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brin_bellway[cw: anxiety, venting, food-safety issues, arguably amnesia]
I know Mom likes to get started on gift planning around August, so a couple days ago I went and organised my wishlist page, making sure all the things I'd thought of were added and placing them in order of priority.
Both this year and last, there were distinct Themes that emerged from the lists. Last year most of the stuff I wanted was disaster-preparedness stuff: portable water filters, stockpiles of non-perishables, solar-powered phone chargers. This year I still want disaster-preparedness stuff, but now it's *informational* disasters rather than physical disasters: more RAM for my laptop (the better to wget with, among other things), a larger microSD card for my smartphone (so I can store more stuff on it), money for various information-storage services I would like to help ensure continue to exist (sometimes in exchange for increased storage space).
---
I've been a frenzy of anxiety and paranoia over the last few days. The world *hurts*, a deep and terrible wrongness, always in danger of rotting out from under me, and the people in it hurt too. I've managed not to show it much, but on the inside I'm howling.
I don't really trust my judgment of people right now, but the way Meta-Boss keeps complaining about how slow I work worries me. (Yeah, he got a bad review recently that noted slowness, but I *know* there's been other bad reviews--you can always find somebody to complain about anything--and he's never harped on them like this before.) Especially the way that the part of my schedule (sent over text message) where the Friday shift should be was *replaced* by a complaint of my slowness: I did not get my usual shift today.
(And like, he's right, I'm *not* cut out for busy times and I *do* kind of suck at Friday lunch. But I don't think I suck at them any *more* than I did in spring.)
My (incredibly biased) suspicion is that he thinks I've gotten too comfortable there and wants to keep me on my toes. I was comfortable enough to rat the new manager out to him when New Manager tried to sell food that had been dropped on the floor. (New Manager insists it was a misunderstanding, that he merely meant to set it aside and throw it away after the more urgent tasks were done. The *second* time might have been a misunderstanding, but I think the *first* time, when he gave me instructions on what to do *if* I dropped food on the floor, was rather more clear.)
New Manager has been a bit cold to me since then, but so is Assistant Manager and I've been dealing with that for probably most of a year now, so I know I can handle it. But Meta-Boss has started complaining about my slowness more, asking about my plans for September and if I'm going to be busy with school (and when I told him not to worry, that I didn't expect my availability to decrease until *next* summer, he said he wasn't worried), cutting an hour off a shift at the last minute in a way that *removes the only hour this month where my shift would have overlapped with Boss^3* (worried I'm going to tell *her* about the food-dropping incident?), and now removing my customary Friday shift.
(I'm his best cleaner and probably worth keeping for that alone, but I'm not sure he's *noticed* how good a cleaner I am. I may have to explicitly point that out if he escalates his speed-related complaints any further: yes, my *top* speed is not great, but my *average* speed is good because I spend the slow times cleaning and not standing around chatting or on my smartphone.)
---
I've been spending a lot of my time stitching together the wounds, making the world more the way it should be, the way that fits me right. (I've spent the past couple of days making a list of [songs from artists I like] that I haven't yet listened to, so that I won't have to go hunting for them once I'm feeling up to listening to them.) My to-do list *is* a lot shorter, which is heartening. My part of the world may yet fit.
I have enough money to keep making my regular contribution to the communal expenses fund for ten months even with *no* further income (though to be fair, my *regular* contribution is deliberately low, because one of my roles is to be keeper of the spare/emergency CAD with which to make the *irregular* contributions). There's a pretty good chance I'll have a full-time paid internship next summer, which is almost like having a 1/4-to-1/3-time job year-round. Also, I have gotten a very clear impression over the years that Meta-Boss hates having to get newbies up to speed, and that this makes him extremely reluctant to fire people, so I'll probably still be getting *some* hours/money from him even if it's less than I used to. And time that I no longer spend working, I can spend on completing school courses faster. (My mental model of Mom pointed that last one out while I was in the middle of a conversation with real!Mom. I brought it up as a thing she was probably thinking and she was like "I actually hadn't thought of that, but that's a good point".)
---
I'm going to go for a walk. Get some sunlight, even some fresh air (unlike July, August air seems to be safe to breathe so far).
I know Mom likes to get started on gift planning around August, so a couple days ago I went and organised my wishlist page, making sure all the things I'd thought of were added and placing them in order of priority.
Both this year and last, there were distinct Themes that emerged from the lists. Last year most of the stuff I wanted was disaster-preparedness stuff: portable water filters, stockpiles of non-perishables, solar-powered phone chargers. This year I still want disaster-preparedness stuff, but now it's *informational* disasters rather than physical disasters: more RAM for my laptop (the better to wget with, among other things), a larger microSD card for my smartphone (so I can store more stuff on it), money for various information-storage services I would like to help ensure continue to exist (sometimes in exchange for increased storage space).
---
I've been a frenzy of anxiety and paranoia over the last few days. The world *hurts*, a deep and terrible wrongness, always in danger of rotting out from under me, and the people in it hurt too. I've managed not to show it much, but on the inside I'm howling.
I don't really trust my judgment of people right now, but the way Meta-Boss keeps complaining about how slow I work worries me. (Yeah, he got a bad review recently that noted slowness, but I *know* there's been other bad reviews--you can always find somebody to complain about anything--and he's never harped on them like this before.) Especially the way that the part of my schedule (sent over text message) where the Friday shift should be was *replaced* by a complaint of my slowness: I did not get my usual shift today.
(And like, he's right, I'm *not* cut out for busy times and I *do* kind of suck at Friday lunch. But I don't think I suck at them any *more* than I did in spring.)
My (incredibly biased) suspicion is that he thinks I've gotten too comfortable there and wants to keep me on my toes. I was comfortable enough to rat the new manager out to him when New Manager tried to sell food that had been dropped on the floor. (New Manager insists it was a misunderstanding, that he merely meant to set it aside and throw it away after the more urgent tasks were done. The *second* time might have been a misunderstanding, but I think the *first* time, when he gave me instructions on what to do *if* I dropped food on the floor, was rather more clear.)
New Manager has been a bit cold to me since then, but so is Assistant Manager and I've been dealing with that for probably most of a year now, so I know I can handle it. But Meta-Boss has started complaining about my slowness more, asking about my plans for September and if I'm going to be busy with school (and when I told him not to worry, that I didn't expect my availability to decrease until *next* summer, he said he wasn't worried), cutting an hour off a shift at the last minute in a way that *removes the only hour this month where my shift would have overlapped with Boss^3* (worried I'm going to tell *her* about the food-dropping incident?), and now removing my customary Friday shift.
(I'm his best cleaner and probably worth keeping for that alone, but I'm not sure he's *noticed* how good a cleaner I am. I may have to explicitly point that out if he escalates his speed-related complaints any further: yes, my *top* speed is not great, but my *average* speed is good because I spend the slow times cleaning and not standing around chatting or on my smartphone.)
---
I've been spending a lot of my time stitching together the wounds, making the world more the way it should be, the way that fits me right. (I've spent the past couple of days making a list of [songs from artists I like] that I haven't yet listened to, so that I won't have to go hunting for them once I'm feeling up to listening to them.) My to-do list *is* a lot shorter, which is heartening. My part of the world may yet fit.
I have enough money to keep making my regular contribution to the communal expenses fund for ten months even with *no* further income (though to be fair, my *regular* contribution is deliberately low, because one of my roles is to be keeper of the spare/emergency CAD with which to make the *irregular* contributions). There's a pretty good chance I'll have a full-time paid internship next summer, which is almost like having a 1/4-to-1/3-time job year-round. Also, I have gotten a very clear impression over the years that Meta-Boss hates having to get newbies up to speed, and that this makes him extremely reluctant to fire people, so I'll probably still be getting *some* hours/money from him even if it's less than I used to. And time that I no longer spend working, I can spend on completing school courses faster. (My mental model of Mom pointed that last one out while I was in the middle of a conversation with real!Mom. I brought it up as a thing she was probably thinking and she was like "I actually hadn't thought of that, but that's a good point".)
---
I'm going to go for a walk. Get some sunlight, even some fresh air (unlike July, August air seems to be safe to breathe so far).
