnings of friends and the shocked expressions of the fishermen, who actually stopped to watch me in my feat of insanity. That water was effing cold! It started to snow as I was climbing back onto the dock to retrieve my clothes. After we got back in the car (I was pretty sure my toes were going to fall off), we went back into town to drop Claytron off so he could go to work, then we grabbed some food and headed for The Edge of the World. It's absolutely stunning, this lookout up in the mountains with 700+ foot drops everywhere and an unparalled view of the foothills and vallies surrounding Jasper. We did some pretty stupid, dangerous things (including, in my case, hanging onto a tree with my leg so that I could lean over a waterfall and take pictures), and generally had a fantastic time. We went back to my brother's house to put the pictures from my sisters camera onto the kick ass external hard drive that she got me for my Christma-birthday present, watched some videos on YouTube, napped, then went back to my apartment and had a wonderful night of watching the beginnings of a bunch of movies, then giving up and going to bed.

And that was my fabulous yesterday.

One More Hour

Well, 58 minutes. Then I'll be done work and free for the day.

I actually quite like my job and don't usually spend my time thinking about wanting to go home... I'm just CRAZY tired right now, due to going to bed sometime after three am and waking up sporadically throughout the night, then permanently at 6:00ish. Combine that with a busy* day yesterday, and you get one tired Athena.

Now I'm basically just trying to think of things to do for the next 54 minutes, so I can go home and have the nap of a lifetime. All of the administrationy stuff is done at work, so I guess it's random cleaning tasks for me.

Oh, also, in craptastic news, my bike got stolen today. Apparently, some asshole came into my parents' house with bolt cutters and stole both my and my sister's bikes. I'm thinking this actually hasn't hit me yet, because I'm quite attached to my bike (I've had him for over 10 years) and I'm nowhere near as freaked out as I feel like I should be. Of course, there's always a chance that I'm just in too good of a mood to let it dampen my spirits ;)

Ookie I'm done

*also wonderful and awe-inspiring

:D

The end.

Yeah, I Got Nothing

I'm at work right now, for another 12 minutes.

Last night, this guy I know called me and I didn't pick up because I only have a texting plan. He texted me right after that to ask why I hadn't picked up the phone, and before I could text him back, he called again. He called 10 times and texted me twice more in the course of two hours. I am stressing over this to a spectacular degree. I know I just need to message him and tell him why this isn't appropriate, but... ugh. I'm so tired of dealing with crazy men.

Speaking of men, I have a huge crush on this guy (different guy from the one above, clearly). That's as much information as I'm putting online, but I'm seriously thinking that if he doesn't ask me out soon, I'm just going to ask him. It sounds like this big revalation, but now that I'm thinking about it, it's the obvious course of action. He makes me go Squee!

Alright, work is done. I'm going home.