I had only been on the job for 3 months, and I was pretty green in the gills and naively thinking I could change the world then, only to get quickly smacked down by reality and a stupid dweeb of a supervisor. The whole experience had left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since.

In all fairness, I don’t think he intended to be malicious, he just wanted to cover his wide trailer, but I didn’t appreciate how he had talked down to me in his droning, Ben Stein voice when it happened. There were probably a dozen ways he could have handled it better and instead he chose the worst way, leaving me with a “friendly” reprimand on my record not even 3 stupid, fricking months into my job. He was unfriendly, uncomfortable to be around with, and micromanaged the most mundane things that had absolutely no relevance to the work we did. To top it off, the dude had no personality at all, I mean seriously NONE, almost as if he had been born without a soul. Ben Stein has nothing on this guy.

That’s why I was glad when he transferred out to what he must have thought were greener pastures. We went through a cocktail variety of supervisors since then, until the last one retired in a hurry and officially left us without a manager again. I ended up taking the supervisor’s desk, since there was no other place to sit, and carved out a little corner for myself in our section that kept me comfortable and boss-free for 2 years.

Recently however, they phased out Mr. No Personality’s position, forcing him to come back to our department once again, although not our specific area (yet). He had clearly done everything he could to avoid getting transferred back to our section, but it looks like the clock finally runs out this week. Judging from the look on his face every time I see him, I can see his untriumphant return as our manager is going to be a real pleasure.

When he does come back, one of two things may happen. He may play it smart and have maintenance carve out some office space for himself, or he may pull rank and evict me out of the desk I’m using now. The reason this is a big issue is because I work with 4 other coworkers, and they all have desks and computers to use. I would have to go back to standing around and waiting for someone to either take a meal break or go home before I finally had a desk that I could access and work on, this despite the fact that I’ve been here 9 YEARS. I swear it’d be like high school all over again, just floating around, never finding a group or a spot where I could finally feel at home.

Yep, this is gonna be fun. Of course, after several years on the job I’m not so green in the gills anymore, and Mr. No Personality will find I’m not the pushover I used to be when I rip his soul-less dweeb monkey’s face off the minute he starts in on me. There’s a reason why nobody wants to oversee our section ya know.

Ironically enough, while there’s no place for him to go, a wave of early retirements that began last week have opened up over 20 new positions for me to potentially choose from, depending on how my seniority compares to others vying for the same job. I know absolutely nothing about these openings though, the hours I’d work, what the people I’d work with are like or what the job entails, only that they’re now looking for people. This is the first time in several years that new openings in my department finally presented themselves, so it’s not something I can just blow off either.

Honestly, the thing that has always held me back from vigorously pursuing opportunities like this was my night pay. My night pay accounts for $300 of my monthly salary, and because a contract concession forces me to work two days a month without pay for 6 months, just the simple act of transferring to another assignment would incur a loss of over $500 a month in income, at least until December.

I hate the thought of losing that much money a month, but if it there was ever a time I could stand to lose it, that time would be now. I no longer need to worry about any debts cramping my finances, and the loss of night pay would just mean I’d have to wait a little bit longer before getting enough cash together to put down for a new apartment and move out. What’s a few months and a few dollars really if it means finally getting out of a job I have loathed for 9 years?

Assuming of course the new job I get doesn’t turn out to be even worse than the old one.

Tomorrow I’ll try to find out more info about these openings and see what’s what. I have to admit the timing of these recent events is pretty curious, and I wonder whether it might be a sign that I finally need to go? After 9 years, as much as I’ve whined and complained about my work, I’ve still gotten pretty comfortable in my job and resistant to change. Facing the great unknown thrills me in a way, but it also frightens me too. I’ve been conditioned to believe that nothing good can ever happen to me when it comes to life changing events like this, and if I do wind up working a job someplace else, I fear it will be ten times worse than what I’m doing now. I wonder if it’s better to deal with the devil I know than charge into the great unknown, even if the devil I DO know ends up forcing me to give up my desk.

I guess I’ll know more by this week’s end what will happen. Heck, I’ve already experienced one life altering event by finally becoming debt-free, so why stop there?

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In the due course of history, a man is empowered with the capacity for life and liberty when he is financially beholden to neither men nor entities. These truths are self evident in their own right, that without freedom from debts and liabilities men are deprived in the profoundest of ways from pursuing that which would ensure their happiness and well being. It is hereto realized and understood the egregious deception by which principalities have sought to strip us of the very power that has been so rightly bestowed to us by our Divine Creator.

Acknowledging then the oppressive currents of those who have entrusted themselves to the cause of evil, I hereby declare my free and total financial independence, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence to utilize these newfound freedoms for the noble cause of truth, justice, and charity.

In other words, I paid off my school loan.

That concludes the triple play of payments I’ve been making to get myself completely out of debt, starting with my credit card (which went as high as $8,000), then my car loan, and finally my college loan, which had been a boil on my boom booms for 11 years.

It couldn’t have come at a better time either. The VERY day I made my last payment on my school loan, my job started a 6 month period where I have to work two days a month without getting paid, a concession my union made because they’re a bunch of spineless baboon heads that are only good to take my money so they can organize picnics I never get invited to.

But anyway, regardless of that temporary cut back, the world is my oyster now, and that my friend is truly a miracle. Not too long ago I was $20,000 or more in debt, and now it’s all but gone. This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous before our eyes. From here on out, I can just keep on saving until I build myself a decent nest egg and use that to go back to school for a masters, buy a new car, and/or put a down payment for a nice house in another state (some place very, very far away from New York). I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do by then, but one thing I do know is that I will NEVER, EVER (with the possible exception of a mortgage), go into debt again. The feeling of owing money to whomever was to me the worst feeling in the world, and I thank God for this tremendous gift of financial freedom, given to me on the 4th of July, of all days. From now on I will be the head, and not the tail, and I will lend to many nations, but I will not borrow thereof.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go collapse into bed for some well deserved rest, then get ready for muchos BBQ food, fireworks and good times.

Happy Independence Day!

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I’ve never been much of a people person, but lately it’s reaching the point where I don’t merely prefer just to be alone, I also want the lot of humanity to be dropped into a supersized vat of boiling vegetable oil.

Almost everyone these days (except for a select few) tend to put me in a mood where I’d like to rip their tongues out with wooden tonsils and then smack them around in the face with it. My God people, at least make some sense to me when you try to engage me in conversation. I don’t begrudge a dissenting view on topics of any flavor, but if you’re going to be more incoherent than Paula Abdul after she’s had 10 bottles of whiskey, then don’t be surprised if the next thing you see is me launching a coffee mug in your direction at 90 miles an hour just so I can get you to SHUT THE $%& UP.

I’ve been stewing over this for some time now, but it seems like the more I befriend people, the more it occurs to me that either I am some kind of magnet for the batpoopie insane, or the world really has gone stark raving, cracknuts mad. I’m betting it’s the latter.

These days I’m ready to toss in the towel, buy up a crapload of first person shooter/adventure games and immerse myself in another world completely just so I can get away from this freak show called real life. At least for say, the next 10 years.

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Ok so here’s me keeping it to myself:  SCREW YOU.

My blog, my rules. I pay money to keep this thing going, and if I’m in a mood to go BBQing somebody’s sacred cow then that’s my prerogative. If YOU don’t like it then YOU can go blow it out your anally stitched up hindquarters.

Ahhhh, I’m glad I got that off my chest.

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While I contributed to paying for most of the rent and bills, Mommy would always pretty much take care of the rest. All those basic necessities of life (like toilet paper) would magically replenish itself so I never had to worry about them. I never had to deal with the scum sucking landlord, or the utility bills, or even with most of the cleaning, though I still cleaned my own room and did my own laundry. Other than that (and cooking), Mommy would always take care of everything else.

I didn’t even have to worry about the phone bills until recently either because I was under the family plan. Since I started making plans to move out once my debts were paid, one of the first things I did was to break off from my parents’ family plan so I could have my own account, but of course Verizon completely botched the process by charging me for two lines when I only wanted one.

After I saw my first Verizon bill and realized the error they made, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Ah well, Mommy will take care… … … … crap.”

Yep, for the first time I had to handle my own phone bill, and after numerous phone calls, emails, and talking to maybe 5 different representatives to get things straightened out, I started to realize very quickly just how BIG a buffer my mother had been for me from life’s everyday aggravations and hassles.

Independence does come with a price after all.

Not that I’m completely unprepared for it, but there are some things that I was still going to have to learn about, like say, paying the electric bill, which my Momsie tried to explain to me the other day:

“If your apartment has one you should always make sure to read the meter to pay the electric, that way you’re not overpaying.”

“Sigh.”

Ayup, it’s definitely going to be a weird experience to sit in my own apartment and wonder why the toilet paper was no longer magically replenishing itself, or why the rent wasn’t automatically being paid, or why the apartment just wouldn’t stay clean for some blasted reason, or why there was never any food in the fridge. Didn’t a group of magical elves always take care of all that? What happened to them all??!?

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I guess it’s normal for me to yearn for female companionship and friendship, but I wonder at what point it gets to be too much. I’m always groping in the dark trying to gauge whether it’s ok to reach out to someone, or whether I’m just being a pest. Women though (at least from what I’ve seen so far) seem to be like total camels here. I mean sheesh, if I didn’t reach out to them every now just to remind them that I’m still alive I’d be lucky if I ever heard from them again. I know a lot of people lead very busy lives, so I do take that into consideration, but it sucks the sucky suck when I’m left to sit here by myself twiddling my thumbs because there’s no one sane enough to talk to. Why am I always the yearner but never the yearnee? Or is it simply because I am a weenie-ish little poopiehead who is just not yearn-worthy enough for the wimmins?

Women have created some very strange criteria in this regard too. On one hand they want a guy who’s independent and doesn’t need a woman to be happy, but then they get upset when said guy never calls them precisely BECAUSE he is in fact an independent brutha who doesn’t need a woman to be happy. If he doesn’t need a girl’s company, then chances are he’s not going to yearn for her either.

But then there’s the other extreme. I have a dear lady friend who seems to be surrounded by guys that bring neediness to levels I didn’t think were even possible. I thought I was bad? Holy crap. There’s one guy that texts, IMs, tweets and calls this poor woman every fricking minute of every fricking day, all day long, nonstop. And then another that does the same, only when he doesn’t get a response within 5 minutes he completely FLIPS THE %$^ OUT, getting all huffy and mad and bent out of shape because she didn’t INSTANTLY return his messages.

Seeing that crap does help me understand why women want a guy to be a bit more… free spirited, but that can be just as bad too. Do you really want to be with someone who doesn’t give you a second thought for weeks at a time? I sure don’t. There has to be a balance somewhere, and it makes me wonder what exactly started this mess. Have men always been clingy balls of mush, or did we start getting this way because our women have gotten more and more aloof and cold-hearted with each passing generation? Or have women become more aloof because they can’t deal with men’s growing insecurity?

Really, why can’t people yearn for each other in a normal way without overdoing it? Is that even possible anymore? All I ever see is this unequal balance where people are either too clingy or too aloof with each other, and I see the destructive impact it has on relationships too. One guy needs the girl more than the girl needs the guy (or vice versa), creating an inequitable bond that can only lead to ruin.

As for me, maybe I simply got old, but I’m starting to see a change in myself where I just don’t give a flying leap anymore. I think this is the product of years of unrequited love and the need for survival, reaching the tipping point where I finally end up as one of those free-spirited guys who have embraced and married the single life, though at the cost of losing all natural affection for the opposite sex. And while “physical needs” may still die hard, that can easily be satisfied by perusing the services of the world’s oldest profession.

I have to admit, it sounds like a GREAT life.

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Yeah, I probably should blog more frequently than that if I’m to get more traffic and achieve my dream of being a full time blogger who lives off the love and affection of his adoring audience.

Part of the reason for the lack of posts is that I simply had no energy to blog. And when I did have some energy, anything I wrote felt too silly or boring that I doubted anyone would have any interest in reading it, especially since I tend to rehash a lot of the same topics. Writing is the one thing I think I can be good at, so when it doesn’t seem to flow freely from my mind to the screen I get so depressed sometimes. I hate being in a funk like this. I’m hoping June will be better blogwise, and maybe from now on I’ll just publish whatever happens to be on my mind, even if they’re like the worst content I’ve ever put to paper in the history of the universe.

So even if my blogging does take a serious dive in quality for the month of June, what’s the worst that could happen, really?

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