So, yesterday I was out doing deliveries and Uber does this thing where depending on where you start and which first few jobs you accept, they seem to want to keep sending you out to the same general area — and so I wound up going to Plain City like three times. Twice to the actual town itself. It was so weird.
Well, the second time I went out there I saw this thing in the road on 161 and it looked like a little pile of fabric. Just the same, I couldn’t tell what it was and I couldn’t swerve it so I centered the car over it and cringed. I was right to cringe. THUNKTHUNKTHUNK. And then it was in the other lane and I was past it. I spent the rest of the day terrified that I had broken something important on my car. I’m still not sure I didn’t.
Then today I had to have my headlights on because it was raining and noticed that I had one of the mains out AGAIN as I sat at a red light behind another vehicle. Thank fuck I had another good bulb in the glove compartment. Replaced it. I don’t think it’s at the proper angle because driving in the dark was a little weird, but the main reason I replaced it even knowing I wouldn’t be able to adjust the angle was because I wanted other drivers to see me properly. Now I know they can do that. It is what it is. I’ll cope.
I am so torn about which way I want to take things in the next few months.
I would stay here in Dublin if I could. It isn’t a status thing, even though I’m gonna get mileage out of “I once lived on [rich people road] for six months” for fucking years, especially if I ever speak again to anyone I used to know from this area before my life here went to shit. It’s just that I got my second Ohio job in Dublin (I can’t remember where the first one was, but it looks like it was in Westerville), I used to catch the bus to and from work in the same area of the Meijer parking lot that I now sit waiting for Uber calls (that bus stop is long gone now — the city killed the line not long after I quit), I used to visit here all the time to go to my favorite stores, I used to bring Thea here for bookstores and the cat shelter, we used to go to the Carriage Place movie theater just down at Sawmill and Bethel for most of our movies… So much of my life has been here. It feels like “me.” Even with all the crazy changes over twenty years (Bridge Park! North Market Dublin! All the everfucking cheaply-built “luxury” apartment communities everywhere!). It’s just… too fucking pricey. There are a few places I could maybe get in, but then most of the jobs here that I would even qualify for don’t pay enough, and I’m fucking fed up with call centers, which are the one well-paying option I had a prayer of getting — and did, before I walked out.
Delaware is another option. There are a few Job Possibles up there — most notably, Major Grocery Store Chain’s got a distribution center and I’ve been their employee before and left on sort of good terms. (That was when I got Mike arrested for B&E and grand larceny of U.S. Army property and then never went back to the house, and they wouldn’t lock him up or confine him to barracks so… it was no longer safe for me to go to work. I did advise my supervisor of the situation. I did that much. And that was in 1999, so.) If I got that one I know for a fact there are apartments up there I could afford on that pay. We’ll see. I still need to inquire into that.
Then there’s New Albany. There’s a Job Possible there I want to also inquire into and if I were to get it, even though it’s through an agency, there’s a fair chance they’d be looking to hire from temp. If I did get that, there’s at least one place in the general area with apartments under $700 a month. It’d be a studio but I’d have more space than I had at InTown Suites, it’d be just a little over half what I spent per month at InTown Suites, I’d be on a lease, and I don’t have much personal stuff anyway so who the fuck cares. It is so fucking far from Dublin — but Delaware is like two minutes farther away than New Albany is, just north instead of east. Whatever. I could hang out in Dublin on my days off. If I ever left the fucking apartment on my days off. I don’t have a great track record for that.
I’ll come right out with it: I don’t want a job at all, and as it is I’ll have to wait until Shark Week comes and goes (and if that doesn’t start happening soon I’m gonna be real fucking irritated — I need to get on with things) so that I can make sure there won’t be any issues. It’s not the work I fear, though I am not fond of coming off my work shift feeling like I went ten rounds with Mike Tyson and that without him dropping trou and coming after me that way. It’s the feeling like I have no freedom. It’s the having to do things I do not give one single tin shit in a gold mine about. (Why do they keep calling shitty jobs “careers”? Buddy, you tell me with a straight face that you always wanted to be a gas-station night manager ever since you were little and I will call you out for the fucking liar you are. Not that that’s any of my Job Possibles. I am just illustrating the issue.) It’s the having to deal with irrational people and stupid rules. I have absolutely no power or authority, I don’t want authority anyway, everyone probably picks all that up from me like it’s a fucking pheromone, and the end result is I’m miserable. If I didn’t NEED the money I would not fucking bother. And I have ways to earn money at home but shifting gears is really hard for me, I’ve got next to no furniture much less to do work at, and it would take time to get my income up anyway. And when you get right down to it I just want to make sure a prospective landlord would say yes. Whatever comes after that is whatever comes after that.
I spend so much time being fretful and indecisive and then wind up in trouble because I never made up my mind. Over and over. It gets old.
Oh, speaking of Uber sending me wherever, I wound up in Delaware today. Right schmackity in the middle of the town itself. Right around the corner from the homeless shelter. So I thought, fuck it, passing the shelter’s the quickest way back to William so I can turn down Liberty. Okay, so guess who was out there on the porch? Enrique. I almost stopped to say hi. I almost did, but I needed to keep picking up jobs. I cannot believe that man is still there. And Lumpy, the other guy who actually was at the InTown Suites in Dublin for five years and then wound up homeless, he was there for a long time after I left too. He didn’t get housed til August. I am so pissed. No one told me there was any chance I could stick around for longer. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to, but basically I got admitted to the shelter, given the bare outline sketch of a plan to deal with my situation, and then got zero guidance from my case worker other than a couple of minor time extensions because first she was “sick” and then I don’t know what the fuck was up and then I find out she’s being given the directorship of another of their locations just opening, at that time, in Marysville. I got neglected for someone’s fucking career advancement. I cannot fucking even. I wanted to like her, too. I don’t really know how to feel about her at this point. I could have spared myself living in the fucking car again and also at the motel in Marysville and also the Dublin InTown Suites had I had that information. Whatever. I may drop by there soon and say hi if Enrique’s around. I know he works, or anyway he was employed when I was there, and I don’t know his hours but what the hell, we’ll see. He might like seeing a familiar face.
I could stand that myself, but most of mine hate me now. And for the dumbest reason possible. I still can’t believe it.